The desolation too of these chambers, once the abode of the proud
and elegant Elizabetta, had a more touching charm for me than if I had
beheld them in their pristine splendor, glittering with the
pageantry of a court.
When I returned to my quarters, in the governor's apartment, every
thing seemed tame and common-place after the poetic region I had left.
The thought suggested itself: Why could I not change my quarters to
these vacant chambers? that would indeed be living in the Alhambra,
surrounded by its gardens and fountains, as in the time of the Moorish
sovereigns. I proposed the change to Dame Antonia and her family,
and it occasioned vast surprise. They could not conceive any
rational inducement for the choice of an apartment so forlorn,
remote and solitary. Dolores exclaimed at its frightful loneliness;
nothing but bats and owls flitting about- and then a fox and wild-cat,
kept in the vaults of the neighboring baths, roamed about at night.
The good Tia had more reasonable objections. The neighborhood was
infested by vagrants; gipsies swarmed in the caverns of the adjacent
hills; the palace was ruinous and easy to be entered in many places;
the rumor of a stranger quartered alone in one of the remote and
ruined apartments, out of the hearing of the rest of the
inhabitants, might tempt unwelcome visitors in the night, especially
as foreigners were always supposed to be well stocked with money.
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