Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн

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The Spaniard is cruel, it is admitted, and he is cruel in ways which are particularly obnoxious to the Anglo-Saxon who, when he sees a man ill-treating a horse, is almost ready to rush in and kill the man. But other peoples can be cruel also. That does not extenuate the Spaniard's fault, but it is permitted to remark without offense, he is cruel, but he has remarkably good manners; he has a greater sense of the dignity of life.

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Travelling by way of Rouen and Chartres to Burgos and Toledo, and by way of Bordeaux to Cordoba and Cadiz prompts certain comparisons—Spain is grander than France; France has more life.

The note of the Gothic is aspiration out of stone, but that of the Moorish is barbaric splendor within stone. The asceticism of stone reigns at Durham, at Rouen, and is somehow transfigured into the loveliness of doves' plumage at Chartres, but in the Spanish cathedrals speaks chiefly gold. It is the same at Burgos, gilded with some of the first gold of Mexico, as it is at the cathedral of Toledo; architecturally unremarkable but interiorly oppressed with riches. As you enter by the old doors it is not so much into the presence of God as into the power of the Church.