Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн

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We walk from the Puerto del Sol, the Harbor of the Sun,—has not every city in Spain and in the Indies a Puerto del Sol?—a confluence of streets and tramcars in the heart of the city, to a sort of baronial mansion in a narrow street. And there live a community of dukes and duchesses, marquises and marchionesses in suites of apartments. Though not castellated the house is massive as a castle, all of stone, and built sheer on the too narrow pavement of a narrow cobbled street. The entrance is from a recess in the frontage of this stronghold, and as you step inside you leave behind the street, its trams, its cries, and enter the stillness of history.

The stone stairways and stately halls are hung with historical paintings of the families and with the spoils of battles fought long ago. Here is a great lamp clutched by a Saracen's hand. It was taken after the battle of Lepanto. There, in cases, are great keys of the gates of the cities of Bruges and Ghent, taken in the wars of the sixteenth century. The gold, the jewels, come from the altars of Mexico and the idols of the Indians. The intervening centuries do not speak. Speaks only the great era of Spain.