Indian chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1882-1902, 1898-10-13
SPAIN'S CAPITAL INwAR TINE
4 Glimpse at the Old City of Madrid
The Palace and the
Crowds. =:

Three o'clock in the afternoon. As
the evening approaches, the streets
of Madrid grow more and more Rni-
mated, filed with a crowd gay and vi
facious.
Before the palaces, In the avenues,
officers and soldiers ride about in uni
forms of charming elegance; white
hussars, blue hussars, red hussars, AT
the old historic palace the white hus-
sars are on guard. On the staircases,
IN the courts, pace up and down the
halberdiers, striking with their weap-
ons the carpet or the sounding stone,
when some prince or dignitary passes
before them. And sec down there,
traversing the inner galleries and an
founced by the respectable salute Of
the ha1berdiers, o very noble woman,
with beautiful face and white hair,
With the bearing Of q queen-her I'M
perial hlghness the Archduchess Isa-
bef, mother of her majesty, the queen
regent.
The facade Of the palace gives on
sort OF circular garden, bordered with
antique statues, which seem 70 be
drawn up thus about the trees, to
dance some stately old-time dance.
On the opposite side the royal win
dows overlook the country-a country
which astonishes because there, SO
hear the city, It has always the aspect
of a desert; no houses, apparently no
roads; woods, underbrush, q vast,
half-sarage extent, which ends at the
far off mountain, and through which
winds the melancholy Mancansres.
Such a view, seen between curtains
of brocade, the colors of which age hos
deliciously subdued, gives to the sump-
tuous solitary apartments some
thing more of melancholy and Of
grandeur. A whole past OF magnih-
eence and of glory seems TO sleep in
those duslcy salons which succeed one
another in an interminable vista, d.
yersifed at this point or that by the
fantasy of the artist of other days, so
that one finds In walking through
them a series of surprises. The lofty
casings of the doors are all made of
agates or of rare marbles, whose col
trs strangely veined harmonize with
the brocaded tapestries of the walls.
There is the salon of Charles III, all
in soft blue, starred with silver. Other
salons, hung with exquisite old satins,
are of a dying rose, with the blazonries
of Louis XIV, or of an inimitabie old
rose embroidered In gold, with an ex-
uberant renaissance ornamentation;
or else of green bizarrely mixed with
saffron yellow, or again Of royal blue,
emblazoned with brilliant yellow, with
furniture of which the magnificent
stiffness dates from the empire. A
certain grand salon, with ceiling all
IN flowers and scrolls Of faience, has
mural panels IN pearl-gray satin, en-
broidered above and below with gar
lands rose-colored or white, which
must have consumed the hives Of le-
gion of patient workwomerl- And one
feels that all these precious things.
respected by human revolutions, have
dwelt here immobile during years and
centuries. The ghosts OF the mon
archs lying in the Escurial would find
here again, intact and only a little
1aoeo, the splendors which they Knew.
The throneroom, the most immense
and most superb of all, hung entirely
with ancient cramoisy velvet, embroi
dered in gold. Is peopled the length of
its walls by great black statues hold
ing in their hands gold emblems, and
standing out in strangely agitated |
poses from the brilliance of the red |
pedestals. Four lions in bronze guard |
the steps of the throne of Spain.
This evening the approaches to the
palace are comparatively tranquil and |
silent. But the crowd swells from
to moment, invades the
streets and the promenades like sea
at the approach of dusk.
One hears music, guitars song and
laughter. And the noise, which one
takes for the noise of fete, Increases
ever as the night falls,-pierreLoti, In
Paris Figaro.