The Mena star., 1898-08-24
SPANS CAPITAL IN WAR TIME
A 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 ami
mated, filled with a crowd gay and vi
vacious.
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 see down there,
traversing the inner galleries and an
nounced by the respectable salute of
the halberdiers, o very noble woman,
with beautiful face and white hair,
with the bearing of queen-her inn
perial highness the Archduchess Isa-
bel. mother of her majesty, the queen
regent.
The facade of the palace gives on a
sort OF circular garden, bordered with
antique statues, which seem to be
drawn up thds 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
near the city, it has always the aspect
of desert; no houses, apparently no
roads; woods, upderbrush; vast,
half-savage extent, which ends at the
far off mountain, and through which
WINDS the melancholy Mancanares.
Such view, seen between curtains
OF brocade, the cofors OF which age has
deliciously subdued, gives to the sump-
tuous solitary apartments some
thing more of melancholy and of
grandeur. A whole past of magnifi-
cence and Of glory seems to sleep in
those dusky salons which succeed one
another in an interminable vista, d.
versifed at this point or that by the
fantasy of the artist Of other days, so
that one finds in walking through
them series of surprises. The lofty
castings OF the doors are all made OF
agates or of rare marbles, whose col
ors 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 u a dying rose, with the blazonries
Of Louis XIV. or Of an lnimiJable old
rose embluide red ia gold, with an ex-
uberant renaissance ornamentatlon;
or else of a gree bizarrely mixed with
saffron yellow. or again OF royal blae,
embla1Cned with brilliant yellow, with
furniture Of which the magnificent
stiffness dates from the empire A
certain grand salon. with a ceiling all
IN flowers and scrolls Of faience, has
mural panels III pearl-gray satin, en-
broitiereti above and below with gar
lands rose-colored or white, which
must have consumed The lives Of le-
gion Of patient worlswomen. And one
feels that al these precious things,
respected by human revolutions, have
dwelt here immobile during years and
centuries The ghosts of the mon
archs lying in the Eseurial would find
here again, intact and only little
faded, 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 bands 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
moment to moment, invades the
streets and the promenades like sea
mounting 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-Pierre Lott. in
Paris Figaro.
No Pleasure at Southern Hotels.