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Updated: May 24, 2025
The Cartuja of Valldemosa offered itself as their sole refuge, a building devoid of architectural beauty, with no other charm than that of its medieval antiquity, situated in the mountains with pine-covered slopes, having, like delicate curtains tempering the sun's ardor, plantations of almond and palm, through the branches of which the eye could make out the green plain and the distant sea.
We were going first to the Cartuja, and in the city, which we found curiously much more modern, after the Latin notion, than Seville, with freshly built apartment-houses and business blocks, we took a cab, not so modern as to be a taxicab, and drove through the quarter said to have been assigned to the Moors after the fall of Granada.
The child bent her pretty head shyly on one side, and went on putting more sticks under her supposititious pot. I found the little spectacle reward enough in itself and in a sort compensation for our failure to see the exquisite alabaster tomb of Juan II. and his wife Isabel which makes the Cartuja Church so famous.
Some of the large pieces of variegated marble which form the base work, fonts, and tables of the chapel, are beautiful examples of the natural stone as quarried in the neighboring mountains. Indeed, larger, or finer agates cannot be found in Europe than those which ornament the Cartuja.
One comes to almost any Cartuja at last, and we found ours on a sunny top just when the cold had pinched us almost beyond endurance, and joined a sparse group before the closed gate of the convent.
A Gold Bearing River. A Beautiful Residence. Early Home of the Ex-Empress Eugénie. City of Granada. Spanish Beggars. The Remarkable Tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella. French Vandals. The Cathedral. Precious Relic. The Cartuja. Love of Music. The distance from Malaga to Granada is about seventy miles, but in Spanish style it requires eight or nine hours to accomplish it.
One night during Carnival season Cartuja was invaded by "Moors." They were young men from Palma, who, after having overrun the town disguised as Berbers, thought of the "French woman," ashamed, no doubt, at the isolation in which she was held by the townspeople.
It was in every way a contrast to the road we had come from the Cartuja: an avenue of gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join the rank and fashion of Granada in their afternoon's outing. But there was only one carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no greater world than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom.
They spent the entire winter in the isolation of the Cartuja. She, wearing Turkish slippers, the little dagger always thrust into her ill-combed hair, courageously did the cooking with the assistance of a young peasant girl who took advantage of every opportunity to gorge herself with the dainties intended for the "beloved invalid."
Febrer pretended not to understand. The carriage entered Valldemosa, stopping in the vicinity of La Cartuja before a dwelling of modern construction. When the two friends opened the garden gate they saw approaching them a gentleman with white whiskers, leaning on a cane. It was Don Benito Valls. He greeted Febrer with a weak, hollow voice, cutting short his words at intervals to gasp for air.
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