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The golden age of Fontainebleau came with the Renaissance and Francis I., who wished to make Fontainebleau the most glorious palace in the world. "The Escurial!" says Brantome, "what of that? See how long it was of building? Good workmen like to be quick finished. With our king it was otherwise. Take Fontainebleau and Chambord.
Peter Martyr; the David and Goliah; and the Last Supper, which is in the Escurial, stand in the very highest rank in art. On the latter of these pictures being finished, Titian in his letter to the King, announcing the circumstance, says that it had been the labour of seven years.
Nero's House of Gold was not raised in a day; nor the Mexican House of the Sun; nor the Alhambra; nor the Escurial; nor Titus's Amphitheater; nor the Illinois Mounds; nor Diana's great columns at Ephesus; nor Pompey's proud Pillar; nor the Parthenon; nor the Altar of Belus; nor Stonehenge; nor Solomon's Temple; nor Tadmor's towers; nor Susa's bastions; nor Persepolis' pediments.
The magnificent palace-convent of the Escurial, dedicated to the saint on whose festival the battle had been fought, and built in the shape of the gridiron, on which that martyr had suffered, was soon afterwards erected in pious commemoration of the event. Such was the celebration of the victory. The reward reserved for the victor was to be recorded on a later page of history.
Preliminaries of the Marriages. Grimaldo. How the Question of Precedence Was Settled. I Ask for an Audience. Splendid Illuminations. A Ball. I Am Forced to Dance. Mademoiselle de Montpensier Sets out for Spain. I Carry the News to the King. Set out for Lerma. Stay at the Escurial. Take the Small pox. Convalescence. Mode of Life of Their Catholic Majesties. Their Night. Morning. Toilette.
In the archives of Simancas is a duplicate copy of the first memorial, Relacion Primera, though, like the one in the Escurial, without its author's name. Munoz assigns it to the pen of Gabriel de Rojas, a distinguished cavalier of the Conquest.
The learned Spaniard will find himself transported to the palace of the Escurial, and the frightful tragedies of its bigoted court, in his terrible tragedy of Don Carlos.
This was crowning the glory of M. de Vendome in good earnest; for no private persons are buried in the Escurial, although several are to be found in Saint-Denis. But meanwhile, until I speak of the visit I made to the Escurial I shall do so if I live long enough to carry these memoirs up to the death of M. d'Orleans, let me say something of that illustrious sepulchre.
There stood the stately Escurial, once the centre of the politics of the world, the place to which distant potentates looked, some with hope and gratitude, some with dread and hatred, but none without anxiety and awe. The glory of the house had indeed departed. It was long since couriers bearing orders big with the fate of kings and commonwealths had ridden forth from those gloomy portals.
The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo? or is it the Corso? or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are?
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