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Updated: June 11, 2025
He called it the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, but the nomenclature of the great has no authority with the people. It was built on a site once covered with cinder-heaps from a long abandoned iron-mine, and so it was called in common speech the Escorial. The royal seat of San Ildefonso can gain from the general public no higher name than La Granja, the Farm.
There was much gesticulation and vociferation, and several people were running about shouting, "Viva la constitucion!" a cry which, a few days previously, would have been visited on the utterer with death, the city having for some weeks past been subjected to the rigour of martial law. I occasionally heard the words, "La Granja! La Granja!"
Amongst other things, he was accused of having acted as an agent to the English government in the affair of the Granja, bringing about that revolution by bribing the mutinous soldiers, and more particularly the notorious Sergeant Garcia.
So strong is this feeling in every department of national life, that the mayoral who drove our spanking nine-in-hand received with very ill humor our suggestion that the time could be greatly shortened by a Fell railroad over the hills to La Granja. "What would become of nosotros?" he asked.
For me the Baron Santos da Granja a was simply a seasoned man of the world, with the good taste to have retired from its conspicuous notoriety; and good taste is always expensive. His bank account did not interest me. I knew her well by sight, for she passed me often in the Bois de Boulogne when I ran up to Paris on just such errands as my present one.
This was not a matter of any difficulty, as the same operas were to be presented as had been already played at Aranjuez, the Escurial, and the Granja, for the Count of Aranda would never have dared to sanction the performance of an Italian comic opera at Madrid. The novelty would have been too great, and the Inquisition would have interfered.
Thinking that his notoriety had not yet crossed the Guadarrama mountains and penetrated into Old Castile, he decided to anticipate it. Lopez was sent ahead with a donkey bearing a cargo of Testaments, his instructions being to meet Borrow and Antonio at La Granja.
And so indeed it proved, for we became bewildered, and at last arrived where two roads branched off in different directions, we took not the left hand road, which would have conducted us to Segovia, but turned to the right, in the direction of La Granja, where we arrived at midnight.
"Madame and I will breakfast here to-day, Emile," said the voice beneath the panama. "The little table in the corner and the same Pommard." He threw his riding crop on a vacant chair and, lifting his hat, handed it to the veteran waiter. It was the Baron Santos da Granja!
From his patent-leather boots to his glistening silk hat the Baron Santos da Granja was immaculate. Suddenly I saw him stop, run his eyes swiftly over the crowded tables and then, though there happened to be one just vacated within his reach, turn back with a look of decision and enter the Government's dépôt for tobacco under the Grand Hotel.
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