House and Garden 
Vol. V 11 
March, 1905 
No. 3 
A GRAN JA, the favorite summer palace 
of the Spanish monarchy, is best ap¬ 
proached by way of the picturesque City of 
Segovia, which lies on the northern slope of 
the Sierra de Guadarrama, the central moun¬ 
tain range of the kingdom. As the high¬ 
road leads away across the low plains, and 
leaves behind the ancient towered walls, the 
great yellow Middle-age cathedral, and the 
Roman aqueduct, we part with regret from 
scenes which make so real the strongly con¬ 
trasted life of Roman, Moorish and Medie¬ 
val ages. 
The city quickly disappears from view, 
shut out by the noble plane trees which line 
the roadsides almost all the way to the village 
of San Ildefonso, which is but an hour’s drive 
from our starting point. We found the vil¬ 
lage given over to joy. The day was a 
fiesta, and all the Castilian faces we saw were 
sunny and bright, with the total surrender to 
pleasure that one sees rarely in northern 
Europe, and not too frequently even in Spain. 
It is one of the few days of the year—before 
the Court comes here from Madrid—when 
the fountains are permitted to play in the 
gardens, and this rare event seemed to the 
villagers to prefigure all the pleasures that 
would accompany the expected royal party. 
The whole scene, however, though filled 
with spontaneous gayety, seemed to us some¬ 
what remote from every-day busy life, and 
it did not at all violate the proprieties when, 
in answer to our inquiry for a fitting guide 
to the beauties of the place, there stepped 
forth, as out of Shakespeare, in black cos¬ 
tume and bearing a wand, a stately Malvolio, 
courteous and condescending to his unen¬ 
lightened guests, but with an ever-present 
consciousness that his station was below his 
deservings. 
We followed him into the palace, and our 
“Castle in Spain” lay before us. Through 
its windows we gazed for a moment across 
and beyond the trim garden, where there 
burst upon our sight that which hurried us 
forth into the sunlight, leaving our aston¬ 
ished cicerone descanting on the interior 
glories of the palace, and chiefly on the 
marvellous mirrors of the room in which 
we had been standing, one of whose crown¬ 
ing merits in his eyes was that they were 
products of the village in which they hung. 
It was Nature’s first mirror which had 
enchanted us. Tumbling from the moun¬ 
tain sides, falling from basin to basin, and 
into successive pools till the torrent reached 
our feet, spouting here from lofty jets, and 
there from finely modelled leaden heads, 
came the purest of crystal waters, now daz- 
109 
Copyright, 1905 by The John C. Winston Co. 
