well that the Escorial had a serious and religious aim; but gravity is
not dryness, melancholy is not marasm, meditation is not ennui, and
beauty of forms can always be happily wedded to elevation of ideas."
This is the Frenchman's language as he goes into the Escorial; he does
not cheer up as he passes through the place, and when he comes out he
has to say: "I issued from that desert of granite, from that monkish
necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; it
seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once
more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost
all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me
round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that
cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare,
which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous as
to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or four days
in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they will enjoy
themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they might be
in the Escorial and that they are not."

That was well toward a century ago. It is not quite like that now, but
it is something like it; the human race has become inured to the
Escorial; more tourists have visited the place and imaginably lightened
its burden by sharing it among their increasing number. Still there is
now and then one who is oppressed, crushed by it, and cannot relieve
himself in such ironies as Gautier's, but must cry aloud in suffering
like that of the more emotional De Amicis: "You approach a courtyard and
say, 'I have seen this already.' No. You are mistaken; it is another. .
. . You ask the guide where the cloister is and he replies, 'This is
it,' and you walk on for half an hour. You see the light of another
world: you have never seen just such a light; is it the reflection from
the stone, or does it come from the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder