then presented me to his mother, and to his four pretty sisters, all doing needle-work. I enjoyed a most amusing visit, struggling bravely with my imported Spanish to answer all the curious questions which fell from pretty Andalusian lips. In that family of working people I found a delicate refinement of speech and manner that would have graced a far more pretentious home.
When I was leaving Granada, Juan asked my destination. "Paris," was my reply. "O Paris!" exclaimed the boy, "el ultimo suspiro del Americano!"—"the last sigh of the American!"
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A MOORISH GATE Photograph by Harlow D. Higinbotham
It was with Juan de Lara as my cicerone that I first approached Granada's famous fortress. For the Alhambra was primarily a fortress, grim and forbidding, while the lovely palace to which it owes its fame is simply a royal residence within the fortifications, a retreat in which the Moorish princes could dream of love, secure from the attacks of enemies. A line of walls and towers stretches completely around the border of the hill, forming thus a stronghold, which in the Moorish days contained an army of forty thousand men.
