The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the upper town,
and full of protestations of devotion. The fair Segovian listened to him
one evening, when her plump arms ached with the work of bringing water
from the ravine, and promised eyes of favor if his Infernal Majesty
would build an aqueduct to her door before morning. He worked all night,
like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, saw
him putting the last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun
lighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decided
that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from her
promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out of
his sight again.
The bartizaned keep of the Moorish Alcazar is perched on the western
promontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams Eresma and
Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring times a palace, a
fortress, a prison (where our friend--everybody's friend--Gil Blas was
once confined), and of late years a college of artillery. In one of its
rooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his
orthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped
a royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara will
seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "La
Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathless
music of Donizetti.
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