Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

S P A I N

EDITION ARTISTIQUE

MERRILL AND BAKER
New York London

THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD’S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS COPY IS NO. .205.

Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1895

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME I

BARCELONA.

IT was a rainy morning in February, and lacked an hour of sunrise. My mother accompanied me to the hall, anxiously repeating all the counsels she had been giving me for a month: then she threw her arms about my neck, burst into tears, and disappeared. I stood a moment stricken to the heart, looking at the door, on the point of calling out, “Let me in! I am not going! I will stay with thee!” Then I ran down the stairs like an escaping thief. When I was in the street it seemed that the waves of the sea and the peaks of the Pyrenees were already lying between me and my home. But, although I had for a long time looked forward to that day with feverish impatience, I was not at all cheerful. At a turn of the street I met my friend the doctor on his way to the hospital. He had not seen me for a month, and naturally asked:

“Where are you going?”

“To Spain,” I replied.

But he would not believe me, so far was my frowning, melancholy face from promising a pleasure-trip. Through the entire journey from Turin to Genoa I thought only of my mother, of my room, now empty, of my little library, of all the pleasant habits of my domestic life, all of which I was leaving for many months.

But, arrived at Genoa, the sight of the sea, the gardens of the Acquasola, and the company of Anton Giulio Barili restored me to serenity and cheerfulness. I recollect that as I was about to step into the boat that was to take me to the ship a porter handed me a letter which contained only these words: “Sad news from Spain. The condition of an Italian at Madrid in time of insurrection against the king would be perilous. Do you persist in going? Consider!” I leaped into the boat and was off. Shortly before the ship sailed two officers came to bid me good-bye. I can still see them standing in the middle of the boat as the ship began to move.

“Bring me a Toledo blade!” they cried.

“Bring me a bottle of Xeres!”

“Bring me a guitar! an Andalusian hat! a stiletto!”

A little while, and I could see only their white handkerchiefs and hear their last cry: I tried to answer, but my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth; I began to laugh, but brushed my hand across my eyes. Soon I retired to my little hole of a stateroom, where, lulled into a delicious sleep, I dreamed of my mother, my purse, France, and Andalusia. At dawn I awoke, and was soon on deck. We were not far from the coast, the French coast—my first view of a foreign coast. Strange! I could not look at it enough, and a thousand fugitive thoughts passed through my head, and I said, “Is it France, in very truth? And is it I who am here?” I began to doubt my own identity.

At mid-day Marseilles came into view. The first sight of a great maritime city fills one with an amazement which destroys the pleasure of the marvel. I see, as through a mist, a vast forest of ships; a waterman who stretches out his hand and addresses me in an incomprehensible jargon; a customs official who, in accordance with some law, makes me pay deux sous pour les Prussiens; then a dark room in a hotel; then the longest streets, endless squares, a throng of people and of carriages; troops of Zouaves, unknown regimentals, a mingling of lights and of voices, and finally come weariness and profound sadness, which end in uneasy sleep.

By daybreak on the following morning I was in a railway-carriage on my way from Marseilles to Perpignan, in the midst of a group of ten Zouave officers arrived from Africa the previous day, some with crutches, some with canes, some with bandaged arms; but all as happy and boisterous as so many school-boys. It was a long journey, consequently conversation was necessary. However, from all I had heard of the bitterness with which the French regarded us, I did not venture to open my mouth. But how foolish! One of them spoke the word and the conversation was started: “An Italian?”

“Yes.”

It was as good as a holiday. All but one had fought in Italy; one had been wounded at Magenta. They began to tell anecdotes of Genoa, of Turin, of Milan, to ask a thousand questions, to describe their life in Africa.

One began to discuss the Pope. “Oh!” said I to myself. Why? He talked even stronger than I should have done: he said that we ought to have cut the knot of the question, and to have gone to the root of the matter without considering the peasantry.

Meantime, as we were approaching the Pyrenees, I amused myself by observing the increasing difference in the pronunciation of the passengers who entered the carriage; by remarking how the French language died, so to speak, into the Spanish; by feeling how near Spain was growing until Perpignan was reached; and as I hurried into a diligence I heard the first Buenos dias and Buen viaje, so pure and sonorous that the words gave me infinite pleasure. Nevertheless, they do not speak Spanish at Perpignan, but they use a dialect formed by a mingling of French, Marseillaise, and Catalan, unpleasant to the ear. I alighted from the diligence at the hotel in the midst of a crowd of officers, gentlemen, Englishmen, and trunks. A waiter compelled me to sit down at a table already spread: I ate until I almost strangled, and was hurried into another diligence and away.

Ah me! I had so long cherished the thought of crossing the Pyrenees, and I now was forced to make the journey by night. Before we arrived at the foothills it was dark. Through the long, long hours, between sleeping and waking, I saw only a bit of the road lit up by the lights of the lantern of the diligence, the black outline of some mountain, the projecting rocks, which seemed to be within arms’ reach of the window, and I heard only the regular tramping of the horses and the whistling of an accursed wind which blew without a moment’s intermission.

Beside me sat an American from the United States, a young man, the most original fellow in the world, who slept I know not how many hours with his head on my shoulder. Now and then he roused himself to exclaim in a lamentable voice, “Ah what a night! what a horrible night!” without perceiving that with his head he gave me an additional reason for making the same lament.

At the first stopping-place we both alighted and entered a little hostelry to get a glass of liquor; my fellow-traveller asked me if I was travelling on business. “No, sir,” I replied; “I am travelling for pleasure; and you, if I may ask?”—“I am travelling for love,” he replied with perfect gravity.—“For love!—” And then, unasked, he told me a long story of an unhappy love-affair, of a deferred marriage, of abductions and duels, and I know not what else; and finally he said he was travelling for a change of scene to help him forget the lady of his affections. And, in fact, he sought distraction to the top of his bent, for at every inn where we stopped, from the beginning of our journey until we arrived at Gerona, he did nothing but tease the maids—always with the utmost gravity, it is true, but nevertheless with an audacity which even his desire for distraction failed to justify.

Three hours after midnight we arrived at the frontier. “Estamos en España!” (We are in Spain!) cried a voice. The diligence came to a stop. The American and I leaped again to the ground, and with great curiosity entered a little inn to see the first sons of Spain within the walls of a Spanish house.

We found a half-dozen customs officials, the host, his wife, and children sitting around a brasier. They greeted us at once. I asked a number of questions, and they answered in an open, spirited manner, which I had not expected to find among the Catalans, who are described in the gazetteers as a rude people of few words. I asked if they had anything to eat, and they brought in the famous Spanish chorizo, a sort of sausage, which is overseasoned with pepper and burns the stomach, a bottle of sweet wine, and some hard bread.

“Well; what is your king doing?” I asked of an official after I had spit out the first mouthful. The man to whom I spoke seemed embarrassed, looked first at me, then at the others, and finally made this very strange answer: “Esta reinando” (He is reigning). They all commenced to laugh, and while I was preparing a closer question, I became conscious of a whisper in my ear: “Es un republicano” (He is a republican). I turned and saw mine host looking into the air. “I understand,” said I, and changed the subject. When we had climbed again into the diligence my companion and I had a good laugh over the warning of the host, and we both expressed our surprise that a person of his class should have taken the political opinions of the officials so seriously; but at the inns where we afterward stopped we learned better. In every one of them we found the host or some adventurer reading the paper to a group of attentive peasants. Now and then the reading would be interrupted by a political discussion, which I could not understand, because they used the Catalan dialect, but I could get the drift of what they were saying by the aid of the paper which I had heard them reading. Well, I must say, among all of those groups there circulated a current of republican thought which would have made the stoutest royalist tremble. One of them, a man with a fierce scowl and a deep voice, after he had spoken a short time to a group of silent auditors, turned to me, whom by my impure Castilian accent he supposed to be a Frenchman, and said with great solemnity, “Let me tell you something, caballero!”—“What is it?”—“I tell you,” he replied, “that Spain is in a worse plight than France;” and after that remark he began walking up and down the room with bowed head and with his arms crossed upon his breast. Others spoke confusedly of the Cortes, of the ministry, of political ambitions, breaches of faith, and other dreadful things. One person only, a girl at a restaurant in Figueras, noticing that I was an Italian, said to me with a smile, “Now we have an Italian king.” And a little while later, as we were going out, she added with graceful simplicity, “I like him.”

When we arrived at Gerona it was still night. There King Amadeus, after a joyful welcome, placed a stone in the house where General Alvarez lodged during the famous siege of 1809.

We passed through the city, which seemed to us of great proportions, sleepy as we were and impatient to tumble into our corners of the railroad carriage. Finally we reached the station, and by dawn were on our way to Barcelona.

Sleep! It was the first time I had seen the sun rise in Spain. How could I have slept? I put my face close to the window, and did not turn my head until we came to Barcelona. Ah! there is no greater pleasure than that one feels upon entering an unfamiliar country, with one’s imagination prepared for the sight of new and wonderful objects, with a thousand memories of the fanciful descriptions of books in one’s head, free from anxiety and free from care.

To press forward into that land, to bend one’s glance eagerly in every direction in search of something which will convince one, if he is not already sure of the fact, that he is really there—to grow conscious of it little by little, now by the dress of a peasant, now by a tree, again by a house; to notice as one advances the growing frequency of those signs, those colors, those forms, and to compare all those things with the mental picture one had previously formed; to find a field for curiosity in everything upon which the eye rests or which strikes the ear,—the appearance of the people, their gestures, their accent, their conversation,—the exclamations of surprise at every step. To feel one’s mind expanding and growing clear; so long to arrive at once and yet never to arrive; to ask a thousand questions of one’s companions; to make a sketch of a village or of a group of peasants; to say ten times an hour, “I am here!” and to think of telling all about it some day,—this is truly the liveliest and most varied of human pleasures. The American was snoring.

The part of Catalonia through which one passes from Gerona to Barcelona is a varied, fertile, and highly-cultivated country. It is a succession of little valleys flanked by gently sloping hills, with tracts of heavy woodland, roaring streams, gorges, and ancient castles; clothed with a vegetation luxuriant and hardy and of a varied green, which reminds one of the severe aspect of the Alpine valleys. The landscape is enlivened by the picturesque dress of the peasants, which corresponds admirably to the fierceness of the Catalan character. The first peasants I saw were dressed from top to toe in black velvet, and wore about their necks a sort of shawl with red and white stripes, and on their heads little Zouave caps of bright red falling to the shoulder. Some wore a sort of buskin of skins laced to the knee, others a pair of canvas shoes shaped like slippers, with corded soles, open in front, and tied about the foot with interlacing black ribbons—a habit, in fine, easy and elegant, and at the same time severe. The weather was not very cold, but they were all bundled up in their shawls, so that only the tip of the nose or the end of the cigarette was to be seen. They had the air of gentlemen coming from the theatre. This effect is produced not merely by the shawls, but by the manner in which they are worn—falling at the side, so that the arrangement appears accidental, with those plaits and foldings which add the grace of a mantilla and dignity of a cloak. At every railway-station there was a group of men, each wearing a shawl of different color, and not a few dressed in fine new cloth: almost all were very clean, and all had a dignity of bearing which heightened the effect of their picturesque costume. There were a few dark faces, but most of them were fair, with lively black eyes, lacking, however, the fire and vivacity of the Andalusian glances.

Gradually as one advances the villages, houses, bridges, and aqueducts become most frequent, with all those things which announce the proximity of a rich and populous commercial city. Granallers, Sant’ Andrea de Palomar, and Clot are surrounded by factories, villas, parks, and gardens. All along the way one sees long rows of carts, troops of peasants, and herds of cattle; the stations are crowded with passengers. If one did not know where he was, he might think he was crossing a part of England rather than a province of Spain. Once past the station of Clot, the last stop before the arrival at Barcelona, one sees on every side huge brick buildings, long walls, heaps of building material, smoking chimneys, stacks of workshops, and many laboring-men, and hears, or imagines he hears, a muffled roar, growing in extent and volume, which seems like the labored breathing of a great city at its work. At last one can see all Barcelona—at a glance the harbor, the sea, a coronet of hills—and it all appears and disappears in a moment, and you are sitting in the station with tingling nerves and a confused brain.

A diligence as large as a railway-carriage took me to a neighboring hotel, when, as soon as I entered, I heard the Italian speech. I confess that this was as great a pleasure as if I had been an interminable distance from Italy and a year absent from home. But it was a pleasure of short duration. A porter, the same one whom I had heard speaking, showed me to my room, and, doubtless assured by my smile that I was a fellow-countryman, asked politely,

“Have you made an end of arriving?”

“Made an end of arriving?” I asked in my turn, elevating my eyebrows.

I must here note that in Spanish the word acabor (to make an end of doing a thing) corresponds to the French expression venir de la faire. Consequently I did not at once understand what he said.

“Yes,” the porter replied, “I ask the cavaliere if he has alighted the selfsame hour from the way of iron?”

“Selfsame hour? Way of iron? What sort of Italian is this, my friend?”

He was a little disconcerted.

However, I afterward discovered that there is in Barcelona a large number of hotel-porters, of waiters in the restaurants, cooks, and servants of all kinds—Piedmontese for the most part from the province of Navarre—who have lived in Spain from boyhood and speak this dreadful jargon composed of French, Italian, Castilian, Catalan, and Piedmontese. However, they do not use this dialect in addressing the Spanish people, for they all know Spanish, but only to Italian travellers in a playful spirit, to let them see that they have not forgotten the speech of their fatherland.

This explains the fact that I have heard many Catalonians say, “Oh! there is very little difference between your language and ours.” I should think so! I ought also to repeat the words which a Castilian singer addressed to me in a tone of lofty benevolence as we were conversing on the boat which bore me to Marseilles five weeks later: “The Italian language is the most beautiful of the dialects formed from ours.”

As soon as I removed the traces which the horrible night of the crossing of the Pyrenees had left upon me I sallied forth from the hotel and began to wander about the streets.

Barcelona is, in appearance, the least Spanish of the cities of Spain. Great buildings—very few of which are old—long streets, regular squares, shops, theatres, large and splendid restaurants, a continuous moving throng of people, carriages, and carts from the water front to the centre of the city, and thence to the outskirts, just as at Genoa, Naples, and Marseilles. A very wide, straight street called the Rambla, shaded by two rows of trees, divides the city from the harbor to the hills. A fine promenade, flanked by new houses, stretches along the sea-shore above a high dyke of masonry built like a terrace, against which the waves beat. A suburb of vast proportions, almost another city, extends toward the north, and on every side new houses break the old enclosure, spread over the fields, even to the foot of the hills, range themselves in endless rows until they reach the neighboring villages, and on all the circling hills rise villas and palaces and factories, which dispute the land and crowd each other as they rise even higher and higher, forming a noble coronet about the brow of the city. Everywhere they are creating, transforming, renewing; the people work and prosper, and Barcelona flourishes.

I saw the last days of the Carnival. Through the streets passed long processions of giants, devils, princes, clowns, warriors, and crowds of certain figures whom I always have the misfortune to encounter the world over. They were dressed in yellow and carried long staves, at the ends of which purses were bound: these they stick under every one’s nose, into the shops and windows, even to the second stories of the houses, begging alms—in whose name I know not, but which were most likely spent in some classic orgy at the close of the Carnival.

The most curious sight which I saw was the

masquerade of the children. It is the custom to dress the boys under the age of eight years like men, after the French fashion, in complete ball-dress, with white gloves, great moustaches, and long flowing hair: some are dressed like the Spanish grandees, bedecked with ribbons and bangles; others like Catalan peasants, with the jaunty cap and the mantle. The little girls appear as court-ladies, Amazons, and poetesses with lyres and laurel crowns; and boys and girls in the costumes of the different provinces of the kingdom—one as a flower-girl of Valencia, another as an Andalusian gypsy or a Basque mountaineer—in the gayest and most picturesque costumes imaginable. Their parents lead them by the hand in the procession, and it is a tournament of good taste, of fantasy, and display in which the people share with great delight.

While I was trying to find my way to the cathedral I met a company of Spanish soldiers. I stopped to look at them, recollecting the picture which Baretti draws when he tells how they assailed him in a hotel, one taking the salad from his plate, while another snatched the leg of a fowl from his mouth. At first sight they resemble the French soldiers, who also wear the red breeches and gray coat reaching to the knee. The only noticeable difference is in the covering of the head. The Spanish wear a parti-colored cap, flat behind and curved in front, and fitted with a visor which turns down over the forehead. The caps, which are made of gray cloth, are light, durable, and pleasing to the eye, and are known by the name of their inventor, Ros de Olano, general and poet, who patterned them after his hunting-cap. The greater part of the soldiers whom I saw—they were all in the infantry—were young men, short of stature, swarthy, alert, and clean, as one would imagine the soldiers of an army which at one time had the lightest and most effective infantry in Europe. Indeed, the Spanish infantry has the reputation of containing the best walkers and swiftest runners. The men are temperate, spirited, and full of a national pride, of which it is difficult to get an adequate idea without studying them closely. The officers wear a short black coat like that of the Italian officers. When off duty they are in the habit of wearing the coat open, thereby revealing a waistcoat buttoned to the chin. In the hours of leisure they do not wear their swords; on the march, like the rank and file, they wear a sort of gaiter of black cloth reaching almost to the knee. A regiment of foot-soldiers completely equipped for action presents an appearance at once pleasing and martial.

The cathedral of Barcelona, in the Gothic style, surmounted by noble towers, is worthy of standing beside the most beautiful edifices in Spain. The interior is formed of three vast naves, separated by two rows of very high pillars slender and graceful in form. The choir, situated in the middle of the church, is profusely decorated with bas-reliefs, filigree-work, and small images. Beneath the sanctuary lies a small subterranean chapel which is always lighted, and in its centre is the tomb of Eulalia, which one may see by looking through one of the little windows opening from the sanctuary. There is a tradition that the murderers of the saint, who was very beautiful, wished before putting her to death to look upon her body, but while they were taking off her last covering a thick cloud enveloped her and hid her from their sight. Her body still remains as fresh and beautiful as when she was alive, and no human eye may endure to look upon it. Once an incautious bishop (after the lapse of a century) wished to open the tomb just to see the sacred remains, but even as he looked he was smitten with blindness.

In a little chapel to the right of the great altar, lighted by many candles, one sees a crucifix of colored wood, with the Christ’s figure inclined to one side. It is said that this image was carried on a Spanish ship at the battle of Lepanto, and that it so bent itself to avoid a cannon-ball which it saw coming straight for its heart. From the arched roof of the same chapel hangs a little galley with all its oars—modelled after the boat in which Don John of Austria fought against the Turks. Below the organ, of Gothic construction and covered with great pictorial tapestries, hangs a huge Saracen’s head with a gaping mouth, from which, in the olden times, candies poured forth for the children. In another chapel one may see a beautiful marble tomb, and also some valuable paintings by Viladomat, a Barcelonian painter of the seventeenth century.

The church is dark and mysterious. Beside it rises a cloister, supported by grand pilasters, formed of delicate columns and surmounted by richly-carved capitals depicting scenes from Bible history. In the cloisters, in the church, in the square lying before it, in the narrow streets running on either side, there broods a spirit of contemplative peace which allures and at the same time saddens one like the gardens of a cemetery. A group of horrid bearded old women guard the door.

After one has visited the cathedral there are no other great monuments to be seen in the city. In the Square of the Constitution are two palaces, called the House of the Deputation and the Consistorial, the first built in the sixteenth, the other in the fourteenth, century. These buildings still retain some old, noteworthy features—the one a door, the other a court.

On one side of the House of the Deputation is the rich Gothic façade of the Chapel of Saint George. Here is a palace of the Inquisition, with a narrow court, windows with heavy iron bars, and secret passages, but it has been almost entirely remodelled on the old plans. There are some enormous Roman columns in the Street of Paradise, lost in the midst of modern buildings, surrounded by tortuous staircases and gloomy chambers.

There is nothing else worth the attention of an artist. However, in compensation there are fountains with rostral columns, pyramids, statues, avenues lined with villas and gardens, and cafés and inns; a circus for bull-fights that has a capacity of seating ten thousand spectators; a town which covers a strip of land enclosing the harbor, laid out with the symmetry of a chequer-board, and peopled by ten thousand seamen; a number of libraries, a very rich museum of natural history, and a repository of archives which contains a vast collection of historical documents dating from the ninth century to our times, which is to say from the first Courts of Catalonia to the War of Independence.

Of the objects outside of the city, the most remarkable is the cemetery, about a half-hour’s ride distant from the gates, in the midst of an extended plain. Seen from a point just outside of the entrance, it looks like a garden, and one quickens one’s pace with a feeling of pleased curiosity. But, once past the gate, one is confronted by a novel spectacle, indescribable, and wholly different from one’s expectation. One is in the midst of a silent city, traversed by long, deserted streets, bordered by straight walls of equal height, which are bounded in the distance by other walls. Advancing, one comes to an intersection, and from that point sees other streets with other walls at the end and other crossways. It is like being in Pompeii. The dead are placed in the walls lengthwise, disposed in various orders, like the books in a library. For every coffin there is a corresponding niche, in which is inscribed the name of the dead. Where no one has been interred there is the word propriedad, which indicates that the position has been engaged. Most of the niches are enclosed in glass, some with iron gratings, others, again, with very fine nettings of woven iron. They contain a great variety of offerings placed there by the families in memory of their dead; as, for instance, photographs, little altars, pictures, embroidery, artificial flowers, and the little nothings that were dear to them in life; ribbons, necklaces, toys of children, books, brooches, miniatures—a thousand things which recall the home and the family, and indicate the profession of those to whom they belonged; and it is impossible to look upon them without compassion. Here and there one sees a niche open and black within, a sign that a casket will be placed there during the day. The family of the dead are obliged to pay an annual sum for the space; when they fail to pay the casket is taken from the place where it lies and is borne to the common trench of the burialplace of the poor, which is reached by one of the streets. There was an interment while I was there. From a distance I saw them place the ladder and raise the casket, and I passed on. One night a madman hid himself in one of the empty holes: a watchman passed with a lantern; the madman gave a terrible cry, and the poor watchman fell to the ground as though he had been struck by lightning, and it is said he never recovered from the shock. In one niche I saw a beautiful tress of golden hair, the hair of a girl who had been drowned in her fifteenth year, and to it was fastened a card bearing the word Querida (Beloved). At every step one sees something which affects the mind and the heart. All those offerings have the effect of a confused murmur, a blending of the voices of mothers, husbands, children, and aged men, who whisper as one passes, “Look! I am here!” At every crossway rise statues, mausoleums, shafts bearing inscriptions in honor of the citizens of Barcelona who performed deeds of charity during the scourge of yellow fever in 1821 and 1870. This part of the cemetery, planned, as has been said, like a city, belongs to the middle class of the people, and is bounded by two vast enclosures—the one for the poor, bare and dotted with great black crosses; the other, of an equal size, for the rich, cultivated like a garden, surrounded by chapels various, rich, and magnificent.

In the midst of a forest of weeping willows and cypresses tower columns, obelisks, and grand tombs on every side; marble chapels richly adorned with sculpture, surmounted by bold statues of archangels raising their arms toward heaven; pyramids, groups of statues, monuments as large as houses, overtopping the highest trees; and between the monuments grass-plots, railings, and flower-beds.

At the entrance, between this and the other cemetery, stands a stupendous marble church, surrounded by pillars and partly hidden by trees—a sight which amply prepares the mind for the magnificent spectacle of the interior. On leaving this garden one again passes through the lonely streets of this city of the dead, which seems even more silent and sad than when one first entered it. On recrossing the threshold one turns with pleasure to the many-colored houses of the suburbs of Barcelona as they lie scattered over the plain, like the advance-guard sent to announce that a populous city is expanding and advancing.

From the cemetery to the café is a great leap, but in travelling one makes even greater ones. The cafés of Barcelona, like nearly all the cafés in Spain, consists of one vast saloon, adorned with large mirrors, and with as many tables as it is possible to crowd into the space. The tables seldom remain vacant, even for half an hour, throughout the entire day. In the evening they are all full to overflowing, so that one is many times obliged to wait a good while even to find a seat by the door. Around every table is a group of five or six caballeros wearing over their shoulders the capa, a mantle of dark cloth, provided with a generous palmer’s hood and worn instead of our capeless cloak. In every group they are playing dominoes. This is the most popular game among the Spaniards. In the cafés from twilight to midnight one hears a loud, continuous, discordant sound, like the rattling of hailstones, from the turning and returning of thousands of dominoes by hundreds of hands, so that one is obliged to raise one’s voice to be heard by one’s next neighbor. The commonest beverage is the exquisite chocolate of Spain, which is generally served in little cups, and is about as thick as preserved juniper-berries and hot enough to scald one’s throat. One of these cups, with a drop of milk and a peculiar cake of very delicate flavor which they call bollo, makes a luncheon fit for Lucullus. Between one bollo and the next I made my studies of the Catalan character, conversing with all the Don Fulanos (a name as common in Spain as Tizio is with us) who had the good grace not to suspect me of being a spy despatched from Madrid to sniff the air of Catalonia.

Their minds were greatly stirred by politics in those days, and it often happened that as I was very innocently speaking of a newspaper article, a prominent man, or of anything whatsoever, whether at the café or in a shop or at the theatre, it happened, I say, that I felt the touch of a toe and heard a whisper at my ear, “Take care! That gentleman on your right is a Carlist.”—“Hush! This man is a Republican.”—“That one over there, a Sagastino.”—“The man beside you is a Radical.”—“Yonder is a Cimbrian.”

Everybody was talking politics. I encountered a rabid Carlist in the person of a barber, who, learning by my pronunciation that I was a compatriot of the king, tried his best to drag me into a discussion. I did not say a word, for he was shaving me, and the resentment of my wounded patriotism might have led to the drawing of the first blood in the civil war. But the barber persisted, and, as he did not know how else to come to the point, he finally said in suave tones,

“You understand, caballero, if a war were to break out between Italy and Spain, Spain would not be afraid.”

“I am fully persuaded of the fact,” I replied, with my eye on the razor.

He then assured me that France would declare war against Italy as soon as she had paid Germany off: “There is no escape.”

I did not reply. He stood a moment in thought, and then said maliciously,

“There will be great doings in a little while.”

Nevertheless, it gratified the Barcelonians that the king made his appearance among them with an air of confidence and tranquillity, and the mass of the people recall his entrance into the city with admiration.

I found sympathizers with the king even among some who hissed through their closed teeth, “He is not a Spaniard,” or, as one of them put it, “How would they like a Castilian king at Rome or Paris?” A question to which one replies, “I don’t know much about politics,” and the conversation is ended.

But the Carlists are the truly implacable party. They say scurrilous things about our revolution in the best of good faith, the greater part of them being convinced that the Pope is the true king of Italy—that Italy wants him, and has submitted to the sword of Victor Emanuel because she could not do otherwise, but that she is only watching for a proper occasion to strike for liberty, as the Bourbons and others have done.

And I am able to offer in evidence of this the following anecdote, which I repeat as I heard it narrated, without the least shadow of an intention to wound the person who played the principal part of it: Upon one occasion a young Italian, whom I know intimately, was presented to one of the most talented women of the city, who received him with marked courtesy. A number of Italians were present during the conversation. The lady spoke very sympathetically of Italy, thanked the young man for the enthusiasm which he had expressed for Spain, sustained, in a word, an animated and pleasing conversation with her responsive guest almost all of the evening. Suddenly she asked:

“In which city will you reside upon your return to Italy?”

“In Rome,” replied the young man.

“To defend the Pope?” asked the lady with perfect sincerity.

The young man looked at her and answered with an ingenuous smile,

“No, indeed!”

That no provoked a tempest. The lady, forgetting that the young man was an Italian and her guest, broke out into such a fury of invective against King Victor, the Piedmontese government, and Italy from the time the army entered Rome to the War of the Marches and Umbria that the ill-fated stranger turned as white as a sheet with her scolding. But he controlled himself and did not say a word, allowing the other Italians, who were friends of long standing, to defend the honor of their country. The discussion was continued to some length, and finally brought to a close. The lady found that she had allowed herself to be carried too far, and showed that she regretted her action; but it was very evident from her words that she, and doubtless a great many others, were convinced that the unification of Italy had been accomplished against the will of the Italian people by Piedmont, the king, the greed of power, and the hatred of religion.

The common people, however, are republican, and, as they have the reputation of being quicker of action than those who talk more, they are feared.

In Spain, whenever they wish to circulate a report of an approaching revolution, they always begin by saying that it will break out in Barcelona, or that it is on the point of breaking out, or has broken out.

The Catalans do not wish to be thought of as on a common footing with the Spaniards of the other provinces. “We are Spaniards,” they say, “but, be it understood, of Catalonia—a people, to be brief, that labor and think; a people to whose ears the din of machinery is more pleasant than the music of the guitar. We do not envy Andalusia her romance, the praises of her poets, nor the paintings of her artists; we are content to be the most serious and industrious people of Spain.” In fact, they speak of their brothers of the South as at one time, though seldom now, the Piedmontese used to speak of the Neapolitans and the Tuscans: “Yes, they have genius, imagination, sweet speech, and amusement; but we, on the contrary, have greater force of will, greater aptitude for science, better popular education, ... and moreover, ... character....” I met a Catalonian, a gentleman distinguished for his ability and learning, who lamented that the War of Independence had too closely affiliated the different provinces of Spain, whence it resulted that the Catalonians had contracted some of the bad habits of the Southerners, while the latter had acquired none of the good qualities of the Catalans. “We have become mas ligeros de casco” (lighter of head), he said, and he would not be comforted.

A merchant of whom I asked what he thought of the Castilian character answered brusquely that in his opinion it would be a fortunate thing for Catalonia if there were no railroad between Barcelona and Madrid, because commerce with that race corrupted the character and the customs of the Catalan people. When they speak of a long-winded deputy, they say, “Oh yes, he is an Andalusian.”

They ridicule the poetic language of the Andalusians, their soft pronunciation, their childish gaiety, their vanity and effeminacy.

The Andalusians, on the contrary, speak of the Catalans much as an æsthetic young lady of literary and artistic tastes would speak of one of those domestic girls who prefer the cook-book to the romances of George Sand.

“They are a rude people,” they say, “who have a capacity only for arithmetic and mechanics; barbarians who would convert a statue of Montaigne into an olive-press, and one of Murillo’s canvases into a tarpaulin—the veritable Bœotians of Spain, insupportable with their jargon, their surliness, and their pedantic gravity.”

In reality, Catalonia is probably the province of least importance in the history of the fine arts. The only poet who was born in Barcelona—and he was not great, but only illustrious—was Juan Boscan, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and introduced into Spanish letters the hendecasyllabic verse, the ballad, the sonnet, and all the forms of Italian lyric poetry, for which he had a passionate admiration. Whence arose this great transformation, as it afterward became, in the entire literature of a people? From the fact that Boscan took up his residence at Granada at the time when the court of Charles V. was held there, and that he there met an ambassador from the republic of Venice, Andrea Navagero, who knew the poems of Petrarch by heart, and recited them to Boscan, and said to him, “It seems to me that you too could write such verses; try it!”

Boscan tried: all the literature of Spain cried out against him. Italian poetry was not sonorous; Petrarch’s poems were insipid and effeminate; and Spain did not need to harness her Pegasus in the traces of any other land. But Boscan was unyielding. Garcilasso de la Vega, the chivalrous cavalier, his friend—he who received the glorious title of Malherbe of Spain—followed his example. The band of reformers grew little by little, until it became an army and conquered and dominated all literature. The consummation of the movement was reached in Garcilasso, but to Boscan remains the merit of giving it the first impulse, and hence to Barcelona belongs the honor of having given to Spain the genius who transformed her literature.

During the few days I remained at Barcelona I was accustomed to spend the evening in company with some young Catalans, walking on the sea-shore in the moonlight until late at night. They all knew a little Italian, and were very fond of our poetry, so from hour to hour we did nothing but repeat verses—they from Zorilla, Espronceda, and Lope de Vega; I from Foscolo, Berchet, and Manzoni—alternating in a sort of rivalry to see who could repeat the most beautiful selection.

It is a novel sensation, that of repeating the verses of one’s native poets in a foreign country.

When I saw my Spanish friends all intent on the story of the battle of Maclodio, and then little by little becoming excited, and finally so inflamed that they grasped me by the arm and exclaimed, with a Castilian accent which rendered their words doubly grateful, “Beautiful! sublime!” then I felt my blood surge through my veins; I trembled, and if it had been light I believe they would have seen me turn as white as a sheet. They repeated to me verses in the Catalan language. I use the word “language” because it has a history and a literature of its own, and was not relegated to the condition of a dialect until the political predominance was assumed by Castile, who imposed her idiom as authoritative upon the rest of the provinces. And although it is a harsh language, made up of short words, and unpleasant at first even to one who has not a delicate ear, it has none the less some conspicuous advantages, and of these the popular poets have availed themselves with admirable skill, particularly in expressing the sense by the sound. A poem which they recited, the first lines of which imitated the rumbling of a railway-train, drew from me an exclamation of wonder. But, even though one may know the Spanish language, Catalan is not intelligible without explanation. The people talk rapidly, with closed teeth, without supplementing their speech by gestures, so that it is difficult to get the sense of the simplest sentence, and it is a great thing to catch a few occasional words. However, the common people can speak Castilian when it is convenient, but they do so utterly without grace, although much better than the common people of the northern Italian provinces speak Italian. Even the cultivated classes of Catalonia are not proficient in the national speech.

The Castilian first recognizes the Catalan by his pronunciation, to say nothing of his voice, but particularly by his uncouth expressions. Hence a foreigner who comes to Spain with an illusion that he can speak the language may easily be able to cherish the illusion so long as he remains in Catalonia, but as soon as he enters Castile and hears for the first time that crossfire of epigrams, that profusion of proverbs, the apt expressions, the clear and happy idioms, he stands aghast like Alfieri in the presence of Dame Vocabulary when they were discussing hosiery; and then farewell illusion!

On my last night I visited the Lyceum Theatre, which is said to be the most beautiful in Europe, and probably the largest. It was crowded with people from the pit to the highest gallery, and could not have accommodated a hundred more persons. From the box in which I sat the ladies on the opposite side looked no larger than children, and on half closing one’s eyes they appeared like so many white lines, one for each row of boxes, tremulous and sparkling like an immense garland of camellias impearled with dew and swayed by the breeze.

The vast boxes are divided by partitions which slope down from the wall to the front of the box, so enabling one to have a good view of the persons seated on the front row; consequently, the theatre looks like a great gallery, and so acquires an air of lightness which makes it very beautiful to look upon. All is in relief; all is open to the view; the light strikes every part; every one sees every one else; the aisles are wide, and one may come and go, turn with ease in any direction, look at a lady from a thousand points of view, pass from the gallery to the boxes and from the boxes to the gallery,—one may walk about, talk, and wander here and there all the evening without striking elbows with a living soul. The other parts of the building are in proportion to the principal room—corridors, staircases, lobbies, vestibules like those of a great palace. Then there is an immense, splendid ball-room in which one could place another theatre. Yet even here, where the good Barcelonians, after the fatigue of the day, should think of nothing but recreation or the contemplation of their beautiful, superb women,—even here the good Barcelonians buy and sell, bargain and chaffer, like souls condemned to torment.

In this corridor there is a continual passing of bank-runners, office-clerks, and messenger-boys, and the constant hum of the market-place. Barbarians! How many beautiful faces, how many noble eyes, how many splendid heads of dark hair in that crowd of ladies! In ancient times the young Catalan lovers, to win the heart of their ladies, bound themselves to fraternities of flagellants and beat themselves with whips of iron beneath the windows of their loves until the blood burst from the skin; and the ladies cheered them on, crying, “Lash thyself still harder, so; now I love thee, I am thine!” How many times did I exclaim that night, “Gentlemen, for pity’s sake give me a whip of iron!”

The next morning before sunrise I was on my way to Saragossa, and, to tell the truth, not without a feeling of sadness at leaving Barcelona, although I had been there only a few days. This city, although it is anything but the flower of the beautiful cities of the world, as Cervantes called it,—this city of commerce and warehouses, spurned by poets and artists—pleased me, and its hurried, busy people inspired me with respect. And then it is always sad to depart from a city, however unfamiliar, with the certainty of never seeing it again. It is like saying good-bye for ever to a travelling companion with whom one has passed twenty-four happy hours: he is not a friend, but one seems to love him as a friend, and will remember him all one’s life with a feeling of affection more real than that one holds toward many who are called by the name of friends.

As I turned to look once again at the city from the window of the railway-carriage, the words of Alvaro Tarfe in Don Quixote came to my lips: “Adieu, Barcelona, the home of courtesy, the haven of wanderers, the fatherland of the brave! Adieu!” And I continued sadly: “Lo, the first leaf is torn from the rosy book of travel! So all things pass. Another city, then another, then another, and then—I shall return, and the journey will seem like a dream, and it will seem as though I had not even stirred from home; and then another journey—new cities and other sad partings, and again a memory vague as a dream; and then?” Alas for that traveller who harbors thoughts like these! Look at the sky and at the fields, repeat poetry, and—smoke. Adios, Barcelona, archivio de la cortesia!

SARAGOSSA.

A FEW miles from Barcelona one comes in sight of the serrated crags of the famous Montserrat, a peculiar mountain which at first sight raises a suspicion of an optical illusion, so hard is it to believe that Nature could ever have yielded to so strange a caprice. Imagine a succession of little triangles connected with each other, like those which children use to represent a chain of mountains, or a crown with a pointed circlet, stretched out like the teeth of a saw or a great many sugar-loaves ranged in a row, and you have an idea of the distant appearance of Montserrat. It is a group of immense cones which rise side by side one behind another, or rather one great mountain formed of a hundred mountains, cleft from the summit to a distance almost one-third of its height in such a manner that it presents two grand peaks, around which cluster the lesser ones. The highest altitudes arid and inaccessible; the lower slopes mantled with pine, oak, arbutus, and juniper, broken here and there by measureless caverns and fearful precipices, and dotted by white hermitages, which stand out in bold relief against the aërial crags and the deep gorges. In the cleft of the mountain, between the two principal peaks, rises the ancient monastery of the Benedictines, where Ignatius Loyola meditated in his youth. Fifty thousand pilgrims and sight-seers annually visit the monastery and the caves, and on the eighth of September a festival is held which brings together an innumerable throng from every part of Catalonia.

Shortly before we arrived at the station where one gets off of the train to ascend the mountain, a group of school-boys from an academy of some unknown village rushed into the railway-carriage. They were making an excursion to the monastery of Montserrat, and a priest accompanied them. They were Catalans—with fair, ruddy faces and large eyes; each one carried a basket containing bread and fruit; one had a scrap-book, another a field-glass. They all laughed and talked at once, rollicked about on the seats, and filled the car with infinite merriment. But, although I strained my ears and racked my brain, I could not understand a word of the miserable jargon in which they were chattering. I entered into conversation with the priest.

“Look, sir,” said he after the preliminary sentences, as he pointed out one of the boys: “he knows all the Odes of Horace by heart; the way in which that other boy can solve problems in arithmetic would astonish you; this one here is a born philosopher;” and so he described to me the gifts of each.

Suddenly he interrupted himself to shout “Beretina!” (Caps). The boys all drew their red Catalonian caps from their pockets, and with cries of delight proceeded to put them on, some slipping them back so that they fell over their necks, the others pulling them forward until they dangled in front of their noses. The priest made a gesture of disapproval, and at once those who had their caps pushed back pulled them over their noses, and those who had them pulled forward pushed them back over their necks, with laughter and shouts and clapping of the hands.

I approached one of the most roguish of the boys, and, merely for the fun of it, knowing that I might as well have talked to a wall, I asked in Italian, “Is this the first time you have made the journey to Montserrat?”

The boy thought for a moment, and then answered very slowly, “I—have—been—there—before—at—other—times.”

“Ah! my dear boy!” I cried with a feeling of satisfaction hard to imagine, “and where have you learned Italian?”

The priest here put in a word to say that the boy’s father had lived several years at Naples. Just as I was turning toward my little Catalan to continue the conversation my words were cut short by a miserable whistle, and then the wretched cry of “Olesa!” the village at the foot of the mountain. The priest bade me good-bye, the boys tumbled out of the car, the train was off again.

I put my head out of the window and shouted to my little friend, “Buona passeggiata!” (A pleasant walk), and he shouted back, emphasizing each syllable, “A-di-o!” Some may laugh at the thought of mentioning these trifles; nevertheless, they are the liveliest pleasures of the traveller’s experience.

The towns and villages which one sees in crossing Catalonia toward Arragon are almost all populous and flourishing, surrounded by workshops, factories, and buildings in course of construction, from which in every direction one sees thick columns of smoke rising here and there among the trees, and at every station there is great running hither and thither of peasants and merchants. The country is a pleasing succession of cultivated fields, gentle hills, and picturesque valleys until one comes to the village of Cervera.

Here one begins to see great stretches of arid land with a few scattered houses, which announce the proximity of Arragon. But then, unexpectedly, one enters a smiling valley clothed with olive-groves, vineyards, mulberry trees, orchards, and dotted with towns and villas. One sees on the one side the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, on the other the mountains of Arragon—Lerida, the glorious city of ten sieges, along the bank of the Segre, on the slope of a beautiful hill; and all about a luxuriance of vegetation, a variety of scenery—a glorious feast to the eye. It is the last view of Catalonia; in a few minutes one enters Arragon.

Arragon! What vague memories of wars, of bandits, queens, poets, heroes, and storied lovers dwell in the echo of that sonorous name! And what a profound feeling of sympathy and respect! The old, noble, haughty Arragon, from whose brow flash the splendid rays of the glory of Spain! upon whose ancestral shields is written in characters of blood, “Liberty and valor!” When the world bent beneath the yoke of the tyrants the people of Arragon said to their king, through the mouth of their chief-justice, “We, who are as great as thou, and more potent, have chosen thee for our lord and king on thy agreement to obey our commands and conserve our liberties; and not otherwise.”

And the king knelt before the might of the magistrate of the people and took his oath on this sacred formula.

In the midst of the barbarity of the Middle Ages the fiery race of Arragon recked not of torture; the secret trial was banished from their code; all their institutions protected the liberty of the citizen and law held absolute sway. Discontented with their narrow mountain-home, they descended from Sobrarbe to Huesca, from Huesca to Saragossa, and as conquerors entered the Mediterranean. Joining with brave Catalonia, they redeemed the Balearic Isles and Valencia from Moorish dominion; fought Murat for their outraged rights and violated consciences; tamed the adventurers of the house of Anjou and spoiled them of their Italian lands; broke the chains of the port of Marseilles, which still hang on the walls of their temples; with the ships of Roger di Lauria ruled the seas from the Gulf of Taranto to the mouth of the Guadalquivir; subdued the Bosphorus with the ships of Roger de Flor; swept the Mediterranean from Rosas to Catania on the wings of victory; and, as though the West was too narrow for their ambition, they dared to carve upon the brow of Olympus, the stones of the Piræus, and the proud mountains which form the gates of Asia the immortal name of their fatherland.

These were my thoughts on entering Arragon, although I did not express them in these very words, for I did not then have before me a certain little book by Emilio Castelar. The first sight upon which my eyes rested was the little village of Monzon lying along the stream of Cinca, noted for the famous assemblies of the courts and for the alternate attacks and defences of Spanish and French—the common fate of almost all the villages of the province during the War of Independence. Monzon lies outstretched at the foot of a formidable mountain upon whose side rises a castle as black, sinister, and appalling as the grimmest of the feudal lords could have planned to condemn the most detested of villages to a life of fear. Even the guide pauses before this monstrous edifice and breaks forth in a timid exclamation of astonishment. There is not, I believe, in Spain another village, another mountain, another castle which better represents the fearful submission of an oppressed people and the perpetual menace of a cruel ruler. A giant pressing his knee on the breast of a mere child whom he has thrown to the ground,—this is but a poor simile to give an idea of it; and such was the impression it made upon me that, although I do not know how to hold the pencil in my hand, I tried to sketch the landscape as best I could, so that it might not fade from my memory. And while I was making scratches I composed the first stanza of a gloomy ballad.

After Monzon the country of Arragon is merely a vast plain, bounded in the distance by long chains of reddish hills, with a few wretched villages, and some solitary eminences upon which rise the blackened ruins of ancient castles. Arragon, so flourishing under her kings, is now one of the poorest provinces of Spain. Only on the banks of the Ebro and along the famous canal which extends for forty miles from Tudela as far as Saragossa, serving at the same time to irrigate the fields and to transport merchandise,—only here does commerce thrive. Elsewhere it languishes or is dead.

The railway-stations are deserted; when the train stops one hears no other sound save the voice of some old troubadour who strums his guitar and chants a monotonous ditty, which one hears again at all the other stations, and afterward in the cities of Arragon: the words varied, but eternally the same tune. As there was nothing to be seen out of the window, I turned to my travelling companions.

The car was well filled: we were about forty in number, counting men and women, and as the second-class carriages in Spain do not have compartments, we could all see each other—priests, nuns, boys, servants, and other persons who might have been business-men or officials or secret emisaries of Don Carlos. The priests smoked their cigarettes, as the custom is in Spain, amicably offering their tobacco-pouches and rolling paper to those beside them. The others ate with all their might, passing from one to another a sort of bladder, which when pressed with both hands sent out a spurt of wine. Others were reading the newspaper, wrinkling their brows now and then with an air of profound meditation.

A Spaniard will not put a piece of orange, a bit of cheese, or a mouthful of bread into his mouth in the presence of others before he has asked every one to eat with him; and so I saw fruit, bread, sardines, and cups of wine pass under my nose, everything accompanied with a polite “Gusta usted comer, commigo?” (Will you eat with me, sir?) To which I replied, “Gracias” (No, thank you), though it went against the grain to do so, for I was as hungry as Ugolino. Opposite to me, with her feet almost touching mine, sat a young nun, if one were to judge of her age by her chin, which was all of her face visible below her veil, and by her hand, which lay carelessly on her knee. I looked at her closely for more than an hour, hoping that she would raise her face, but she remained motionless as a statue, although from her attitude it was easy to see that she was obliged to resist the natural curiosity to look around her; and for this reason she finally won my admiration. What constancy! I thought; what strength of will! What a power of sacrifice even in these trifling matters! What a noble contempt for human vanity! As I was engaged with these thoughts I happened to glance at her hand; it was a small, white hand, and it seemed to me to be moving. I watched it more intently, and saw it escape very slowly out of the sleeve, extend the fingers, and rest on the knee, so that for a moment it hung gracefully down; then it turned a little to one side, was drawn back, and again extended. Oh, ye gods! anything but contempt of human vanity!

I could not have been mistaken; she had gone to all that trouble merely to display her little hand, yet she did not once raise her head all the time she remained in the car, nor did she even allow her face to be seen when she got out. Oh, the inscrutable depths of the feminine mind!

It was ordained that I should make no other friends than priests during the journey. An old father with a benevolent expression spoke to me, and we commenced a conversation which lasted almost to Saragossa. At first, when I said I was an Italian, he became a little suspicious, thinking perhaps that I had been one of those who had broken the bolts of the Quirinal, but when I told him that I did not busy myself about politics he was reassured and talked with perfect freedom. We chanced upon literature. I repeated to him the whole of Manzoni’s Pentecoste, which delighted him, and he recited for me a poem of the celebrated Luis de Leon, a sacred poet of the sixteenth century, and we were friends. When we came to Zuera, the last station before arriving at Saragossa, he arose, bade me good-bye, and with his foot on the step he turned quickly and whispered in my ear, “Beware of the women; they bring evil consequences in Spain.” When he alighted he stood to watch the train start, and, raising his hand with a gesture of fatherly admonition, he said a second time, “Beware!”

It was late at night when I reached Saragossa, and as I left the train my ear suddenly became aware of the peculiar cadence with which the hackmen, the porters, and the boys were speaking as they quarrelled over my baggage. In Arragon even the most insignificant people can speak Castilian, although with some mutilation and harshness; but your pure Castilian can recognize the Arragonese before he has spoken half a word; and, in fact, the Andalusians can imitate their accent, and do so occasionally in derision of its roughness and monotony, as the Tuscans used sometimes to mock the speech of Lucca.

I entered the city with a certain feeling of reverent fear. The terrible fame of Saragossa oppressed me; my conscience almost upbraided me for having so often profaned its name in the school of rhetoric, when I hurled it as a challenge in the face of tyrants. The streets were dark; I saw only the black outline of the roofs and steeples against the starlight sky: I heard only the rumble of the coaches as they rolled away. At certain turns I seemed to see daggers and gun-barrels gleaming at the windows and to hear far off the cries of the wounded. I do not know what I should have given if I could have hastened the daybreak, and so have gratified that eager curiosity which was stirring within me to visit one by one those streets, those squares, those houses, famous for desperate conflicts and horrible slaughter, painted by so many artists, sung by so many poets, and so often in my dreams before I departed from Italy, that I used to murmur with delight, “I shall one day see them.” Arrived finally at my hotel, I looked at the porter who conducted me to my room with an amiable smile, as though I would have said, “Spare me! I am not an invader!” And with a glance at a large painting of Amadeus hanging at an angle of the corridor—a great reassurance to Italian travellers—I went to bed as sleepy as any of my readers.

At daybreak I hurried from the hotel. Neither shops, doors, nor windows were yet open, but hardly had I taken a step in the street before an exclamation of surprise escaped me, for there passed me a party of men so strangely dressed that at first sight I believed them to be masqueraders. Then I thought, “No, they are the silent characters of some theatre;” and then, again, “No, they are madmen, beyond a doubt.”

Imagine them: for a cap they wore a red handkerchief bound about the head like a padded ring, from which their dishevelled hair stuck out above and below; a blanket, striped blue and white, worn like a mantle, and falling almost to the ground in ample folds, like the Roman toga; a wide blue sash around the waist; short breeches of black corduroy gathered in tight at the knee; white stockings; a sort of sandal laced over the instep with black ribbons; and yet bearing with all this picturesque variety of vesture the evident impress of poverty, but with this evident poverty a manner not only theatrical, but proud and majestic, as shown in their carriage and gestures—the air of ruined grandees of Spain; so that one was in doubt, on seeing them, whether to laugh or to pity, whether to put one’s hand in one’s pocket and give them an alms or to raise one’s hat as a mark of respect. But they were simply peasants from the country around Saragossa, and this which I have described was only one of a thousand varieties of the same manner of dress. As I passed along at every step I saw a new costume. Some were dressed in ancient, others in modern, style; some with elegance, others simply; some in holiday attire, others with extreme plainness; but every one wore the scarf, the handkerchief about the head, the white stockings, the cravat and parti-colored waistcoat.

The women wore crinolines with short skirts, which showed their ankles and made their hips seem ridiculously high. Even the boys wore the flowing mantle and the handkerchief around the head, and posed in dramatic attitudes like the men.

The first square I entered was full of these people, who were sitting in groups on the doorsteps or lying about in the angles formed by the houses, some playing the guitar, others singing, many going about begging in patched and tattered garments, but with a high head and fiery eye. They seemed like people who had just come from a tableau in which together they had represented a savage tribe from some unknown country.

Gradually the shops and houses were opened and the people of Saragossa began to fill the streets. The citizens do not appear different from us in dress, but there is something peculiar in their faces. They unite the serious expression of the Catalans with the alert air of the Castilians, and then add a fierceness of expression which belongs entirely to the blood of Arragon.

The streets of Saragossa are severe, almost depressing, in appearance, as I had imagined they would be before I saw them. Excepting the Coso, a wide street which runs through a large part of the city, describing a grand semicircular curve—the Corso famous in ancient times for the chariot-races, jousts, and tourneys which were celebrated in it at the times of the public feasts,—excepting this beautiful and cheerful street and a few streets which have recently been rebuilt like those of a French city, the rest are tortuous and narrow, flanked by tall houses, dark in color and with few windows, reminding one of ancient fortresses. These are the streets which bear an impress and which have a character, or, as another has said, a physiognomy, of their own—streets which once seen can never be forgotten. Throughout one’s life at the mention of Saragossa one will see those walls, those doors, those windows as one saw them before. At this moment I see the court of the New Tower, and could draw it house by house, and paint each one with its own color; and so vividly does the picture live in my imagination that I seem to breathe that air again, and to repeat the words which I then spoke: “This

square is tremendous!” Why? I do not know: it may have been an illusion of mine. It is with cities as with faces—each one reads them in his own way.

The streets and squares of Saragossa impressed me thus, and at every turn I said, “This place seems to have been made for a combat,” and I looked around as though something was needed to complete the scene—a barricade, the loopholes, and the guns. I felt again all the profound emotions which the account of that horrible siege had produced upon me: I saw the Saragossa of 1809, and hurried from street to street with increasing curiosity to find the traces of that gigantic struggle at which the world trembled. Here, I thought, indicating to myself the place, passed the division of Grandjean, there perhaps Musnier’s command sallied forth; at this point the troops of Morlot rushed into the fight; at that angle before me the light infantry of the Vistula made their charge; still farther round occurred the attack of the Polish infantry; yonder three hundred Spaniards were cut down; at this spot burst the great mine which blew a company of the Valencian regiment to atoms; in this corner fell General Lacoste, his forehead pierced by a bullet.

There lie the famous streets of Santa Engracia, Santa Monica, and San Augustine, through which the French advanced toward the Coso from house to house with a blasting of mines and counter-mines, through crumbling walls and smoking beams, under a tempest of bullets, grape-shot, and rocks.

There are the narrow ways, the little courts, the dark alleys, where they fought those horrid battles, hand to hand, with bayonet and dagger, with scythes and their very teeth; their houses barricaded and defended room by room, in the midst of fire and ruin, the narrow stairways which ran with blood, the gloomy halls which echoed to cries of pain and despair, which were covered with mutilated corpses, which saw all the horrors of pestilence, famine, and death.

As I was walking from street to street I came out in front of the cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar, the terrible Madonna to whom came the squalid rout of soldiers, citizens, and women to plead for protection and courage before they went to die on the ramparts. The people of Saragossa still persevere in their ancient fanaticism in regard to it, and venerate it with a peculiar sentiment of love and fear, which still lives in the minds of persons who are strangers to all other religious feelings. Nevertheless, from the moment you enter the court and raise your eyes toward the church to the moment you turn on leaving it to take a farewell look, be careful not to smile or make any careless gesture which might possibly seem irreverent; for there are those who see you, who watch you, and who will on occasion follow you, and if faith is dead within you, prepare your mind, before you cross the sacred threshold, for a confused reawakening of those childish terrors which few churches in the world have such power to revive even in the coldest and most callous of hearts.

The first stone of Our Lady of the Pillar was laid in the year 1686, in a place where stood a chapel erected by St. James to receive the miraculous image of the Virgin, which still remains. It is an immense edifice, with a rectangular base, surmounted by eleven domes painted in different colors, giving the whole a pleasing Moorish effect. The walls are unadorned and dark in color. Let us enter. It is a vast cathedral, dark, bare, and cold, divided into three naves, encircled by modest chapels. One’s eye turns quickly to the sanctuary which rises in the middle: there stands the statue of the Virgin. It is a temple within a temple, and might stand alone in the middle of the square if the building which surrounds it were torn away. A circle of beautiful marble columns, arranged in the form of an ellipse, bear up a dome richly adorned with sculpture, open at the top, and ornamented within the opening by aspiring figures of angels and saints. In the centre stands the great altar; on its right the statue of St. James; on the left, far back under a silver canopy which gleams against a background of a richly-draped velvet curtain sown with stars, amid the flashing of thousands of costly offerings, in the glare of innumerable lights, the famous statue of the Virgin, where St. James placed it nineteen centuries ago, carved in wood, black with age, all enveloped in a bishop’s gown, excepting its head and the head of the Christ child. In front of it, between the columns grouped around the sanctuary and in the far recesses of the naves, in every place from which one can see the venerated image, kneel faithful worshippers, prostrate, their heads almost touching the pavement, their hands clasping the crucifix—poor women, laboring-men, ladies, soldiers, boys, and girls—and through the different doorways of the cathedral passes a continuous stream of people, walking slowly on tiptoe, with solemn faces; and in that deep silence not a murmur, not a rustle, not a sigh; the very life of the crowd seems suspended: it seems as though they were all expecting a divine apparition, a mysterious voice, some awful revelation from the dim sanctuary; and even one who does not have their faith, and who does not pray, is forced to gaze himself at that point where all eyes are turned, and the current of his thoughts is interrupted by a sort of restless expectation.

“Oh, would that some voice would speak!” I thought. “Would that the apparition would appear! Would that there might be a word or a sigh which would turn my hair white with fear and make me utter a cry the like of which was never heard on earth, if so I might for ever be delivered from that horrible doubt which saps my brain and saddens my life!”

I tried to enter the sanctuary, but I could not have done so without passing over the shoulders of a hundred worshippers, some of whom had already begun to look surly because I was going around with a note-book and pencil in my hand. I attempted to go down into the subterranean crypt where are the tombs of the archbishops and the urn which holds the heart of John II. of Austria, the natural son of Philip IV., but this I was not allowed to do. I asked to see the vestments, the gold, the jewels, which had been poured out at the feet of the Virgin by the lords, the rulers, and the monarchs of every age and every land, but I was told that it was not the proper time, and not even by showing a shiny peseta was I able to corrupt the honest sacristan. But I was not refused some information concerning the worship of the Virgin after I had told him, to win favor in his eyes, that I was born in Rome in the Borgo Pio, and that from the little terrace in front of my home I could see the windows of the Pope’s apartments.

“It is a fact,” said he, “almost a miracle—and one would not believe it if it were not attested by tradition—that at the very early time when the statue of the Virgin was placed on its pedestal, even down to the days in which we are living, except in the night when the cathedral is closed, the sanctuary has never been empty a moment—not even a moment, in the full sense of the word. Our Lady of the Pillar has never been alone. In the pedestal there has been a hollow worn by kisses in which I could put my head. Not even the Moors dared to forbid the worship of Our Lady; the chapel of St. James was always respected. The cathedral has been struck by lightning many times, and the sanctuary too, even on the inside, right in the midst of a crowd of people. Well! the souls of the lost may deny the protection of the Virgin, but no—one—has—ever—been—struck! And the bombs of the French? They have burned and ruined other buildings, but when they fell on the cathedral of Our Lady it was as though they had fallen on the rocks of the Sierra Morena. And the French, who pillaged on every hand, did they have the heart to touch the treasures of Our Lady? One general only allowed himself to take some trifling thing to give to his wife, offering a rich gift to the Virgin in compensation, but do you know what followed? In the next battle a cannon-ball carried away one of his legs. There is not a trace of a general or a king who has imposed on Our Lady, and moreover it is written up above that this church will stand to the end of the world.” And he ran on in this vein until a priest made a mysterious sign from a dark corner of the sacristy, and he at once bowed and disappeared.

As I came out of the cathedral, with my mind occupied with a picture of the solemn sanctuary, I met a long procession of Carnival chariots, led by a band of music, accompanied by a crowd, followed by a great number of carriages, on their way to the Coso. I do not ever remember to have seen faces so grotesque, ridiculous, and preposterous as those worn by the maskers, and, although I was alone and not at all disposed to merriment, I could no more have kept from laughing than I could have done at the close of one of Fucini’s sonnets. The crowd, on the other hand, was decorous and silent and the maskers were as grave as possible. One would have said that both parties were more impressed by the melancholy presentiment of Lent than by the short-lived gaiety of the Carnival. I saw some pretty little faces at the windows, but as yet no type of that proverbial Spanish beauty, of the rich dark complexion, and the fiery black eyes which Martinez de la Rosa, an exile in London, remembered with such passionate sighs among the beauties of the North. I passed between two carriages, pushed my way out of the crowd, thereby drawing down some curses which I promptly entered in my note-book, and turned at random down two or three narrow little streets. I came out at the square of San Salvador in front of the cathedral of the same name, which is also called the Seo—a richer and more splendid edifice than that of Our Lady of the Pillar.

Neither the Græco-Roman façade, although majestic in its proportions, nor the high, light tower, is a preparation for the grand spectacle of the interior. On entering I found myself surrounded by gloomy shadows. For an instant my eyes could not discover the outlines of the building. I saw only a shimmer of broken light resting here and there on column and arch. Then slowly I distinguished five naves, divided by four orders of Gothic pilasters, the walls far in the distance, and the long series of lateral chapels, and I was overwhelmed by the sight. It was the first interior which corresponded with the image I had formed of the Spanish cathedrals, so varied, magnificent, and rich. The principal chapel, surrounded by a great Gothic dome in the form of a tiara, alone contains the riches of a great church. The large altar is of alabaster covered with rosettes, scrolls, and arabesques; the vaulted roof is adorned with statues; on the right and left are tombs and urns of princes; in an angle stands the chair in which the kings of Arragon sat at their coronation. The choir rising in the middle of the great nave is a mountain of treasures. Its exterior, broken by some passages leading to little chapels, presents an incredible variety of statuettes, little columns, bas-reliefs, friezes, and mosaics, and one would have to look all day to see it thoroughly. The pilasters of the two outer naves and the arches which span the chapels are richly adorned from the base to the capital with statues—some so enormous that they seem to be raising the edifice on their shoulders—with pictures, sculpture, and ornament of every style and of every size. In the chapels there is a wealth of statues, rich altars, royal tombs, busts, and paintings, which are so shrouded by the deep gloom that they appear only as a confused mass of colors, reflections, and shadowy forms, among which the eye loses itself and the imagination faints. After much running hither and thither, with my note-book open and pencil in hand, noting this and sketching that, with my brain in a whirl, I tore out the chequered leaves, and, promising myself that I would not write another word, I left the cathedral and began to walk through the city, seeing for at least an hour only long dim aisles and statues gleaming in the deep recesses of mysterious chapels.

There come moments to the gayest and most enamored traveller, as he walks the streets of a strange city, in which he is suddenly overwhelmed by such a strong feeling of utter weariness that if he were able by a word to fly back to his home and his dear ones with the rapidity of the genii of the “Arabian Nights,” he would pronounce that word with a cry of joy. I was seized by such a feeling just as I turned into a narrow street far from the centre of the city, and it almost terrified me. I anxiously rehearsed all the images I had formed of Madrid, Seville, and Granada, hoping in this way to arouse and rekindle my curiosity and enthusiasm; but those images now seemed dull and lifeless. My thoughts carried me back to my home, when on the day before my departure in my feverish impatience I could hardly wait for the hour of starting; but even that did not remove my sadness. The idea of having to see so many more new cities, of having to pass so many nights in hotels, of having to find myself for so long a time in the midst of a strange people, disheartened me. I asked myself how I could have resolved to leave home. It seemed as if I were suddenly separated from my country by a measureless distance—that I was in a wilderness alone, forgotten by all. I looked around; the street was empty, my heart turned cold, tears gathered in my eyes. “I cannot stay here,” I said to myself; “I shall die of melancholy. I will return to Italy.”

I had not made an end of speaking these words before I almost burst into hysterical laughter. In an instant everything regained life and splendor in my eyes. I thought of Castile and of Andalusia with a sort of frantic joy, and, shaking my head with an air of pity for my recent dejection, I lighted a cigar and walked on, happier than I had been at first.

It was the last day of the Carnival: in the evening on the principal streets I saw a procession of maskers, carriages, bands of young men, large family parties with children and nurses and budding girls, walking two by two. But there was no disagreeable shouting, no coarse songs of drunken men, no troublesome crowding and pushing. Now and then one felt a light rub on the elbow, but light enough to seem like the greeting of a friend who would say, “It is I,” rather than the jostling of some thoughtless fellow; and together with the touch at the elbow there were voices, much gentler than of old when the Saragossa women used to scream from the windows of their tottering houses, and much more ardent than the boiling oil which they poured down on the invaders. Oh! those were certainly not the times of which I heard recently at Turin, when an old priest of Saragossa assured me that in seven years he had not received the confession of a mortal sin.

That night I found at the hotel a madcap of a Frenchman whose equal I believe does not exist under the sun. He was a man of forty, with one of those putty-like faces which say “Here I am; come and cheat me”—a wealthy merchant, as it appeared, who had just arrived from Barcelona and expected to leave the next day for St. Sebastian. I found him in the dining-room telling his story to a group of tourists, who were bursting with laughter. I too joined the circle and listened to his story.

The fellow was a native of Bordeaux, and had lived for years at Barcelona. He had left France because his wife had run away from him, without saying good-bye, with the ugliest man in the town, leaving four children on his hands. He had never heard of her since the day of her flight. Some told him she had gone to America, others that she was in Africa or Asia, but those were mere groundless conjectures. For four years he had believed her to be dead. One fine day at Barcelona, as he was dining with a friend from Marseilles, his guest said to him (but you ought to have seen with what comical dignity he described the circumstance):

“My friend, I am going to make a trip to St. Sebastian one of these days.”

“What for?”

“Just a little diversion.”

“A love-affair, eh?”

“Yes, at least—I will tell you. It is not exactly a love-affair, because, as for me, I do not care to come in at the tail end of a love-affair. It is a caprice. A pretty little woman, however. Why, only the day before yesterday I received a letter. I did not want to go, but there were so many comes and I expect yous and my friends and dear friends, that I allowed myself to be tempted.” So saying, he drew out the letter with a grimace of lordly pride.

The merchant takes it, opens it, and reads.

“By the gods! my wife!” and without another word he leaves his friend, runs home, packs his valise, and hurries to the station.

When I entered the room the man had just shown the letter to everybody present, and had spread on the table, so that every one could see them, his certificate of baptism, his marriage articles, and other papers which he had brought along in case his wife might not wish to recognize him.

“What are you going to do?” we all asked with one voice.

“I shall not do her any harm. I have made up my mind: there will be no bloodshed, but there will be a punishment even more terrible.”

“But what will that be?” demanded one of his auditors.

“I have made up my mind,” replied the Frenchman with profoundest gravity, and, taking from his pocket a pair of enormous scissors, he added solemnly, “I am going to cut off her hair and her eyebrows!”

We all burst into a shout of laughter.

“Messieurs!” cried the abused husband, “I have said it, and I will keep my word. If I have the pleasure of meeting you here again, I will see that you are presented with her wig.”

Here ensued a pandemonium of laughter and shouts of applause, but the Frenchman did not for a moment relax his tragic scowl.

“But if you find a Spaniard in the house?” some one asked.

“I shall then throw him out of the window,” he responded.

“But if there are a number there?”

“All the world out of the window.”

“But you will make a scandal; the neighbors will run in, the police, and the people.”

“And I,” cried the terrible man, striking his hand on his chest, “I will throw the neighbors, the police, the people, and the whole city out of the window if it is necessary.”

And he went on in this vein, swaggering about and gesticulating with the letter in one hand and the scissors in the other, in the midst of the convulsive laughter of the tourists.

Vivir para ver (Live and see), says the Spanish proverb; and it ought rather to say viager (travel), for it seems that only in hotels and on the train does one fall in with such originals. Who knows how it all came out in the end?

On entering my room I asked the waiter what those two things on the wall were which I had been seeing since the evening of my arrival, and which seemed to have some claims to pass as paintings.

“Sir,” he replied, “they are nothing less than the brothers Argensola, Arragonese, natives of Barbastro, most celebrated poets of Spain.”

And truly such were the two brothers Argensola, two veritable literary twins, who had the same temperament, studied the same subjects, wrote in the same style, pure, dignified, and refined, striving with all their powers to raise a barrier against the torrent of depraved taste which in their time, the end of the sixteenth century, had begun to invade the literature of Spain. One of them died in Naples, the secretary of the viceroy, and the other died at Tarragona, a priest. The two left a name illustrious and beloved, upon which Cervantes and Lope de Vega have placed the noble seal of their praise. The sonnets of the Argensola brothers are recognized as the most beautiful in Spanish literature for their clearness of thought and dignity of form, and there is one of them in particular, to Lupercio Leonardo, which the legislators repeat in answer to the grandiloquent philippics of the orators on the left, emphasizing the last lines. I quote it with the hope that it may supply some of my readers with an answer to their friends who reprove them for being enamored, as was the poet, of a lady with a weakness for rouge:

“Yo os quiero confesar, don Juan, primero
Que aquel blanco y carmin de doña Elvira
No tiene de ella mas, si bien se mira,
Que el haberle costado su dinero:

“Pero tambien que me confieses quiero
Que es tanto la beldad de su mentira,
Que en vano à competir con ella aspira
Belleza igual de rostro verdadero.

“Mas que mucho que yo perdido ande
Por un engaño tal, pues que sabemos
Que nos engaña asì naturaleza?

“Porque ese cielo azul que todos vemos
No es cielo, ni es azul; làstima grande
Que no sea verdad tanta belleza!”

(First, Don Juan, I wish to confess that the comely white and red of Lady Elvira are no more hers than the money with which she bought them. But in thy turn I wish thee to confess that no like beauty of an honest cheek may dare compete with the beauty of her feigning. But why should I be vexed by such deception if it be known that Nature so deceives us? And, in fact, that the azure sky which we all see is truly neither sky nor is it azure? Alas, that so much beauty is not true!)

The following morning I wished to try a pleasure similar to that which Rousseau indulged in following the flight of flies—the pleasure of wandering through the streets of the city at random, stopping to look at the most insignificant things, as one would do in the streets at home if one were obliged to wait for a friend. I visited some public buildings, among them the palace of the Bourse, containing a magnificent hall in which are twenty-four columns, each ornamented with four shields placed above the four faces of the capital and bearing the arms of Saragossa. I visited the old church of Santiago and the beautiful palace of the archbishop; stood in the centre of the vast, cheerful Square of the Constitution, which divides the Coso, and into which run the two other principal streets of the city; and from that point I set out and wandered about until noon, to my infinite delight. Now I stopped to watch a boy playing nocino; now I poked my curious head into a little café frequented by scholars; now I slackened my pace to overhear servants joking with each other at a street-corner; now I flattened my nose against the window of a bookshop; now I almost pestered a tobacconist to death by asking for cigars in German; now I stopped to chat with a peddler of matches; here I bought a diary, then asked a soldier for a light, again asked a girl to show me the way, and, pondering the lines of Argensola, I commenced facetious sonnets, hummed the hymn of Riego, thought of Florence, the wine of Malaga, the counsels of my mother, of King Amadeus, my purse, a thousand things and nothing; and I would not have changed places with a grandee of Spain.

Toward evening I started to see the New Tower, one of the most curious monuments in Spain. It is eighty-four metres high, or four metres higher than Giotto’s tower, and without a crack leans about two and a half metres from the perpendicular, like the Tower of Pisa. It was erected in 1304. Some affirm that it was built just as it now stands, others that it settled afterward; there are different opinions. It is octagonal in form, and is built entirely of bricks, but presents a marvellous variety of design and ornamentation—a different appearance at every point, a graceful blending of Gothic and Moorish architecture. To gain admittance I was obliged to ask permission of some municipal official who lived hard by, who, after he had eyed me carefully from the tips of my boots to the hairs of my head, gave the key to the keeper and said to me, “You may go, sir.”

The keeper was a vigorous old man, who climbed up the interminable steps much more rapidly than I could follow.

“You will have a magnificent view, sir,” said he.

I told him that we Italians also had a leaning tower like that of Saragossa. He turned so that he could look at me and said sternly, “Ours is the only one in the world.”—“Oh, nonsense! I say that we have one too, and I have seen it with my eyes, at Pisa, but then, if you don’t want to believe me, you may read it here. See, the guide-book tells about it.”

He gave me a look and muttered, “Perhaps so.”

Perhaps so! the stubborn old numbskull! I could have thrown the book at his head.

Finally we reached the top. It is a wonderful sight. One sees Saragossa at a glance—the great Coso, the avenue of Santa Engracia, the suburbs; and then below, where it seems one can almost touch them, the richly-colored domes of Our Lady of the Pillar; just beyond, the bold tower of the Seo; yonder the famous Ebro sweeping around the city with a majestic curve, and the wide valley, enamored, in the words of Cervantes, with the beauty of her waters and the dignity of their flow; and the Huerba and the bridges and the hills, which could tell of so many bloody repulses and desperate assaults.

The keeper read in my face the thoughts which were passing through my mind, and, as though he was continuing a conversation which I had commenced, he began to point out the places at which the French forced their entrance, and where the citizens made the most stubborn resistance. “It was not the bombs of the French,” said he, “which made us surrender. We ourselves burned the houses and blew them up with mines. It was the plague. During the last days there were in the hospitals more than fifteen thousand of the forty thousand men who defended the city. There was not time to bring in the wounded or to bury the dead. The ruins of the houses were covered with putrefying corpses, which poisoned the air. One-third of the buildings of the city were destroyed, yet no one said surrender, and if any one had done so, he would have been strung up on one of the gallows which had been erected in every square.

“We would have died behind the barricades, in the fire, beneath the rubbish of our walls, rather than have bowed the head. But when Palafox found himself at the point of death, when it was known that the French were victorious in other places, and that there was no longer any hope, then we were obliged to lay down our arms. But the defenders of Saragossa surrendered themselves with all the honors of war, and when that crowd of soldiers, peasants, monks, and boys—haggard, ragged, blood-stained, and battle-scarred—filed out before the French army, the victors trembled with awe and had not the heart to rejoice over their victory. The lowest of our peasants could carry his head as high as the first of their marshals. Saragossa”—and, speaking these words, the old man was magnificent—“Saragossa has spit in the face of Napoleon!”

I thought at that moment of Thiers’ history, and the remembrance of his account of the fall of Saragossa raised within me a feeling of disdain. Not one generous word for the sublime sacrifice of that devoted people! To him their valor was but the raging of fanatics or a senseless mania for war on the part of the peasants weary of their monotonous life in the fields, and of monks surfeited with the solitude of the cell; their unyielding heroism was only obstinacy; their love of country, foolish pride. They did not die pour cet ideal de grandeur which animated the courage of the imperial troops. As if liberty, justice, and the honor of a people were not nobler than the ambition of an emperor seeking to triumph by treachery and wishing to rule with violence!

The sun was setting, the towers and minarets of Saragossa were gilded by the last rays, the sky was liquid. Again I looked around to impress clearly upon my memory the picture of the city and the country, and before I descended I said to the keeper, who regarded me with an air of benevolent curiosity: “Tell the strangers who in after-time may come to visit this tower that one day a young Italian a few hours before he started for Castile, in bidding a last farewell to the capital of Arragon from this balcony, bared his head with a sentiment of the deepest reverence, thus, and, as he was not able to kiss, one by one, the brows of all the descendants of the heroes of 1809, he gave a kiss to the keeper;” and so I kissed him and he me, and I went away content, and he too; and you may laugh who will.

After this it seemed to me that I could say I had seen Saragossa, and I turned toward the hotel, summing up my impressions. I was still very desirous of having a conversation with some good Saragossan, and after dinner I entered a café, where I quickly found an architect and a shopkeeper, who between sips of chocolate explained to me the political situation of Spain and the most effectual means of “bringing her safely through her troubles.” They thought very differently. The shopkeeper, a little man with a flat nose and a great furrow between his eyes, wanted a federal republic right off hand, that very night, before he went to bed, and he provided, as a sine-quâ-non condition for the prosperity of the new government, the execution of Serrano, Sagasta, and Zorilla, to convince them, once for all, that “they cannot trifle with the Spanish people.” “And to that king of yours,” he concluded, looking me in the eyes—“to your king, whom you have sent us—pardon me, my dear Italian, for the frankness with which I say it—to your king I would give a first-class ticket to return to his native Italy, where the air is better for kings. We are Spanish, my dear Italian,” said he, laying his hand on my knee,—“we are Spanish, and we do not want foreigners, either cooked or raw.”

“I think I have caught your meaning; and you?” I asked, turning to the architect, “how do you believe Spain can be saved?”

“There is but one way,” he answered solemnly; “there is but one way—a federal republic; in this I am of the same mind as my friend, but with Don Amadeus for president.” (The friend shrugged his shoulders.) “I repeat it—with Don Amadeus as president! He is the only man who could direct the republic. This is not my opinion alone; it is the opinion of a great many. Let Don Amadeus make it plain to his father that a monarchy will never please us here; let him call Castelar, Figueras, and Pi y Margal to the government; let him proclaim a republic and have himself elected president, and cry to Spain, ‘Sirs, I am now in command, and if any one raises his horns, let him beware of the rod!’ And then we shall have true liberty.”

The shopkeeper, who did not believe that true liberty consisted in being beaten over the horns, protested, the other replied, and the discussion lasted some time. Then they began to speak of the queen, and the architect declared that, although he was a republican, he had profound respect and warm admiration for Donna Victoria. “She has a great deal in here,” said he, touching his forehead with his finger. “Is it true that she knows Greek?”

“Oh yes,” I replied.

“Did you hear that, eh?” he asked the other.

“Yes,” replied the shopkeeper in a low voice, “but you don’t govern Spain with Greek.” He admitted, however, that, since one must have a queen, it was desirable to have one who was learned and intelligent, and worthy of sitting on the throne of Isabella the Catholic—who, as every one knows, knew as much Latin as a well-read professor—rather than to have one of those hare-brained queens who have no head for anything but festivities and favorites. In a word, he did not wish to see the house of Savoy in Spain. But if anything could plead a little in its favor, it would be the Greek of the queen.

What a gallant republican!

There is, however, in this race a generosity of heart and a vigor of mind which justify their honorable fame. The Arragonese are respected in Spain. The people of Madrid, who pick flaws in the Spaniards of all the provinces—who call the Catalans rough, the Andalusians vain, the Valencians fierce, the Galicians miserable, the Basques ignorant—even they speak with a little more reserve of the haughty sons of Arragon, who in the nineteenth century have written in their own blood the most glorious page in the history of Spain. The name of Saragossa sounds to the people like a cry of liberty, and to the army it is a battle-cry. But, since there is no rose without a thorn, this noble province is also a seed-bed of restless demagogues, of guerilla chieftains, of magistrates, of a people with the hot head and steady hand, who give all the government departments a great deal to do. The government is obliged to caress Arragon like a morose, passionate son who lays his plans to blow up the house if his will is crossed in the least thing.

The entrance of King Amadeus into Saragossa and the short stop he made there in 1871 offered an occasion for some deeds which are worthy of being retold, not only because they refer to the prince, but because they are an eloquent expression of the character of the people; and before everything else should come the speech of the mayor, which made such a stir in and out of Spain, and will probably remain among the traditions of Saragossa as a classic example of republican audacity. Toward evening the king arrived at the railroad-station, where, accompanied by an immense crowd, the delegates of the many municipalities, the societies, and the civil and military corps of the various cities of Arragon had gathered to meet him. After the customary cheers and applause had subsided the alcayde of Saragossa presented himself before the king, and read the following address in an emphatic manner:

“Sir! It is not my own humble self, and it is not the man of deep republican convictions, but in truth the alcayde of Saragossa, invested with the sacred universal suffrage, who, through a sense of unavoidable duty, presents himself here before you and submits himself to your commands. You are about to enter the precincts of a city which, sated at length with glory, bears the title of enduring heroism—a city which, when danger threatened the integrity of the nation, became a new Numantia—a city which humbled the armies of Napoleon in their very triumphs. Saragossa was the advance-guard of liberty; to her no government has ever seemed too liberal. Treason has never found shelter in the breast of any of her sons. Enter, then, within the precincts of Saragossa. If you lack courage, you have no need of it, for the sons of their ever-heroic mother are brave in open field and are incapable of treachery. There is at this moment no shield nor any army more ready to defend your person than the loyalty of the descendants of Palafox, for their very enemies find an inviolate asylum beneath their roofs. Think and consider that if you walk steadfastly in the path of justice; if you further the observance of the laws of the strictest morality; if you protect the producer, who hitherto has given so much and received so little; if you maintain the integrity of the ballot; if Saragossa and Spain shall one day owe to you the achievement of the sacred aspiration of the majority of this great people whom you have learned to know,—then perhaps you may be honored by a more glorious title than that of king. You may then be the first citizen of the nation, and the most dearly loved in Saragossa, and the Spanish republic will owe to you her complete felicity.”

To this address, which signified, after all, “We do not recognize you as king, but, however, you may come in, and we will not murder you, because heroes do not murder by treachery; and if you will be brave and will treat us as you ought to do, we will possibly consent to support you as president of the republic,”—to this the king replied with a bitter-sweet smile which seemed to say, “Too great a condescension,” and pressed the hand of the alcayde, to the great surprise of all present. He then mounted his horse and entered Saragossa. The people, from all accounts, received him with delight, and from the windows many ladies threw poems, garlands, and doves down upon him. At some points General Cordova and General Rosell, who accompanied him, were obliged to clear the street with their horses. When he entered the Coso a woman of the people rushed out to present him with some memorial. The king, who had ridden past without noticing her, turned back and took it. Soon after a charcoal-man presented himself and stretched out his sooty hand, which the king grasped. In the square of Santa Engracia he was received by a pompous masquerade of dwarfs and giants, who welcomed him with some traditional dances, amid the discordant cheers of the multitude. So he passed through the entire city. The next day he visited the church of Our Lady of the Pillar, the hospitals, the prisons, and the circus of the bull-fights, and everywhere his presence was hailed almost with the enthusiasm due a monarch, not altogether without the secret chagrin of the alcayde, who accompanied him, and who would have been better pleased had the people of Saragossa contented themselves with the observance of the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” without entering further upon his modest promises.

However, the king had a joyous welcome on the way from Saragossa to Logroño.

At Logroño, in the midst of an innumerable crowd of peasants, national guardsmen, women, and boys, he saw for the first time the venerable General Espartero. As soon as they saw each other they ran together; the general sought the hand of the king, the king opened his arms, and the crowd gave a shout of joy. “Your Majesty!” said the illustrious soldier in a husky voice, “the people welcome you with patriotic enthusiasm, because they see in their young monarch the firmest support of the liberty and independence of their country, and are sure that if by any misfortune our enemies were to cause trouble, Your Majesty, at the head of the army and the citizen militia, would overwhelm and rout them. My broken health did not suffer me to go to Madrid to felicitate Your Majesty and your august consort upon your establishment on the throne of Ferdinand. To-day I do so, and I repeat, once again, that I will serve faithfully the person of Your Majesty as king of Spain, chosen by the will of the nation. Your Majesty, I have in the city a modest home, and I offer it to you, and ask of you to honor it with your presence.” In these simple words the new king was greeted by the oldest, the best-beloved, and the most renowned of his subjects. A happy augury, though sadly at variance with the final outcome!

Toward midnight I went to a masquerade in a theatre of moderate size on the Coso, a short distance from the Square of the Constitution. The maskers were few and very shabby, but there was a compensation for this in a dense crowd of people, fully a third of whom were dancing furiously. Except for the language, I should not have known that I was at a masked ball in a theatre in Spain rather than in Italy. I seemed to see precisely the same faces. There was the same familiarity, the same freedom of speech and movement, the usual degeneracy of the ball into noisy and unbridled brawl.

Of the hundred couples of dancers who waltzed past me, only one pair remains impressed upon my memory—a youth of twenty years, tall, lithe, and fair, with great black eyes, and a girl of the same age, brown as an Andalusian—both beautiful and noble in their bearing, dressed in the ancient costumes of Arragon, clasped in each other’s arms, face to face, as though the one wished to breathe the other’s breath, rosy as two flowers, and radiant with joy. They paused in the middle of the crowd, glancing about with an air of disdain, and a thousand eyes followed them with a low murmur of admiration and envy.

On leaving the theatre I stood a moment at the door to see them pass again, and then I turned toward the hotel melancholy and alone. The next morning before dawn I was on my way to the Castiles.

BURGOS.

TO go from Saragossa to Burgos, the capital city of Old Castile, one travels the whole length of the great valley of the Ebro, crosses a part of Arragon and a part of Navarre, as far as the city of Miranda, situated on the branch road which passes through St. Sebastian and Bayonne.

The country is full of historic memories, of ruins, monuments, and famous names; every village recalls a battle, every province a war. At Tudela, the French defeated General Castaños; at Calahorra, Sertorius withstood Pompey; at Navarrete, Henry de Transtamare was conquered by Peter the Cruel. One sees the remains of the city of Egon ad Agoncilla; the ruins of the Roman aqueduct at Alcanadre; and the remains of the Moorish bridge at Logroño. The mind grows tired of recalling the memories of so many centuries and of so many peoples, and the eye grows weary with the mind.

The appearance of the country changes every moment. Near Saragossa there are green fields dotted with houses, while here and there one sees groups of peasants wrapped in their many-colored shawls, and occasionally donkeys and carts. Farther on there are only vast undulating plains, bare and arid, without a tree, or a house, or a road, where for miles and miles one sees only a herd of cattle, a cowherd, and a hut, or some little village of mud-colored, thatched cottages, so low that one can scarcely distinguish them from the ground—groups of huts rather than villages, true pictures of poverty and squalor.

The Ebro winds beside the railroad in great curves, now so close that the train seems on the point of plunging into it, now looking in the distance like a silver line appearing and disappearing between the hillocks and through the underbrush along its banks. In the distance one sees a purple chain of mountains, and beyond them the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees. Near Tudela one sees a canal, and after Custejon the country becomes green again; as one advances the arid plains alternate with olive-groves, and here and there lines of varied green break the yellow expanse of the deserted land. On the distant hilltops one sees the ruins of enormous castles, surmounted by towers broken, gaping, and fallen to decay, like the great trunks of giants, prostrate, but threatening.

At every station I bought a paper; before I had travelled half the distance I had a mountain, the journals of Madrid and Arragon, big and little, black and red, but, unfortunately, not one friendly to

Amadeus. And I say “unfortunately,” because to read those papers was to fall into the temptation to turn my back on Madrid and start for home. From the first column to the last there was a passionate outburst of insults, imprecations, and threats directed against Italy, scandals about our king, burlesques of our ministers, the wrath of God implored to descend upon our army,—the whole founded upon the report, then current, of a coming war in which the allied powers of Italy and Germany would suddenly attack France and Spain for the purpose of destroying Catholicism, the eternal enemy of them both, of establishing the duke of Genoa upon the throne of St. Louis, and of securing the throne of Philip II. for the duke of Aosta. There were threats in the leading articles, threats in the clippings, threats in the notices, threats in prose and in verse, displayed with sketches, capital letters, and long rows of exclamation points; dialogues between father and son, the one at Rome, the other in Madrid, one of whom would ask, “What shall I do?” Whereupon the other would reply, “Shoot!” or, again, “Let them come; we are ready: we are ever the Spain of 1808. The conquerors of the armies of Napoleon have no fear of the ugly mugs of King William’s Uhlans or of the yells of Victor Emanuel’s sharpshooters.” And then King Amadeus would be called “poor child;” the Italian army described as a crowd of ballet-dancers and opera-singers; the Italians in Spain requested to take their departure by the gentle hint, “Italians to the train.” In short, ask what you would, and there was something to meet your wish. I must confess that for a short time I was a little disturbed. I imagined that, at Madrid, Italians could hardly fail to be hooted in the streets; I remembered the letter which I had received at Genoa, repeated to myself, “Italians to the train” as advice worthy of serious consideration; I glanced with suspicion at the travellers who entered the carriage, and at the railroad-employees, and expected that on first spying me they would say, “Look at that Italian emissary! Let us send him to keep company with General Prim.”

On nearing Miranda the railroad enters a mountainous region, varied and picturesque, where on every side, wherever one looks, one sees only dark gray rocks which suggest to the imagination a sea turned into stone at the time of a storm, stretching away as far as the eye can reach. It is a country full of savage beauty, lonely as a desert, silent as a glacier, which represents to the fancy, as it were, a vision of an uninhabited planet, and impresses one with a mingled feeling of sadness and fear. The train passed between two walls of rock, sharp-pointed, hollowed, and crested, serrated in every manner and form, so that it seemed as though a crowd of stonecutters had spent their entire lives in cutting furiously on every side, working blindly to see who could make the most erratic marks. The railroad then comes out into a vast plain thickly wooded with poplar, among which rises Miranda.

The station is a long way from the city, and I was obliged to wait in the café until nightfall for the train to Madrid. For three hours I had no other company than that of the two custom-officers, called in Spain carabineros, dressed in a severe uniform, with a dagger and pistols and a carbine slung across their shoulders.

There were two or three of them at every station. The first few times I saw the barrels of their carbines opposite the window I thought they had come there to arrest some one, and perhaps...; and without thinking I put my hand on my passport.

They are handsome young fellows, brave and courteous, and the traveller who is obliged to wait can be pleasantly entertained by talking with them about Carlists and contrabands, as I did, with great advantage to my Spanish vocabulary. Toward evening a Mirandese came in: he was a man of about fifty, a politician, bright and talkative, and so I left the carabineros to join him. He was the first Spaniard who fully explained the political situation to me. I asked him to unravel a little this precious tangle of parties, of which I had not succeeded in finding the thread, and he was well pleased to do so, and went into the subject very thoroughly.

“It is described in two words,” he began. “See how matters stand! There are five principal parties—the Absolutist, the Moderate, the Conservative, the Radical, and the Republican. The Absolutist is divided into two other parties, the out-and-out Carlists and the dissenting Carlists. The Moderate party has separated into two, one of which favors Isabella, the other Alphonso. The Conservative party is made up of four—get them clearly fixed in your mind: the Canovists, led by Canovas del Castillo; the ex-Montpensierists, led by Rios y Rosas; the Fronterizos, led by General Serrano; and the Historical Progressionists, led by Sagasta. The Radical party is divided into four—the Democratic Progressionists, headed by Zorilla; the Cimbrios, headed by Martos; the Democrats, by Ribero; and the Economists, headed by Rodriguez. The Republican party is composed of three elements—the Unionists, led by Garcia Ruiz; the Federalists, headed by Figueras; and the Socialists, by Garrido. The Socialists are again divided into two parties—the International Socialists, and the Socialists without international sympathies. In all there are sixteen parties, and these sixteen are still further subdivided. Martos is trying to constitute a party of his own, Candan to form a second party, and Moret a third. Rios y Rosas, Pi y Margal, and Castelar are each forming their own party. There are accordingly twenty-two parties already formed or in process of formation. Add to these the partisans of the republic, with Amadeus for president; the partisans of the queen, who would gladly trip up the heels of Amadeus; the partisans of the Montpensier monarchy; those who are republicans on the condition that Cuba be retained; those who are republicans on the condition that Cuba be given up; those who have not yet renounced the prince of Hohenzollern; those who long for a union with Portugal; and you will have thirty parties.

“If one wished to be still more accurate, one might subdivide still further, but it is better to get a clear idea of matters as they stand. Sagasta inclines toward the Unionists, Zorilla toward the Republicans; Serrano is disposed to support the Moderates; the Moderates, if they had an opportunity, would join hands with the Absolutists, who, in their turn, would join with the Republicans, who would unite with a part of the Radicals to blow the minister Sagasta skyhigh, as he is too conservative for the Democratic Progressionists and too liberal for the Unionists, who are afraid of the Federalists, while they, the Federalists, on their part, do not place much confidence in the Radicals, who are always vacillating between the Democrats and the followers of Sagasta.

“Have I given you a clear idea of the situation?”

“As clear as amber,” I answered with a shudder.

I recall the journey from Miranda to Burgos as I would the page of a book read in bed when the eyes begin to close and the flame of the candle droops, for I was dead with sleep. From time to time one of my fellow-travellers shook me to make me look out. The night was calm and glorious, with clear moonlight. Whenever I looked out of the window I saw on both sides of the track huge rocks of fantastic form, so close that they seemed about to fall upon the train. They were white as marble, and shone so brightly that one could have counted all the points, the hollows and the boulders, as easily as in broad daylight.

“We are at Pancorbo,” said my neighbor. “Look at that height! Up there stood a terrible castle which the French destroyed in 1813. This is Briviesca. Look! here John I. of Castile summoned the States General, who granted the title of prince of Asturia to the heir to the throne. Look! there is the mountain of Brujola, which touches the stars.”

He was one of those indefatigable cicerones who would talk even to an umbrella, and while he was eternally saying “Look!” he kept punching me in the side near my pocket. At last we arrived at Burgos; my neighbor disappeared, without saying good-bye. I took a cab to a hotel, and just as I was about to pay the driver I discovered that the little purse in which I carried change, and which I was in the habit of carrying in my overcoat pocket, was missing. I thought of the States General of Briviesca, and ended the matter with a philosophic “I deserved it,” without making an outcry, as many do on similar occasions, “By the gods! where can we be? what a terrible country!” as though there are not in their own lands light-fingered people, who would carry off a purse without even having the courtesy to tell one of the history or geography of the country.

The hotel where I stopped was served by girls, as are all the hotels in Castile. There were six or seven of them, like great overgrown children, plump and muscular, who came and went with their arms full of mattresses and linen, bending back in athletic attitudes, rosy, panting, and laughing, so that it made one happy to see them. A hotel with women-servants is an entirely different thing from an ordinary hotel. The traveller seems to feel less strange and goes to rest with a quieter heart. The women impart a certain home-like air to the house which almost makes one forget one’s loneliness wheresoever one may be. They are more attentive than men; knowing that the traveller is inclined to be melancholy, they try to change his thoughts. They laugh and talk in a familiar way in an effort to make one feel like a member of the family and in safe hands. There is an air of housewifery about them, and they serve one, not because it is their business, but because they like to make themselves useful. They sew on buttons with an air of protection; they take the clothes-brush out of one’s hand with a gesture of impatience, as much as to say, “Let me have it, you good-for-nothing thing!” They pick the hairs off of your clothes when you are going out, and when you come back, all bespattered with mud, they say, “Oh! poor fellow!” They advise you not to sleep with your head too low when they bid you good-night; they bring your coffee to you in bed, telling you benevolently to “Lie still; don’t get up!” One of them was named Beatrice, another Carmelita, and a third Amparo (protection), and they all three possessed that ponderous highland beauty which makes one exclaim in a deep voice, “What splendid creatures!” When they ran along the corridors they shook the whole house.

At sunrise next morning Amparo called in my ear, “Caballero!” A quarter of an hour later I was in the street.

Burgos, built at the foot of a mountain on the right bank of the Arlanzon, is an irregular city, with narrow, winding streets, with few noteworthy buildings, and the larger part of its houses not older than the seventeenth century. But it possesses one particular characteristic which gives it a curious and genial appearance. It is painted in many colors, like one of those scenes in a puppet-show by which the painters are expected to draw cries of admiration from the servants in the pit. It seems like a city colored on purpose for a Carnival celebration, with the intention of having it whitewashed afterward. The houses are red, yellow, blue, gray, and orange, with ornaments and trimmings of a thousand other colors; and everything is painted—the doorframes, the railings of the landings, the gratings, cornices, corbels, reliefs, balconies, and windowsills. All the streets seem to have been prepared for a festival. At every turn a new effect strikes the eye; in every direction there is, as it were, a rivalry in displaying the most conspicuous colors. It almost makes one laugh: they are such colors as have never before been seen on walls—green, flesh-color, purple, colors of rare flowers, of sauces, sweets, and stuffs for ball-dresses. If there were at Burgos an asylum for mad painters, one would say that the city had been painted one day when its doors had been broken open.

To make the appearance of the houses more pleasing, a great many windows have in front of them a sort of covered balcony enclosed with an abundance of glass like a case in a museum. There is, as a rule, one of these on every floor, the one above resting on the one below, and the lowest of all on the show-window of a shop, in such a way that from the ground to the roof they look altogether like the single window of an immense store. Through the windows on every floor one sees, as though they were on exhibition, visions of girls and children, flowers, landscapes, and cardboard figures from France, embroidered curtains, lace, and Moorish ornaments. If I had not known differently, it would not have occurred to me that such a city could be the capital of Old Castile—of a people who have a reputation for gravity and anxiety; I should have believed it to be a city of Andalusia, where the people are gayest. I had expected to see a decorous nation where I found a coquettish masker.

After two or three turns I came out into a vast square called the Plaza Mayor, or the Square of the Constitution. It was entirely surrounded by ochre houses with porticoes, and in the middle stood a bronze statue of Charles III. I had not yet looked around when a boy ran toward me, enveloped in a long cape torn off at the bottom, and dragging behind him two old shoes and waving a paper in the air:

“Want the Imparcial, caballero?”

“No.”

“Want a Madrid lottery-ticket?”

“No indeed!”

“Want some contraband cigars?”

“No.”

“Want—?”

“Well?”

My friend scratched his chin: “Want to see the remains of the Cid?”

Gracious! what a leap! But no matter; let us go and see the remains of the Cid.

We went to the municipal palace, and there an old janitress made us cross three or four narrow passages until she stopped us where all of them converged. “Behold the remains!” said the woman, pointing to a sort of coffin resting upon a pedestal in the centre of the room. I approached and raised the cover and looked in. There were two compartments, at the bottom of which one could see some bones heaped together like fragments of broken furniture. “These,” said the old woman, “are the bones of the Cid, and these others the bones of Ximenes his wife.”

I took in my hand the shin-bone of one and a rib of the other, looked at them, felt them, and turned them over, but, as I was unable by their aid to resurrect the features of husband and wife, I replaced them. The woman showed me a wooden seat, almost in pieces, propped against the wall, and bearing an inscription which said that it was the seat upon which sat the first judges of Castile, Nunnius Rasura and Calvo Lainus, the great-great-grandfathers of the Cid; which is the same thing as saying that this precious piece of furniture has stood in the very same place for the goodly period of nine hundred years. I have it before my eyes at this moment, sketched in my note-book in serpentine lines, and I seem to hear the good woman asking, “Are you a painter?” as I stood leaning my chin on my pencil to admire my masterpiece. In the next room she showed me a brazier of the same antiquity as the old seat, and two paintings—one of the Cid and the other of Ferdinand Gonzales, the first count of Castile, both of which are so dark and faded that they do not suggest the image of those personages any better than did the shin-bone and the ribs of the illustrious consorts.

From the municipal palace I was conducted along the bank of the Arlanzon to an extensive square, with gardens, fountains, and statues, surrounded by handsome new buildings. Across the river lies the suburb of Bega, and behind it rise the barren hills which tower above the city. At one end of the square stands the monumental gate of Santa Maria, erected in honor of Charles V., and ornamented with statues of the Cid, Ferdinand Gonzales, and the emperor, while beyond the gate rise the majestic spires of the cathedral.

It was raining; I was alone in the middle of the square, without an umbrella. I raised my eyes to a window and saw a woman, who appeared to be a servant, looking at me and laughing, as if to say, “Who is that crazy man?” This was so unexpected that I was a little disconcerted, but I tried my best to appear indifferent, and started toward the cathedral by the shortest cut.

The cathedral of Burgos is one of the largest, most beautiful, and richest monuments of Christendom. Ten times I wrote these words at the top of the page, and ten times I lacked the courage to continue, so feeble and inadequate are the powers of my mind for the task of describing it.

The façade runs along a little square from which one is able to see only a part of the immense structure; on the other sides run crooked, narrow streets which shut off the view. From all parts of the vast roof spring graceful spires, rising above the highest buildings of the city, and richly adorned with ornaments of the color of dark limestone. In front, to the right and left of the façade, rise two tapering belfries covered with sculpture from base to summit, ornamented with open-work carving and stone embroidery of charming grace and delicacy. Farther on, from a point near the centre of the church, rises a tower equally rich with bas-reliefs and carvings. On the façade, at the angles of the belfries and along the different elevations, beneath the arches and on all the walls, stand an innumerable multitude of statues—angels, martyrs, warriors, and princes—so close, so various in pose, and brought out in such strong relief by the light background of the edifice, that they almost present to the view an appearance of life, like a celestial legion stationed to guard the monument.

On raising the eyes beyond the façade to the pinnacles of the farthest spires, comprehending at a glance all that delicate harmony of line and color, one experiences a feeling of exquisite pleasure, as when one listens to a strain of music which sweeps gradually upward from the expression of solemn prayer to an ecstasy of sublime inspiration.

Before one enters the church one’s imagination is far beyond the things of earth. You enter. The first emotion of which you are conscious is a sudden strengthening of faith if you have it, and a yearning of the soul toward faith if you have it not. It does not seem possible that this measureless mass of stone can be a vain work of man’s superstition. It seems to affirm, to prove, to command something. It is like a superhuman voice crying to the earth, “I AM!” It exalts and abases, like a promise and a threat, like a dazzling burst of sunlight followed by a thunder-clap. Before you have looked about you feel the need of rekindling in your heart the dying embers of divine love; you feel unfamiliar and humiliated before that miracle of aspiration, genius, and labor. The timid no which whispers in the depths of your soul dies with a groan beneath the dreadful YES which reverberates in your brain. First you look vaguely round, trying to discover the limits of the edifice, which are concealed by the choir and the enormous pilasters. Then you run your eyes along the columns and the highest arches, your glance rising and falling, darting rapidly along the endless lines, which follow each other, interweave, correspond, and are lost, like rockets crossing in space; up and through the great vaults, and your heart is lost in boundless admiration, as though all those lines issued from your own brain, inspired by the act of following them with your eyes. Then suddenly you are assailed, as it were, by dismay, a feeling of sadness that you have not time in which to see it all, the genius to comprehend it, nor the memory to retain the innumerable miracles which you have but dimly seen on every side, crowded about you, towering above you, stupefying you—miracles which come, you would say, not by the hands of men, but by a second creation from the hand of God.

The church belongs to the order of architecture known as Gothic of the Renaissance period. It is divided into three very long naves, crossed in the middle by a fourth, which separates the choir from the great altar. Over the space between the altar and the choir rises a dome formed by the tower which one sees from the square. You turn your eyes upward and stand a quarter of an hour gazing with open mouth. You are enraptured by a vision of bas-reliefs, statues, columns, little windows, arabesques, flying arches, and airy carvings, all harmonizing in a design at once grand and delicate, which at the first sight makes you tremble and smile like the sudden bursting and flashing of an immense display of fireworks. A thousand vague images of paradise, which hovered round our childish slumbers, spring together from the ecstatic mind and soar upward like a cloud of butterflies alighting on the thousand reliefs of the highest vault, flying about and intermingling, and your eyes follow them as though you really saw them, and your heart beats faster and a sigh escapes you.

If you turn from the dome and look around, an even grander spectacle awaits you. The chapels are like so many other churches in size, variety, and richness. In each of them lies entombed a prince, a bishop, or a grandee. The tomb is placed in the centre, and upon it rests a memorial statue of the dead, the head lying on a pillow and the hands clasped on the breast; the bishops clothed in their most gorgeous robes, the princes in their armor, and the women in their gala attire. Each of the tombs is covered by an ample pall, which falls over the sides and takes the form of the raised portions of the statue, so that it really makes them look like the rigid limbs of a human corpse. Whichever way one turns, one sees in the distance, between the measureless pilasters, behind the rich gratings, in the uncertain shimmer of light descending from the high windows, the mausoleums, the funereal hangings, and the rigid outlines of the dead. On approaching the chapels one is amazed by the lavish use of sculpture, marbles, and gold in the ornamentation of the walls, ceilings, and altars. Each chapel contains a host of angels and saints carved in marble or wood, colored, gilded, and draped.

On whatever part of the pavement one’s glance may fall it is at once led upward from bas-relief to bas-relief, from niche to niche, from arabesque to arabesque, from painting to painting, to the very roof, and then by another chain of carvings and frescoes it is led down from the roof to the pavement.

On whatever side you turn your eyes you see eyes gazing back into your own, beckoning hands, the heads of cherubs peeping at you, draperies which seem instinct with life, floating clouds, crystal spheres tremulous with light—an infinite variety of forms, colors, and reflections which dazzle the eyes and confuse the brain.

A volume would not be sufficient for a description of all the masterpieces of sculpture and painting which are scattered through this vast cathedral. In the vestry of the chapel of the constables of Castile hangs a very beautiful Magdalene, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci; in the chapel of the Presentation, a Virgin attributed to Michelangelo; and in another chapel, a Holy Family attributed to Andrea del Sarto. It is not certainly known who the painters of these pictures were, but when I saw the curtains which concealed them withdrawn and heard those names reverently spoken, I shivered from head to foot. Then, for the first time, I experienced in its fulness that sense of gratitude which we owe to the great artists who have made the name of Italy honored and precious the world over. I learned for the first time that they are not only the illustrators, but also the benefactors, of their country—benefactors not only of those who have the ability to appreciate and admire them, but of those also who are blind to their works, and even of those who are careless and ignorant of them. For he who lacks the sense of beauty does not lack national pride, or, if he lacks even this, he still has personal pride, and feels his heart deeply stirred when he hears some one, even though it be only a sacristan, say, “He was born in Italy,” and the careless man smiles and is happy. But for his smiles and his enjoyment he is a debtor to those great names, which inspired no feeling of admiration in him before he passed the confines of his country. Wherever one goes these great names accompany and protect one like invisible friends; they make one seem less foreign among foreigners; they cast upon one’s face the lustre of their own glory. How many smiles, how many hand-clasps, how many courteous words from unknown people do we Italians not owe to Raphael, Michelangelo, Ariosto, and Rossini!

If one wishes to see this cathedral in a day, one must run past the masterpieces. The carved door which opens into the cloister is said to be the most beautiful in the world after the doors of the Baptistery of Florence. Behind the great altar stands a stupendous bas-relief by Philip of Borgogna, representing the Passion of Christ—a marvellous composition, for the execution of which one man’s lifetime does not seem sufficient. The choir is a veritable museum of sculpture of incredible richness. The cloister is full of tombs surmounted by recumbent statues, and about them runs a profusion of bas-reliefs. In the chapels, around the choir, in the passages of the sacristy, everywhere, are paintings by the greatest Spanish masters, statuettes, columns, and ornaments. The great altar, the organs, the doors, the staircases, the gratings, everything, is grand and magnificent, and at the same time arouses and rebukes one’s admiration. But why add word to word? Could the most minute description give a living image of it all? And even if I were to write a page for every painting, for every statue, for every bas-relief, could I produce in another’s heart, even for a moment, the emotions which I felt myself?

A sacristan came up to me and whispered in my ear, as though he was telling me a secret.

“Do you wish to see the Christ?”

“What Christ?”

“Why,” he answered, “the famous one, as every one knows.”

The famous Christ of the cathedral of Burgos, which bleeds every Friday, is worthy of particular attention. The sacristan leads the way into a mysterious chapel, closes the window-shutters, lights the candles on the altar, pulls a cord; the curtain falls back, and—there is the Christ! If you do not take to your heels at the first sight, you are brave indeed. A real corpse hanging on a cross could not be more horrible. It is not a painted wooden statue like other images: it is a stuffed skin, and they say the skin is that of a man. It has real hair, real eyebrows and eyelashes, and a real beard. The hair is matted with blood, and there are streaks of blood on the breast, the legs, and the hands. The wounds which seem like real wounds, the color of the skin, the contraction of the face, the attitude, the expression,—each thing is terribly real. If you touched the body, you would expect to feel the tremor of the limbs and the warmth of the blood. The lips seem to be moving and to be opened in a cry of lamentation. You cannot long endure the sight, and in spite of yourself you avert your face and say to the sacristan, “I have seen it.”

After the Christ one ought to see the celebrated coffer of the Cid. It is a battered, worm-eaten coffer, suspended from the wall of one of the rooms in the sacristy. The story runs that the Cid took this coffer with him in his wars against the Moors, and that the priests used it for an altar in the celebration of mass. One day the doughty warrior, finding his money-bags empty, filled the coffer with stones and scraps of iron, and had it carried to a Hebrew money-lender, to whom he said, “The Cid has need of money. He might sell his treasures, but he does not wish to do so. Give him the money which he stands in need of, and he will speedily return it with usury of ninety-nine per cent., and he leaves in your hands as a pledge this precious coffer which contains his fortune. But upon one condition—that you swear to him not to open it until he has restored what he owes you. It is a secret that must be known only to God and me. Make your decision.” Either money-lenders of that day reposed greater faith in army officers, or else they had an ounce less of shrewdness, than they now have; at any rate, it is a fact that the usurer accepted the proposal of the Cid, took the oath, and gave him the money. Whether or not the Cid lived up to his promise I do not know, nor can I tell if the Jew brought suit. But the fact remains that the coffer is still in existence, and that the sacristan tells the story with great gusto, without the shadow of a suspicion that the transaction was the act of a hardened villain rather than an ingenious caprice of a facetious man of honor.

Before leaving the cathedral you should get the sacristan to tell you the famous legend of Papa-Moscas. Papa-Moscas is an automaton of life-size placed on the case of a clock above the door inside of the church. Once upon a time, like the celebrated automatons of the clock of Venice, he would come forth from his hiding-place at the stroke of the hour, and at every stroke he would utter a cry and make an odd gesture, whereupon the faithful were filled with the greatest delight, the boys laughed, and the religious services were disturbed. To end this scandalous behavior, a stern bishop had some of Papa-Moscas’ sinews cut, and from that day he has stood there motionless and silent. But, nevertheless, they do not stop telling of his deeds in Burgos and throughout all Spain, and even beyond Spain. Papa-Moscas was a creature of Henry III., and hence arose his great importance.

The story is exceedingly curious. Henry III., the king of gallant adventures, who once sold his cloak to buy something to eat, was accustomed to go to the cathedral every day incognito to pray. One morning his eyes met those of a young woman who was praying before the tomb of Ferdinand Gonzales: their glances were bound together, as Théophile Gautier would say. The young woman arose; the king followed as she left the church, and walked behind her to her home. For many days, at the same place and hour, they again saw each other, looked into each other’s eyes, and told their love and sympathy by their glances and their smiles. The king always followed the lady as far as her home, without speaking a word and without her giving a sign that she desired him to speak. One morning, on leaving the church, the beautiful unknown dropped her handkerchief; the king picked it up, hid it in his bosom, and offered her his own. The lady took it with many blushes, and, drying her tears, she disappeared. From that day Henry saw her no more. A year later, while hunting in a wood, the king was attacked by six ravenous wolves. After a long struggle he killed three of them with his sword, but his strength was already failing and he was on the point of being devoured by the others. At that moment he heard the report of a gun and a strange cry, at which the remaining wolves took to flight. He turned and saw a mysterious woman staring at him with fixed eyes, without the power to utter a word. The muscles of her face were horribly distorted, and a shrill cry of lamentation burst from her breast. Recovering from his first surprise, the king recognized in the woman the lady whom he had loved in the cathedral. With a cry of joy he rushed to embrace her, but the lady stopped him by exclaiming with a heavenly smile, “I have loved the memory of the Cid and of Ferdinand Gonzales because my heart loves all that is noble and generous; therefore I loved thee also, but my duty restrains me from fulfilling this love, which would have been the happiness of my life. Accept the sacrifice.” As she spoke these words she fell to the ground and died without finishing the sentence, pressing the king’s handkerchief to her heart. A year afterward Papa-Moscas stepped out on the case of the clock to announce the hour for the first time. King Henry had him made to honor the memory of the woman whom he loved. Papa-Moscas’ cry reminded the king of the cry with which his deliverer had frightened off the three wolves in the forest. The story runs that King Henry wanted to hear Papa-Moscas repeat also the words of love which the woman spoke. But the Moorish artist who constructed the automaton declared, after many vain efforts, that it was impossible to satisfy this desire of the tender-hearted monarch.