Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“The prelates, the knights, and the other dignitaries of the state were present. The Cid put the Bible on the altar and made the king place his hand on it, and then the Cid said to him: ‘King Alfonso, you must swear to me that you are not stained by the blood of Don Sancho my lord, and, if you swear falsely, may you die by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’ and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he changed color. And the Cid said again: ‘King Alfonso, you must swear that you neither ordered nor counselled the death of Don Sancho my lord; and, if you swear falsely, may you die by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’ and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he changed color a second time. Twelve vassals confirmed the oath of the king. The Cid would have kissed his hand, but the king would not permit him to do so, and hated him from that moment to the end of his life.” The old man added, however, that another tradition records the fact that he did not have King Alfonso sworn on the Bible, but on a bolt of the church-door, and that for a long time travellers came from all the countries of the world to see that bolt; that the people attributed to it I know not what supernatural virtues, and so it was much spoken of in every place; and that it gave rise to so many and such extravagant fables that the bishop, Don Fray Pascual, was constrained to have it removed, because it created a dangerous rivalry between the door and the high altar. The cicerone told me nothing more, but one could fill several volumes if he wished to collect all the traditions of the Cid which are current in Spain. No legendary warrior was ever dearer to his people than this terrible Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar. Poetry has made him little less than a god; his glory lives in the national spirit of the Spaniards, as though a few lustres, instead of eight centuries, had passed since the times in which he lived. The heroic poem which is called by his name, the greatest monument of the poetry of Spain, still continues to be the most powerful national work in Spanish literature.

* * * * *

As evening was drawing on I went to walk beneath the portico of the Plaza Mayor, in the hope of seeing something of the people. But the rain was pouring down and a high wind was blowing, so I found only some groups of boys, workmen, and soldiers, and directly turned back to the hotel. The emperor of Brazil had arrived in the morning, and was leaving for Madrid that night. In the room where I dined, together with some Spaniards--who talked pleasantly with me until the hour of departure arrived--there dined also all the major-domos, the valets, servants, and clerks of His Imperial Majesty, and the dear knows who else, a household which sat around a large table and filled it full. In all my life I have never seen a more motley crowd of human beings. There were white, black, yellow, and copper-colored faces, with some eyes and noses and mouths which could not be equalled in the whole collection of the _Pasquino_ of Teza. Every one was talking in a different and much-abused language; one spoke English, another Portuguese, another French, another Spanish, while some spoke a mixture of all four languages, the like of which was never heard before, adding words, sounds, and accents of some outlandish dialect. However, they understood each other and jabbered all together, making such a confusion that it seemed as though they were speaking the horrible secret language of some savage land unknown to the world.

Before I left Old Castile, the cradle of the Spanish monarchy, I wished to see Soria, the town built on the ruins of ancient Numantia; Segovia, with its immense Roman aqueduct; Sant Idelfonso, the delightful garden of Philip V.; and Avilo, the native city of Saint Theresa. But when I had hurriedly and in desperation gone through the four elementary operations of arithmetic before buying my ticket to Valladolid, I said to myself that there was nothing great to be seen in those four cities, that the “Guide” exaggerated, that fame has pieced out their little attractions, that it is better to see a few things rather than many, if only those few are well seen and will be remembered. I indulged in these and other sophistries, and they corresponded perfectly with the results of my calculation and the motives of my hypocrisy.

So I left Burgos without having really seen anything but monuments, cicerones, and soldiers, for the fair Castilians, frightened by the rain, had not dared to risk their little feet in the streets, and therefore my recollections of the city are rather sad, in spite of the gorgeousness of its colors and the magnificence of its cathedral.

From Burgos to Valladolid the country is almost the same as that from Saragossa to Miranda. There are the same vast, desolate plains, bounded by dun-colored hills of angular form with bare summits. These silent, solitary wastes, flooded by dazzling light, bear one away in fancy to African deserts, to the hermit’s life, to the sky, to the infinite, and raise in the heart an irrepressible feeling of weariness and melancholy. Surrounded by these plains, this solitude, this silence, one understands the mystical nature of the Castilian people, the ardent faith of their kings, the sacred inspiration of their poets, the divine ecstasy of their saints, their churches, their grand cloisters, and their glorious history.

VALLADOLID.

Valladolid, “the rich,” as Quevedo calls it, a famous dispenser of colds,--Valladolid, of all the cities lying north of the Tagus, was the city which I had the liveliest desire to see, although I knew that it contained no grand artistic monuments and no modern buildings of importance. Its name, its history, and its character had a peculiar attraction for me as I had imagined them in my own way from my knowledge of its inhabitants. I expected that it would be a noble, cheerful, and studious city, and I could not picture its streets to my mind without seeing Gongora walking here or Cervantes there or Leonardo de Argensola yonder, and all the other poets, historians, and scholars who dwelt there when it was the seat of the splendid court of the monarch. And as I thought of the court I saw in the vast squares of this city, which had so won my heart, a confused mingling of religious processions, bull-fights, military parades, masquerades, balls--all the mad merriment of the festival in celebration of the birth of Philip IV., from the arrival of the English admiral with his retinue of six hundred to the final banquet famous for the twelve hundred dishes of meat, to repeat the popular tradition, without counting the plates of those who were not served. I arrived in the night and went to the first hotel, when I fell asleep with the delightful thought that I should awake in an unknown city.

And to awake in an unknown city when one has gone there from choice is indeed a very lively pleasure. The thought that from the moment you step out of the house in the morning until you return to it at night you will do nothing but pass from curiosity to curiosity, from pleasure to pleasure, that everything you see will seem new, and that at every step you will be learning something, and that all will be impressed upon your memory so long as you live; that through the livelong day you will be as free as air and as gay as a lark, without a thought in the world unless it be to amuse yourself, and that by amusing yourself you are at the same time gaining health of body, mind, and soul; that, finally, the termination of all these pleasures, instead of bringing to you a feeling of melancholy, like the evening of a holiday, will be only the beginning of another company of delights, which will attend you from that city to the next, and from it to a third, and so on as long as your fancy is pleased not to confine them within bounds,--all these thoughts, I say, which present themselves in a crowd as soon as you open your eyes, give you such a joyful surprise that

before you know it you find yourself standing in the middle of the room with your hat on and the Guide in your hands.

Let us go, then, to enjoy Valladolid.

Alas! how changed from the time of Philip III.! The population, which was then above one hundred thousand, has dwindled to less than twenty thousand; in the principal streets there is a fair showing of university students and tourists on their way to Madrid; the other streets are dead. The city makes upon one the impression of a great abandoned palace, where one still sees traces of carving, gilding, and mosaic, and finds in some of the central rooms a few poor families which reflect by their melancholy life the vast solitude of the edifice.

There are many spacious squares, an old palace, houses in ruins, empty convents, long streets grass-grown and deserted; in short, all the appearances of a great city fallen into decay. The most beautiful part is the Plaza Mayor, a vast arena, encircled all around by a portico supported by heavy columns of bluish granite, behind which rise houses, all three stories in height. In front of the houses run three orders of terraces of great length, where it is said twenty-four thousand people can be conveniently seated. The portico extends along the two sides of a wide street which opens into the square, and here and in two or three other adjacent streets there is a great concourse of people. It was market-day: under the porticoes and in the square swarmed a crowd of country-folk, vegetable-sellers, and market-men, and, as they speak Castilian with admirable purity of expression and pronunciation at Valladolid, I began to stroll about among the baskets of lettuce and the piles of oranges, to catch as I might the _bon-mots_ and the cadences of that most beautiful language.

Among other things I remember a curious proverb repeated by a woman who was vexed beyond endurance by a young bully. “_Sabe Usted_,” she said, planting herself before him, “_lo que es que destruye al hombre?_” (I stopped and pricked up my ears.) “_Tres muchos y tres pocos: mucho hablar y poco saber; mucho gastar y poco tener; mucho presumir y nada valer._” (Do you know, sir, what it is that ruins a man? Three muckles and three mickles: much talking and little sense; much spending and little keeping; much presumption and no worth.)

It seemed to me that I could perceive a great difference between the voices of these people and those of the Catalans: here they were more liquid and silvery, and the gestures too were livelier and the expression of the faces more animated; but there was nothing remarkable about their features and complexion, and in their dress they differed very little from the peasants of Northern Italy.

It was in the square at Valladolid that it occurred to me for the first time that I had not seen a pipe since I entered Spain. The laboring-men, the peasants, the poor, all classes, smoke the cigarette, and it is ridiculous to see great strapping fellows, with long moustaches, going about with that little microscopic thing in their mouths, half hidden in their beards. And they are very careful to smoke it up to the very last particle of tobacco, until they have only a bit of smouldering ashes left on their lower lip, and they even cling to this as though it were a drop of liquor, and finally they spit out the ashes with the air of one who is making a sacrifice.

Something else occurred to me also--a fact which I often observed afterward as long as I remained in Spain: I never heard any whistling.

From the Plaza Mayor I passed on to the wide, cheerful Plaza of San Pablo, where is the ancient royal palace. The façade is not remarkable either for grandeur or beauty. I entered the doorway, and before I could feel a sense of admiration for the magnificence of the hall I felt only sadness at the sepulchral silence which reigned in it. Nothing else produces the impression made upon one by a cemetery so closely as does an abandoned castle, for there especially, to a greater extent than in other places, the contrast is very strong and sharp between the remembrance of what has been and the actual condition in which one finds it. Alas for the superb retinue of plumed cavaliers! Alas for the splendid feasts, the fervid enjoyment of a prosperity which seemed eternal! It is a novel pleasure--that of coughing a little in front of those hollow sepulchres, as invalids sometimes cough to test their strength, and of hearing the echo of your lusty voice, which assures you that you are young and hearty. On the inside of the palace there is a court of generous size surrounded by busts of the Roman emperors in demi-relief, a beautiful staircase, and wide galleries on the upper stories. I coughed and the echo answered, “What health!” and I went out comforted.

A drowsy porter showed me another palace in the same square which I had overlooked, and told me that in it was born the great king Philip II., from whom Valladolid had received the title of a city. “You know, sir, Philip II., son of Charles V., father of”--“I know, I know,” I hastened to reply to save the narration, and, casting a gloomy glance at the gloomy palace, I passed on.

Opposite to the royal palace is the Dominican convent of San Pablo, with a façade of the Gothic order so richly and extravagantly ornamented with statuettes, bas-reliefs, and traceries of every sort that one half of them would amply adorn an immense palace. At that moment the sun was shining on it, and the effect was magnificent. While I stood contemplating at my ease that labyrinth of sculpture, from which it seems one’s eye will never turn when once it has become fixed upon it, a little rogue, six or eight years old, who had been sitting in a distant corner of the square, rushed from his place as though he had been thrown from a sling, and ran toward me, crying in an affectionate, plaintive tone, “_Señorito! Señorito!_ I like you so much!”

This is something new, I thought, for the ragamuffins to make declarations of love. He came and stood in front of me, and I asked, “Why do you love me?”

“Because,” he answered frankly, “you will give me alms.”

“And why should I give you alms?”

“Because,” he replied, hesitating, and then resolutely, in the tones of one who has found a good reason--“because, sir, you have a book.”

The Guide which I held under my arm! But, you see, one must travel to learn these new things. I carried a Guide, foreigners carry Guides; foreigners give alms; therefore I ought to give him alms; all this reasoning instead of saying, “I am hungry!”

I was pleased by the plausibility of this discovery, and dropped into the hands of this profound boy the few _cuartos_ which I found in my pockets.

Turning into a street near by, I saw the façade of the Dominican college of San Gregorio, Gothic in its architecture, and more dignified and richer than the convent of San Pablo. Then I went from street to street until I came to the square of the cathedral. At the point where the street widens into the square I met a very graceful little Spanish lady, to whom I might have applied those two verses of Espronceda:

“Y que yo la he de querer
Por su paso de andadura,”

or that line of ours, “She walks not like a mortal thing,” for in their gait lies the supreme grace of the Spanish women. She had in her walk those thousand fugitive little friskings and easy undulating motions which the eye cannot follow one by one, nor the memory retain, nor words express, but which, taken altogether, form the most feminine of woman’s charms. Here I found myself in an embarrassing position. I saw the great mass of the cathedral looming up at the end of the square, and curiosity prompted me to look at it; but a few feet in front of me I saw this little person, and a curiosity not less lively constrained me to look at her; and so, as I did not wish to lose the first glimpse of the church nor the fleeting sight of the woman, my glances ran from her face to the dome and from the dome to her face with such breathless rapidity that the fair unknown must have certainly thought that I had discovered a correspondence of line or some mysterious bond of sympathy between the building and herself, for she also turned and looked at the church, and smiled as she passed me.

The cathedral of Valladolid, although it is unfinished, is one of the largest cathedrals in Spain. It is an imposing mass of granite, and produces upon the mind of the incredulous an effect similar to that produced by the church of the Pillar at Saragossa. On first entering one flies in thought to the Basilica of St. Peter’s. Architecturally, it is dignified and simple, and receives a sombre reflection from the dark color of the stone. The walls are bare, the chapels dark, the arched columns, the doors, and everything gigantic and severe. It is one of those cathedrals which make one stammer out his prayers with a sense of secret dread. I had not yet seen the Escurial, but I thought of it. It was, in fact, designed by the same architect. The church was left unfinished, so that the work of building the convent might be carried on, and on visiting the convent one is reminded of the church.

In a little chapel to the right of the great altar rises the tomb of Pedro Ansurez, a gentleman and benefactor of Valladolid, whose sword has been placed above his monument. I was alone in the church and heard the echoing of my footsteps. Suddenly a keen sense of fear seized me and an indescribable feeling of childish fright: I turned my back upon the tomb and went out.

As I was going out I met a priest and asked where the house of Cervantes was. He answered that it was in the street of Cervantes, and pointed out the way I ought to take. I thanked him, and he asked me if I was a stranger; I said I was.

“From Italy?”

“Yes, from Italy.”

He scanned me from head to foot, raised his hat, and went on his way down the street. I too started off, in the opposite direction, and the thought came to me: “I’ll wager that he has stopped to see how one of the Pope’s prison-keepers is made.” I looked back, and there he was, sure enough, standing stock still in the middle of the square, staring at me with all his eyes. I could not keep from laughing, so I excused my amusement with the salutation, “_Beso a usted la mano!_” (I give you my hand), and he called back, “_Buenos dias!_” (Good-day), and was off. But he ought to have added, not without surprise, that for an Italian I had not such a villainous face, after all. I crossed two or three quiet, narrow streets, and entered the street of Cervantes, a long, straight, dirty thoroughfare lined with wretched houses. I walked along it for some distance without meeting anybody but some soldiers and servants-girls and an occasional mule, my eyes busily scanning the walls for the inscription, “_A qui vivio Cervantes_,” etc. (“Here lived Cervantes,” etc.). But I found nothing. On reaching the end of the street I found myself in the open country. There was not a soul in sight. I stood a while to look around, and then I retraced my steps. I happened to meet a muleteer and asked him, “Where is the house in which Cervantes lived?” The only answer he gave me was a blow for the mule as he went on his way. I questioned a soldier: he sent me to a shop. In the shop I questioned an old woman. She did not understand, and, believing that I wished to buy a copy of _Don Quixote_, sent me to a book-store. The bookseller, who wanted to play the wiseacre and could not bring his mind to confess that he knew nothing about the house of Cervantes, began to beat about the bush, talking of the life and works of that “marvellously great writer;” so that, to cap the climax, I went off about my own affairs, without seeing anything. However, the memory of this house must be preserved (and no doubt if I had searched more diligently I should have been successful), not only because Cervantes lived in it, but because an act was committed there which all of his biographers mention. One night, a short time after the birth of Philip II., a cavalier of the court happened to meet an unknown man, and for some unknown reason high words were passed between them: both drew their swords and fell to fighting, and the cavalier was mortally wounded. The other disappeared. The wounded man, all drenched with blood, ran to a neighboring house to find succor. In the house lived Cervantes with his family, together with a widow of a famous chronicler and her two sons. One of them ran and lifted the wounded man from the ground and called Cervantes, who was already in bed. Cervantes got up and helped his friend carry the cavalier into the widow’s house, where he died two days later. Justice took a hand in the case and sought to ferret out the cause of the duel. It was believed that the combatants were both paying court to the daughter or niece of Cervantes. The entire family were cast into prison. Shortly afterward they were set at liberty, and nothing more was heard of it. But even this had to befall the poor author of _Don Quixote_, so that he might truly say that he had experienced every misfortune.

In this same street of Cervantes it was my good fortune to witness a scene which repaid me a thousand times for not finding the house. As I passed a door I spied a little Castilian girl of twelve or thirteen years, as beautiful as an angel, standing at the foot of the stairs with a baby in her arms. I cannot find words sufficiently delicate and refined to describe what she was doing. A childish curiosity to know the delight of mother-love had softly tempted her. The buttons of her little bodice had been slowly slipped through the button-holes one by one under the pressure of a trembling finger. She was alone; there was not a sound in the street; she had hidden her hand in her bosom; then perhaps she stood a moment in doubt, but, glancing at the baby and feeling her courage renewed, and making a final effort with the hidden hand, she uncovered her breast as well as she could, and, opening the chubby lips of the baby with her thumb and finger, she said tenderly, “_Hela aqui_” (Here it is), her face glowing and a sweet smile in her eyes. Hearing my step, she gave a cry and disappeared.

Instead of the house of Cervantes I found, a little farther along, the house in which was born José Zorrilla, one of the most gifted of the Spanish poets of our time, who is still living, but must not be mistaken, as many in Italy do mistake him, for Zorilla the radical leader, although he too has some poetry in his head and scatters it with a liberal hand through his political speeches, supplementing it with bursts of eloquence and furious gestures. In my opinion José Zorrilla is to Spanish letters a little more than Prati is to our Italian literature, and the two have many points of similarity--religious feeling, passion, productiveness, spontaneity, and a certain indefinable quality, vague and daring, which fires the youthful fancy. Zorrilla has a way of reading in resonant, solemn tones, it is said, somewhat monotonous, and yet many Spaniards rave over it. In form I should say the Spanish poet is more correct; they are both prolix, and in each there is the germ of a great poet. Admirable above every other work of Zorrilla are his “Songs of the Troubadour,” narrative poems and legends, full of the tenderest love-lyrics and descriptions of incomparable beauty. He has written also for the stage. His _Don Juan Tenario_, an ideal drama, in eight-line rhymed stanzas, is one of the most popular dramatic operas of Spain. It is performed once a year on All Souls’ Day with great magnificence, and the people crowd to the performance as they would to a festival. Some of the lyrics scattered through the drama run through the speech of all, and especially is this true of Don Juan’s declaration to his love, whom he has stolen away; which is one of the gentlest, tenderest, and most ardent expressions that could possibly fall from the lips of an enamored youth in the most impetuous burst of passion. I am confident that the coldest of men could not read these lines without a thrill. The woman’s answer is possibly even stronger: “Don Juan! Don Juan! I implore thee, of thy noble compassion, rend my heart or love me, for I adore thee!” Let some fair Andalusian repeat these lines and see if you do not appreciate them; or, if this be impossible in your case, read the ballad called “La Pasionaria,” which is rather long, but full of affection and an entrancing melancholy. I cannot think of it without my eyes filling with tears. I always see the two lovers, Aurora and Felice, in the flush of youth, alone at the close of day in the deserted fields, going their opposite ways, turning at every step, waving good-bye, and never satisfied with gazing back at each other. The lines are what the Spanish call _asonantes_ (unrhymed), but so composed and arranged that the penult of each line, equal or unequal, is accented and always has the same vowel. This is the most popular verse in Spain--the verse of the _Romancero_, in which very many can improvise with surprising facility; nor is a foreigner able to perceive all its harmony unless his ear has been trained.

“May I see the picture-gallery?”

“Why not, caballerito?” The portress opened the door of the Colegio de Santa Cruz, and followed me inside. There are many paintings, but besides some by Rubens, Mascagni, Cardenas, Vincenzo Carduccio, the rest of them are of very slight merit, gathered together from convents here and there, and hung at random in the rooms, along the corridors, staircases, and galleries. None the less, it is a museum which leaves upon the mind a profound impression, not very unlike that produced by one’s first sight of a bull-fight; in fact, it is more than six months since that day, and yet the impression is still as distinct as though it was made only a few hours ago. The gloomiest, the bloodiest, the most horrid work from the brushes of the finest Spanish painters are found there. Imagine gaping wounds, mutilated limbs, heads severed from the trunks, ghastly corpses, bodies that have been bruised, torn asunder, racked with the cruelest tortures you have found described in the romances of Guerrazzi or in the _History of the Inquisition_, and you will have formed an adequate idea of the gallery of Valladolid. You pass from room to room and see only faces distorted by death, faces of the dying, of demoniacs, of executioners, and on every side blood, blood, blood! until you seem to see blood spurting from the walls and feel as though you were wading in it, like Father Bresciani’s Babette in the prisons of Naples. It is a collection of woes and horrors enough to fill to overflowing all the hospitals in the country.

At first one feels a sense of sadness, then a shudder of abhorrence, and finally far more than abhorrence--indignation against the butcher-artists who have so shamelessly debased the art of Raphael and Murillo.

The most noticeable painting which I saw, among the many bad ones, although it too was a cruel Spanish realism, was a picture representing the circumcision of Jesus, with all the most minute details of the instruments and the operation, and a circle of spectators standing motionless with bowed heads, like the students of a surgical clinic around their chief.

“Let us go! let us go!” I said to the courteous portress; “if I stay here half an hour longer I shall be burned, flayed, or quartered. Have you nothing more cheerful to show me?”

She took me to see Rubens’ “Assumption,” a grand, effective painting which would look well above a great altar--a majestic, radiant Virgin, ascending to heaven, and around her, above and below, a host of angelic faces, wreaths of flowers, golden hair, white wings, waving pinions, and dancing sunbeams. It is all tremulous, and pierces the air and soars upward like a flock of doves, so that it seems from moment to moment that the whole scene ought to rise and disappear.

But it was not ordered that I should leave the museum with a pleasant picture before my eyes. The portress opened a door and with a laugh bade me enter. I entered, and turned back in fright. It seemed to me that I had fallen upon a madhouse of giants. The vast room was full of colossal statues of painted wood which represented the drama of the Passion--soldiers, jailers, and spectators, each in the attitude befitting his office, some in the act of scourging, others binding the criminals, others smiting, and wagging their heads--horrid faces horribly distorted, a few kneeling women, Jesus nailed to an enormous cross, the thieves, the ladder, the instruments of torture,--in short, everything one could think of to represent the Passion as it was once portrayed in the square, with a group of these huge statues which must have required as much room as a house. And here too were wounds, heads dripping with blood, and gashes enough to sicken you.

“See that Judas there?” said the woman as she pointed out one of the statues--a gallows face which I shall dream of sometimes. “When they arranged the groups outside, they had to take it down, it was so ugly and sad. The people hated it like death, and wanted to break it to pieces, and as there was always such a great to-do to guard it and to keep their threats from becoming deeds, it was decided to form the groups without it.” The most beautiful statue, to my eyes, was a Madonna, the work of Berruguete, Juan de Juni, or Hernandez--I do not know which, for they all three have statues there. She was kneeling with her hands clasped, and her eyes turned toward heaven with an expression of such passionate sorrow that one is moved to pity as though the statue were a living person; and, in fact, a few steps distant it seems to be alive, so that on seeing it suddenly one cannot check an exclamation of surprise.

“The English,” said the portress (for the cicerones repeat the opinions of the English as a confirmation of their own, and sometimes attribute to them the most tiresome extravagances),--“the English say that only words are lacking.”

I joyfully assented to the opinion of the English, gave the portress the customary _reales_, and, taking my departure with a head full of sanguinary images, hailed the cheerful sky with an unwonted feeling of pleasure, like a young student leaving the dissecting-room where he has been assisting at his first autopsy.

I visited the beautiful palace of the University, La Plaza Campo Grande, where the Holy Inquisition kindled its fagots--a wide, cheerful square, surrounded by fifteen convents. I went to see a church adorned with famous paintings, and then my brain began to confuse the images of the things I had seen. I slipped the guide-book into my pocket and took my way toward the great square. I did the same thing in all the other cities, for when the mind becomes tired it may be a good sign of constancy to force one’s attention in deference to that mistaken idea of following the guide-book, but it is a dangerous practice for one who is travelling with the intention of afterward telling the impressions of what he had seen. For one cannot remember everything, and it is better not to confuse the vivid remembrances of the principal objects with a crowd of vague recollections of things of less account. Moreover, one never has pleasant recollections of a city where he has used his head for a storehouse.

To see how the city appeared in the evening I took a walk under the porticoes, where they were beginning to light up the shops, and there was a continual passing of soldiers, students, and girls, who disappeared through the little passages, darted between the columns, and glided here and there to escape the eager hands of their pursuers, who were enveloped in their flowing capes; a troop of boys were romping about the square, filling the air with their sonorous cries: and everywhere there were groups of _caballeros_, among whom one occasionally heard the names Serrano, Sagasta, and Amadeus alternating with the words _justicia_, _libertad_, _traición_, _honra de España_, and the like. I entered a very large café which was full of students, and there satisfied the natural talent of eating and drinking, as a refined writer would say. Then, as I had a great desire to talk, I noticed two students who were sipping their coffee and milk at a neighboring table, and without any introduction I addressed one of them--a very natural thing to do in Spain, where one is always sure of receiving a courteous response. The two students came over, and, as every one may imagine, we discussed the absorbing subjects of Italy, Amadeus, the university, Cervantes, the Andalusian women, balls, Dante, travels; in short, it was a course in the geography, the literary history, and the customs of the two countries; then a glass of Malaga and a friendly hand-clasp.

O caballeros of happy memory, comrades in every café, companions at all the hotel tables, near neighbors in every theatre, fellow-travellers on all the railway-trains in Spain! who so often, moved by gentle pity for an unknown stranger, scanning with sad eyes the railway-guide or the _Correspondencia Española_, thinking of his family, his friends, his distant country,--who with generous impulse have offered him the cigarette and drawn him into conversation; who have broken the course of his gloomy thoughts and have calmed and cheered him,--I thank you, caballeros of happy memory, whoever you may be, Carlists or Alphonsists or Amadeists or Liberals--from the bottom of my heart I thank you in the name of all Italians who are travelling or who will travel in your dear country; and I swear on the eternal volume of Miguel Cervantes that whenever I hear your highly-civilized European brothers condemning your fierce nature and savage manners, I will rise in your defence with the fire of an Andalusian and the constancy of a Catalan so long as I have the strength to cry, “Long live hospitality!”

A few hours later I found myself in the carriage of a train bound for Madrid; the starting whistle was still sounding when I clapped my hand to my forehead. Alas! it was too late! I had been to Valladolid and had forgotten to visit the room where Christopher Columbus died!

MADRID.

It was day when one of my companions shouted “Caballero!” in my ear.--“Are we at Madrid?” I asked as I awoke.--“Not yet,” was the answer, “but look!” I turned toward the country and saw, half a mile away on the side of a high mountain, the convent of the Escurial illuminated by the first rays of the sun. “The grandest of the grand things on the earth”--as it has been called by an illustrious traveller--did not seem to me at first sight that immense edifice which the Spaniards consider “the eighth wonder of the world.” However, I uttered my “Oh!” like the other travellers who then saw it for the first time, reserving all my admiration for the day when I should see it near at hand. From the Escurial to Madrid the railroad crosses a barren plain which reminds one of the country around Rome.

“Have you never seen Madrid?” asked my neighbor. I replied that I had not.

“Impossible!” exclaimed the good Spaniard, turning to look at me with a air of curiosity, as though he was saying to himself, “Let us see what sort of a creature a man is who never saw Madrid.” Then he began to enumerate the grand things that I should see: “What walks! what cafés! what theatres! what women! If one has a hundred thousand dollars to spend, there is nothing better than Madrid; it is a great monster that lives on fortunes. If I were in your place, I should take pleasure in thrusting my fortune also down its throat.”

I felt for my flabby pocket-book and murmured, “Poor monster!”

“Here we are!” cried the Spaniard. “Look!”

I put my head out of the window.

“That is the royal palace.”

I saw an immense pile on an eminence, but shut my eyes quickly, for the sun was shining in my face. Everybody got out, and then commenced the customary bustling

“Of cloaks and shawls and other rags”

which almost always shuts out the first view of the city. The train stopped, and I alighted to find myself in a square full of coupés surrounded by a clamorous crowd. A hundred hands are extended for my valise, a hundred mouths shout in my ear; it is a devilish pack of porters, cabbies, cicerones, hotel-clerks, guards, and boys. I elbow my way through them, jump on an omnibus full of people, and am off. We go down an avenue, cross a great square, turn into a long straight street, and arrive at the Puerta del Sol.

It is a stupendous sight! A semicircular square of vast extent, surrounded by high buildings, at the mouth of ten great streets like so many torrents, from every one of which pours a continuous roaring flood of people and of vehicles. Everything one sees is in proportion to the immensity of the place: sidewalks as wide as streets, cafés as wide as squares, a fountain the size of a lake--on every side a dense, rapidly-shifting crowd, a discordant roar, a subtle air of cheerfulness and gaiety in the faces, the gestures, and the colors, which makes one feel that neither the people nor the city is entirely strange, and gives one an insane desire to join in the uproar, to salute everybody, to run here and there, as if one were revisiting those sights and people rather than seeing them for the first time. I enter a hotel, and leave it immediately, and begin to wander at random through the city. There are no grand palaces, no ancient monuments of art, but wide, clean, cheerful streets, flanked by houses painted in lively colors, and interrupted by open squares of a thousand different forms, as though they have been dropped here and there by chance, and in every square there is a garden, a fountain, and a statuette. Some streets run up hill in such a manner that on turning into them one sees the sky at the end, and one imagines that they open into the country, but when one has reached the top another long street stretches off as far as one can see.

Every little while there are crossways where five, six, and even eight streets meet, and here there is a continuous stream of carriages and people passing each other. The walls are covered for long spaces with show-bills and placards; in the shops there is an incessant coming and going; the cafés are crowded; everywhere there is the rush of a great city. Alcalá (Castle) Street, so wide that it looks like a rectangular square, cuts Madrid in half from the Puerta del Sol eastward, and ends in a vast park which extends all along one side of the city and contains gardens, promenades, open squares, theatres, bull-rings, triumphal arches, museums, palaces, and fountains.

I jumped into a carriage, saying to the driver, “Where you will.” Past the statue of Murillo, up Alcalá Street, down the Street of the Turk, where General Prim was assassinated; across the square of the Cortes, where stands the statue of Miguel Cervantes; through the Plaza Mayor, where blazed the fires lighted by the Inquisition; and then back again, past the house of Lope de Vega, out into the vast Plaza del Oriente, which stretches in front of the royal palace, where towers the equestrian statue of Philip IV. in the midst of an oval garden surrounded by forty colossal statues--climbing up toward the centre of the city, across other wide streets and cheerful squares, and crossways thronged with people, until finally I return to the hotel, declaring that Madrid is rich, grand, gay, populous, and attractive, and that I am going to see it all, and stay and enjoy it so long as my account-book and the mildness of the season will permit.

In the course of a few days a good friend found me a _casa de huéspedes_, a guest-house, and I installed myself there. These guest-houses are nothing else than the homes of families who give board and lodging to students, artists, and foreigners at prices which vary, understand, according to the manner in which you choose to eat and sleep, but which are always lower than the hotel rates, with the inestimable advantage of breathing the air of home-life, forming friendships, and being treated as a member of the family rather than as a boarder. The mistress of the house was a pleasant lady on the hither side of fifty, the widow of a painter who had studied at Rome, Florence, and Naples, and who had all his life cherished a grateful and affectionate remembrance of Italy. She too, as was natural, displayed a very lively sympathy toward our country, and manifested it by joining me every day at dinner, when she would recount the life, death, and miraculous doings of all her relatives and friends, as though I was the only confidant she had in Madrid. I met few Spaniards who spoke so rapidly, so frankly, and with such an easy flow of phrases, _bon-mots_, similes, proverbs, and expressions. At first this disconcerted me, for I understood little and was every moment obliged to ask her to repeat; nor was I always able to make myself understood. In a word, it was impressed upon me that in studying the language of the books I had wasted a great deal of time in storing my memory with words and phrases which are seldom used in ordinary conversation, while, on the other hand, I had neglected very many other forms of speech which are indispensable. I was obliged, therefore, to begin again, to rally my forces, to make notes, and, above all, to keep my ear always on the _qui vive_, so that I might profit as much as possible by the speech of the people. And I was convinced of this fact: that one may live for ten, thirty, or forty years in a foreign city, but unless one makes an effort at once, unless one devotes considerable time to study, unless one is always standing, as Giusti said, “with one’s eyes wide open,” one will either never learn to speak the language or will speak it incorrectly. At Madrid I was acquainted with some old Italians who had lived in Spain from their earliest youth, and yet they spoke wretched Spanish. Indeed, it is not an easy language, even for us Italians, or, to speak more clearly, it presents the great difficulty of easy languages, for it is not allowable to speak them poorly, and yet by so doing one can make one’s self understood. The Italian who wishes to speak Spanish in conversation with cultured people, where every one would understand him if he spoke French, must justify his audacity by speaking with facility and grace.

Now, the Spanish language, precisely because it is more closely allied to the Italian than to the French, is also more difficult to speak rapidly, and, for the same reason, more difficult to speak by ear, without making awkward mistakes, because, for example, it is much easier to say _propre_, _mortuaire_, _delice_ (the French words) without danger of letting slip the Italian _proprio_, _mortuairo_, _delizia_, than it is to say the Spanish _propio_, _mortuorio_, _delicia_. One falls back into Italian unconsciously--inverts the syntax every moment, and always has one’s own language in one’s ear or on one’s tongue, so that one keeps stammering, confusing words, and betraying one’s self.

Neither is the pronunciation of Spanish less difficult than that of French. The Moorish, although easy to pronounce, is very difficult when two _j_’s occur in a word or several of them in a clause. The _y_, which is pronounced as stutterers pronounce _s_, can only be acquired by patient effort, for it is a sound which at first proves very unpleasant, and many who are familiar with the sound do not like to hear it. But if there is a city in Europe where one is able to acquire the language of a country thoroughly, that city is Madrid, and the same thing may be said of Toledo, Valladolid, and Burgos. The people speak as the scholars write: the differences in the pronunciation of the cultured classes and the people of the town are very slight.

And, even leaving these four cities out of the question, the Spanish language is much more used and much more common, and consequently much more vigorous and forcible, in the daily press, on the stage, and in the popular literature than is the case with the Italian language. There are in Spain the Valencian, the Catalan, the Galician, and the Murcian dialects and the very ancient language of the Basque provinces. But Spanish is spoken in the two Castiles, in Arragon, in Estremadura, and in Andalusia; that is, in the five great provinces. The squib enjoyed at Saragossa is enjoyed at Seville also; the popular phrase which makes a hit in the theatres of Salamanca produces the same effect in the theatres of Granada. They say that the Spanish of to-day is not at all the language of Cervantes, Quevedo, and Lope de Vega; that the French have corrupted it; that if Charles V. should come to life again, he would no longer call it “the language to speak with God;” and that Sancho Panza would not be understood and enjoyed. Alas! he who has frequented the little cook-shops and the low-rates theatre of the suburbs unwillingly acquiesces in this sentence.

To pass from the tongue to the palate, one needs a little good-will to accustom one’s self to certain sauces, gravies, and poor soups of the Spanish cuisine, but I accustomed myself to them. The French, who are as fussy in the matter of eating as spoiled children, invoke the wrath of Heaven upon it. Dumas says that in Spain he has suffered from hunger. In a book on Spain which was lately before my eyes it was stated that the Spanish live only on honey, fungi, eggs, and snails. But this is all stuff and nonsense. The same might be said of our cooking. I have known many Spaniards whose stomachs were turned by the sight of maccaroni and gravy. They make most too many potpies, they do not know how to use fat, and they season a little too highly, but hardly enough to take away Dumas’s appetite, and, among other things, they are master-hands at sweets.

Then their _puchero_, the national dish, eaten every day by everybody in every place--I speak the truth, I ate it like an out-and-out glutton,--the _puchero_ is to the culinary art what the anthology is to literature, a little of the best of everything. A good piece of boiled beef forms the nucleus of the dish, and around this a wing of a fowl, a slice of _chorizo_ (sausage), lard, herbs, and bacon, and, above and below and in all the interstices, _garbanzos_. Epicures pronounce the name of _garbanzos_ with reverence. They are a sort of chick-pea, very large, very tender, and very succulent--peas, an extravagant man might say, that have fallen down from some world where a vegetation equal to ours is made fruitful by a stronger sun. Such is the ordinary _puchero_. But every family modifies it according to its purse. The poor are content with meat and _garbanzos_. The rich add a hundred exquisite tidbits. After all, it is a dinner rather than a dish, and very many eat nothing else.

A good _puchero_ and a bottle of _Val de Peñas_ are enough to satisfy any one. I say nothing of the oranges, the Malaga grapes, asparagus, artichokes, and every sort of vegetable and fruit, which, as every one knows, are very fine and good in Spain. Nevertheless, the Spanish are small eaters, and because the pepper and highly-seasoned sauces and salt meats predominate in their cuisine, because they eat chorizos (sausages), which, as they say, _levantan las piedras_, or rather burn their intestines, they drink very little wine. After the fruit, instead of beginning to sip a good bottle, they usually take a cup of coffee and milk, and they rarely drink wine in the morning. At the table d’hote in the hotels I have never seen a Spaniard empty a bottle, while I, who emptied mine, was stared at in astonishment, as though I was a scandalous beast. One rarely meets a drunken man in a Spanish city, even on a holiday, and on this account, when one considers their hot blood and the very free use they make of knives and daggers, there occur fewer fights which lead to death or bloodshed than is generally believed outside of Spain.

As I had found board and lodging, there remained nothing else for me to do but wander through the city with the Guidebook in my pocket and a _tres-cuartos_ cigar in my mouth--“an occupation easy and straightforward.”

During the first days I could not keep away from the plaza of the Puerta del Sol. I would stay there hour after hour, and was so amused by it that I could willingly have spent days there. The square is worthy of its fame, not so much for its size and beauty as for the people, the life, the variety of scene which it presents at every hour of the day. It is not a square like other squares: it is at once a great reception-hall, a promenade, a theatre, an academy, a garden, a parade-ground, and a bazaar. From the peep of day until after midnight it contains one stationary crowd, and another crowd that comes and goes through the ten great streets which meet there, and all the while a procession and intermingling of carriages which make one’s head whirl. Business-men congregate there; there gather the demagogues who have nothing to do, unemployed clerks, old pensioners, and young dandies; there they talk business and politics, make love, promenade, read the papers, dun their debtors, search for their friends, hatch plots against the ministry, coin the false reports which make the round of Spain, and weave the scandalous chronicle of the city.