Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

On the sidewalks, which are wide enough to hold four carriages abreast, one is obliged to force one’s way. In a space no larger than a flagstone you see a civil guard, a matchseller, a broker, a beggar, and a soldier, all in a bunch. Troops of scholars pass servants, generals, ministers, peasants, _toreros_, and gentlemen. Ruined spendthrifts ask for alms in a whisper, so as not to be discovered; lewd wretches look at you with questioning eyes; women lightly nudge you on the elbow; on every side there are hats in the air, smiles, shaking of hands, cheery greetings, cries of “_Largo!_” from the laden porters and from the hawkers with their wares hanging about their necks; the shouts of newsboys, the shrill cry of the water-carrier, the tooting of the coach-horns, the cracking of whips, the clank of swords, the tinkling of guitars, and the songs of blind beggars. There regiments pass with bands of music; the king passes; the square is sprinkled with great jets of water, which cross in the air; men go by carrying placards to advertise the shows; swarms of gamins with their arms full of extra editions; then an army of government clerks; the bands of music pass again; lights appear in the shops; the crowd grows denser; the blows on the elbow become more frequent; the voices grow louder; the uproar and commotion increase. It is not the activity of a busy people: it is the vivacity of a high-spirited race; it is a Carnival gaiety, an idleness that cannot rest and overflows in a feverish desire for pleasure, which seizes one and holds him fast or drives him around like a reel and forbids him to leave the square--a curiosity which never wearies, a happy desire to be amused, to think of nothing, to talk small talk, to stroll about and laugh. Such is the famous plaza of the Puerta del Sol.

An hour spent there is enough to make one familiar with the people of Madrid in their various aspects. The common people dress like those of our great cities; the upper classes, when they lay aside the cloak which is worn in winter, are attired in the Parisian mode; and from the duke to the clerk, from the stripling to the tottering old man, they are all neat and tastefully dressed, bepowdered and perfumed, as though they had just stepped out of a toilet-room. In this respect they resemble the Neapolitans with their fine heads of black hair, their carefully-trimmed beards, and their feminine hands and feet. One rarely sees a low hat: they all wear high hats. Then there are canes, chains, ornaments, pins and ribbons in their buttonholes by the thousand.

Except on certain holidays the ladies also dress like the French. The women of the middle classes still wear the mantilla, but the ancient satin shoes, the _peineta_, the bright colors--the national costume, in a word--have disappeared. They are, however, the same little women, so praised for their large eyes, their tiny hands, and small feet, with jet-black hair, a skin that is rather fair than dark, well formed, of good carriage, active, and vivacious.

In order to view the fair sex of Madrid one should go to the promenade of the _Prado_, which is to Madrid what the _Cascine_ are to Florence.

The Prado, to be precise, is a very wide avenue, of no great length, flanked by smaller avenues which run toward the eastern part of the city. It lies beside the famous gardens of _Buen Retiro_, and is closed at both ends by two enormous stone vases, the one surmounted by a colossal Cybele sitting on a shell and drawn by sea-horses; the other, by a Neptune of equal size, both of them crowned with copious fountains, whose waters interlace and fall gracefully with a pleasant murmur.

This great avenue, lined along the sides with thousands of chairs and hundreds of benches, where men sell water and oranges, is the most frequented part of the Prado, and is called the _Salon del Prado_. But the walk extends beyond the fountain of Neptune: there are other avenues, other fountains, and other statues, and one may walk among the trees and fountains as far as Our Lady of Atocha, the famous church loaded with gifts by Isabella II. after the outrage of February 2, 1852, and where King Amadeus went to visit the body of General Prim. From that point there is an extended view of a vast tract of the desert plain around Madrid and of the snowy summits of the Guadarrama. But the Prado is the most

famous, not the most beautiful nor the largest, promenade in the city. Beyond the Salon, toward the fountain of Cybele, the promenade of _Recoletos_ extends for almost two miles, flanked on the right by the large, cheerful town of Salamanca, the home of the rich, of the deputies, and the poets, and on the left by a long chain of small palaces, villas, theatres, and new buildings painted in vivid colors. It is not a single promenade: there are ten avenues, one beside another, and each more beautiful than the last--streets for driving, streets for riding, walks for persons who like a crowd, and walks for those who prefer to be alone, divided from each other by endless hedges of myrtle, bordered and broken by gardens and groves, in which appear statues and fountains, and little footpaths which cross each other. On fête-days one may there enjoy a charming spectacle. From one end of the avenues to the other pass two processions of people, carriages, and horsemen, going in opposite directions.

In the Prado one can scarcely walk. The gardens are crowded by thousands of boys; the theatres are full of music; every one hears the murmur of fountains, the swish of skirts, the shouting of children, and the cantering of horses. It is not only the movement and the gaiety of a promenade: it is the pomp, the uproar, the confusion, the feverish delight of a fête. The city is deserted during those hours. At dusk the whole of that immense crowd turns back into the great Alcalá Street, and then from the fountain of Cybele, as far as the Puerta del Sol, one sees only a sea of heads, furrowed by a line of carriages as far as the eyes can reach.

For promenades--and, in fact, for theatres and spectacular exhibitions--Madrid is, without doubt, one of the first cities of the world. Besides the great opera-house, which is very large and rich, besides the theatre for comedy, the theatre of the Zarzuela, the Madrid circus--all of which are first class in point of size, appointments, and attendance--there is a circle of smaller theatres for dramatic companies, for equestrian exhibitions, musical organizations, and vaudevilles--parlor theatres, theatres with boxes and galleries, theatres, big and little, for high and low, to suit all purses and all tastes, and for all hours of the night; and there is not one among so many that is not crowded at every performance.

Then there are the cock-pits, the bull-rings, the popular balls, and the games. Some days there are as many as twenty different entertainments, commencing at noon and continuing almost to dawn. The opera, of which the Spanish are passionately fond, is always magnificent, not only at the time of the Carnival, but at all seasons. While I was at Madrid, Fricci sang at the Zarzuela and Stagno at the circus; both were supported by very able artists, with excellent orchestra and splendid stage-setting.

The most celebrated singers in the world make an effort to sing in the capital of Spain, for artists are there sought after and fêted. The passion for music is the only one which is able to hold its own against the passion for bull-fights. Comedy is in great vogue also. L’Hatzembuch, Breton de los Herreros, Tamayo, Ventura, D’Ayala, Gutiérrez, and a great many other dramatic writers, some living and some dead, who are known even beyond Spain, have enriched the modern stage by a large number of comedies, which, although they do not bear that strong national stamp which has immortalized the dramatic works of the great century of Spanish literature, are nevertheless full of life, wit, and cleverness, without the unwholesome tendency of the French comedy. But, although they perform modern comedies, they are not unmindful of the old. On the anniversaries of Lope de Vega, Calderón, Morito, Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Francesco de Rojas, and the other great lights of the Spanish theatre their masterpieces are performed with solemn pomp. The actors, however, do not seem able to satisfy the authors, and show the defects of our own actors--too much action, ranting, and excessive sobbing. Many even prefer our actors, because they find in them a greater variety of cadence and inflection. Besides tragedy and comedy, they perform a dramatic composition that is thoroughly Spanish--the _zainete_, of which Ramon de la Cruz was the master. It is a sort of farce which in great part consists of tableaux of Andalusian costumes, with national and popular characters, and actors who imitate the dress, speech, and customs of the period in an admirable manner. The comedies are all published, and are eagerly read even by the lowest classes, and the names of the authors are very popular. Dramatic literature, in a word, remains to-day, as it was in former times, the richest and most general.

There is also a great passion for the _zarzuela_, which is usually represented in the theatre to which it has given the name, and is a composition midway between comedy and melodrama, between opera and vaudeville, with an easy interchange of prose and verse, of recitation and singing, of the serious and burlesque--a composition exclusively Spanish and very delightful. In some theatres they perform political comedies, a mixture of song and prose after the style of Scalvini’s “reviews;” satirical farces to take off the questions of the day; a sort of sacred tableaux, with scenes from the Passion of Our Lord, during Holy Week; and balls and dances and pantomimes of every sort.

In the small theatres they give three or four performances a night, one after the other, and new spectators come in for each performance. At the famous _Capellanes_ Theatre every night in the year they dance a _can-can_, scandalous beyond the wildest imagination, and there crowd the dissolute young men, the fast women, and the old libertines with wrinkled noses, armed with monocles, spectacles, opera-glasses, and every sort of optical instrument which helps to bring nearer the forms advertised on the stage, as Aleardi says.

After the theatres are closed one finds all the cafés crowded, the city illuminated, the streets filled with countless carriages, just as in the early evening. One feels a little sad on coming out of a theatre in a foreign country, there are so many beautiful creatures, and not one of them deigns to bestow so much as a glance upon one. But an Italian finds one comfort in Madrid. The actors almost always sing Italian operas, and they sing in Italian, and so, as you return to your lodging, you hear them humming in the words of your own language the airs which you have known from infancy. You hear a _palpito_ here, a _fiero genitor_ there, a _tremenda vendetta_ yonder; and these words are like the greetings of a friendly people. But to reach your house what a thick hedge of petticoats you must climb over! The palm is given to Paris, and doubtless she deserves it, but Madrid is not to be laughed at. What boldness! what words of fire! what imperious provocations! Finally, you arrive before your house to find that you have no door-key.

“Do not be disturbed,” says the first citizen you meet. “Do you see that lantern at the foot of the street? The man who carries it is a _sereno_, and the _serenos_ have keys for all the houses.” Then you cry “Sereno!” at the top of your voice, and the lantern approaches, and a man with an enormous bunch of keys in his hands gives you a searching glance, opens the door, lights you to the second story, and bids you good-night. So it is every night; for a franc a month you escape the annoyance of carrying the door-key in your pocket. The sereno is a public officer, and there is one in every street, and each of them has a whistle. If the house takes fire or thieves force your lock, you have only to throw up a window and cry, “Sereno! help!” The sereno who is in the street sounds his whistle, the serenos of the neighboring streets whistle, and in a few moments all the serenos in the district run to your assistance. At whatever hour of the night you awake you hear the voice of the sereno announcing the time, or if it is fine weather, or if it is raining or going to rain. How many things he knows! and how many he never tells! this nocturnal sentinel. How many whispered farewells he hears from the lips of lovers! How many little letters flutter from the windows before his eyes! how many little keys fall on the pavement! and how many hands wave mysteriously in the air! Muffled lovers glide through narrow doorways, and lighted windows are suddenly darkened, and black shadows vanish along the walls at the first streaks of dawn.

I have spoken only of the theatres; at Madrid there is a concert, one may safely say, every day. There are concerts in the theatres, concerts in the academy halls, concerts in the streets, and then a company of strolling musicians who deafen you at all hours of the day. After all this one has a right to ask why it is that a people so infatuated with music that it seems as necessary, so to speak, as the air they breathe, have never produced any great master of the art. The Spanish will not be comforted.

One could cover many pages if he were to describe the fine suburbs of Madrid, the gates, the parks beyond the city, the squares, the historic streets; and, if nothing were willingly to be omitted, the splendid cafés, the “Imperial” in the square of the Puerto del Sol and the _Fornos_ in Alcalá Street, two vast saloons, in which, if the tables were removed, a company of dragoons could be drilled, and the innumerable other cafés which one finds at every step, where two hundred dancers could be easily accommodated; the magnificent shops which occupy the entire ground-floor of vast buildings, and among them the great Havana tobacco warehouse (a meeting-place for gentlemen), filled with cigars, little and big, round, flat, pointed, and twisted, winding like snakes, bent like bows, hook-shaped, of every shape, for every taste, and at every price, enough to content the maddest fancy of a smoker and to stupefy the entire population of a city; spacious markets; the grand royal palace, in which the Quirinal and the Pitti Palace might hide without fear of discovery; the great street Atocha, which crosses the city; the immense garden of _Buen Retiro_, with its great lake, with its hills crowned with Moorish domes, and its thousands of rare birds.... But, worthy of attention above everything else, the museums of armor and painting, and the Naval Museum, to each of which one might easily dedicate a volume.

The armory of Madrid is one of the most beautiful in the world. As you enter the vast hall your heart gives a leap, your blood tingles, and you stand still on the threshold like one demented. A complete army of cavalry in full armor, with drawn swords and lances in rest, gleaming and terrible, rushes toward you like a legion of spectres. It is an army of emperors, kings, and dukes, clad in the most splendid armor that has ever left the hands of man, upon which pours a flood of light from eighteen enormous windows, producing a marvellous play and flashing of light, dancing sunbeams, and dazzling colors. The walls are covered with cuirasses, swords, halberds, jousting-spears, huge blunderbusses, and enormous lances which reach from the floor to the ceiling. Banners of all the armies of the world hang from the ceiling--trophies of Lepanto, of San Quintino, of the War of Independence, of the wars of Africa, Cuba, and Mexico. On every side there is a profusion of glorious standards, of illustrious arms, of marvellous works of art, of effigies, emblems, and immortal names.

One does not know what first to admire. One runs first here, then there, looking at everything and seeing nothing, and becomes tired before one has really begun. In the middle of the hall is the equestrian armor, the cavaliers and their horses, drawn up in line by threes and by twos, and all wheeling just like a squadron on the march. Among the arms one at first sight discovers those of Philip II., of Charles V., Philibert Emmanuel, and Christopher Columbus. Here and there, on pedestals, one sees helmets, casques, morions, gorgets, and shields which belonged to kings of Arragon, Castile, and Navarre, adorned with very fine reliefs in silver representing battles, mythological subjects, symbolic figures, trophies, grotesques, and garlands: some of these are works of the greatest power, the workmanship of the most famous artists of Europe; others are uncouth in form, with excessive ornament, with crests, visors, and colossal top-pieces. Then there are the little helmets and cuirasses of princes, swords and shields the gifts of popes and monarchs. In the midst of the knightly armor one sees statues dressed in the fantastic costumes of the American Indians, of Africans, and of Chinese, with feathers and bells, bows and quivers; then, too, horrible warmasks and the dresses of mandarins of gold woven with silk. Along the walls is other armor--the arms of the marquis de Pescara, of the poet Garcilasso de la Vega, of the marquis de Santa Cruz, the gigantic armor of John Frederick, the magnanimous duke of Saxony, and scattered here and there are Arabian, Persian, and Moorish banners falling to decay.

In the glass cases there is a collection of swords which make your blood run cold when you hear the names of those who wielded them--the sword of the prince de Conde, the sword of Isabella the Catholic, the sword of Philip II., the sword of Hernando Cortez, of the count-duke d’Olivares, of John of Austria, of Gonzalez of Cordova, of Pizarro; the sword of the Cid, and, a little farther along, the helmet of King Boabdil of Granada, the shield of Francis I., and the camp-chair of Charles V. In a corner of the hall are arranged the trophies of the Ottoman armies--helmets studded with gems, spurs, gilded stirrups, the collars of slaves, daggers, scimitars in velvet sheaths, with rings of gold, embroidered and inlaid with pearl; the spoils of Ali Pacha, who was slain on the flag-ship at the battle of Lepanto, his caftan brocaded with gold and silver, his girdle, sandals, and shields, the spoils of his sons, and the banners stripped from the galleys. On another side are votive crowns, crosses, and the necklaces of Gothic princes. In another room are articles taken from the Indians of Mariveles, the Moors of Cagyan and Mindanao, and the savages of the most remote islands of Oceanica; collars of snail-shells, stone pipes, wooden idols, reed flutes; ornaments made of the claws of insects; slaves’ garments made of palm-leaves with characters scribbled on them to serve as fetiches; poisoned arrows and axes of the executioners. And then, wherever one turns, there are royal saddles, coats of mail, culverins, historic drums, shoulder-belts, inscriptions, memorials and images of every time and every land, from the fall of the Goths to the battle of Tetuan, from Mexico to China--a storehouse of treasures and of masterpieces from which one goes out amazed and exhausted, to return to consciousness as if it were a dream, with one’s memory weary and confused.

If a great Italian poet shall one day wish to sing the discovery of the New World, nowhere will he be able to find so powerful an inspiration as in the Naval Museum of Madrid, because in no other place will he feel so profoundly the original air of the American wilderness and the subtle presence of Columbus. There is a room called the “Cabinet of Discoveries:” the poet on entering this room, if he really has the soul of a poet, will reverently uncover his head. Wherever one’s glance falls in the room one sees an image which stirs his blood. One is no longer in Europe nor in the century; one is in the America of the fifteenth century; one breathes that air, one sees those places, and lives that life. In the middle is a high trophy of the arms taken from the Indians of the newly-discovered land--shields covered with the skins of wild beasts, arrows of cane with feathered notches, wooden swords with sheaths woven of twigs, with hilts ornamented with horsehair, and scalp-locks falling in long streamers; clubs, spears, enormous axes, great swords with teeth like those of a saw, shapeless sceptres, gigantic quivers, garments of monkey-skin, dirks of kings and executioners, arms of the savages from Cuba, Mexico, New Caledonia, the Carolinas, and the most distant islands of the Pacific--black, uncouth, and horrible, suggesting to the imagination confused visions of terrible struggles in the mysterious shadows of the virgin forest, in an endless labyrinth of unknown trees. Among the spoils of the savage world are pictures and memorials of the Conquerors: here the portrait of Columbus, there that of Pizarro, farther on that of Hernando Cortez; on one of the walls the map of America by Juan de la Cosa, drawn during the second voyage of the Genoese upon an ample canvas dotted with figures, colors, and signs which were intended to direct expeditions into the interior of the country. Near the map is a bit of the tree under which the conqueror of Mexico lay on that famous “night of sorrow” after he had opened a passage through the immense army that awaited his coming in the valley of Otumba; also a vase turned from the trunk of the tree near which the celebrated Captain Cook died; models of the canoes, boats, and rafts used by the natives; a circle of portraits of illustrious navigators, in the middle of which is a large painting of the three ships of Christopher Columbus, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, at the moment when America was discovered, with all the sailors standing on the decks waving their arms and cheering lustily, greeting the new land and giving thanks to God. There is no word which expresses the emotion which one feels at the sight of that spectacle, no tear worth that which then trembles on the eyelash, no soul that does not at that moment feel itself ennobled.

The other rooms, of which there are ten, are also full of precious objects. In the room next to the Cabinet of Discoveries there are collected the relics of the battle of Trafalgar--the painting of the Holy Trinity which was in the cabin of the “Royal Trinidad,” and which was rescued by the English a few minutes before the ship went to the bottom; the hat and sword of Frederick de Gravina, the admiral of the Spanish fleet, who was killed that day; a large model of the Santa Anna, one of the few ships that escaped from the battle; banners and portraits of admirals, and paintings which depict episodes of that tremendous struggle. And besides the relics of Trafalgar there are many other things which affect the mind no less powerfully, as a chalice of wood from the tree called _ceiba_, in whose shade was celebrated the first mass at Havana, on the 19th of March, 1519; Captain Cook’s cane; idols of the savages; flint chisels with which the Indians of Porto Rico fashioned their idols before the discovery of the island. And beyond this there is another great room where, on entering, one finds one’s self in the midst of a fleet of galleys, caravels, feluccas, brigantines, sloops, and frigates--ships of all seas and of all ages, armed, gayly decked, and provisioned, so that they need only a wind to put to sea and scatter to all parts of the world. In the other rooms there is an exhibition of machinery, ordnance, and naval armor; paintings which represent all the maritime exploits of the Spanish people; more portraits of admirals, navigators, and mariners; trophies from Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, crowded and piled one above another, so that one must pass them on the run to see everything before nightfall. On coming out of the Naval Museum it seems as if you are just returning from a voyage around the world, so much have you lived in those few hours.

There is also at Madrid a large museum of artillery, an immense museum of the industrial arts, a fine archeological museum, a remarkable museum of natural history, as well as a thousand other things that are worth seeing; but it is necessary, however, to sacrifice the description of them for the marvellous Museum of the Fine Arts.

The day on which one enters for the first time a museum like that of Madrid forms a landmark in a man’s life. It is an important event, like marriage, the birth of a child, or the entrance upon an inheritance; for one feels the effect of it to the end of one’s life. And this is true because a museum like that of Madrid or that of Florence or that of Rome is a world: a day passed within its walls is a year of life: a year of life stirred by all the passions which are able to animate one in real life: love, religion, patriotism, glory; a year of life in the enjoyment it gives, in the instruction it imparts, in the thoughts it suggests, in the pleasure to be derived from its memory in the future; a year of life in which one reads a thousand volumes, feels a thousand sensations, and meets with a thousand adventures. These thoughts were in my mind as I approached with rapid steps the Museum of the Fine Arts, situated to the left of the Prado as one comes from the street Alcalá; and so great was my pleasure that on reaching the doorway I stopped and said to myself, “Let us see: what have you ever done in your life to deserve an entrance here? Nothing! Well, then, on that day when some misfortune comes upon you bow your head and consider that your account is balanced.”

As I entered I unconsciously raised my hat: my heart beat fast and a slight shiver ran through me from head to foot. In the first room there are only some large paintings of Luca Giordano. I passed them by. In the second I was no longer myself, and, instead of staying to look at paintings one by one, I postponed that examination and made the circuit of the gallery almost on the run. In the second room there are some paintings of Goya, the last great Spanish painter; in the third, which is as large as a square, are masterpieces of the great masters. On entering you see on one side the Madonnas of Murillo, on the other the saints of Ribera; a little farther on, the portraits of Velasquez; in the middle of the hall, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, and at the end those of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni. You turn back and enter a great room to the right. There you see at the end other paintings of Raphael; on the right and left, more of Velasquez, Titian, and Ribera; opposite the entrance, Rubens, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Murillo. Another is devoted to the French school--Poussin, Daguet, Lorraine. In two other rooms of vast size the walls are covered with paintings of Breughel, Teniers, Jordaens, Rubens, Durer, Schoen, Mongs, Rembrandt, and Bosch. In the other rooms, of equal size, there is a medley of the works of Joanes, Carbajal, Herrera, Luca Giordano, Carducci, Salvator Rosa, Menendez, Cano, and Ribera.

You walk for an hour and have seen nothing. For the first hour a war is waging: the masterpieces struggle for the possession of your soul. The _Conception_ of Murillo blots out Ribera’s _Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew_ with a flood of light; Ribera’s _Saint James_ obliterates Joanes’ _Saint Stephen_; Titian’s _Charles V._ dooms the _Count-Duke de Olivares_ of Velasquez; Raphael’s _Pasmo de Sicilia_ casts all the paintings around it in the shade; the _Drunkards_ of Velasquez, with their reflection of bacchanalian joy, somewhat disconcert the faces of the neighboring saints and princes; Rubens overthrows Van Dyck; Paolo Veronese triumphs over Tiepolo, and Goya kills Madrazo.

The conquered turn against those still weaker than themselves, or in their turn win lesser victories over their conquerors. It is a struggle of the miracles of art, in the midst of which one’s restless soul trembles like a flame fanned by a thousand gusts of wind, and one’s heart expands with a sense of pride in the power of the genius of man.

When the first enthusiasm has subsided one begins to admire. In the midst of an army of such artists, each of whom would require a volume for himself, I restrict myself to the Spaniards, and among these to the painters who aroused within me the most profound admiration and whose canvases I remember most distinctly. The most recent of these is Goya, who was born toward the end of the last century. As a painter he is the most Spanish of the Spaniards, the painter of _toreros_, of the people, of contrabandists, hags, and robbers, of the War of Independence, and of that old Spanish life which melted away before his very eyes. He was a fiery son of Arragon, of iron temper, passionately devoted to bull-fights, so that even in the closing years of his life, when he was living at Bordeaux, he was accustomed to come once a week to Madrid with no other reason than to witness those spectacles; and he would go back like an arrow, not even so much as saluting his friends. A genius rigorous, cynical, imperious, awe-inspiring--who in the heat of his violent inspirations would in a few moments cover a wall or a canvas with figures, giving the finishing touches with whatever came to hand--sponges, brooms, or sticks; who in sketching the face of a person whom he hated would insult it; who painted a picture as he would have fought a battle; very bold in composition, an original strong colorist, the creator of an inimitable style, with frightful shadows, hidden lights, and resemblances distorted and yet true to life. He was a great master in the expression of all terrible effects of anger, hate, desperation, and the thirst for blood; an athletic, turbulent, indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velasquez, fantastical like Hogarth, vigorous like Rembrandt, the last ruddy spark of Spanish genius. There are several of his paintings in the museum of Madrid,

and among them is a very large canvas representing the entire family of Charles IV. But the two paintings into which he put his whole soul are the French soldiers shooting the Spaniards on the second of May, and the fight of the people of Madrid with the Mamelukes of Napoleon, in which the figures are life-size. These are paintings which make one shudder. One cannot imagine anything more terrible, nor is it possible to give overbearing power a form more execrable, to desperation a more fearful appearance, or to the fury of a battle an expression of greater ferocity. In the first of these paintings there is a murky sky, the light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a confused mass of corpses, a crowd of men condemned to death, a row of French soldiers in the act of firing: in the other, bleeding horses, cavaliers dragged from their saddles, stabbed, trampled down, and mangled. What faces! what attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and see the blood run; the actual scene could not have been more horrible. Goya must have painted these pictures with flashing eyes and foaming mouth, with all the fury of a demoniac. It is the final point which painting can reach before it is transferred into action; beyond this point the brush is flung aside and the battle begins. Anything more terrible than these paintings must be slaughter; after these colors comes blood.

Of Ribera--whom we know also by the name of _Spagnoletto_--there are enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn out and exhausted, clothed in rags--yellow with the deathly pallor of corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art--ah, it is not that! In those faces there is none of that celestial light, that immortal ray of the soul, which reveals with sublime pathos, noble aspirations, those “subtle flashes” and “limitless desires”--that light which draws the eye from the sores and calls down the thought of heaven. There is only the crude suffering which causes repulsion and fear; there are only weariness of life and the presentiment of death; only that fleeting mortal life without a suggestion of the immortality drawing near. There is not one of those saints whose image one recalls with affection: one looks and is chilled at heart, but the heart beats none the quicker. Ribera never loved. Yet as I hurried through the halls of the museum, in spite of that strong repugnance which many of these paintings inspired in me, I was obliged to look at them and could not withdraw my eyes, so great is the attractive force of truth, even if it be despicable. And how true are the paintings of Ribera! I recognized those faces: I had seen them in the hospitals, in the morgues, behind the doors of churches--the faces of beggars, of the dying, of those condemned to death, which haunt me at night even now when I hurry along a deserted street, pass by a graveyard, or climb a mysterious staircase. There are some of them which I could not look at--a naked hermit, stretched on the ground, who seemed like a skeleton covered with skin; an old saint whose shrunken skin gave the appearance of a flayed body; the Prometheus with his entrails bursting from his breast. Ribera delighted in blood, mangled limbs, and butchery; it was his delight to represent suffering; he must have believed in an Inferno more horrible than that of Dante and in a God more terrible than that of Philip II. In the museum of Madrid he represents religious dread, old age, torture, and death.

More cheerful, more various, and more splendid is the great Velasquez. Almost all his masterpieces are there. They form a world: everything is pictured in them--war, the court, the street, the tavern, Paradise. It is a gallery of dwarfs, idiots, beggars, buffoons, revellers, comedians, kings, warriors, martyrs, and gods, all alive and speaking, in bold and novel attitudes, with serene brow and smiling lip, full of animation and vigor; the great painting of Count-Duke de Olivares on horseback, the celebrated paintings of the Beggars, of the Weavers, of the Revellers, the Forge of Vulcan, and of the surrender of Breda--large canvases full of figures which seem to be stepping out of the frame, which on once seeing you remember distinctly by some trifling characteristic, a gesture or a shadow on the face, as though they were real persons whom you have just met; people with whom you seem to have talked, and of whom you think long afterward as of acquaintances of a forgotten time; people who might inspire cheerfulness and provoke a smile of admiration, causing you to regret that it is possible only to enjoy them with the eyes and not to mingle with them and share a little of their exuberant life. This is not the effect of a preconceived opinion which the name of the great artist has given, nor need one be a connoisseur of art to experience it. The poor ignorant woman and the boy stop before those pictures, clap their hands, and laugh. It is Nature painted with a fidelity higher than any imagination. One forgets the painter, does not think of the art, nor try to discover its meaning, but says, “This is true! This is the very thing! It is the picture I had in my mind!” One would say that Velasquez has not put anything of himself in it, but that his hand has only drawn the lines and put the colors on the canvas from a likeness which reproduced the very persons whom he was painting. There are more than sixty of his paintings in the museum of Madrid, and if one saw them only once, and hurriedly at that, not one of them would be forgotten. It is with the paintings of Velasquez as with the romances of Alessandro Manzoni--when one has read them for the tenth time they become so interwoven and confused with one’s personal memories that one seems to have lived them. So the persons in Velasquez’s paintings melt into the crowd of friends and acquaintances; the neighbors and strangers of our whole life present themselves and entertain us without our even remembering that we have seen them on the canvas.

Now let us speak of Murillo in our gentlest tones. Velasquez is in art an eagle; Murillo is an angel. One admires Velasquez and adores Murillo. By his canvases we know him as if he had lived among us. He was handsome, good, and virtuous. Envy knew not where to attack him; around his crown of glory he bore a halo of love. He was born to paint the sky. Fortune gave him a mild and serene genius, which bore him to God on the wings of a tranquil inspiration, and yet his most admirable paintings breathe an air of gentle sweetness which inspires sympathy and affection even before admiration. A simple nobility and elegance of outline, an expression full of sprightliness and grace, an inexpressible harmony of colors,--these are the qualities that impress one at first sight; but the more one looks at the paintings, the more one discovers, and surprise is transformed little by little into a delicious sense of pleasure. His saints have a benign aspect, cheering and consoling; his angels, whom he groups with marvellous ability, make one’s lips tremble with a desire to kiss them; his Virgins, clothed in white, with long flowing draperies of azure, with their great black eyes, their clasped hands, delicate, graceful, and ethereal, make one’s heart tremble with their beauty and one’s eyes fill with tears. He combines the truth of Velasquez, the vigor of Ribera, the harmonious transparency of Titian, and the brilliant vivacity of Rubens. Spain has given

him the name of the “Painter of Conceptions” because he is unsurpassed in the art of representing that divine idea. There are four grand Conceptions in the museum of Madrid. I have stood for hours in front of those four paintings, motionless and entranced. I was enraptured, above all, by that incomplete one, with the arms folded over the Virgin’s breast and a half moon across her waist. Many prefer the others; I trembled on hearing this, for I was filled with an inexpressible love for that face. More than once as I looked at it I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. As I stood before that painting my heart was softened and my mind was lifted to a plane of thought higher than any I had ever before reached. It was not the enthusiasm of faith; it was a longing, a boundless aspiration toward faith, a hope which gave me visions of a life nobler, richer, and more beautiful than that which I had yet known--a new feeling of prayer, a desire to love, to do good, to suffer for others, to make atonement, to elevate my mind and heart. I have never been so full of faith as in those moments. I have never felt so good and affectionate, and I believe that my soul has never shone more clearly in my face. _The Lady of Sorrows_, _Saint Anna Teaching the Virgin to Read_, _Christ Crucified_, _The Annunciation_, _The Adoration of the Shepherds_, _The Holy Family_, _The Virgin of the Rosary_, and _The Child Jesus_ are all admirable and beautiful paintings of a soft and serene light which appeal to the soul. One should see on a Sunday the children, the girls, and the poor women before those pictures--see how their faces light up and hear the sweet words upon their lips. Murillo is a saint to them, and they speak his name with a smile, as if to say, “He is ours!” and in so saying they look as though they were performing an act of reverence. The artists do not all regard him in the same manner, but they love him above all others, and they are not able to divorce their admiration from their love.

Murillo is not merely a great painter; he is a great soul. He has won more than glory: he has won the love of Spain. He is more than a sovereign master of the beautiful; he is a benefactor, an inspiration to noble deeds, for a lovely image, when once seen on his canvas, is carried in the heart throughout life with a feeling of gratitude and religious devotion. He is one of those men whom some secret prompting tells us we must see again, and that the meeting will be a reward: such men cannot have disappeared for ever; in some place they still live where their life is as a lamp of constant flame, which must one day appear to the eyes of mortals in all its splendor. “The empty dreams of fancy,” one may say, but, ah, what pleasant dreams!

After the works of these four great masters there are the paintings of Joanes to admire--an artist imbued with the Italian feeling, whose correct drawing and nobility of character have won for him the title, although it must be spoken in an undertone, of the Spanish Raphael. He resembles Fra Angelico in his life, not in his art, for his studio was an oratory where he fasted and did penance. Before beginning his work he used to take the communion.

Then there are the paintings of Alonzo Cano; the paintings of Pacheco, the master of Murillo; the paintings of Pareja, Velasquez’s slave; of Navarrete the mute; of Menendez, a great painter of flowers; of Herrera, Coello, Carbajal, Collantes, and Rizi, and there are a few works of Zurbarán, one of the greatest Spanish artists, worthy to stand beside the three first. The corridors, the antechambers, and the halls are full of the works of other artists, of less importance than those mentioned, but nevertheless admirable for particular points.

But this is not the only art gallery in Madrid; there are hundreds of pictures in the Academy of San Fernando. In the chambers of Fomento and in other private galleries one would have to spend month after month to see everything well, and to describe it would take an equal time, even if one had sufficient ability to do so. One of the ablest French writers, a great lover of art and a master of description, when it came to the point was frightened and knew nothing better to do than to avoid the dilemma by saying that it would take too long to describe it all; and if he thought well to keep silent, it must appear that I have said too much already. It is one of the saddest consequences of a pleasant journey to discover that one has in one’s mind a crowd of lovely images and in one’s heart a tumult of grand emotions, and to be able to express only so small a part of them.

With what profound contempt could I destroy these pages when I think of those paintings! O Murillo! O Velasquez! O my poor pen!

A few days after my arrival at Madrid, as I was coming from the street Alcalá into the square of the Puerta del Sol, I saw King Amadeus for the first time. I felt it to be as great a pleasure as if I had met my most intimate friend. It is strange to find one’s self in a country where the only person one knows is the king. One could wish to run after him saying, “Your Majesty, it is I; I have arrived.”

Amadeus pursued his father’s course at Madrid. He rose at dawn and walked in the gardens of Moro, which lie between the royal palace and the Manzanares, or else he visited the museums, walking through the city on foot with only one attendant. The maids, running home in breathless haste with their well-filled baskets, told their sleepy mistresses how they had met the king, how they had passed him so near that he could have touched them; and the Republican matrons would say, “And so he ought to!” And the Carlists would make a grimace and mutter, “What sort of a king is that?” Or as I heard one say, “He seems determined to get shot at any cost.” On returning to the palace he received the captain-general and the governor of Madrid, who, in accordance with the ancient custom, are obliged to present themselves every day to the king to ask if he has any orders to give to the army or the police. Next came the ministers. Besides seeing them altogether in council once a week, Amadeus received one of them every day. On the departure of the minister the audience began.

Amadeus gave an audience every day of at least one hour’s duration, and many times prolonged it to two hours. The demands were innumerable, and the ends sought may be easily imagined--subsidies, pensions, positions, favors, and decorations. The king heard them all. The queen also received--not every day, however, on account of her variable health. To her lot fell all the deeds of charity. She received all sorts of people in the presence of the major-domo and a lady of honor at the hour of the king’s audience--ladies, laboring-men, peasant-women, hearing with pity their long recitals of poverty and suffering; moreover, she distributed in works of charity a hundred thousand francs a month, without counting her liberal donations to hospitals, asylums, and other benevolent institutions, some of which she herself founded.

On the bank of the Manzanares, in sight of the royal palace, in an open smiling place, one sees a brightly-colored cottage surrounded by a garden, when as one passes one hears the laughter, the crowing, and the crying of babies. The queen had this house built to shelter the little children of washerwomen, who, while their mothers were at work, used to remain in the streets exposed to a thousand dangers. There are teachers, nurses, and servants who provide for all the needs of the babies: it is at the same time a refuge and a school. The funds for the construction and maintenance of the house were appropriated from the twenty-five thousand francs a month which the state had granted to the duke of Puglia. The queen also instituted a foundling hospital, a home or sort of college for the children of the tobacco-workers, and kitchens where soup, meat, and bread are distributed to all the poor of the city. She herself went unexpectedly sometimes to assist at the distribution, to assure herself that no abuse was made of it, and, discovering that some trickery was practised, she provided against its repetition. Besides these acts, the Sisters of Charity received every month thirty thousand francs with which to succor those families that by reason of their social position were not able to come to the distribution of soup. These private deeds of benevolence which the queen performed were very difficult to discover, because she was accustomed to do them without speaking to any one. Little is known of her habits, because she did everything unostentatiously and with a reserve which would be considered excessive even for a private lady.

None of the court ladies knew that she went to hear the sermon at San Luis de Francis; a lady saw her there for the first time, by chance, among the other worshippers. In her dress there was nothing distinctive of royalty, not even on the days of the court dinners. Queen Isabella wore a great red mantle with the arms of Castile, a diadem, ornaments, and insignia; not so Donna Victoria. She usually dressed in the colors of the Spanish flag, with a simplicity which proclaimed her royalty much better than splendor and magnificence would have done. It was not Spanish gold which had to do with this simplicity: all the expenses which were incurred for herself, her children, and her servants were paid from her privy purse.

When the Bourbons were on the throne the whole of the royal palace was occupied. The king resided in the left wing toward the plaza of the armory; Montpensier lived in the part opposite to that of the queen; the princes had each an apartment looking toward the garden of Moro. When King Amadeus resided there a great part of the immense edifice remained empty: he occupied only three small rooms--a study, a bed-chamber, and a dressing-room. His chamber opened into a long corridor which led to the two little rooms of the princes, opposite to which was the queen’s apartments, for she would never be separated from her children.

Then there was a reception-room. All that part of the palace which served for the entire royal family was formerly occupied by Queen Isabella alone. When she learned that Amadeus and Victoria were content with such small quarters, she is said to have exclaimed with astonishment, “Poor young things! they won’t have room to turn around.”

The king and queen used to dine with a major-domo and one of the court ladies. After dinner the king smoked a Virginia cigar (if the detractors of this prince of cigars care to know it) and entered his cabinet to attend to the affairs of state. He was accustomed to take a great many notes and frequently consulted with the queen, especially when he was trying to reconcile the ministers or to conciliate the heads of departments. He read a great many magazines of every bias; anonymous letters which threatened him with death and those which gave him advice; satirical poems, schemes of social revolution,--everything, indeed, that was sent to him. About three o’clock he left the palace on horseback; the guards blew their trumpets and a squire in red livery followed him at a distance of fifty paces. To see him one would have said that he did not know he was the king: he looked at the children as they passed him, at the signs of the shops, the soldiers, the coaches, and the fountains with an expression of almost childish curiosity. He rode the whole length of the street Alcalá slowly, like an ordinary citizen thinking of his own affairs, and would turn into the Prado to enjoy his part of the air and the sunshine.

The ministers clamored against it; the Bourbons, accustomed to the imposing equipage of Isabella, said that he was trailing the majesty of the throne of San Fernando through the streets; even the squire who followed him looked around with a shamefaced air, as if to say, “See what folly!” But whatever they might say, the king gave no sign of fear. And the Spaniards, it must be said, did him justice, and, whatever may have been their opinion of his administration and government, they never failed to add, “So far as courage goes, there is nothing to say.”