Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

He drank a third glass in spite of the good counsel and disapprobation of his friends, and after prattling a little longer amid the laughter of his audience, he suddenly became silent, looked fixedly at a lady sitting opposite to him, dropped his head, and fell asleep. I thought that he could not present himself for the examination that day, but was mistaken. A short hour later they awakened him; he went up stairs to wash his face, ran off to the university still drowsy, took his examination, and was promoted, to the greater glory of the wine of Xerez and Spanish diplomacy.

I devoted the following days to visiting the monuments, or, to be more accurate, the ruins of the Moorish monuments which besides the Alhambra and the Generalife attest the ancient splendor of Granada. Insomuch as it was the last bulwark of Islam, Granada is the city which presents the most numerous relics of all the cities of Spain. On the hill called the hill of _Dinadamar_ (the Fountain of Tears) one may still see the ruins of four towers rising at the four corners of a great cistern into which flowed the waters from the Sierra to supply the highest part of the city. There were baths, gardens, and villas of which not a trace remains: from that point one overlooked the city with its minarets, its terraces, and its mosques gleaming among the palms and cypresses. Near there one sees a Moorish gate called the gate of Elvira--a great arch crowned with battlements--and beyond it are the ruins of the palaces of the caliphs. Near the Alameda promenade stands a square tower in which there is a great hall ornamented with the usual Arabian inscriptions. Near the convent of San Domingo are the remains of gardens and palaces once joined to the Alhambra by a subterranean passage. Within the city is the Alcaiceria, a Moorish market almost perfectly preserved, formed of a few little streets as straight and narrow as corridors, lined with two rows of shops, one adjoining the other, and presenting the strange appearance of an Asiatic bazaar. In short, one cannot take a step in Granada without coming face to face with an arch, an arabesque, a column, or a pile of stones which suggests its fantastic, luxurious past.

What turns and windings have I not made through those tortuous streets at the hottest hour of the day, under a sun that shrivelled my brain, without meeting a living soul! At Granada, as in the other cities of Andalusia, the people are alive only at night, and the night repays them for the imprisonment of the day; the public promenades are crowded and confused by the hurry and jostling of a multitude, one half of which seems to be seeking the other half upon urgent business. The crowd is densest in the Alameda, but, for all that, I spent my evenings on the Alameda with Gongora, who talked to me of Moorish monuments, and with a journalist who discoursed on politics, and also with another young man who talked of women, and frequently with all three of them together, to my infinite pleasure, because those cheery meetings, like those of school-boys, at odd times and places, refreshed my mind, to steal a beautiful simile, like a summer shower refreshes the grass as it falls faster and faster, dancing for joy.

If I were obliged to say something about the people of Granada, I should be embarrassed, because I have not seen them. In the day-time I met no one in the streets, and at night I could not see them. The theatres were not open, and when I might have found some one in the city I was wandering through the halls or avenues of the Alhambra; and then I had so much to do to see everything in the short time which I had allowed myself that no unoccupied moments remained for those chance conversations, like the ones I had in the other cities, in the streets and the cafés, with whomever I happened to meet.

But from what I learned from men who were in a position to give me trustworthy information, the people of Granada do not enjoy an enviable reputation in Spain. They are said to be ill-tempered, violent, vindictive, and bloodthirsty; and this arraignment is not disproved by the pages of the city newspapers. It is not publicly stated, but every one knows it for a fact, that popular instruction in Granada is at a lower ebb than even in Seville and the other smaller Spanish cities, and, as a rule, everything that cannot be produced by the sun and the soil, which produce so bountifully, goes to the bad, either through indolence or ignorance or shiftlessness. Granada is not connected by railway with any important city: she lives alone, surrounded by her gardens, enclosed by her mountains, happy with the fruits which Nature produces under her hand, gently lulling herself to sleep in the vanity of her beauty and the pride of her history--idle, drowsy, and fanciful, content to answer with a yawn to any one who reproves her for her condition: "I gave Spain the painter Alonzo Cano, the poet Louis de Leon, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the sacred orator Luis di Grenada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas. I have paid my debt, leave me in peace;" and this is the reply made by almost all the southern cities of Spain, more beautiful, alas! than wise and industrious, and proud rather than civilized. Ah! one who has seen them can never have done exclaiming, "What a pity!"

"Now that you have seen all the marvels of Moorish art and tropical vegetation there remains the suburb of the Albaicin to be seen before you can say that you know Granada. Prepare your mind for a new world, put your hand on your purse, and follow me."

So said Gongora to me on the last evening of my sojourn in Granada. A Republican journalist was with us, Melchiorre Almago by name, the director of the _Idea_, a congenial, affable young man, who to accompany us sacrificed his dinner and a leading article that he had been cogitating since morning.

We walked on until we came to the square of the _Audiencia_. There Gongora pointed out an alley winding up a hill, and said to me, "Here commences the Albaicin;" and Señor Melchiorre, touching a house with his cane, added, "Here commences the territory of the republic."

We turned up the alley, passed from it into another, and from that into a third, always ascending, without my seeing anything extraordinary, although I looked curiously in every direction. Narrow streets, squalid houses, old women dozing on the doorsteps, mothers carefully inspecting their children's heads, gaping dogs, crowing cocks, ragged boys running and shouting, and the other things that one always sees in the suburbs; but in those streets nothing more. But gradually, as we ascended, the appearance of the houses and the people began to change; the roofs became lower, the windows fewer, the doors smaller, and the people more ragged. In the middle of every street ran a little stream in a walled gutter, in the Moorish style; here and there over the doors and around the windows one saw the remains of arabesques and fragments of columns, and in the corners of the squares fountains and well-curbs of the time of the Moorish dominion. At every hundred steps it seemed as if we had gone back fifty years toward the age of the caliphs. My two companions touched me on the elbow from time to time, saying as they did so, "Look at that old woman!"--"Look at that little girl!"--"Look at that man!" and I looked, and asked, "Who are these people?" If I had unexpectedly found myself in that place, I should have believed on seeing those men and women that I was in an African village, so strange were the faces, the dress, the manner of moving, talking, and looking, at so short a distance from the centre of Granada--so different were they from the people that I had seen up to that time. At every turn I stopped to look in the face of my companions, and they answered, "That is nothing; we are now in the civilized part of the Albaicin; this is the Parisian quarter of the suburb; let us go on."

We went on, and the streets seemed like the bed of a torrent--paths hollowed out among the rocks, all banks and gullies, broken and stony--some so steep that a mule could not climb them, others so narrow that a man could scarcely pass; some blocked by women and children sitting on the ground, others grass-grown and deserted; and all so squalid, wild, and uncouth that the most wretched of our villages cannot give one an idea of them, because this is a poverty that bears the impress of another race and another continent. We turned into a labyrinth of streets, passing from time to time under a great Moorish arch or through a high square from which one commanded a view of the wide valleys, the snow-covered mountains, and a part of the lower city, until finally we arrived at a street rougher and narrower than any we had yet seen; and there we stopped to take breath.

"Here commences the real Albaicin," said the young archeologist. "Look at that house!"

I looked; it was a low, smoke-stained, ruinous house, with a door that seemed like the mouth of a cavern, before which one saw, under a mass of rags, a group, or rather a heap, of old women and little children, who upon our approach raised their eyes heavy with sleep, and with bony hands removed from the threshold some filth which impeded our passage.

"Let us enter," said my friend.

"Enter?" I demanded.

If they had told me that beyond those walls there was a facsimile of the famous Court of Miracles which Victor Hugo has described, I should not have doubted their word. No door has ever said more emphatically than that, "Stand back!" I cannot find a better comparison than the gaping mouth of a gigantic witch breathing out pestilential vapors. But I took courage and entered.

Oh, marvellous! It was the court of a Moorish house surrounded by graceful little columns surmounted by lovely arches, with those indescribable traceries of the Alhambra along the porticoes and around the mullioned windows, with the beams and ceiling carved and enamelled with little niches for vases of flowers and urns of perfume, with a pool in the middle, and all the traces and memorials of the delicate life of an opulent family. And in that house lived those wretched people!

We went out and entered other houses, in all of which I found some fragments of Moorish architecture and sculpture. From time to time Gongora would say to me, "This was a harem. Those were the baths of the women; up yonder was the chamber of a favorite;" and I fixed my eyes upon every bit of the arabesqued wall and upon all the little columns of the windows, as if to ask them for a revelation of their secrets--only a name or a magic word with which I might reconstruct in an instant the ruined edifice and summon the beautiful Arabians who had dwelt there. But, alas! amid the columns and under the arches of the windows there were only rags and wrinkled faces.

Among other houses, we entered one where we found a group of girls sewing under the shade of a tree in the courtyard, directed by an old woman. They were all working upon a great piece of cloth that seemed like a mat or a bed-spread, in black and gray stripes. I approached and asked one of the girls, "What is this?"

They all looked up and with a concerted movement spread the cloth open, so that I could see their work plainly. Almost before I had seen it I cried, "I will buy it."

They all began to laugh. It was the mantle of an Andalusian mountaineer, made to wear in the saddle, rectangular in form, with an opening in the middle to put one's head through, embroidered in bright-colored worsteds along the two shortest sides and around the opening. The design of the embroideries, which represented birds and fantastic flowers, green, blue, white, red, and yellow, all in a mass, was as crude as a pattern a child might make: the beauty of the work lay altogether in the harmony of the colors, which was truly marvellous. I cannot express the sensation produced by the sight of that mantle, except by saying that it laughed and filled one with its cheerfulness; and it seems to me impossible to imagine anything gayer, more festive, or more childishly and gracefully capricious. It was a thing to look upon in order to bring yourself out of a bad humor, or when you wish to write a pretty verse in a lady's album, or when you are expecting a person whom you wish to receive with your brightest smile.

"When will you finish these embroideries?" I asked one of the girls.

"_Hoy mismo_" (to-day), they all replied in chorus.

"And what is the mantle worth?"

"_Cinco_" (five), stammered one.

The old women pierced her with a glance which seemed to say, "Blockhead!" and answered hastily, "Six _duros_."

Six _duros_ are thirty francs; it did not seem much to me, and I put my hand in my pocket.

Gongora cast a withering glance at me which seemed to say, "You simpleton!" and, drawing me back by the arm, said, "One moment: six _duros_ is an exorbitant price."

The old woman shot him another glance which seemed to say, "Brigand!" and replied, "I cannot take less."

Gongora gave her another glance, which seemed to say, "Liar!" and said, "Come, now; you can take four _duros_; you would not ask more from the country-people."

The old woman insisted, and for a while we continued to exchange with our eyes the titles of simpleton, swindler, marplot, liar, pinch-penny, spend-thrift, until the mantle was sold to me for five duros, and I paid and left my address, and we went out blessed and commended to God by the old woman and followed a good way by the black eyes of the embroiderers.

We went on from street to street, among houses increasingly wretched and growing blacker and blacker, and more revolting rags and faces. But we never came to the end, and I asked my companions, "Will you have the goodness to tell me if Granada has any limits, and if so where they are? May one ask where we are going and how we shall return home?" But they simply laughed and went forward.

"Is there anything stranger than this to be seen?" I asked at a certain point.

"Stranger?" they both replied. "This second part of the suburb which you have seen still belongs to civilization: if not the Parisian, it is at least the Madrid, quarter of the Albaicin, and there _is_ something else; let us go on."

We passed through a very small street containing some scantily-clothed women, who looked like people fallen from the moon; crossed a little square full of babies and pigs in friendly confusion; passed through two or three other alleys, now climbing, now descending, now in the midst of houses, now among piles of rubbish, now between trees and now among rocks, until we finally arrived at the solitary place on a hillside from which we saw in front the Generalife, to the right the Alhambra, and below a deep valley filled with a dense wood.

It was growing dark; no one was in sight and not a voice was heard.

"Is this the end of the suburb?" I asked.

My two companions laughed and said, "Look in that direction."

I turned and saw along the street that was lost in a distant grove an interminable row of houses. Of houses? Rather of dens dug in the earth, with a bit of wall in front, with holes for windows and crevices for doors, and wild plants of every sort on top and along the sides--veritable caves of beasts, in which by the glow of faint lights, scarcely visible, swarmed the gypsies by hundreds; a people multiplying in the bowels of the mountain, poorer, blacker, and more savage than any seen before; another city, unknown to the greater part of Granada, inaccessible to the police, closed to the census-officers, ignorant of every law and of all government, living one knows not how, how numerous no one knows, foreign to the city, to Spain, and to modern civilization, with a language and statutes and manners of their own--superstitious, false, thieving, beggarly, and fierce.

"Button up your coat and look out for your watch," said Gongora to me, "and let us go forward."

We had not taken a hundred steps when a half-naked boy, black as the walls of his hovel, ran out, gave a cry, and, making a sign to the other boys who followed him, dashed toward us; behind the boys came the women; behind the women the men, and then old men, old women, and more children; and in less time than it takes to tell it we were surrounded by a crowd. My two friends, recognized as Granadines, succeeded in saving themselves; I was left in the lurch. I can still see those horrid faces, still hear those voices, and still feel the pressure of those hands: gesticulating, shouting, saying a thousand things which I did not understand; dragging at my coat, my waistcoat, and my sleeves, they pressed upon me like a pack of famished people, breathed in my face, and cut off my very breath. They were, for the most part, half naked and emaciated--their garments falling in tatters, with unkempt hair, horrible to see; I seemed to be like Don Roderick in the midst of a crowd of the infected in that famous dream of the August night.

"What do these people want?" I asked myself. "Where have I been brought? How shall I get out of this?" I felt almost a sense of fear, and looked around uneasily. Little by little I began to understand.

"I have a sore on my shoulder," said one; "I cannot work; give me a penny."

"I have a broken leg," said another.

"I have a palsied arm."

"I have had a long sickness."

"_Un cuarto, Señorito!_"

"_Un real, caballero!_"

"_Una peseta para todos!_"

This last request was received with a general cry of approval: "_Una peseta para todos!_" (a _peseta_ for us all).

With some little trepidation I drew out my purse; they all stood on tiptoe; the nearest poked their chins into it; those behind put their chins on the heads of those in front; the farthest stretched out their arms.

"One moment," I cried. "Who has the most authority among you all?"

They all replied with one voice, stretching out their arms toward the same person, "That one."

It was a terrible old hag, all nose and chin, with a great tuft of white hair standing straight above her head like a bunch of feathers, and a mouth which seemed like a letter-box, with little clothing save a chemise--black, shrivelled, and mummified; she approached me bowing and smiling, and held out her hands to take mine.

"What do you want?" I demanded, taking a step backward.

"Your fortune," they all cried.

"Tell my fortune, then," I replied, holding out my hand.

The old woman took my poor hand between her ten--I cannot say fingers, but shapeless bones--placed her sharp nose on it, raised her head, looked hard at me, pointed her finger toward me, and, swaying and pausing at every sentence as if she were reciting poetry, said to me in inspired accents, "Thou wert born upon a famous day.

"Upon a famous day also shalt thou die.

"Thou art the possessor of amazing riches."

Here she muttered I know not what about sweethearts and marriage and felicity, from which I understood that she supposed I was married, and then she continued: "On the day of thy marriage there was great feasting in thy house; there were many to give and take.

"And another woman wept.

"And when thou seest her the wings of thy heart open."

And so on in this strain, saying that I had sweethearts and friends and treasures and jewels in store for me every day of the year, in every country of the world. While the old woman was speaking they were all silent, as if they believed she had prophesied truly. She finally closed her prophecy with a formula of dismissal, and ended the formula by extending her arms and making a skip in a dancing attitude. I gave her the peseta, and the crowd broke into shouting, applause, and singing, making a thousand uncanny hops and gestures around me, saluting me with nudges and slaps of the hand on my back, as if I were an old friend, until finally, by dint of wriggling and striking now one and then another, I succeeded in opening a passage and rejoined my friends. But a new danger threatened us. The news of the arrival of a foreigner had spread, the tribes were in motion, the city of the gypsies was all in an uproar; from the neighboring houses and from the distant huts, from the top of the hill and the bottom of the valley, ran boys, women with babies about their necks, old men with canes, cripples, and professional imposters, septuagenarian prophetesses who wished to tell my fortune--an army of beggars coming upon us from every direction. It was night; there was no time for hesitation; we broke into a run toward the city like school-boys. Then a devilish cry broke out behind us, and the nimblest began to chase us. Thanks to Heaven! after a short race we found ourselves in safety--tired and breathless, and covered with dust, but safe.

"It was necessary to escape at any cost," said Señor Melchiorre with a laugh; "otherwise we should have gone home without our shirts."

"And take notice," added Gongora, "that we have seen only the door of Gypsy-town, the civilized part, not the Paris nor the Madrid, but at least the Granada, of the Albaicin. If we could only have gone on! if you could have seen the rest!"

"But how many thousand are there of those people?" I demanded.

"No one knows."

"How do they live?"

"No one can imagine."

"What authority do they recognize?"

"One only--_los reyes_ (the kings), the heads of families or of houses, those who have the most money and years. They never go out of their city; they know nothing, they live in the dark as to all that happens beyond the circle of their hovels. Dynasties fall, governments change, armies clash, and it is a miracle if the news ever reaches their ears. Ask them if Isabella is still on the throne; they do not know. Ask them who Amadeus is; they have never heard his name. They are born and perish like flies, and they live as they lived centuries ago, multiplying without leaving their own boundaries, ignorant and unknown, seeing nothing all their lives beyond the valleys lying below their feet and the Alhambra towering above their heads."

We passed again through all the streets that we had traversed, now dark and deserted, and endless as it seemed to me; and, climbing and descending, turning and twisting, and turning again, we finally arrived at the square of the Audiencia in the middle of the city of Granada--in the civilized world. At the sight of the brightly-lighted cafés and shops I experienced a feeling of pleasure, as if I had just returned to city-life after a year's sojourn in an uninhabited wilderness.

On the evening of the next day I left for Valencia. I remember that a few moments before starting, as I was paying my hotel-bill, I observed to the proprietor that there was an overcharge for one candle, and playfully asked him, "Will you deduct it for me?" The proprietor seized his pen, and, deducting twenty centimes from the total charge, replied in a voice which he wished to appear emotional, "The devil! among Italians!"

VALENCIA.

The journey from Granada to Valencia, made all _de un tiron_ (at one breath), as they say in Spain, is one of those recreations in which a rational man indulges only once in his life. From Granada to Menjibar, a village on the left bank of the Guadalquivir, between Jaen and Andujar, is a night's ride by diligence; from Menjibar to the Alcazar de San Juan is a half-day's journey by railway in an uncurtained carriage, through a plain as bare as the palm of one's hand, under a blazing sun; and from the Alcazar de San Juan to Valencia, taking account of an entire evening spent in the station of the Alcazar, makes another night and another morning before one reaches the longed-for city at noon, where Nature, as Emile Praga would say, is horrified at the dreadful idea that there are still four months of summer.

But it must be said that the country through which one passes is so beautiful from beginning to the end that if one were capable of appreciation when one is dead with sleep and finds one's self turning into water by reason of the heat, one would go into ecstasies a thousand times. It is a journey of unexpected landscapes, sudden vistas, remarkable contrasts, theatrical effects of Nature, so to speak--marvellous and fantastic transformations, which leave in the mind an indescribable, vague illusion of having passed not through a part of Spain, but along an entire meridian of the earth across the most dissimilar countries. From the _vega_ of Granada, which you cross in the moonlight, almost opening a way among the groves and gardens, in the midst of a luxuriant vegetation that seems to crowd around you like a tossing sea, ready to overflow and engulf you with its billows of verdure,--from this you emerge into the midst of ragged and precipitous mountains, where not a trace of human habitation is to be seen; you graze the edge of precipices, wind along the banks of mountain-torrents, run along at the bottom of the ravines, and seem to be lost in a rocky labyrinth. Then you come out a second time among the green hills and flowery fields of upper Andalusia, and then, all suddenly, the fields and hills disappear and you find yourself in the midst of the rocky mountains of the Sierra Morena, that hang over your head from every direction and close the horizon all around like the walls of an immense abyss. You leave the Sierra Morena, and the desert plains of La Mancha stretch before you; you leave La Mancha and advance through the flowery plain of Almansa, varied by every sort of cultivation, presenting the appearance of a vast carpet of checkered pattern colored in all the shades of green that can be found upon the pallet of a landscape-painter. And, finally, the plain of Almansa opens into a delightful oasis, a land blest of God, a true earthly paradise, the kingdom of Valencia, from whose boundaries, even to the city itself, you pass through gardens, vineyards, fragrant orange-groves, white villas encircled by terraces, cheerful, brightly-colored villages, clusters, avenues, and groves of palms, pomegranates, aloes, and sugar-canes, interminable hedges of Indian fig, long chains of low hills, and conical mounds cultivated as kitchen-gardens and flower-beds, laid out with minute care from top to bottom, and variegated like great bunches of grass and flowers; and everywhere a vigorous vegetation which hides every bare spot, covers every height, clothes every projection, climbs, falls, trails along, marches forward, overflows, intertwines, shuts off the view, impedes the road, dazzles with its verdure, wearies with its beauty, confounds with its caprices and its frolics, and produces an effect as of a sudden parting of the earth raised to fever heat by the fires of a secret volcano.

The first building which meets the eye on entering Valencia is an immense bull-ring situated to the right of the railway. The building consists of four orders of superimposed arches rising on stout pilasters, all of brick, and in the distance resembling the Colosseum. It is the bull-ring where on the fourth of September, 1871, King Amadeus, in the presence of thousands of spectators, shook hands with Tato, the celebrated one-legged _torero_, who as director of the spectacle had asked permission to render his homage in the royal box. Valencia is full of mementos of the duke d'Aosta. The sacristan of the cathedral has in his possession a gold chronometer bearing the duke's initials in diamonds, with a chain of pearls, which was presented by him when he went to pray in the chapel of Our Lady of the Desolate. In the hospice of the same name the poor remember that one day they received their daily bread from his hand. In the mosaic workshop of one Nolla they preserve two bricks, upon one of which he cut his own name with his sword, and upon the other the name of the queen. In the Plaza di Tetuan the people point out the house of Count di Cervellon, where he was entertained; it is the same house in which Ferdinand VII. signed the decrees annulling the constitution in 1814, in which Queen Christina abdicated the throne in 1840, in which Queen Isabella spent some days in 1858. In short, there is not a corner of the city of which it cannot be said, Here he shook hands with a working-man, here he visited a factory, there he passed on foot far from his suite, surrounded by a crowd, trustful, serene, and smiling.

It was in Valencia, since I am speaking of the duke d'Aosta,--it was in the city of Valencia that a little girl of five years in reciting some verses touched upon that terrible subject of a _foreign king_ with probably the noblest and most considerate words spoken in Spain for many years previous to that time--words which, if all Spain had remembered and pondered then, would perhaps have spared her many of those calamities which have befallen her, and others which still threaten; words which perhaps one day some Spaniard may repeat with a sigh, and which already at this time draw from events a marvellous light of truth and beauty. And, since these verses are graceful and simple, I transcribe them here. The poem is entitled "God and the King," and runs as follows:

"Dios, en todo soberano,
Creó un dia á los mortales,
Y á todos nos hizo iguales
Con su poderosa mano.

"No reconoció Naciones
Ni colores ni matices?
Y en ver los hombres felices
Cifró sus aspiraciones.

"El Rey, che su imágen es,
Su bondad debe imitar
Y el pueblo no ha de indagar
Si es aleman ó francés.

"Porqué con ceño iracundo
Rechazarle siendo bueno?
Un Rey de bondades lleno
Tiene por su patria el mundo.

"Vino de nacion estraña
Cárlos Quinto emperador,
Y conquistó su valor
Mil laureles para España.

"Y es un recuerdo glorioso
Aunque en guerra cimentado,
El venturoso reinado
De Felipe el Animoso.

"Hoy el tercero sois vos
Nacido en estraño suelo
Que viene á ver nuestro cielo
Puro destello de Dios.

"Al rayo de nuestro sol
Sed bueno, justo y leal,
Que á un Rey bueno y liberal
Adora el pueblo español.

"Y á vuestra frente el trofeo
Ceñid de perpetua gloria,
Para que diga la historia
--Fué grande el Rey Amadeo."

"God, Ruler over all, created mortals one day, and made all equal with His mighty hand. He recognized neither nations nor colors nor divisions, and to behold men happy was His desire. The king, who is His image, ought to imitate His goodness, and the people have no need to ask whether he be German or French. Why, then, with angry frown repulse him if he be good? A king abounding in good deeds holds the world as his country. Charles V., the emperor, came from a foreign nation, and by his valor won a thousand laurels for Spain. And the fortunate reign of Philip the Courageous is a glorious memory even though founded upon war.

"To-day a third king rules you born on a foreign soil, who comes to look upon our sky, a clear spark of God. His love is true and just and loyal to the light of our sun, and this is a good and liberal king Spanish people adore. And around your brows you shall wear the trophy of perpetual glory upon which history shall write, 'Great was King Amadeus.'"

Oh, poor little girl! how many wise things you have said! and how many foolish things others have done!

The city of Valencia, if one enters it with one's mind full of the ballads in which the poets sang of its marvels, does not seem to correspond to the lovely image formed of it; neither, on the other hand, does it offer that sinister appearance for which one is prepared if one considers its just fame as a turbulent, warlike city, the fomenter of civil strife--a city prouder of the smell of its powder than of the fragrance of its orange-groves. It is a city built in the midst of a vast flowery plain on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, which separates it from the suburbs, a little way from the roadstead which serves as a port, and consists all of tortuous streets lined with high, ungainly, many-colored houses, and on this account less pleasing in appearance than the streets of the Andalusian cities, and entirely devoid of that evasive Oriental grace which so strangely stirs one's fancy. Along the left bank of the river extends a magnificent promenade formed of majestic avenues and beautiful gardens. These one reaches by going out of the city through the gate of the Cid, a structure flanked by two great embattled towers named after the hero because he passed through it in 1094 after he had expelled the Moors from Valencia. The cathedral, built upon the spot where stood a temple of Diana in Roman times, then a church of San Salvador in the time of the Goths, then a mosque in Moorish times, afterward converted into a church by the Cid, changed a second time into a mosque by the Moors in 1101, and for the third time into a church by King Don Jayme after the final overthrow of the invaders, is a vast structure, exceedingly rich in ornaments and treasures, but it cannot bear comparison with the greater number of the other Spanish cathedrals. There are a few palaces worth seeing, besides the palace of the Audiencia, a beautiful monument of the sixteenth century in which the Cortes of the kingdom of Valencia assembled; the _Casa de Ayuntamiento_, built between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which are preserved the sword of Don Jayme, the keys of the city, and the banner of the Moors; and, above all, _the Lonja_--the Bourse of the merchants--notable for its celebrated hall consisting of three great naves divided by twenty-four spiral columns, above which curve the light arches of the vaulted roof in bold lines, the architecture imparting to the eye a pleasing impression of gayety and harmony. And, finally, there is the art-gallery, which is not one of the least in Spain.

But, to tell the truth, in those few days that I remained at Valencia waiting for the boat I was more occupied by politics than by art. And I proved the truth of the words I heard an illustrious Italian say before I left Italy--one who knew Spain like his his own home: "The foreigner who lives even for a short time in Spain is drawn little by little, almost insensibly, to heat his blood and muddle his brain over politics, as if Spain were his own country or as if the fortunes of his country were depending upon those of Spain. The passions are so inflamed, the struggle is so furious, and in this struggle there is always so clearly at stake the future, the safety, and the life of the nation, that it is impossible for any one with the least tinge of the Latin blood in his imagination and his system to remain an indifferent spectator. You must needs grow excited, speak at party meetings, take the elections seriously, mingle with the crowd at the political demonstrations, break with your friends, form a clique of those who think as you think--make, in a word, a Spaniard of yourself, even to the whites of your eyes. And gradually, as you become Spanish, you forget Europe, as if it were at the antipodes, and end in seeing nothing beyond Spain, as if you were governing it, and as if all its interests were in your hands."

Such is the case, and this was my experience. In those few days the Conservative ministry was shipwrecked and the Radicals had the wind behind them. Spain was all in a ferment; governors, generals, officials of all grades and of all administrations fell; a crowd of parvenus burst into the offices of the ministry with cries of joy: Zorilla was to inaugurate a new era of prosperity and peace; Don Amadeus had had an inspiration from heaven; liberty had conquered; Spain was saved. And I, as I listened to the band playing in front of the new governor's mansion under a clear starry sky in the midst of a joyous crowd,--I too had a ray of hope that the throne of Don Amadeus might finally extend its roots, and reproached myself for being too prone to predict evil. And that comedy which Zorilla played at his villa when he would by no means accept the presidency of the ministry, and sent back his friends and the members of the deputation, and finally, tired of continually saying no, fell into a swoon on saying yes, this, I say, gave me at the time a high opinion of the firmness of his character and led me to augur happily for the new government. And I said to myself that it was a sin to leave Spain just when the horizon was clearing and the royal palace of Madrid was tinted rose-color. And I had already considered the plan of returning to Madrid that I might have the satisfaction of sending some consoling news to Italy, and so be pardoned for the imprudence of sending unvarnished accounts of the situation up to that time. And I repeated the verses of Prati:

"Oh qual destin t'aspetta
Aquila giovenetta!"

(Oh what a destiny awaits thee, young eagle!) And, save a little bombast in the appellation, it seemed to me that they contained a prophecy, and I imagined meeting the poet in the Piazza Colonna at Rome and running toward him to offer my congratulations and press his hand....

The most beautiful sight in Valencia is the market. The Valencian peasants are the most artistic and bizarre in their dress of all the peasants of Spain. To cut a good figure in a group of maskers at one of our masquerades they need only enter the theatre dressed as they would be on a festival or market-day in the streets of Valencia and along the country roads. On first seeing them dressed in this style, one laughs, and cannot in any way be brought to believe that they are Spanish peasants. They have an indescribable air of Greeks, Bedouins, buffoons, tightrope-walkers, women partly undressed on their way to bed, the silent characters of a play not quite ready to make their appearance, or facetious people who wish to make themselves generally ridiculous. They wear a full white shirt that takes the place of a jacket; a parti-colored velvet waistcoat open at the breast; a pair of zouave linen breeches which do not reach the knee, looking like drawers and standing out like the skirts of a ballet-dancer; a red or blue sash around the waist; a sort of embroidered white woollen stockings that leave the knee bare; a pair of corded sandals like those of the Catalan peasants; and on their heads, which are almost all shaved like those of the Chinese, they wear a handkerchief, red, sky-blue, yellow, or white, bound around like a cornucopia, and knotted at the temples or at the nape of the neck. They sometimes wear small velvet hats similar in shape to those worn in the other provinces of Spain. When they go into the city they nearly all carry around their shoulders or on their arms, now like a shawl, now like a mantle, or again like a little cape, a woollen _capa_, long and narrow, in brightly-colored stripes in which white and red predominate, adorned with fringe and rosettes. One may easily imagine the appearance presented by a square where there are gathered some hundreds of men dressed after this fashion: it is a Carnival scene, a festival, a tumult of colors, that makes one feel as gay as a band of music; a spectacle at once clownish, pretty, imposing, and ridiculous, to which the haughty faces and the majestic bearing which distinguish the Valencian peasants add an air of gravity which heightens the extraordinary beauty of the scene.

If there is an insolent, lying proverb, it is that old Spanish one which says, "In Valencia flesh is grass, grass is water, men are women, and the women nothing." Leaving that part about the flesh and the grass, which is a pun, the men, especially those of the lower classes, are tall and robust, and have the bold appearance of the Catalans and Arragonese, with a livelier and more luminous expression of the eye; and the women, by the consent of all the Spaniards and of as many foreigners as have travelled in Spain, are the most classically beautiful in the country. The Valencians, who know that the eastern coast of the Peninsula was originally settled by Greeks and Carthaginians, say, "It is a clear case. The Grecian type of beauty has lingered here." I do not venture to say yes or no to this assertion, for to describe the beauty of the women of a city where one has passed only a few hours would seem to me like a license to be taken only by the compiler of a "Guide." But one can easily discover a decided difference between the Andalusian and Valencian types of beauty. The Valencian is taller, more robust, and fairer, with more regular features, gentler eyes, and a more matronly walk and carriage. She does not possess the bewitching air of the Andalusian, which makes it necessary to bite one's finger as if to subdue the sudden and alarming insurrection of one's capricious desires at sight of her; but the Valencian is a woman whom one regards with a feeling of calmer admiration, and while one looks one says, as La Harpe said of the Apollo Belvidere, "_Notre tete se releve, notre maintien s'ennoblit_," and instead of imagining a little Andalusian house to hide her from the eyes of the world, one longs for a marble palace to receive the ladies and cavaliers who will come to render her homage.

If one is to believe the rest of the Spaniards, the Valencian people are fierce and cruel beyond all imagination. If one wishes to get rid of an enemy, he finds an obliging man who for a few crowns undertakes the business with as much indifference as he would accept a commission to carry a letter to the post. A Valencian peasant who finds that he has a gun in his hands as he passes an unknown man in a lonely street says to his companion, "See if I can aim straight?" and takes aim and fires. This actually occurred not many years ago: I was assured of its truth. In the cities and villages of Spain the boys and young men of the people are accustomed to play at being bulls, as they call it. One takes the place of the bull and does the butting; another, with a sharp stick under his arm like a lance, climbs on the back of a third, who represents the horse, and repulses the assaults of the first. Once a band of young Valencians thought they would introduce some innovations into this sport, and so make it seem a little more realistic and afford the spectators and the participants a little more amusement than the customary way of playing it; and the innovations were to substitute for the stick a long sharp-pointed knife, one of those formidable _navajas_ that we saw at Seville, and to give the man who took the part of the bull two other shorter knives, which, fastened firmly on either side of his head, answered the purpose of horns. It seems incredible, but it is true. They played with the knives, shed a sea of blood, several were killed, some were mortally wounded, and others badly hurt, without the game becoming a fight, without the rules of the sport being transgressed, and without any one raising his voice to end the slaughter.

I tell these things as they were told to me, although I am far from believing all that is said against the Valencians; but it is certain that at Valencia the public safety, if not a myth, as our papers poetically say in speaking of Romagna and Sicily, is certainly not the first of the good things which one enjoys after the blessing of life. I was persuaded of this fact the first evening of my stay in the city. I did not know the way to the port, but thought I was near it, and asked a shop-woman which way I should take. She uttered a cry of astonishment:

"Do you wish to go to the port, _caballero_?"

"Yes."

"_Ave Maria purissima!_ to the port at this hour?"

And she turned toward a group of women who were standing by the door, and said to them in the Valencian dialect, "Women, do you answer for me: this gentleman is asking me the way to the port!"

The women replied in one voice, "God save him!"

"But from what?"

"Don't risk yourself, sir."

"What is your reason?"

"A thousand reasons."

"Tell me one of them?"

"You would be murdered."

One reason was enough for me, as any one can imagine, and I did not go to the port.

For the rest, at Valencia as elsewhere, in whatever intercourse I had with the people I met only with courtesy as a foreigner and as an Italian--a friendly welcome even among those who would not hear foreign kings discussed in general, and princes of the house of Savoy in particular, and such men were numerous, but they were courteous enough to say at once, "Let us not harp on that string." To a foreigner who, when asked whence he comes, replies, "I am a Frenchman," they respond with an agreeable smile, as if to say, "We recognize each other." To one who answers, "I am a German or an Englishman," they make a slight inclination of the head, which implies, "I bow to you;" but when one replies, "I am an Italian," they eagerly extend the hand as if to say, "We are friends;" and they look at one with an air of curiosity, as you look for the first time at a person who is said to resemble you, and they smile pleasantly on hearing the Italian tongue, as you would smile on hearing some one, though in no mocking spirit, imitate your voice and accents. In no country in the world does an Italian feel nearer home than in Spain. The sky, the speech, the faces, and the dress remind him of his fatherland; the veneration with which the Spanish pronounce the names of our great poets and our great painters, that vague and pleasing sense of curiosity with which they speak of our famous cities, the enthusiasm with which they cultivate our music, the impulsiveness of their affections, the fire of their language, the rhythms of their poetry, the eyes of their women, the air and the sun,--oh! an Italian must be without a spark of love for his fatherland who does not feel an emotion of sympathy for this country, who does not feel inclined to excuse its errors, who does not sincerely deplore its misfortunes, who does not desire for it a happy future. O beautiful hills of Valencia, smiling banks of the Guadalquivir, charmed gardens of Granada, little white cottages of Seville, proud towers of Toledo, roaring streets of Madrid, and venerable walls of Saragossa! and you, kindly hosts and courteous companions of my travels--you who have spoken to me of Italy as of a second fatherland, who with your festal gayety have scattered my restless melancholy!--I shall always carry deep down in my heart a feeling of gratitude and love for you, and I shall cherish your images in my memory, as one of the dearest recollections of my youth, and shall always think of you as one of the loveliest dreams of my life.

I repeated these words to myself at midnight as I looked over brightly-lighted Valencia, leaning against the rail of the good ship _Xenil_, which was on the point of sailing. Some young Spaniards had come on board with me. They were going to Marseilles to take ship from that port to the Antilles, where they expected to remain for some years. One of them stood alone weeping; suddenly he raised his head and looked toward the shore between two anchored vessels, and exclaimed in a tone of desolation, "Oh, my God! I hoped she would not come!"

In a few moments a boat approached the ship; a little white figure, followed by a man enveloped in a cloak, hastily climbed the ladder, and with a deep sob threw herself into the arms of the young man, who had run to meet her.

At that moment the boatswain called, "All off, gentlemen!"

Then there followed a most distressing scene: the two young persons were torn apart, and the young lady was borne almost fainting to the boat, which pushed off a little and remained motionless.

The ship started.

The young man dashed madly forward toward the rail, and, sobbing, cried in a voice that pierced one's heart, "Adieu, darling! adieu! adieu!"

The little white figure stretched out her arms and perhaps responded, but her voice was not heard. The boat was dropped behind and disappeared.

One of the young men said to me in a whisper, "They are betrothed."

It was a lovely night, but sad. Valencia was soon lost to view, and I thought I should never see Spain again, and wept.

END OF VOL. II.

INDEX.

A.

Abdelasio reconstructs the Alcazar of Seville, ii. 121.

Abdurrahman I. builds the mosque of Cordova, ii. 68.

Abdurrahman I. builds Medina Az-Zahra, ii. 88;
his happy days, ii. 89.

Abencerrages, Hall of the, Alhambra, ii. 209.

Abrantes, duke d', at the bull-fights, 209.

Absolutist party, 96.

Academy, a dream of the, 280.

Academy of San Fernando, Madrid, 193.

Acquasola gardens, Genoa, 10.

Alameda, Granada, ii. 188, ii. 241.

Alarcon y Mendoza, Juan Ruiz de, dramatist, 169.

Alarmed travellers, ii. 9, ii. 55.

Albaicin at Granada, ii. 244;
courtyard in, ii. 246;
fortune-telling, ii. 253;
government of, ii. 255;
ignorance in, ii. 256;
Parisian quarter, ii. 245;
squalor of, ii. 251.

Albornoz, Gil Carillo de, tomb of, Toledo, ii. 29.

Alcaiceria, Granada, ii. 241.

Alcala street, Madrid, 156, 168.

Alcanadre, Roman aqueduct at, 91.

Alcantara, bridge of, Toledo, ii. 18.

Alcazar de San Juan, ii. 259;
of Seville, ii. 120;
of Toledo, ii. 39.

Alcayde of Saragossa's bold republicanism, 83.

Aleardi Gaetano, on the can-can, 171.

Alfonso and the Cid, 121.

Alfonso the Wise, MSS. of, ii. 118;
tomb of, ii. 109.

Alfonso VIII. defeats the Moors at las Navas de Tolosa, ii. 61.

Alfonso XII., favored by the Moderate party, 96.

Algaba, ii. 118.

Algeciras, Gulf of, ii. 168.

Alhambra, arabesques, ii. 197, 208, ii. 210, ii. 211;
baths, ii. 211;
cabinet of Linderaja, ii. 209;
Charles V.'s palace, ii. 192;
Court of Lions, ii. 201;
Court of Myrtles, ii. 194;
fascination of, ii. 205;
Gate of Justice, ii. 192;
grounds of ii. 190;
Hall of Abencerrages, ii. 209;
Hall of Barca, ii. 197;
Hall of Divans, ii. 210;
Hall of Justice, ii. 206;
Hall of Oranges, ii. 209;
Hall of the Ambassadors, ii. 198;
Hall of the Two Sisters, ii. 207;
Mirador de la Reina, ii. 212, ii, 215;
mosque, ii. 216;
paintings in, ii. 207;
Patio de la Reja, ii. 212;
realization of a dream, ii. 200;
situation of, ii. 190;
Tower of Commares, ii. 196;
Tower of the Ambassadors, ii. 196;
vastness of the, ii. 217;
view from, ii. 213.

Ali Pacha, relics of, 176.

Almago, Melchiorre, republican journalist, ii. 243.

Almansa, plain of, ii. 260.

Almansur builds Zahira, ii. 89.

Almodovar, castle of, ii. 99.

Altimura, Count d', possesses the fiscal accounts of Gonzalez di
Cordova, ii. 237.

Alvarez, Gen., house of, at Gerona, 16.

Amadeus at Gerona, 16;
at Logroño, 85;
at Madrid, 166, 194;
at Saragossa, 82;
at the bull-fights, 213;
at Valencia, ii. 262;
character of, 201;
courage of, 199;
court-life of, 194;
encourages bull-fights, 223, 235;
hostility of the newspapers to, 93, 200;
hostility of the soldiery to, 204;
prejudice against, 15, 33, 80.