Chapter VII: Part 7

“That was like him,” said the old man. “It was when he had become so unpopular with the people on account of the English influence that he remitted the taxes for four years as a bid for popularity. Taxes once lifted from a people like this are not easily put on again. The country was nearly bankrupt; the Sultan was at the last gasp financially. As usual he appealed to the English for help. Just then the understanding between England and France was complete: France was to withdraw from Egypt and leave England a free hand there; in return for this, England was to withdraw her influence and support from Morocco. Egypt was worth more to England than Morocco; the Sultan was sold for forty pieces of silver.”

“More than he is worth!” said the boy. “France or England, does it matter which? They are the only two civilized countries in Europe.”

“There is only one country that can civilize,” said the old man,--“England!”

“It would have gone on well enough, if William the Wilful had not put his finger into the pie,” said the boy resentfully. His sympathies were evidently with France.

“We were in Fez when the German Emperor made that famous visit to the Sultan,” said the old man. “I have never seen the people so moved. They were in a frenzy of joy; they thought they were saved!”

“That bubble was soon pricked,” said the boy.

“Perhaps, but the Conference sitting over in Algeciras would never have come off, if it had not been for his visit.”

“What will the Conference accomplish?” I asked.

“It will insure what the diplomats call ‘the integrity of Morocco’ for a little longer, that is all.”

“How will it end?”

The old man stroked his long gray beard with a truly Oriental movement of the hand. “Keep your ear to the ground,” he said; “the end of Islam is not yet. There are more Mohammedans than Christians in the world; they still make converts. I myself knew an English Lord who became a musselman.”

“Instead of quarreling among themselves, let the Christians unite!” said the young man.

“Strife there must be. The young tigers wrestle together, or they would not be strong to wrestle with the enemy when it is time to go out into the jungle and kill!”

We might have gone on gossiping till dinner time,--_they_ were in no hurry,--if Ali had not reminded me of an engagement that could not be postponed; I had been invited to tea with the Lady of Tangiers.

The house of the Lady of Tangiers is set on the edge of a high cliff. Far, far below, at the foot of the cliff, the waves break into white foam flowers, and the seagulls flit and swoop in restless flight over the emerald sea. House and garden are shut in by a high wall. A man on horseback was waiting in the road outside the gate, surrounded by a horde of beggars and cripples. A pair of white shrouded women stood a little apart, each with a child on her shoulder. The horseman was armed: a pair of pistols and a knife were stuck in his sash, a rifle was slung over his shoulder; at his left side hung a long sword. Man and horse were both of pure Arab breed; there was a certain likeness between them. Both were thin and wiry, with delicate feet, fierce, flashing eyes, thin, quivering nostrils. The man sat impassive as a bronze statue, and gave no sign of having seen our queer cavalcade as we rode up,--Zuleika, the big gray donkey, with me in my ridiculous chair saddle on her back, Ali running beside, and Abdul hanging on to her tail. The horse pricked its dainty ears, whinnied, and turned its head to look at us.

“_Es-salem alekum!_” Health be with you, said Ali, who never allowed himself to be ignored.

“_U alekum es-salem!_” and with you be peace, answered the Arab on the horse.

The sound of footsteps inside the garden caused great excitement among the cripples. The gate was opened and a servant came out leading a beautiful little boy of four or five. At the sight of the boy, a fair child, with brown curls and pretty, gracious manners, a howl arose from the beggars and cripples. They tried to get hold of him, to kiss his hands or touch his garments. The servant and the man on horseback kept them back as best they could. The horseman laid about him with the flat of his sword:

“By the life of the prophet, room there for my lord the prince! _Yalla!_ Go on!”

“I am under thy protection, save me!” cried the oldest beggar; he was rather cleaner than the rest, and was allowed to touch the little foot before the horseman caught up the child, set him before him, put spurs to the horse, and galloped off joyously in a cloud of dust.

“_Al Allah!_” cried the old beggar.

“_Al Allah!_” echoed the cripples, waving their crutches and their maimed stumps after the pretty child.

Ali gave my card and letter of introduction to the servant. I was invited to enter the garden. Ali waited for me in the road outside. Near the house was a little flower bed, with a few homely English flowers; some one had been at work among the marigolds. Outside the door stood a large rocking-horse, a drum and a toy trumpet. I had not long to wait in the reception room, before the Lady of Tangiers appeared. She greeted me heartily.

“Come in,” she said, and led the way to a large comfortable, English drawing-room. I suppose I showed some surprise at finding myself in so thoroughly British an interior, for she said:

“I lead a double life. With the Arabs, I am an Arab; with the Europeans, I am a European. We will have our tea here first,--you will like my tea better than my daughter-in-law’s; then I will take you into the Arab part of the house and introduce you to my son’s wife.”

At the first glance the Lady of Tangiers looked the full-blooded English woman she is by birth. As I talked with her, I felt something Oriental in her expression. You cannot live three parts of your life among an alien race without catching something of the racial look. First, and last, and all the time, I felt her to be a woman of power. The servant who brought the tea said something to her in Arabic.

“Were there many children waiting in the crowd outside the gate?” she asked.

I told her I had seen only two.

“They can wait, or come to-morrow,” she said. “Their mothers have brought them to be vaccinated. When I first came here I once spoke to my husband about a child I thought should be vaccinated, as there was so much small-pox about.”

“How is it done?” he asked.

“I know how it is done,” I said, “and I can do it. That was the beginning. Now I vaccinate hundreds of children every year. That is the sort of missionary work I believe in. There is not the slightest use in sending Christian missionaries to any Mahommedan country, unless they are willing to work without direct religious teaching. Civilize first! Teach the women and the girls to cook and sew, something about the laws of health, and the care of children.”

The Lady of Tangiers is a member of the Church of England, by the way.

I asked about the pretty boy I had met at the gate.

“That was my little grandson, Muli Hassan, going out for his afternoon’s airing. All those people hanging about were waiting to see him start. To them he is not only a noble, but a sacred person. My husband was of a great family. He was descended from the Prophet,--but I am of the oldest family in the world; I am of the Adam and Eve connection!” Her eyes danced as she said it. “In certain respects, my grandchildren are brought up English fashion, as my children were. When my oldest boy was perhaps twelve days old, my mother, who had come out from England to be with me, thought that it might please my husband’s old nurse to see the baby have his bath; so she called her into my room. My husband was asleep in a neighboring room. Suddenly he was waked by the old nurse, she was past eighty, shaking him by the arm--usually she would not have dared to disturb him--and crying:

“Come, come quickly! The Christians are murdering your son, they are drowning him!”

My husband hurried to my room. “What does this mean?” he cried out. When he found out what it meant, he threw himself down on the divan and laughed till he cried.

When we had finished our tea, my hostess took me into the part of the house where her son’s wife, the mother of Muli Hassan, lives. As she was receiving native visitors in the reception room, the Lady of Tangiers showed me into the bedroom; a large, handsome, airy room with windows opening seawards, and comfortable brass beds. We had not been there long,--I had not had time to take in half the beauty of the outlook from those windows,--when I heard behind me the soft patter of bare feet on the tiled floor, and the daughter-in-law was at my side. She was a pretty woman, with a refined, intelligent face, who received me with a charming Oriental reverence. The nails of her hands and feet were reddened with henna, otherwise she was not painted. She wore a pretty, simple, green tissue robe, with a robe of dotted muslin over it.

“May thy day be white as milk,” was her first greeting. Then, “How is thy health?”

“She is sorry she cannot speak your language,” said the Lady of Tangiers, “you must not think her an uneducated person on that account. She reads and writes Arabic beautifully.”

The young woman was in mourning for a relative: she would wear it for forty days, she told me. Her mourning consisted of not wearing silk or jewels,--the most sensible mourning I ever heard of. She was so fair, except for her melting eyes and coal-black eyebrows, that in European dress she might easily have passed for an Italian. As the other guests were waiting for the daughter-in-law, our visit to her was short.

“_Yalla bina_,” now let us go, said the elder woman.

“To Allah’s protection,” said the mother of Muli Hassan.

We returned to the English drawing-room, where I stayed as long, perhaps longer, than good manners allowed, while the Lady of Tangiers told me things that I hope she will some day tell the world. While I was listening, entranced, there came the sound of a childish voice crying “Grandmama!” The little Prince Muli Hassan had come back from his ride. I had stayed an unconscionable time, and my visit, the most interesting episode in all those interesting Moroccan days, had to come to an end!

While in Tangiers our party was much broken up. J. and Patsy made several riding trips with Israel, leaving me to potter about the Socco with Ali, or to prowl with Mme. Hortense in the bazaars, where I bought a long, salmon colored cloth gabardine with wide sleeves and fascinating silk buttons and loops; and a fine _sulham_ like the one the Arab gentleman wore. Both are men’s garments, though they pass muster very well, on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar, for a woman’s.

Our greatest pleasure we all enjoy together,--a dinner at one of the foreign villas on the heights. It was nearly dark when I mounted Zuleika and rode under the stars and a thin crescent moon to our friend’s house. All the company except ourselves belonged to the diplomatic circle. They were as agreeable, well dressed, and well bred as such people are the world over. The dinner was excellent, the talk, for me, of absorbing interest. After dinner, as we were sitting talking together in the pretty drawing-room, admiring the Arabic curios our host had collected, we heard, faintly first, then gradually growing louder, the sound of a shepherd’s pipe, like the flute in Tristan and Isolde.

“I thought you might like to hear a little Arab music,” said our host, leading the way to an open-air concert room. In the corner made by two sides of his house, rugs were spread upon the ground, lanterns hung among the rose covered walls, and six native musicians squatted on the ground. Their instruments were a lute, a tambourine, a reban,--two-stringed fiddle--and the shepherd’s pipe. The leader was a handsome dark man with dreamy eyes, and the face of an enthusiast. He threw back his head and began a song that was like a wail; the others joined in from time to time like a chorus.

“They are singing,” said the host, “the Lament for Granada!”

When anybody says Tangiers to me suddenly, _this_ is what I see! The Arab musicians sitting cross-legged on the ground under the stars, and the thin crescent moon. I hear the high wail of the Moorish pipe, the throb of the drum struck by the hand, the voices of the Moorish minstrels mourning for the Moors’ lost paradise, singing the Lament for Granada.

X

MADRID

“Señora, this is my mother,” said Pedra the Vestal, who took care of our sitting-room fire.

“I am glad to make your acquaintance,” said Pedra’s mother; she shook my hand heartily, and looked at me with keen, kind eyes. “In regard to the washing, I will call for it on Mondays and bring it back on Fridays. If mending is required, there will be an additional price.”

“Where do you wash the clothes?”

She was astonished at the question. “In the river, where else?”

“And where do you hang them out to dry?”

“On the river bank, near the palace of the King.”

When Pedra the Vestal knelt on the hearth blowing the bellows, she looked more than ever like a Tanagra figurine. She built up the fire with odd little chunks of dark red wood that give out a strange perfume of the forest, and burn as slowly as soft coal.

“What sort of wood is that?” I asked.

“Who knows? The wood of a tree,” Pedra looked over her shoulder with the flashing smile that made everything she said pass for wit.

“I know; it is ilex,” said her mother. “In Segovia I used to gather it on the mountain. Here it costs too much, we burn charcoal.”

“Is Madrid dearer than Segovia?”

“Madrid is the dearest place in the world, and the coldest.” She wrapped her faded plaid shawl about her shoulders. There had been a slight snow flurry that morning; it was proper Christmas weather, but Pedra and her mother took it as seriously as we take a blizzard. Pedra was straight as a lance, hard as marble, built of stuff that wears well, judging from her mother. The elder woman was not one of those mothers who serve as a dreadful warning of what a daughter may become, if she had lost youth and freshness; she had kept her health and strength, a fiery spirit, a tough fibre.

The next time she came in to mend the fire, Pedra’s bright eyes were dull and red. It took only a little coaxing to find out her trouble.

“My mother brought bad news,” she said. “My brother has married a girl who is not worthy of him. Though we are poor, Señora, our family is an old one; there is none more respected in Segovia. After all the sacrifices we made for Juan to keep on the little shop that was my father’s,--to marry beneath him, it was unworthy, it was ignoble!” The tears came to her eyes again. Here was Castilian pride, indeed.

We had come to Madrid meaning to keep house for six months or more. We soon found that a furnished apartment at a moderate price in Madrid is as rare as a roc’s egg. We spent several days driving up and down the streets of the quarter where we wished to live, looking up at the houses. A large sheet of blank paper hung at the end of a window or balcony means unfurnished apartments to let, in the middle, furnished. We could find nothing available. It seemed as if we must give up our plan of passing the winter in Madrid. Then came the great invitation. Our old friends Don José and Doña Lucia Villegas asked us to share their large comfortable home. When we found they really wished us to accept this unparalleled hospitality, J. and I moved over to their delightful apartment, and Don Jaime found a modest hotel for Patsy.

The Villegas’ house is opposite the handsome new National Museum on the Paseo Recoletos, a wide avenue laid out in the grand style of the Champs Elysées.

Madrid is a modern capital; at first it seemed as if we had left picturesque Spain behind us and come to a modern European city, a little like Paris, a little like Brussels, and not at all like the Spain we knew. Then, as we began to learn our way about the city, we found that beside the new Madrid, with its splendid boulevards, its conventional new houses and cafés, its air of prosperous business, there was an old Madrid, full of quaint corners and picturesque buildings.

The palace of the King stands at the edge of this old Madrid, boldly planted on the high land above the river, where the old Moorish Alcazar once stood, a magnificent situation for a royal palace. The façade fronts and dominates the city; the rear looks out on vast stretches of royal demesne.

“This looks more as a palace should look than any I ever saw,” said Patsy. We had driven over one sharp clear morning to see Guard-mounting. “All grand and white and shining. The sort of a palace where lovely princesses with golden hair always live in poetry,--sometimes even in history.”

On the right of the palace is the noble Plaza de Armas, where, besides the guards pacing up and down their beat, there was a continual coming and going of all sorts and conditions of men. In a sheltered corner, under the very palace windows, two boys were playing at marbles. This was all in keeping with what we had seen and heard of the democratic character of the people. At one end of the Plaza, the long narrow arches of the peristyle frame a stupendous view. Behind the palace runs the river Manzanares; beyond lies the royal park of the Casa de Campo, with its masses of green trees, broken here and there by the glint of a lake, or the spire of one of poor Isabel Second’s expiatory chapels. Beyond the park, the bare plains of Castile sweep grandly to the north, rising to the stern snow-capped range of the Sierra Guaderrama.

It was all dearly familiar, because Velasquez has painted that blue-gray landscape, that silver light sometimes hardening to steel, those snow mountains, not once, but many, many times, as the background of his pictures.

“The Manzanares is not much of a stream compared to the Guadalquiver,” said Patsy. “That must be the bridge the Frenchman meant, when he advised the King of Spain either to sell his bridge, or to buy a river!” He pointed to a big handsome bridge, curiously out of proportion to the size of the meagre river.

Not far from the palace, along the river bank, was a gorgeous, tremulous, swaying mass of color,--scarlet, blue, orange, every tint of the rainbow.

“That,” said Patsy, “looks like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Those might be the fluttering pennons of Leon and Castile, Navarre and Aragon.”

“Don’t look too closely, or you will lose the illusion. That is the drying ground, where Pedra’s mother and the other washerwomen of Madrid hang out their clothes.”

“Standards of heroes, standards of heroines, what’s the odds? They _are_ heroines. I stood and watched them yesterday, their petticoats kilted up to their knees, rubbing and scrubbing and singing at their work.”

A young American artist painted an admirable picture of the drying ground with its many-colored garments not long ago. He worked in summer, close to the river when the water was low, and caught a fever that put an end to all his painting!

Fronting the palace is the large oval Plaza del Oriente, with a good equestrian statue of Philip IV, surrounded by a circle of quaint marble statues of Visigothic and Spanish kings and queens, from Berenguela to Isabel the Catholic.

“We know Philip IV better than all the rest of them put together!” Patsy exclaimed, as we walked round the royal group. “Thanks to the genius for making a likeness of that young man shown by Velasquez, whom he engaged as his _valet de chambre_ at a salary of eleven dollars a month. Philip young, thin and cadaverous, Philip old, fat and blowsy; I know his face as well as I know my own. People who want to be remembered by posterity should be very polite to the painters and sculptors--even to the writers--of their day. Strange they don’t realize it!”

Madrid was gay with Christmas bustle; streets and shops were crowded; Pedra was busy with the presents that poured into the house for Lucia and Villegas. From Granada came a cask of oil, from Malaga a small barrel of grapes, from Jerez a cask of olorosa, from Tangiers a box of oranges, from Seville a flagon of cologne, the finest in the world,--it smells of fresh orange blossoms.

One morning, a few days before Christmas, I heard a strange hob-gobbling noise outside in the passage. I opened my door; there was Pedra, flushed and out of breath with the effort, trying to get two large speckled turkeys up the terrace stairs.

“_Miré_,” she said, “observe these fine birds, Señora, a present from the country. I shall mix a dish of corn meal and hot water for them, that will be the food of luxury, fattening besides. Poor animals! they shall live well until Cisera wrings their necks.”

Cisera, the Tuscan cook, followed the procession up the terrace stairs, and felt the larger turkey.

“In a week,” she said, “he will be fit to kill, perhaps sooner.”

When the turkeys had been fed with the food of luxury, Pedra showed me another gift that had just come for Villegas. “Don José will like this more than all the rest, you will see!” she said.

Villegas is the Director of the Prado Museum. What Pedra called the best present was a “testimonial,” with his photograph and a complimentary address signed by all the employees of the Prado. He gave the dreadful thing with its impossible plush frame the place of honor, and hung it up himself in the hall.

Cisera killed the larger turkey, and stuffed it with pistacchio nuts for the Christmas eve dinner-party. As we were all sitting together, waiting for the last guest to arrive, Gil, the melancholy Gallegan man-servant, threw open the door and announced:

“The Bohemian Gentleman.”

A big blond man with dancing blue eyes and a ruffled shirt came in, followed by Pedra, carrying in her upraised hands a tray with two enormous hams (she looked like the picture of Titian’s daughter with the fruit).

“A good Christmas!” the Bohemian made Lucia a grand bow. “I have brought you a pair of hams from Prague!”

“The best hams in the world,” Villegas patted one of them. “I was afraid you had forgotten this year!”

“They should be good; the pigs were raised on

my father’s farm, and, I was assured, were fed on nothing but milk.”

Before the turkey made its appearance, Villegas had discovered that among his guests were people of seven nationalities, and that four languages were being spoken at the table.

“This,” he said, “is the Tower of Babel.” The name stuck for as long at least as that hospitable house was our home.

“What,” I asked Don Jaime who sat beside me, “is the Bohemian gentleman’s name?”

“Of baptism or of family?”

“Both, particularly of family.”

“Ah!” the Don relapsed into Spanish, “nobody can pronounce it; it begins with a cough and ends with a sneeze. He is called Don Carlos the Bohemian, because he comes from Bohemia. He copies royal portraits in the Prado for the Archduke Eugenio of Austria; no one has made such copies of Velasquez since Villegas left off painting them!” The Bohemian saw we were speaking of him, for he looked over at us.

“This lady, whose name I did not catch,” he said, “is an American?”

“Oh, no!” cried little Serafita, who gives music lessons to the Infanta; “she is English, Yankee, from New York.” In Madrid, American means South American, unless the contrary is stated.

I asked Serafita, a sparkling Andaluz with a drop of Hebrew blood in her veins, if many of her pupils worked seriously. “Only a few,” she said, “more give up their music when they marry. It is the same with their other studies. The women I know drop their reading and studies when they leave school. If one cannot talk with them about the fashions or the last ball, they have nothing to say. You North American women can speak on every subject. Our women are not less clever, but our men do not wish us to be improved, for they know that we are naturally more intelligent than they themselves, and if our minds were cultivated they believe we would not be content always to stay at home.”

Villegas had lately sat for his photograph, and as Lucia wished opinions on the likeness, the photographs were handed round the table. When they came to Don Jaime he counted them, and told me that there were twelve, and all alike, adding with a sigh that if there were only twelve Villegases, all alike, and he could dine with all of them, he could then be sure of twelve such dinners a year!

Before Villegas came to Madrid, and took Don Jaime under his wing, the Don often had no dinner--so he confided to Patsy. One does not exactly dine when one spends two cents a day for food. “Under such circumstances,” the Don said, “it is best to invest all your money in bread of the day before; it costs less than fresh bread, and goes farther.”

While we were still at table, there came a tremendous ringing at the door-bell. There was a lull in the conversation as Gil opened the front door. “A message and a box from the bedchamber of the King for Don José!” cried a loud voice in the hall outside.

“Put down the box. Don José is dining,” Gil replied firmly.

“Give him the message then as I give it to thee. Here are the pantaloons of his Majesty the King. They must be returned by the fifteenth of the month, when his Majesty wishes to wear them.”

We looked at each other in astonishment.

“I am painting the King’s portrait,” said Villegas; “as he is not very fond of posing they have sent me the clothes to work from before the next sitting.”

“The Infanta’s wedding is on the eighteenth,” said Lucia; “perhaps they are wanted for that. Be sure nothing happens to them at the studio.”

It was nearly twelve when the Bohemian, the first to make the move, rose to go. They keep late hours in Madrid, even later than in Paris. Don Carlos was reproved for breaking up the party so early.

“I promised,” he said by way of excuse, “to be at the Countess Q’s for midnight mass.”

“I should not have thought that _misa del gallo_--cockcrow mass was exactly in your line!” said Don Jaime. “You grow devout with years!”

“Ah, well--I know the music will be good, they will give selections from Carmen. Besides, I promised I would stay and help them out with the supper and dance after the mass.”

Just then Gil brought in a curiously shaped old bottle covered with dust and cobwebs.

“Try this before you go,” said Villegas; “it is Trafalgar 1805, the year of the great vintage of Jerez and of the great battle.” He himself poured out the wine, with greatest care not to shake the bottle.

“It is good enough,” said the Bohemian, with another of his grand bows, “to drink to Doña Lucia’s health, and,” raising his glass, “to the portrait of the King.”

“The portrait of the King!” We drank the toast standing.

The next morning we walked over to the studio with Villegas and Lucia, Gil following with the box from the bedchamber of the King. As we left the Tower of Babel, Cisera came running after us.

“Don José, you have forgotten your brushes;” she put a bundle of paint-brushes done up in a newspaper into his hand. Villegas tucked them in his pocket and thanked Cisera; it is her privilege to wash the brushes, and she allows no one else to touch them. The studio is in the Pasaje del Alhambra, rather a picturesque place for Madrid, not more than half a mile from the house. Though it was late, after ten o’clock, the streets were very uncomfortable on account of the floods of water pouring through them. The extreme dryness of the soil and the air makes it necessary to flush the streets twice a day! A pair of wild looking gypsy girls were standing by one of the corners, watching the water pouring from the hydrant. The taller girl was very handsome, the shorter one seemed older, and had an ill-tempered face, with a head shaped like a snake’s. They stood gaping at us with the dazed look of country people unused to a city. They were so poorly dressed I rather thought they would beg of us.

“What a type!” said Villegas, looking at the handsome girl, a beauty with rough black hair hanging over the eyes, and a half fierce, half shy expression.

“What character in that head, eh?”

“She has exactly the face you have been looking for,” said Lucia. “Ask her to come to the studio and pose.”

They spoke to the handsome girl, who seemed to agree. At this the elder girl caught her by the arm and dragged her back.

“No, no, you shall not go!” she cried. “Do you know what he will do? He will look you in the eyes fixedly, fixedly, like this, and while he is looking at you, he will suck your blood!” At this the two took to their heels and ran for dear life.

“You see how difficult it is to get models in Madrid!” Villegas laughed. “One is driven here, by force, to paint portraits!”

We were passing a house in a garden where an old retired General and his old wife sat opposite each other on the porch in large covered invalid chairs, keeping a sharp lookout on all passers-by. They were both deaf, and imagining other people heard no better than they, talked quite audibly about the people in the street.

“There goes Villegas, the painter,” said the wife. “He seems amused about something.” (Don José had laughed to tears over the gypsy’s warning). “What do you suppose his servant is carrying in that big box?”

“What ridiculous curiosity,” growled the General; “isn’t it the same old box?”

“No, I never saw it before. I wonder what he _has_ got in it!”

As we reached the corner of the Barquillo, Villegas exclaimed: “There’s the Novio. He must have been ill, he looks rather pale; I haven’t seen him for a week.” The novio, a pallid young man in a plaid suit, stood in a protected angle of the side-walk, looking up at a window at the top of a high house where a roguish girl’s face looked out from between the curtains. The young man was talking with his fingers in the deaf and dumb language.

“He talks so fast I cannot read what he says,” said Villegas. “But one can guess; one has either heard or said such things oneself, is it not so?”

At the opposite corner the old flower woman, who sat stooping and huddled under her black shawls like the eldest of the Fates, chose from her stock a white hyacinth and silently handed it to Villegas, who gave her a coin, took the flower and walked briskly on. The old woman sat up a little straighter, after he had passed, and set her flowers in better order. It is characteristic of Villegas that people always sit up straighter and put their affairs in better order when he has passed their way.

Angoscia, the glove-maker of Granada, who takes care of the studio, and serves as a draped model, opened the studio door: it is almost impossible in Madrid to get either male or female models to pose for the nude. Angoscia is a pretty young woman with an almost perfect face, beautiful hands and feet, but with a tendency to grow stout.

“You have been eating maccaroni again!” said Lucia.

“No, no, I swear by the Virgin I have not. I eat nothing, I starve myself, I am hungry always.”

“Or _torrones_. You are much fatter than before Christmas; that comes of giving you a holiday!”

Poor Angoscia, looking worthy of her name--it means anguish--made a diversion by asking what we had brought in the box. Lucia, with her help, then unpacked a fine cocked hat, a red and blue military coat and waistcoat, a pair of short white cloth knee breeches, the belt linings and pockets of heaviest satin, a dainty sword and sword belt. Angoscia drew the damascened Toledo blade, pretty as a toy, cruel as death, from its sheath; it glinted in the sun and flashed its reflection in her soft brave eyes. Everything in the box was most carefully packed, each silver button and bit of silver lace separately wrapped in black tissue paper to keep it from tarnishing. At the very bottom of the box was a long thin morocco case. This I opened, gave a scream, and almost dropped the case that contained the ensign of the Order of the Garter. The garter was of dark blue velvet bordered with gold. The letters were separate, of very thick gold, attached by invisible rivets to the velvet. After the legend “Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense” the velvet strap was heavily embroidered in gold thread, the tab and buckle were finely chased gold.

“A beautiful piece of work!” Villegas turned it over in his hand and nodded approval. How all good workmen feel a good piece of work!

“Edward the Black Prince was made the first knight of the Order of the Garter after Crécy, when he brought the great ruby back from Spain,” said J.

“Where is it worn?” That was a serious question. By this time the clothes were on the mannikin, the palette was set, Villegas unrolled the great sheaf of brushes, and was ready to go to work.

“On the left leg below the knee,” said J. There was some argument on the point, finally settled by appeal to a Van Dyke portrait in the Prado.

“They have forgotten the shoes!” cried Angoscia.

“There is nothing remarkable about them: any low evening pumps will do till the next sitting,” said Villegas.

“Mariano Benlliure has a pair!” cried Jaime, and went off in a cab to borrow them. He came back with two pairs of patent leather pumps nicely fitted on wooden lasts.

“Mariano must be very rich,” said Jaime. “I will pawn the pair you don’t use, send him the ticket, and when he wants to wear them he can redeem the shoes.”

At last the mannikin was dressed with the King’s clothes and put in the right pose and Villegas got to work. He did not like to paint from the mannikin; he said it looked too stiff, and would spoil the portrait, but that it would be impossible to put the King’s clothes on a model!

“If Don Alfonzo had only given me a sitting instead of going hunting to-day!” he sighed, squeezing more yellow ochre on his palette to paint the garter; “I should like to have gone into the country too!”

“A hundred years from now who will care whether the King went hunting to-day or not? Somebody may be glad that you stayed in your studio and worked.”

“_Quien sabé?_” sighed Villegas.

“He is never satisfied!” said Lucia.

“The day he is satisfied, he will be finished!” laughed J. Villegas, who likes company when he works, and can endure a dozen people talking in the studio without listening to a word that is said, went steadily on with his painting, laying on the bold, firm strokes of color in a manner all his own.

In those days there was much to do in Madrid about the Infanta Maria Teresa’s wedding. The trousseau and presents were exhibited in the great dining-hall of the palace. The jewels given by the King, Queen Maria Cristina, and the bridegroom, Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria, were said to be fabulously fine. There were fifty dresses with shoes to match, among other items, and all the rest of the outfit was on the same scale. The bridegroom and his parents arrived in Madrid some days before the wedding. His mother, the Infanta Paz, was the sister of the bride’s father, Alfonzo XII, so it was a family affair and a deal of entertaining went on in the palace of the King. Prince Max of Bavaria, the bridegroom’s father, took little part in the merrymaking, but slipped off whenever he could to the hospitals to have a look at the interesting cases, and compare notes with his confrères, the surgeons. The story was told of his coming home late to lunch one day, and saying to the guests invited to meet him, “I have made such a successful operation this morning; cut off a man’s leg. It all went well; the patient stood it admirably!”

“Even royalties are becoming emancipated,” said Patsy; “they have practically gone on strike. Can you blame a man for refusing to spend his life standing round waiting on the chance that he may be wanted to fill a throne? Here you have a royal explorer, like the Duke of Abruzzi, and a royal surgeon, like Prince Max, real professionals, not amateurs; what are we coming to next?”

We were driving along the gay crowded Calle Acalá, on our way to the wedding.

“They have a fine day,” Patsy went on. “I saw a few icicles on the fountain of Cebele this morning, but they’re all melted now. At home we should call this mild weather for January; here they act as if it were ten below zero.”

Every carriage or automobile we passed was hermetically sealed; not a crack of a window was left open, and the Madrileños were muffled in furs to the eyes. The climate of Madrid is not half so black as it is painted; half the bronchitis and lung troubles we hear about come from too much wrapping up and too little fresh air! The only open carriages to be seen in Madrid at this season belong to the royal family. They set a good example in that direction, at least.

The chapel royal of the palace, where the wedding took place, leads from the glass enclosed gallery that surrounds the courtyard at the second story, and communicates with the bedchamber of the King and the other private apartments. Each door is guarded day and night by two tall halberdiers, in whose hands lies the safety of the King. They are picked men, the very flower of the army, the type of Spanish soldier history and romance have made familiar. They look as fierce, proud, and terrible as the men who marched with Cortes. The young officer in lovely white broadcloth uniform and shining feathered helmet, who took us in charge at the palace door, delivered us over into the hands of a halberdier in a cocked hat and short clothes, who led us through the gallery, empty save for the guards pacing up and down. The four men on duty at the chapel door stood like breathing statues; they never moved their eyes; they hardly seemed to wink. Though they were relieved every fifteen minutes, as long as flesh and blood can stand the strain, one of the big handsome fellows fainted, before his quarter of an hour was over.

Our halberdier--his name was Pedro--led us up a private stairway covered with a blue Aubusson carpet, sprinkled with roses and lilies so lifelike that you could almost pick them, then to a little, dark, secret stair leading to the grated balcony, where we were to sit, as if in a private stage box, and see the royal wedding. We were spectators, not guests, as only the Court and the diplomatic circle were admitted to the floor of the chapel. Don Jaime soon joined us; he had made the unprecedented sacrifice of getting up at ten o’clock, so that he might tell us who all the great personages were.

“To the left sit members of Government and his wifes. Next Greats of Spain”--usually called Grandees--“Major-domos-de-semana, Gentilhombres, _corps diplomatique_, authorities, mayor and members of city, dames of court, generals, chamberlains, suite of bridegroom.”

“_Solo Madrid es corte_;” only at Madrid is there a court, according to the old saying. The arrival of this famous Spanish court was the most impressive feature of the whole gorgeous pageant. The ladies, wearing long velvet trains and white mantillas, entered the chapel one by one, bowed before the altar, crossed themselves, and with consummate grace and dignity, above all with perfect calm, made their way to their places, where they spread out their trains and settled themselves like so many brilliant birds of paradise. There was no noise, no confusion, no crowding; it had all been calculated to a nicety. There was plenty of time, and plenty of space for everybody; this above all else made for the great distinction of the ceremony. The Chinese minister and secretary, in their embroidered silk gowns, their mandarin caps and peacock feathers, were the most picturesque figures in the diplomatic tribune. Chief among the Grandees were the Knights of the Golden Fleece. Patsy asked the name of one whose face seemed familiar.

“Is Pidal, Duke of Veragua,” said Jaime. “He receive the order on the anniversary of 1892, as proof of worthy to be descendant of Columbus. He is the elevator of the finest bulls in Spain; you will see them at the next _corrida_.”

“Are all the seven Spanish Knights of the Golden Fleece here?”

“No, not Count Cheste. Has nineteen seven years, is more ancient of army and of literature. It is a poet.”

The King’s clothes had been returned in plenty of time for the wedding; care had been taken of them, they looked as good as new when, to the music of the Lohengrin march, Don Alfonzo walked into the chapel, leading the bride with one hand, the bridegroom with the other.

“It’s just like the opera,” Patsy whispered. “Wagner made no mistakes in his stage directions; he knew all the traditions of the Bavarian Court, and must have seen a royal wedding or two.”

The bride wore orange blossoms in her hair; the front of her satin dress sparkled with diamonds, the train of white velvet, bordered with ostrich feathers, hung from the shoulders and was carried by a page.

“Her code is three metres long,” the Don told us.

The bride knelt at the altar, made her first prayer, then crossed the church, passing the three officiating cardinals in their arrogant scarlet robes, to the prie-dieu where her mother knelt apart from all the rest. She stooped, and raised the Queen’s hand to her lips. The Queen, who wept openly throughout the ceremony, kissed her cheek; the bride then rejoined the bridegroom, a kind looking, round-faced young man, with thick brown hair. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal primate of Spain, a subtle-faced old man with silver hair and benevolent manners. The King knew his mass perfectly; he kissed his prayer-book and crossed himself at all the proper times, and throughout the service prompted the bridegroom, who seemed ill prepared and had evidently not been so well drilled.

“_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_” the King struck his breast three times with his clenched fist, as he said the words.

“What do you suppose Don Alfonzo’s _maxima culpa_ is?” murmured Patsy. “I don’t believe he has had much chance to commit one. Villegas might say it is his not liking to pose. Some old fogy might say it was his habit of riding his horse up the palace stairs. I would not give a fig for a young man in his position who didn’t do that; it is a time-honored custom of gay young princes! It wasn’t _his_ fault that he was born a king; he can’t be expected to forfeit all the fun he might otherwise have enjoyed as heir to the throne!”

While the Archbishop knotted the white satin scarf, symbol of the marriage tie, about the young couple’s shoulders, Don Jaime hurried us down to the gallery to see the cortége pass from the chapel to the private apartments. Our halberdier, Pedro, had kept us a place opposite the chapel door. The gallery was lined with these superb guards. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their steel halberds flashing in the sunlight that streamed through the glass sides of the gallery.

“The _alabardaros_,” Don Jaime explained, “are a particularity, all must be of so great length.” He added that they all held rank two grades below what they had held in the army; that the soldiers had been sergeants and the general formerly a field marshal.

The fateful music of Mendelssohn’s march thrilled through the gallery, the waiting crowd behind the halberdiers swayed at the sound as wind-flowers shaken by the wind.

The wedding party came out of the chapel behind four mace bearers, stalwart men in black velvet, with gold maces over their shoulders.

“The Infanta Isabel, the King’s aunt, _es muy Española_!” she is very Spanish--whispered Jaime as a gray-haired, hearty-looking woman passed, bowing and smiling.

“I like her,” said Patsy; “she looks a thoroughly good sort; she has twice been heir to the throne, before the birth of her brother Alfonzo XII, and again after his death, before our Don Alfonzo was born. Trying, wasn’t it? She seems to be the most popular of the elder members of the family.”

The Infanta Eulalia is not so well known as her sister, the Infanta Isabel, because she has been little in Spain and prefers to live in Paris. She looked very much as she did when she was in Chicago, at the time of the World’s Fair, very elegant, very graceful, more cosmopolitan, less _Española_ than her sister.

The Queen walked with Don Alfonzo. She wore a long ash colored dress, a white lace mantilla, a diamond diadem, and the finest pearls I ever saw. She neither bowed nor smiled.

In the clear sunlight of the gallery, at a range of ten feet, one saw the dreadful look of suffering in her face. It must have been a trying day for her. Her eldest daughter, Princess of the Asturias, had died only a year before, leaving four little children: _her_ marriage had been so unpopular that it nearly caused a revolution, and there had been none of the rejoicing and merrymaking her sister, the Infanta Maria, was enjoying. Besides this recent grief, what bitter memories must have surged up in the Queen’s heart. Her own marriage and all of the tragedy and suffering that it held. Hers had been a state marriage; her bridegroom met her at the altar with a heart still sore for his adored Mercedes, his first wife dead in the first year of their marriage. Then came her husband’s early death, after a cruel, lingering illness; the summoning together of the ministers, to whom she announced that there was still hope of an heir, for besides her three daughters, she was again with child: the birth of that child, Alfonzo XIII, one of the very few who have been born King, twenty years of passionate devotion to the care of the delicate boy’s health, his education, his religious training. Twenty years of intense, unresting effort to keep the throne for her son,--all this among a people to whom she was ever “the Austrian,” is still the Outlander. And now, after all that she has done, another woman is to usurp her place. Her son will marry within the year a woman who has been bred a Protestant.

As she passed, without a look at the people, it seemed that for once the mask of the Queen had dropped from the grief-ravaged face of the woman.

The young people were in the gayest mood. Don Alfonzo nodded and smiled to right and left, the bride and bridegroom came along, laughing and talking together, like any other happy young couple. There was youth and hope in their faces; they were still far from the stereotyped bow, the dreadful mechanical smile of the elder royalties.

“_Felicidad eternal!_” said Don Jaime, as the bride passed us.

“A good word,” Patsy echoed it as the doors closed behind the wedding party. “Eternal felicity, may they be as happy as if they had not been born in the shadow of a throne.”

XI

THE PRADO

_Por las calles de Madrid_
_se pasea un valenciano_
_con un clavel en la boca_
_y una rosa en cada mano._

Through the streets of Madrid
A Valencian was straying
With a pink in his mouth
And a rose in each hand.

Little Don Luis the Valencian took the pink from his mouth, when he met Villegas coming up the steps of the Prado Museum. “I was going away,” he said, “but I will turn back with you. Anything for an excuse not to go to work!”

“Work!” Villegas fairly snorted! “You call painting work, when it is the only thing you like to do? Caramba! There are some things in this world hard to understand!” Villegas was disappointed. He had waited an hour at the studio for Luz, who never came for her sitting; this was quite natural the day after the court ball.

The head porter met us at the door; any of the famous painters whose pictures hang in the room of the great portraits might have been glad to have him for a sitter. He was a handsome man of the grave Castilian type, with a big, square black beard and skin like alabaster. He wore a broadcloth overcoat down to his heels and a gold laced cap.

“These are my friends,” Villegas introduced us. “You will give them any help they may need.”

The porter bowed gravely and we all followed Villegas into the Museum. He had come to make his morning rounds, and little Don Luis offered to be our guide while he looked over his mail.

“I was too discouraged to paint to-day,” said Don Luis, “so I came for help to the great artists, whose work is here. They seem to hold out their hands to me, and say: ‘we have travelled the road you find so hard; we, too, have known discouragement and despair!’ I always go away from the Museum as from the company of my best friends, full of courage and hope.”

“The way I feel, after seeing a play of Shakespeare’s,” murmured Patsy. “Clever work discourages you; great work puts heart into you, makes you feel you can go home and do something as good, that you might even have done that.”

Villegas, who loves the pictures under his care as if they were his children, is not satisfied with the Prado, and is always hoping they may some day have a museum worthy of them.

“The three arts should be united, as they were in Greece,” he said. “Oh, for a building that should be as a perfect casket for the two jewels, painting and sculpture. Other museums may illustrate the history of art better than the Prado, none possesses more masterpieces of painting!”

“He has performed miracles since he became Director,” said Don Luis; “not only in the care and hanging of the pictures, but against the risk of fire. He has put in all the latest fire extinguishing apparatus. He is right, though, we must have a new building, and, it appears to me, he will get it for us!”