Gatherings From Spain Part 12

[Sidenote: THE POSADA.]

In the seaports and large towns on the Madrid roads the twilight of cafe and cuisine civilization is breaking from La belle France. Monastic darkness is dispelled, and the age of convents is giving way to that of kitchens, while the large s.p.a.ces and ample accommodations of the suppressed monasteries suggest an easy transition into "first-rate establishments," in which the occupants will probably pay more and pray less. News, indeed, have just arrived from Malaga, that certain ultra-civilized hotels are actually rising, to be defrayed by companies and engineered by English, who seem to be as essential in regulating these novelties on the Continent as in the matters of railroads and steamboats. Rooms are to be papered, brick floors to be exchanged for boards, carpets to be laid down, fireplaces to be made, and bells are to be hung, incredible as it may appear to all who remember Spain as it was. They will ring the knell of nationality; and we shall be much mistaken if the grim old Cid, when the first one is pulled at Burgos, does not answer it himself by knocking the innovator down. Nay, more, for wonders never cease; vague rumours are abroad that secret and solitary closets are contemplated, in which, by some magical mechanism, sudden waters are to gush forth; but this report, like others _via_ Madrid and Paris telegraph, requires confirmation. a.s.suredly, the spirit of the Holy Inquisition, which still hovers over orthodox Spain, will long ward off these English heresies, which are rejected as too bad even by free-thinking France.

[Sidenote: THE POSADA.]

The genuine Spanish town inn is called the _posada_, as being meant to mean, a house of _repose_ after the pains of travel. Strictly speaking, the keeper is only bound to provide lodging, salt, and the power of cooking whatever the traveller brings with him or can procure out of doors; and in this it diners from the _fonda_, in which meats and drinks are furnished. The _posada_ ought only to be compared to its type, the _khan_ of the East, and never to the inn of Europe. If foreigners, and especially Englishmen, would bear this in mind, they would save themselves a great deal of time, trouble, and disappointment, and not expose themselves by their loss of temper on the spot, or in their note-books. No Spaniard is ever put out at meeting with neither attention nor accommodation, although he maddens in a moment on other occasions at the slightest personal affront, for his blood boils without fire. He takes these things coolly, which colder-blooded foreigners seldom do. The native, like the Oriental, does not expect to find anything, and accordingly is never surprised at only getting what he brings with him. His surprise is reserved for those rare occasions when he finds anything actually ready, which he considers to be a G.o.dsend. As most travellers carry their provisions with them, the uncertainty of demand would prevent mine host from filling his larder with perishable commodities; and formerly, owing to absurd local privileges, he very often was not permitted to sell objects of consumption to travellers, because the lords or proprietors of the town or village had set up other shops, little monopolies of their own. These inconveniences sound worse on paper than in practice; for whenever laws are decidedly opposed to common sense and the public benefit, they are neutralized in practice; the means to elude them are soon discovered, and the innkeeper, if he has not the things by him himself, knows where to get them. On starting next day a sum is charged for lodging, service, and dressing the food: this is, called _el ruido de casa_, an indemnification to mine host for the _noise_, the disturbance, that the traveller is supposed to have created, which is the old Italian _incommodo de la casa_, the routing and inconveniencing of the house; and no word can be better chosen to express the varied and never-ceasing din of mules, muleteers, songs, dancing, and laughing, the dust, the _row_, which Spaniards, men as well as beasts, kick up. The English traveller, who will have to pay the most in purse and sleep for his _noise_, will often be the only quiet person in the house, and might claim indemnification for the injury done to his acoustic organs, on the principle of the Turkish soldier who forces his entertainer to pay him teeth-money, to compensate for the damage done to his molars and incisors from masticating indifferent rations.

[Sidenote: SPANISH INNKEEPERS.]

Akin to the _posada_ is the "_parador_," a word probably derived from Waradah, Arabice, "a halting-place;" it is a huge caravansary for the reception of waggons, carts, and beasts of burden; these large establishments are often placed outside the town to avoid the heavy duties and vexatious examinations at the gates, where dues on all articles of consumption are levied both for munic.i.p.al and government purposes. They are the old _sisa_, a word derived from the Hebrew _Sisah_, to take a sixth part, and are now called _el derecho de puertas_, the gate-due; and have always been as unpopular as the similar _octroi_ of France; and as they are generally farmed out, they are exacted from the peasantry with great severity and incivility. There is perhaps no single grievance among the many, in the mistaken system of Spanish political and fiscal economy, which tends to create and keep alive, by its daily retail worry and often wholesale injustice, so great a feeling of discontent and ill-will towards authority as this does; it obstructs both commerce and travellers. The officers are, however, seldom either strict or uncivil to the higher cla.s.ses, and if courteously addressed by the stranger, and told that he is an English gentleman, the official _Cerberi_ open the gates and let him pa.s.s unmolested, and still more if quieted by the Virgilian sop of a bribe.

The laws in Spain are indeed strict on paper, but those who administer them, whenever it suits their private interest, that is ninety-nine times out of a hundred, evade and defeat them; they obey the letter, but do not perform the spirit, "_se obedece, pero no se c.u.mple_;"

indeed, the lower cla.s.ses of officials in particular are so inadequately paid that they are compelled to eke out a livelihood by taking bribes and little presents, which, as _Backs.h.i.+sh_ in the East, may always be offered, and will always be accepted, as a matter of compliment. The _idea_ of a bribe must be concealed; it shocks their dignity, their sense of honour, their "_pundonor_:" if, however, the money be given to the head person as something for his people to drink, the delicate attention is sacked by the chief, properly appreciated, and works its due effect.

[Sidenote: THE VENTA.]

[Sidenote: THE VENTA.]

Another term, almost equivalent to the "posada," is the "_meson_," which is rather applicable to the inns of the rural and smaller towns, to the "_hosterias_," than to those of the greater. The "_mesonero_," like the Spanish "_ventera_," has a bad reputation. It is always as well to stipulate something about prices beforehand. The proverb says, "_Por un ladron, pierden ciento en el meson_"--"_Ventera hermosa, mal para la bolsa_." "For every one who is robbed on the road, a hundred are in the inn."--"The fairer the hostess, the fouler the reckoning." It is among these innkeepers that the real and worst robbers of Spain are to be met with, since these cla.s.ses of worthies are everywhere only thinking how much they can with decency overcharge in their bills. This is but fair, for n.o.body would be an innkeeper if it were not for the profit. The trade of inn-keeping is among those which are considered derogatory in Spain, where so many Hindoo notions of caste, self-respect, purity of blood, etc., exist. The harbouring strangers for gain is opposed to every ancient and Oriental law of sacred hospitality. Now no Spaniard, if he can help it, likes to degrade himself; this accounts for the number of _fondas_ in towns being kept by Frenchmen, Italians, Catalans, Biscayans, who are all _foreigners_ in the eye of the Castilian, and disliked and held cheap; accordingly the inn-keeper in Don Quixote protests that he is a _Christian_, although a _ventero_, nay, a genuine old one--_Cristiano viejo rancio_; an old Christian being the common term used to distinguish the genuine stock from those renegade Jews and Moors who, rather than leave Spain, became _pseudo-Christians_ and publicans.

The country _Parador_, _Meson_, _Posada_, and _Venta_, call it how you will, is the Roman stabulum, whose original intention was the housing of cattle, while the accommodation of travellers was secondary, and so it is in Spain to this day. The accommodation for the _beast_ is excellent; cool roomy stables, ample mangers, a never-failing supply of fodder and water, every comfort and luxury which the animal is capable of enjoying, is ready on the spot; as regards _man_, it is just the reverse; he must forage abroad for anything he may want. Only a small part of the barn is allotted him, and then he is lodged among the brutes below, or among the trusses and sacks of their food in the lofts above. He finds, in spite of all this, that if he asks the owner what he has got, he will be told that "there is everything," _hay de todo_, just as the rogue of a _ventero_ informed Sancho Panza, that his empty larder contained all the birds of the air, all the beasts of the earth, all the fishes of the sea,--a Spanish magnificence of promise, which, when reduced to plain English, too often means, as in that case, there is everything that you have brought with you. This especially occurs in the _ventas_ of the out-of-the-way and rarely-visited districts, which, however empty their larders, are full of the spirit of Don Quixote to the brim; and the everyday occurrences in them are so strange, and one's life is so dramatic, that there is much difficulty in "realising," as the Americans say; all is so like being in a dream or at a play, that one scarcely can believe it to be actually taking place, and true. The man of the note-book and the artist almost forget that there is nothing to eat; meanwhile all this food for the mind and portfolio, all this local colour and oddness, is lost upon your Spanish companion, if he be one of the better cla.s.ses: he is ashamed, where you are enchanted; he blushes at the sad want of civilization, clean table-cloth, and beefsteaks, and perhaps he is right: at all events, while you are raving about the Goths, Moors, and this lifting up the curtain of two thousand years ago, he is thinking of Mivart's; and when you quote Martial, he and the ventero set you down as talking nonsense, and stark staring mad; nay, a Spanish gentleman is often affronted, and suspects, from the impossibility to him, that such things can be objects of real admiration, that you are laughing at him in your sleeve, and considering his country as Roman, African, or in a word, as un-European, which is what he particularly dislikes and resents.

These _ventas_ have from time immemorial been the subject of jests and pleasantries to Spanish and foreign wits. Quevedo and Cervantes indulge in endless diatribes against the roguery of the masters, and the misery of the accommodations, while Gongora compares them to Noah's ark; and in truth they do contain a variety of animals, from the big to the _small_, and more than a pair, of more than one kind of the latter. The word _venta_ is derived from the Latin _vendendo_, on the lucus a _non_ lucendo principle of etymology, because provisions are _not_ sold in it to travellers: old Covarrubias explains this mode of dealing as consisting "especially in _selling_ a cat for a hare," which indeed was and is so usual a venta practice, that _venderlo a uno gato por liebre_ has become in common Spanish parlance to be equivalent to _doing_ or taking one in. The natives do not dislike the feline tribe when well stewed: no cat was safe in the Alhambra, the galley-slaves bagged her in a second. This _venta_ trait of Iberian gastronomy did not escape the compiler of Gil Blas.

[Sidenote: RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.]

Be that as it may, a _venta_, strictly speaking, is an isolated country inn, or house of reception on the road, and, if it be not one of physical entertainment, it is at least one of moral, and accordingly figures in prominent characters in all the personal narratives and travels in Spain; it sharpens the wit of both hungry cooks and lively authors, and ingenii largitor _venter_ is as old as Juvenal. Many of these _ventas_ have been built on a large scale by the n.o.blemen or convent brethren to whom the village or adjoining territory belonged, and some have at a distance quite the air of a gentleman's mansion.

Their walls, towers, and often elegant elevations glitter in the sun, gay and promising, while all within is dark, dirty, and dilapidated, and no better than a whitened sepulchre. The ground floor is a sort of common room for men and beasts; the portion appropriated to the stables is often arched over, and is very imperfectly lighted to keep it cool, so that even by day the eye has some difficulty at first in making out the details. The ranges of mangers are fixed round the walls, and the harness of the different animals suspended on the pillars which support the arches; a wide door, always open to the road, leads into this great stable; a small s.p.a.ce in the interior is generally left uninc.u.mbered, into which the traveller enters on foot or on horseback; no one greets him; no obsequious landlord, bustling waiter, or simpering chambermaid takes any notice of his arrival: the _ventero_ sits in the sun smoking, while his wife continues her uninterrupted _cha.s.se_ for "small deer" in the thick covers of her daughters' hair; nor does the guest pay much attention to them; he proceeds to a gibbous water-jar, which is always set up in a visible place, dips in with the ladle, or takes from the shelf in the wall an _alcarraza_ of cold water; refreshes his baked clay, refills it, and replaces it in its hole on the _taller_, which resembles the decanter stands in a butler's pantry: he then proceeds, unaided by ostler or boots, to select a stall for his beast,--unsaddles and unloads, and in due time applies to the _ventero_ for fodder; the difference of whose cool reception contrasts with the eager welcome which awaits the traveller at bedtime: his arrival is a G.o.dsend to the creeping tribe, who, like the _ventero_, have no regular larder; it is not upstairs that he eats, but where _he_ is eaten like Polonius; the walls are frequently stained with the marks of nocturnal combats, of those internecine, truly Spanish _guerrillas_, which are waged without an Elliot treaty, against enemies who, if not exterminated, murder sleep. Were these fleas and French ladybirds unanimous, they would eat up a Goliath; but fortunately, like other Spaniards, they never act together, and are consequently conquered and slaughtered in detail; hence the proverbial expression for great mortality among men, _mueren como chinches_.

[Sidenote: ARRANGEMENT OF THE VENTA.]

Having first provided for the wants and comforts of his beast, for "the master's eye fattens the horse," the traveller begins to think of himself. One, and the greater side of the building, is destined to the cattle, the other to their owners. Immediately opposite the public entrance is the staircase that leads to the upper part of the building, which is dedicated to the lodgment of fodder, fowls, vermin, and the better cla.s.s of travellers. The arrangement of the larger cla.s.s of _posadas_ and _ventas_ is laid out on the plan of a convent, and is well calculated to lodge the greatest number of inmates in the smallest s.p.a.ce. The ingress and egress are facilitated by a long corridor, into which the doors of the separate rooms open; these are called "_cuartos_," whence our word "quarters" may be derived. There is seldom any furniture in them; whatever is wanted, is or is not to be had of the host from some lock-up store. A rigid puritan will be much distressed for the lack of any artificial contrivance to hold water; the best toilette on these occasions is a river's bank, but rivers in unvisited interiors of the Castiles are often rarer even than water-basins. It is, however, no use to draw nets in streams where there are no fish, nor to expect to find conveniences which no one else ever asks for, and those articles which seem to the foreigner to be of the commonest and daily necessity, are unknown to the natives. However, as there are no carpets to be spoiled, and cold water retains its properties although brought up in a horse-bucket or in the cook's bra.s.s cauldron, ablutions, as the alb.u.ms express it, can be performed. What a school, after all, a _venta_ is to the slaves of comforts, and without how many absolute essentials do they manage to get on, and happily! What lessons are taught of good-humoured patience, and that British sailor characteristic of making the best of every occurrence, and deeming any port a good one in a storm! Complaint is of no use; if you tell the landlord that his wine is more sour than his vinegar, he will gravely reply, "_Senor_, that cannot be, for both came out of the same cask."

[Sidenote: VENTA GARLIC.]

The portion of the ground-floor which is divided by the public entrance from the stables, is dedicated to the kitchen and accommodation of the travellers. The kitchen consists of a huge open range, generally on the floor, the _ollas_ pots and culinary vessels being placed against the fire arranged in circles, as described by Martial, "multa villica quem coronat _olla_," who, as a good Spaniard would do to this day, after thirty-five years' absence at Rome, writes, after his return to Spain, to his friend Juvenal a full account of the real comforts that he once more enjoys in his best-beloved patria, and which remind us of the domestic details in the opening chapter of Don Quixote. These rows of pipkins are kept up by round stones called "_sesos_," _brains_; above is a high, wide chimney, which is armed with iron-work for suspending pots of a large size; sometimes there are a few stoves of masonry, but more frequently they are only the portable ones of the East. Around the blackened walls are arranged pots and pipkins, gridirons and frying-pans, which hang in rows, like tadpoles of all sizes, to accommodate large or small parties, and the more the better; it is a good sign, "_en casa llena, p.r.o.nto se guisa cena_." Supper is then sooner ready.

The vicinity of the kitchen fire being the warmest spot, and the nearest to the flesh-pot, is the _querencia_, the favourite "resort" of the muleteers and travelling bagsmen, especially when cold, wet, and hungry.

The first come are the best served, says the proverb, in the matters of soup and love. The earliest arrivals take the cosiest corner seats near the fire, and secure the promptest non-attendance; for the better cla.s.s of guests there is sometimes a "private apartment," or the boudoir of the _ventera_, which is made over to those who bring courtesy in their mouths, and seem to have cash in their pockets; but these out-of-the way curiosities of comfort do not always suit either author or artist, and the social kitchen is preferable to solitary state. When a stranger enters into it, if he salutes the company, "My lords and knights, do not let your graces molest yourselves," or courteously indicates his desire to treat them with respect, they will a.s.suredly more than return the compliment, and as good breeding is instinctive in the Spaniard, will rise and insist on his taking the best and highest seat. Greater, indeed, is their reward and satisfaction, if they discover that the invited one can talk to them in their own lingo, and understands their feelings by circulating _his_ cigars and wine _bota_ among them.

At the side of the kitchen is a den of a room, into which the _ventero_ keeps stowed away that stock of raw materials which forms the foundation of the national cuisine, and in which garlic plays the first fiddle. The very name, like that of monk, is enough to give offence to most English.

The evil consists, however, in the abuse, not in the use: from the quant.i.ty eaten in all southern countries, where it is considered to be fragrant, palatable, stomachic, and invigorating, we must a.s.sume that it is suited by nature to local tastes and const.i.tutions. Wherever any particular herb grows, there lives the a.s.s who is to eat it. "_Donde crece la escoba, nace el asno que la roya._" Nor is garlic necessarily either a poison or a source of baseness; for Henry IV. was no sooner born, than his lips were rubbed with a clove of it by his grandfather, after the revered old custom of Bearn.

[Sidenote: DINNERS IN THE VENTA.]

Bread, wine, and raw garlic, says the proverb, make a young man go briskly, _Pan, vino, y ajo crudo, hacen andar al mozo agudo_. The better cla.s.ses turn up their noses at this odoriferous delicacy of the lower cla.s.ses, which was forbidden per statute by Alonzo XI. to his knights of _La Banda_; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be moderate in this food, as not becoming to a governor: with even such personages however it is a struggle, and one of the greatest sacrifices to the altar of civilization and _les convenances_. To give Spanish garlic its due, it must be said that, when administered by a judicious hand (for, like prussic acid, all depends on the quant.i.ty), it is far milder than the English. Spanish garlic and onions degenerate after three years'

planting when transplanted into England. They gain in pungency and smell, just as English foxhounds, when drafted into Spain, lose their strength and scent in the third generation. A clove of garlic is called _un diente_, a tooth. Those who dislike the piquant vegetable must place a sentinel over the cook of the venta while she is putting into her cauldron the ingredients of his supper, or Avicenna will not save him; for if G.o.d sends meats, and here they are a G.o.dsend, the evil one provides the cooks of the venta, who certainly do bedevil many things.

[Sidenote: RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.]

Thrice happy, then, the man blessed with a provident servant who has foraged on the road, and comes prepared with cates on which no Castilian Canidia has breathed; while they are stewing he may, if he be a poet, rival those sonnets made in Don Quixote on Sancho's a.s.s, saddle-bags, and sapient attention to their provend, "_su cuerda providencia_." The odour and good tidings of the arrival of unusual delicacies soon spread far and wide in the village, and generally attract the _Cura_, who loves to hear something new, and does not dislike savoury food: the quality of a Spaniard's temperance, like that of his mercy, is strained; his poverty and not his will consents to more and other fastings than to those enjoined by the church; hunger, the sauce of Saint Bernard, is one of the few wants which is not experienced in a Spanish venta. Our practice in one was to invite the curate, by begging him to bless the pot-luck, to which he did ample justice, and more than repaid for its visible diminution by good fellows.h.i.+p, local information, and the credit reflected on the stranger in the eyes of the natives, by beholding him thus patronised by their pastor and master. It is not to be denied in the case of a stew of partridges, that deep sighs and exclamations _que rico!_ "how rich!" escape the envious lips of his hungry flock when they behold and whiff the odoriferous dish as it smokes past them like a railway locomotive.

Nor, it must be said, was all this hospitality on one side; it has more than once befallen us in the rude _ventas_ of the Salamanca district, that the silver-haired _cura_, whose living barely furnished the means whereby to live, on hearing the simple fact that an Englishman was arrived, has come down to offer his house and fare. Such, or indeed any Spaniard's invitation is not to be accepted by those who value liberty of action or time; seat rather the good man at the head of the _venta_ board, and regale him with your best cigar, he will tell you of _El gran Lor_--the great Lord--the Cid of England; he will recount the Duke's victories, and dwell on the good faith, mercy, and justice of our brave soldiers, as he will execrate the cruelty, rapacity, and perfidy of those who fled before their gleaming bayonets.

But, to return to first arrival at _ventas_, whether saddle-bag or stomach be empty or full, the _ventero_ when you enter remains unmoved and imperturbable, as if he never had had an appet.i.te, or had lost it, or had dined. Not that his genus ever are seen eating except when invited to a guest's stew; air, the economical ration of the chameleon, seems to be his habitual sustenance, and still more as to his wife and womankind, who never will sit and eat even with the stranger; nay, in humbler Spanish families they seem to dine with the cat in some corner, and on sc.r.a.ps; this is a remnant of the Roman and Moorish treatment of women as inferiors. Their lord and husband, the innkeeper, cannot conceive why foreigners on their arrival are always so impatient, and is equally surprised at their inordinate appet.i.te; an English landlord's first question "Will you not like to take some refreshment?" is the very last which he would think of putting; sometimes by giving him a cigar, by coaxing his wife, flattering his daughter, and caressing Maritornes, you may get a couple of his _pollos_ or fowls, which run about the ground-floor, picking up anything, and ready to be picked up themselves and dressed.

[Sidenote: VENTA EATING.]

All the operations of cookery and eating, of killing, sousing in boiling water, plucking, et caetera, all preparatory as well as final, go on in this open kitchen. They are carried out by the ventera and her daughters or maids, or by some crabbed, smoke-dried, shrivelled old she-cat, that is, or at least is called, the "_tia_," "my aunt," and who is the subject of the good-humoured remarks of the courteous and hungry traveller before dinner, and of his full stomach jests afterwards. The a.s.sembled parties crowd round the fire, watching and a.s.sisting each at their own savoury messes, "_Un ojo a la sarten, y otro a la gata_"--"One eye to the pan, the other to the real cat," whose very existence in a _venta_, and among the pots, is a miracle; by the way, the naturalist will observe that their ears and tails are almost always cropped closely to the stumps. All and each of the travellers, when their respective stews are ready, form cl.u.s.ters and groups round the frying-pan, which is moved from the fire hot and smoking, and placed on a low table or block of wood before them, or the unctuous contents are emptied into a huge earthen reddish dish, which in form and colour is the precise _paropsis_, the food platter, described by Martial and by other ancient authors. Chairs are a luxury; the lower cla.s.ses sit on the ground as in the East, or on low stools, and fall to in a most Oriental manner, with an un-European ignorance of forks;[8] for which they subst.i.tute a short wooden or horn spoon, or dip their bread into the dish, or fish up morsels with their long pointed knives. They eat copiously, but with gravity--with appet.i.te, but without greediness; for none of any nation, as a ma.s.s, are better bred or mannered than the lower cla.s.ses of Spaniards.

[Sidenote: VENTA EATING.]

They are very pressing in their invitations whenever any eating is going on. No Spaniard or Spaniards, however humble their cla.s.s or fare, ever allow any one to come near or pa.s.s them when eating, without inviting him to partake. "_Guste usted comer?_" "Will your grace be pleased to dine?" No traveller should ever omit to go through this courtesy whenever any Spaniards, high or low, approach him when at any meal, especially if taking it out of doors, which often happens in these journeyings; nor is it altogether an empty form; all cla.s.ses consider it a compliment if a stranger, and especially an Englishman, will condescend to share their dinner. In the smaller towns, those invited by English will often partake, even the better cla.s.ses, and who have already dined; they think it civil to accept, and rude to refuse the invitation, and have no objection to eating any given _good_ thing, which is the exception to their ordinary frugal habits: all this is quite Arabian. The Spaniards seldom accept the invitation at once; they expect to be urged by an obsequious host, in order to appear to do a gentle violence to their stomachs by eating to oblige _him_. The angels declined Lot's offered hospitalities until they were "pressed _greatly_." Travellers in Spain must not forget this still existing Oriental trait; for if they do not greatly press their offer, they are understood as meaning it to be a mere empty compliment. We have known Spaniards who have called with an intention of staying dinner, go away, because this ceremony was not gone through according to their punctilious notions, to which our off-hand manners are diametrically opposed. Hospitality in a hungry inn-less land becomes, as in the East, a sacred duty; if a man eats all the provender by himself, he cannot expect to have many friends. Generally speaking, the offer is not accepted; it is always declined with the same courtesy which prompts the invitation. "_Muchas gracias, buen provecho le haga a usted_," "Many thanks--much good may it do your grace," an answer which is a.n.a.logous to the _prosit_ of Italian peasants after eating or sneezing. These customs, both of inviting and declining, tally exactly, and even to the expressions used among the Arabs to this day. Every pa.s.ser-by is invited by Orientals--"_Bismillah ya seedee_," which means both a grace and invitation--"In the name of G.o.d, sir, (_i.e._) will you dine with us?"

or "_Tafud'-dal_," "Do me the favour to partake of this repast." Those who decline reply, "_Henee an_," "May it benefit."

[Sidenote: AN EVENING AT A VENTA.]

[Sidenote: HONESTY AND ANTIQUITY IN A VENTA.]

Supper, which, as with the ancients, is their princ.i.p.al meal, is seasoned with copious draughts of the wine of the country, drunk out of a jug or _bota_ which we have already described, for gla.s.ses do not abound; after it is done, cigars are lighted, the rude seats are drawn closer to the fire, stories are told, princ.i.p.ally on robber or love events, the latter of which are by far the truest. Jokes are given and taken; laughter, inextinguishable as that of Homer's G.o.ds, forms the chorus of conversation, especially after good eating or drinking, to which it is the best dessert. In due time songs are sung, a guitar is strummed, for some black-whiskered Figaro is sure to have heard of the "arrival," and steals down from the pure love of harmony and charms of a cigar; then flock in peasants of both s.e.xes, dancing is set on foot, the fatigues of the day are forgotten, and the catching sympathy of mirth extending to all, is prolonged until far into the night; during which, as they take a long siesta in the day, all are as wakeful as owls, and worse caterwaulers than cats; to describe the scene baffles the art of pen or pencil. The roars, the dust, the want of everything in these low-cla.s.sed ventas, are emblems of the nothingness of Spanish life--a jest. One by one the company drops off; the better cla.s.ses go up stairs, the humbler and vast majority make up their bed on the ground, near their animals, and like them, full of food and free from care, fall instantly asleep in spite of the noise and discomfort by which they are surrounded. This counterfeit of death is more equalizing, as Don Quixote says, than death itself, for an honest Spanish muleteer stretched on his hard pallet sleeps sounder than many an uneasy trickster head that wears another's crown. "Sleep," says Sancho, "covers one over like a cloak,"

and a cloak or its cognate mantle forms the best part of their wardrobe by day, and their bed furniture by night. The earth is now, as it was to the Iberians, the national bed; nay, the Spanish word which expresses that commodity, _cama_, is derived from the Greek ?aa?. Thus they are lodged on the ground floor, and thereby escape the three cla.s.ses of little animals which, like the inseparable Graces, are always to be found in fine climates in the wholesale, and in Spanish _ventas_ in the retail. Their pillow is composed either of their pack-saddles or saddle-bags; their sleep is short, but profound. Long before daylight all are in motion; "they _take up_ their bed," the animals are fed, harnessed, and laden, and the heaviest sleepers awakened: there is little morning toilette, no time or soap is lost by biped or quadruped in the processes of grooming or lavation: both carry their wardrobes on their back, and trust to the shower and the sun to cleanse and bleach; their moderate accounts are paid, salutations or execrations (generally the latter), according to the length of the bills, pa.s.s between them and their landlords, and another day of toil begins. Our faithful and trustworthy squire seldom failed for a couple of hours after leaving the _venta_ to pour forth an eloquent stream of oaths, invectives, and lamentations at the dearness of inns, the rascality of their keepers in general, and of the host of the preceding night in particular, although probably a couple of dollars had cleared the account for a couple of men and animals, and he himself had divided the extra-extortion with the honest _ventero_.

These Spanish venta scenes vary every day and night, as a new set of actors make their first and last appearance before the traveller: of one thing there can be no mistake, he has got out of England, and the present year of our Lord. Their undeniable smack of antiquity gives them a relish, a _borracha_, which is unknown in Great Britain, where all is fused and modernized down to last Sat.u.r.day night; here alone can you see and study those manners and events which must have occurred on the same sites when Hannibal and Scipio were last there, as it would be very easy to work out from the cla.s.sical authors. We would just suggest a comparison between the arrangement of the Spanish country _venta_ with that of the Roman inn now uncovered at the entrance of Pompeii, and its exact counterpart, the modern "_osteria_," in the same district of Naples. In the Mus...o...b..rbonico will be found types of most of the utensils now used in Spain, while the Oriental and most ancient style of cuisine is equally easy to be identified with the notices left us in the cookery books of antiquity. The same may be said of the tambourines, castanets, songs, and dances,--in a word, of everything; and, indeed, when all are hushed in sleep, and stretched like corpses amid their beasts, the Valencians especially, in their sandals and kilts, in their mantas, and in and on their rush-baskets and mattings, we feel that Strabo must have beheld the old Iberians exactly in the same costume and position, when he told us what we see now to be true, t? p?e?? e? sa????, e? ???

pe? ?a? st?ad????t??s?.

[Sidenote: THE VENTORILLO.]

The "_ventorrillo_" is a lower cla.s.s of _venta_--for there is a deeper bathos; it is the German _kneipe_ or hedge ale-house, and is often nothing more than a mere hut, run up with reeds or branches of trees by the road-side, at which water, bad wine, and brandy, "_aguardiente_,"

tooth-water, are to be sold. The latter is always detestable, raw, and disflavoured with aniseed, and turns white in water like Eau de Cologne, not that the natives ever expose it to such a trial. These "_ventorillos_" are at best suspicious places, and the haunts of the spies of regular robbers, or of skulking footpads when there are any, who lurk inside with the proprietress; she herself generally might sit as a model for Hecate, or for one of the witches in Shakspere over their cauldron; her attendant imps are, however, sufficiently interesting personages to form a chapter by themselves.

[Sidenote: SPANISH ROBBERS.]

CHAPTER XVI.

Spanish Robbers--A Robber Adventure--Guardias Civiles--Exaggerated Accounts--Cross of the Murdered--Idle Robber Tales--French Bandittiphobia--Robber History--Guerrilleros--Smugglers--Jose Maria--Robbers of the First Cla.s.s--The Ratero--Miguelites--Escorts and Escopeteros--Pa.s.ses, Protections, and Talismans--Execution of a Robber.

An _olla_ without bacon would scarcely be less insipid than a volume on Spain without banditti; the stimulant is not less necessary for the established taste of the home-market, than brandy is for pale sherries neat as imported. In the mean time, while the timid hesitate to put their heads into this supposed den of thieves as much as into a house that is haunted, those who are not scared by shadows, and do not share in the fears of c.o.c.kney critics and delicate writers in satin-paper alb.u.ms, but adventure boldly into the hornet's nest, come back in a firm belief of the non-existence of the robber genus. In Spain, that _pays de l'imprevu_, this unexpected absence of personages who render roads uncomfortable, is one of the many and not disagreeable surprises, which await those who prefer to judge of a country by going there themselves, rather than to put implicit faith in the foregone conclusions and stereotyped prejudices of those who have not, although they do sit in judgment on those who have, and decide "without a view." This very summer, some dozen and more friends of ours have made tours in various parts of the Peninsula, driving and riding unarmed and unescorted through localities of former suspicion, without having the good luck of meeting even with the ghost of a departed robber; in truth and fact, we cannot but remember that such things as monks and banditti were, although they must be spoken of rather in the past than in the present tense.

[Sidenote: A ROBBER ADVENTURE.]

The actual security of the Spanish highways is due to the _Moderados_, as the French party and imitators of the _juste milieu_ are called, and at the head of whom may be placed _Senor Martinez de la Rosa_. He, indeed, is a moderate in poetry as well as politics, and a rare specimen of that sublime of mediocrity which, according to Horace, neither men, G.o.ds, nor booksellers can tolerate; his reputation as an author and statesman--alas! poor Cervantes and Cisneros--proves too truly the present effeteness of Spain. Her pen and her sword are blunted, her laurels are sear, and her womb is barren; but, among the blind, he who has one eye is king.

This dramatist, in the May of 1833, was summoned from his exile at Granada to Madrid by the suspicious Calomarde. The mail in which he travelled was stopped by robbers about ten o'clock of a wet night near Almuradiel;--the _guard_, at the first notice, throwing himself on his belly, with his face in the mud, in imitation of the postilions, who pay great respect to the gentlemen of the road. The pa.s.sengers consisted of himself, a German artist, and an English friend of ours now in London, and who, having given up his well-garnished purse at once with great good-humour, was most courteously treated by the well-satisfied recipients: not so the Deutscher, on whom they were about to do personal violence in revenge for a scanty scrip, had not his profession been explained by our friend, by whose interference he was let off.

Meanwhile, the _Don_ was hiding his watch in the carriage lining, which he cut open, and was concealing his few dollars, the existence of which when questioned he stoutly denied. They, however, re-appeared under threats of the bastinado, which were all but inflicted. The pa.s.sengers were then permitted to depart in peace, the leader of their spoilers having first shaken hands with our informant, and wished him a pleasant journey: "May your grace go with G.o.d and without novelty;" adding, "You are a _caballero_, a gentleman, as all the English are; the German is a _pobrecito_, a poor devil; the Spaniard is an _embustero_, a regular swindler." This latter gentleman, thus hardly delineated by his Lavater countryman, has since more than gotten back his cash, having risen to be prime minister to Christina, and humble and devoted servant of Louis-Philippe, _cosas de Espana_.

[Sidenote: GUARDIAS CIVILES.]