Spanish Highways and Byways Part 15

This _Calle de Toledo_, where Isidro dug several of his medicinal wells, is always gay with arcades and booths and drapers' shops; but now, during the _Romeria_, it is a veritable curbstone market, where oranges, sashes, brooms, mantles, picture frames, saucepans, fiddles, mantillas, china, jackets, umbrellas, fans, dolls, bird-cages, paintings of saints, and photographs of ballet dancers are all cried and exhibited, hawked and held under nose, in one continuous tumult.

As we approach the bare ma.s.s of masonry known as the Gate of Toledo, we cast, for all our festival mood, a clouded glance in the direction of the barbarous slaughter-houses of Madrid. Here the stronger beasts are blinded by the thrust of darts, and also hamstrung, to render them helpless under the deliberate butchery of their tormentors, who often amuse themselves by a little bull-fight practice with the agonized creatures before striking the final blow--a place of such atrocious cruelties that even the seasoned nerves of an Austrian surgeon recently visiting it gave way, and he fainted as he looked. There is work for San Isidro here.

The jam of equipages on the Bridge of Toledo gives us abundant time to observe the statue of the Holy Peasant, in a stone niche, lifting his baby from the well, and the companion statue of Mary of the Skull. And there is the Manzanares to look at, that sandy channel along which dribble a few threads of water--threads that the washerwomen of Madrid seek after like veins of silver. Small boys are wading from one bank to the other, hardly troubling themselves to roll up their trousers.

It is said that Philip IV, surveying his pompous bridge across the Manzanares, was wickedly advised by one of his courtiers to sell the bridge or else buy a river. It is a curious bit of irony to hold the festival of the Water Saint beside a river bed almost as dry as his bones.

But the crowd has now become so mad and merry that it distracts attention alike from architecture and physical geography. Will all the dexterity of foot-police and mounted guards ever succeed in disentangling this snarl of equipages? Who cares? Everybody is laughing. Everybody, too, is helping, so far as lungs can help. A daring Aragonese, with a blue and white checked handkerchief knotted about his head and a scarlet blanket over his shoulders, tries to dash across the bridge and rejoin his screaming children. He stumbles before a jovial omnibus, whose four horses, adorned with beribboned straw hats, gaze coyly out from under the torn brims like so many metamorphosed Maud Mullers. A distant guard roars a warning. The crowd bellows in sympathy. A liveried coachman rears his spirited pair of bays. A c.o.c.k-hatted gypsy, with half his tribe packed into his cart, tries to follow suit, and tugs savagely at the stubborn mouths of mules whose heads are liberally festooned with red and green ta.s.sels.

In front of these safely pa.s.ses the Aragonese, only to bring up against the great wheel of a picnic wagon, whose occupants, mostly senoritas in the sunrise Philippine shawls, thrust out their pretty heads, all crowned with flowers instead of hats, and rain down saucy salutations. The crowd chimes in with every variety of voluble impudence. He catches at the long gold fringe of the nearest shawl, saves himself from falling at the price of a shriek of wrath from the senorita, plunges desperately on, is struck by a cab horse, the poor beast being half blinded by the tickling plumes that droop over eyes and nose, and amid volleys of ridicule and encouragement reels to the shelter of the sidewalk. But a very precarious shelter it is, so narrow that the lads are positively obliged to fling their arms about the la.s.ses to hold the fluttering skirts back from peril of wheels and hoofs. Everywhere what audacity, what fun, what color, and what noise!

Troops on troops of foot travellers, usually in family groups, and often stained with the dust of an all-day tramp! The wives generally carry the hampers, and the husbands sometimes shoulder the babies.

Squads of young fellows frolic along, each with his supply of provisions tied up in a gaudy handkerchief. The closer the nudging the better they like it; a slap from a girlish hand is almost as good as a kiss. Isidro knew all about it in his day. But this clownish jollity grows rougher and rougher, and the crack and sting from a coachman's whip tempt a reply with the pilgrim's staff. The guards, hoa.r.s.e and purple, wipe their dripping brows. It is early afternoon yet, too, and the larking and license are as nothing to what may be expected before midnight.

It is a little better when, at last, the bridge is left behind.

Turning to the northwest, the dusty road runs on beside the river and beneath the bluffs lined with rowdyish folk, who shout down greetings to their acquaintances and compliments to the ladies, toward the _ermita_. A certain Juan de Vargas, riding over this same route one day, lifted his eyes to the uplands to see how his farm-hand, Isidro, was getting on with the ploughing. Blessed Isidro! Before and after went two stalwart young angels, still in s.h.i.+ning white, each driving a celestial yoke of oxen.

Times have changed. The sight that greets our eyes is emphatically human--a great country fair, a pandemonium of rude, good-natured revelry. The beggars who have been chasing the carriage, the cripples outstripping the rest, thrust withered arms, ulcerous legs, and all manner of profitable deformities into our very faces as we alight, even clutching at the coins with which we pay the coachman. We make our way, as best we can in the rough press, between two rows of booths toward the church. There is the usual Spanish variety of penny toys on sale--b.a.l.l.s, baskets, whips, kites, jumping-jacks, balloons, and every other conceivable trifle admitting of the colors red and yellow. But the great traffic is in those articles especially consecrate to San Isidro--frosted cakes, probably made after the recipe of _Maria de la Cabeza_, clay vessels of every shape and size for carrying away the healing waters, and, first and foremost, _pitos_, or whistles. The priests would have us believe that San Isidro was forever droning psalms, but ploughmen know a ploughman's music, and the sacred whistles lead the sales in the _Romeria_. It is impiety not to purchase at least one of these, and the more devout you are, the more _pitos_ will you buy. The Infanta Isabel, aunt of his Little Majesty, fills her emblazoned coach every year with these shrill pipes in all their variety of queer disguises--fans, birds, puffing grotesques, and, above all, paper flowers. He is no lover worth the having who does not bring his sweetheart a San Isidro rose with a _pito_ for a stem. The ear-torture of an immense fair-ground delighting in an infinity of whistles may be left to the sympathetic imagination. We cling to the memory of Burns, and bear for his bonny sake what we could hardly endure for any such sham laborer as Isidro.

The hearing is not the only sense to do penance in this pilgrimage.

The Water Saint has never thought to work a miracle of cleanliness upon his peasant votaries, and the smell that bursts out upon us from the opening doors of the church might put us to flight, were flight still possible. But, caught in the human current, we are swept on into the gilded, candle-lighted, foul-aired oratory, with its effigies of Santo Labrador and Santa Labradora. All day long the imperious ringing of the bell at the shortest of intervals has been calling one company of the faithful after another up the bare brown hill to that unventilated temple. When there is no squeezing room left for even a dwarf from the pygmy show, the doors are closed, the bell is silenced, and the rustics are marshalled in rapid procession before the altar, where they pay a penny each, receive a cheap print of San Isidro, and kiss the mysterious, gla.s.s-cased relic which a businesslike young ecclesiastic touches hastily to their lips. The frank sound of the kissing within is accompanied by the tooting of _pitos_ without. We stand at one side, looking at the priests and wondering how their consciences are put together, but half ashamed to watch with heretic eyes the tears of joy, the fervors of prayer, the ecstasies of faith, that are to be seen in many of these simple, pa.s.sionate faces filing by. Here comes a little girl treading as if on air and clasping her picture of the saint to her lips, brows, and heart with such abandon of delighted adoration as one must go to Spain to see.

Released from the Hermitage, we fill our lungs with sweeter breath, give skirts a vigorous shake in the vain hope that we may not carry away too many deserters from the insect retinue of our recent a.s.sociates, and turn down toward the river. Our short cut leads us among heaps and heaps of bales packed with the graceful clay jars. How many an anxious mother will trudge her weary miles across this dry Castilian steppe, bearing with all her other burdens a _botija_ of the healing water to some little sufferer at home! Wonderful water, warranted to make whole the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and put to rout all ills that flesh is heir to, especially fevers, tumors, erysipelas, paralysis, and consumption! It is as potent to-day as when it first gushed from the earth at the bidding of the young Isidro, for did it not work a notable cure, as late as 1884, on the Infanta Dona Paz de Bourbon, sister of Alphonso XII?

We linger a few minutes at the edge of the bluff, looking down upon the animated scene below, from which rises the hum as of an exaggerated beehive. The long green stretch of valley meadow is one wave of restless color. Thickly dotted with booths for refreshment, for sale of the San Isidro wares, for penny shows, farces, wax figures, and all manner of cheap entertainments, it still has s.p.a.ce for dancers, wrestlers, _pelota_ players, for swings, stilts, and merry-go-rounds, and, above all, for the mult.i.tude of promenaders, sleepers, and feasters. The bright May suns.h.i.+ne gleams and dazzles on the soldiers' helmets, flashes out all the hues and tints of the varied costumes, and even lends a grace to the brown patches on the browner tents. The tossing of limbs in the wild, free dances, the flutter of the red and yellow flags, the picturesque grouping on the gra.s.s of families, complete to dog and donkey, around the platter of homely fare and the skin bottle of wine--all this makes a panorama on which one would gladly gaze for hours.

Going down into the heart of the festivity, the interest still grows.

We enter one of the cleanest _cantinas_ and invest a _peseta_ in a bottle of sarsaparilla, not for our own drinking, having seen the water in which the gla.s.ses are washed, but as a protection against the horde of beggars and the gypsy fortune tellers. It works like a charm.

As we respond to the whining appeals with the civilities of social greeting and an offered gla.s.s of our innocent beverage, the ragged pet.i.tioners are straightway transformed into ladies and gentlemen.

They draw themselves erect, quaff the cup to our long life and happiness, discuss in self-respecting tones the weather and the fete, and then, without another hint of solicitation, bid us courteous farewells. We mean to take out a patent on the sarsaparilla treatment of Spanish mendicancy.

The tent itself is, like the rest, shabby and tumbledown, furnished with rough tables and benches, where cadets are playing dominos as they drink, and two country sweethearts are delectably eating what appears to be a sardine omelette off the same cracked plate. A clumsy lantern hangs overhead, racks of bottles are fastened up along the canvas walls, and all about the trampled earth floor stand water jars, great bowls of greens, and baskets of the crusty Spanish bread. A pale young Madrileno drops in for a gla.s.s of wine, but before indulging has the shy little rustic who serves him take a sip, languidly begging her, "Do me the favor to sweeten my drink." The yellow cigarette-stains show on his white fingers as he pats her plump bare arm. The child, for she is scarcely more, and as brown as an acorn, responds to these amenities by giving the smiling exquisite alternate bites of her hunk of goat's-milk cheese, while her mother keeps a sharp eye on them both.

Comedy and tragedy are busy all about us. A newly arrived family plods wearily by in ludicrous procession, headed by a tall father carrying a baby and closed by a short child carrying a cat. A showy man of middle age, playing the gallant to an overdressed brunette, is suddenly confronted by his furious wife in boy's attire, so unluckily well disguised that, before recognizing her, he has replied to her rush of invective with a blow which bids fair to make one of her eyes, at least, blacker than those of her rival. Traditional ballads are trolled, popular songs are echoed from group to group, and, despite bad odors, fleas, and whistles, we are reluctant to leave. But the afternoon grows late, the _Arganda_ and _Valdepenas_ are beginning to burn in the southern blood, an occasional flourish of cudgels or of fists sends the police scurrying across the field, and, being nothing if not discreet, we pay our parting respects to San Isidro.

Coming home by way of the _Prado_ and pa.s.sing the proud shaft of yellow-brown granite that towers far above its enclosing cypress trees, as glory above death, we are reminded that this gala month has brought another _fiesta_ to Madrid. Every second of May the capital commemorates with solemn ma.s.ses, with stately civic processions, and a magnificent military review, the patriots who fell fighting in the streets on that terrible Monday of 1808, _El Dos de Mayo_, which brought to pa.s.s the war of independence. One may read of that fierce carnage in the vivid pages of Galdos or behold it in the lurid paintings of Goya. To see once is to see forever that line of French soldiery, with steady musket at shoulder, but with eyes bent on the ground, while they shoot down squad after squad of their defenceless victims. In pools of blood lie the contorted bodies, with heads and b.r.e.a.s.t.s horribly torn by crimson wounds, while of those who wait their turn to fall beside them some cover the eyes, one stupidly gnaws his hands, one kneels and wildly peers from under his s.h.a.ggy hair into the very muzzle of the gun before him, one flings back his head with a savage grin, half of fright and half of courage, one desperately strips bare his breast and in agony of horror glares upon the guns, but the most are crouching, shuddering, sinking--and all only an item in the awful cost that the Spanish people have paid for Spanish liberties. The celebration of 1899 was no less brilliant than usual, although many of the Madrid papers spoke bitterly of the shadow that the disastrous first of May must henceforth cast on the glorious Second. It is indeed gall and wormwood to all Spain that the Manila defeat so nearly coincides with the proudest day in Spanish annals.

The saint of _El Dos de Mayo_ is Saint Revolution, as democratic in one way as Saint Agriculture in another. When these two patrons of Madrid understand how to work in fellows.h.i.+p, when there comes a Government in Spain that cares chiefly to promote the welfare of the laboring people, the world may discover anew the vitality and n.o.ble quality of this long-suffering nation.

We saw the _Romeria_ once more, driving through late in the evening, when the closed booths glimmered white on the silent meadow.

"Yes, it is all a pack of lies," said a thoughtful Catholic, "but what is one to do? A man cannot believe in religion--and yet how to live without it? The more I stay away from ma.s.s the more I want and need it. Think of the comfort these peasants take with their San Isidro!"

The moonlight shone serene and beautiful on those patched, shabby tents, transforming them to silver.

XVI

THE FUNERAL OF CASTELAR

"The death of the Republic will be, for you, for us, and for all, the death of liberty. The death of liberty will be the death of the Republic, and as liberty is the only thing in the world that rises from the dead, with liberty shall rise again, in good time, the Republic."--EMILIO CASTELAR: _Inaugural Address_, 1873.

The present state of Spanish politics was amusingly expounded to me by a spirited young philosopher of Cadiz.

"In the north," he said, "the prevailing sentiment is for Don Carlos.

Nocedal is doing all he can to fan it in Andalusia, but it finds its natural home in the northern provinces. To be sure, there is San Sebastian, where the Court summers, which consequently upholds the Queen, and there are Republican groups; but the north of Spain, broadly speaking, is Carlist. The centre favors the reigning family.

Possession is a strong argument, and the royal forces hold Madrid.

Barcelona is Republican. Those Catalans are always thirsty for a fight. But the middle tract of Spain, as a whole, accepts the existing monarchy. Castilians are too gallant to strike against a woman and a child. The south is Republican. For the best part of the century Cadiz and Malaga have stood for revolution. Where was the army of Isabel II defeated? And why has the Queen never seen the Alhambra?

"But, let me tell you, these Carlists, these Royalists, these Republicans are all fools. If there is anything hopeless in this world, it's Spanish politics. All the uproar of the Revolution ended in murdering our best man and driving out our best king. For myself, I mean to work hard and marry soon, and have a little Spain in my own house that shall express my own convictions. My children shall be good Catholics, but not superst.i.tious bigots. They shall be well educated, if I have to send them to France or England for it. They shall be disciplined, but under the law of liberty. And with that I propose to be content. All my politics are to be kept under my own roof, where I can work my ideas into permanent form. I am sick of the way in which Spain boils with ideas that only destroy one another."

This Sir Oracle was two-and-twenty, with the prettiest of girlish photographs in his vest pocket, and the smallest of savings in the bank, but I remembered his words in the days of mourning for Emilio Castelar.

The ill.u.s.trious tribune, heavy-hearted with the troubles of his country, had gone to the home of friends, at a village in sunny Murcia, for the rest and comfort that nature always gave him. His almost boyish optimism, "_nino grande y grande nino_" that he was, had kept him a.s.sured of peace even after the destruction of the _Maine_, and a.s.sured of victory even after the battle of Manila. Hence the pressure of fact told on him all the more cruelly. "I die a victim of Spain's agony," he wrote in a personal letter shortly before the end, and his last article for publication, finished on the day of his death, a gloomy discussion of the outlook for the Peace Conference, contains bitter references to the national disasters and to the ravages of the "criminal troop of pirates in the Philippines."

He died on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of May, within hearing of the Mediterranean waves he loved so well, with tender faces bent over him, and the crucifix at his lips. The news of his death aroused this grief-weary nation to a fresh outburst of sorrow. Some lamented him as one of the chief orators of modern Europe, recalling his eloquence in the tempestuous times of the Revolution, when he "intoned mighty hymns in praise of liberty, democracy, and the sacred Fatherland!" Some mourned the patriot, pointing proudly to the honorable poverty in which this holder of many offices, at one time almost absolute dictator, had lived and died. Some wept for the cordial, generous, n.o.ble-hearted man, the joy of his friends and idol of his household.

His political sympathizers bewailed the loss of the Spanish apostle of democracy, the lifelong champion of liberty. And many not of his following nor of his faith felt that a towering national figure had disappeared and another glory of Spain vanished away.

The first wreath received was from a Republican club that sent the pansies of memory. Among the five hundred telegrams and cablegrams that arrived within a few hours at the country-seat where he had died was one from over seas, which read: "To Castelar: In thy death it seems as if we had lost the last treasure left to us, the voice of the Spanish race. In thy death Spain has become mute. Yet let me believe that thou respondest, 'She will speak again.'"

The coming of the body to the capital was a triumphal progress. A large escort of friends, who had made speed to Murcia from all parts of the Peninsula, accompanied it, and there were crowds at the stations, even in the mid-hours of the night, with tears, handfuls of roses, wreaths, and poems of farewell. There was often something very touching about these offerings. At one of the smaller towns a young girl hastily gathered flowers from the garden attached to the station, broke off a spray from a blossoming tree, tied these with the bright ribbon from her hair, and, clambering up, hung this simple nosegay among the costly tributes that already nearly covered the outer sides of the funeral car. In another crowded station the village priest came hurrying forward, bared his head with deepest reverence before the garlanded coach, as if before the altar, and chanted the prayers for the dead. Again, a group of workmen, allowed to enter the car, fell on their knees before the bier and prayed.

The train was met on its arrival in Madrid by an immense concourse of people. Senor Silvela and other distinguished representatives of the Government were there, church dignitaries, presidents of political societies and literary academies, but, above all, the people. It was the great, surging mult.i.tude that gave the Republican leader his grandest welcome.

This poor sh.e.l.l of Castelar, the man said to bear "the soul of a Don Quixote in the body of a Sancho Panza," lay in state through Sunday and a part of Monday in the _Palacio del Congreso_. The vestibule had been converted into a _capilla ardiente_. Ma.s.ses were chanted ceaselessly at the two candle-laden altars, the perfume from the ever increasing heaps of flowers was so oppressive that the guards had to be relieved at short intervals, and the procession of people that filed rapidly past the bier, often weeping as they went, reached out from the Morocco lions of the doorway to the _Prado_ and the Fountain of Neptune. Many of the humblest clad, waiting half the day in line, held pinks or lilies, fast withering in the sun, to drop at the feet of the people's friend. Early on Monday afternoon the doors were closed, and by half-past three the funeral cortege began to form in the _Prado_ for its four-hour march by way of the _Calle de Alcala_, _Puerta del Sol_, _Calle Mayor_, and _Cuesta de la Vega_, to the cemetery of San Isidro.

By the never failing Spanish courtesy, I was invited to see the procession from the balcony of a private house in the _Alcala_. I found my hostess, a vivacious little old lady, whose daughter had crowned her with glory and honor by marrying into the n.o.bility, much perturbed over the failure of the Queen Regent to show sympathy with the popular grief.

"There were one hundred and forty-nine wreaths sent in. The very number shows that the royal wreath was lacking. I am a Conservative, of course. Canovas was my friend, and has dined here often and often.

You see his portrait there beside that of my daughter, _la Marquesa_.

But Canovas loved Castelar, and would not, like Silvela, have grudged him the military honors of a national funeral. As if the dead were Republicans! The dead are Spaniards, and Castelar is a great Spaniard, as this tremendous throng of people proves. There were not nearly so many for Canovas, though the aristocracy made an elegant display; there were not so many for Alfonso XII, though all that Court and State and army could do was done, and the Queen rode in the splendid ebony coach in which Juana the Mad used to carry about the body of that handsome husband of hers.

"But the people know their losses. Never in my life have I seen the _Alcala_ so full as this. Silvela has had to give way, and the troops will come--at least a few of them. But not a word, not a flower, from the Queen! She sent a magnificent wreath for Canovas, and a beautiful letter to his widow. But for Castelar, her people's hero, nothing. Ah, she is not _simpatica_. She does not know her opportunities. She does not understand the art of winning love. Only a year ago she sent a wreath to the funeral of Frascuelo, the _torero_. And everybody knows how she hates the bull-fight. But if she could drop her prejudices then to be at one with the feeling of her capital, why not now? They say she has a neuralgic headache to-day. _Ay, Dios mio!_ I should think she might."

Listening to this frank chatter and watching that mighty mult.i.tude, I was reminded of one of the Andalusian _coplas_:--

"The Republic is dead and gone; Bury her out of the rain.

But see! There is never a _Panteon_ Can hold the funeral train."

And this, in turn, suggested another of those popular refrains:--

"The moon is a Republican, And the sun with open eye; The earth she is Republican, And Republican am I."

But who can understand this ever baffling Spain? After all, what was the significance of that a.s.sembled host? How far was it drawn by devotion to the man, and how far by devotion to the idea for which he stood? How far by idle curiosity, by the Spanish pa.s.sion for pomps and shows, and, above all, for a crowd, by that strange Spanish delight in _mucha gente_? So far as eye could tell, this might have been the merriest of fetes. The wide street was a sea of restless color.

Uniforms, liveries, parasols, hats, frocks, pinafores, kerchiefs, blouses, sashes, fans, flecked the suns.h.i.+ne with a thousand hues. Here loitered a messenger boy in vivid scarlet; there pa.s.sed a waiter with a silver tray gleaming on his head; here a market woman bent beneath her burden of russet sacks bursting with greens; there stood a priest in shovel hat and ca.s.sock, smelling a great red rose; here a gallant in violet cape escorted a lady flaming in saffron; there a beaming old peasant, with an azure scarf tied over his white head, threw an orange to attract the attention of a plodding porter, whose forehead was protected from the cords binding the boxes to his back by several folds of purplish carpeting.

Streets and sidewalks, balconies and windows, all were full, and everywhere such eagerness, such animation, and such stir! The children sitting on the curbstone rocked their little bodies back and forth in excitement. Young mothers danced their crying infants, and young fathers s.h.i.+fted the babies of a size or two larger from one shoulder to the other. A boy in a red cap climbed a small locust tree, from whose foliage his head peeped out like an overgrown cherry. The crowd indignantly called the attention of authority to this violation of the city laws. A glittering member of the Civil Guard sonorously ordered the culprit down. The laughing lad refused to budge, inviting this embarra.s.sed arm of the law to reach up and get him. The Guard darkly surveyed the slender stem already swaying with the boy's slight weight. The fickle crowd, whose every face seemed to be upturned toward that defiant cherry, cheered the rebel and tossed him cigarettes and matches, wherewith he proceeded to enjoy a smoke. The Guard caught a few cigarettes in mid-career, pocketed them, smiled benevolently, and walked away. The lad saucily saluted, and the mult.i.tude, suddenly impartial, pelted them both with peanuts.

Thus it was that the Madrid populace awaited the last coming of Castelar. Even when the funeral train was pa.s.sing, the crowd showed scant respect. Not half the men uncovered for the bier, although I was glad to see the cherry cap whisked off. And one picturesque gentleman stood throughout with his back to the procession, making eyes at his novia in the gallery above our own.