MA S TER NEGA TIVE NO 92-80708-7 MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT Ithlr reproductions of copyrighted material, under certain conditions specif^d in .he .^^^^^^ archives are ^"X*'°"^^y.^t^^f^^°^7?ii«*a«-*-a^^SM«M 946.01 Ed9 k». Edwardes, Ellen Charlotte Hope-, 1837- Azahar. Extracts from a journal in Spain in 1881-82. By E. C. ITope-Eclwardes ... London, 11. Bentley and son; ^etc, etc.] 1883. xii, 310 p. 19i^. 1. Spain— Descr. & trav. i. Title. Library of Congress u DP41.E26 [aSlcl] ■^^-„/.,— - — ^^, ^ ,_ ^ ^ ^_ ^ MiikMaiMMbu«dUftt«Ulflii»«LdMMlNMi^^MMMi 4—5118 FILM SIZE: ,^c»7 -^^^^ TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: /^^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: U. (JL^ IB IIB DATE FILMED: ^iJS.Z:^ INITIALS^^. RLMEDBY: RESEARC!H PUBLICATIONS, INC WOOOTrTdGE. CT 1 r Association for Information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 11 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Inches TTT 1 4 .1. T lull mil iiiiiii 2 II III rTJTT Ma 8 10 liiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil IIIIIII TTT 11 12 I T llllllllllllllll r^ 1.0 ta 1 2.8 i« 1" — 1.4 2.5 1 ^-^ 2.0 1.8 1.6 I.I 1.25 13 14 15 mm iiliiiiliiiiliiii mi MONUFPCTURED TO RUM STRNDfiRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE, INC. A^:^ %' \at-.vv»a^. ■■'»*is^-<'f-,'0^f'^s^^i^'^smisim>m3^t99ss- '^^4m WM'»<4S' A Z AH AE. EXTEACTS FROM A JOURNAL IN SPAIN IN 1881-82. V I " BY E. C. HOPE-EDWARDES, AUTHOR OP "EAU DE NIL. »» LONDON: RICHAED BENTLEY AND SON, NEW BUELINGTON STREET. SHREWSBURY: A. CHANCELLOR, 14, HIGH STREET. 1883. QAll rights reserved.) -»: -..^x — ■sc- sv - "*" V""-^'-' -.i-"%?fl (T) 00 PREFACE. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. This journal counts on the probability that a fact or impression which was new to the writer will be new to a certain number of other people, and to these we dedicate our experiences. M. Jourdain's suggestion to his master, **Je le sais, mais faites comme si je ne le savais pas," is one I have often myself been grateful to an author for following, and I do as I would be done by. The church-going and religious ceremonies seem, as I look through the book, to take up rather a large share of it; yet, except at Seville, we never tried U particularly to seek them out, and, I believe, the fact ^ is, they are so thoroughly mixed up with the daily ^ life of the people that their prominence in the book ^ is only in just proportion to the large space they fill CO O") in the social round. CO *x 48438 VI PREFACE. PREFACE. Vll Another confession and apology has lain heavily on my conscience since I began, and I feel I had better have it out with my reader before he embarks. We did not go to a bull-fight. I have taken pains to be literal and accurate in reproducing conversation and describing details, knowing that the only possible use of the book would be that it might give a photographic view of some minutiae, for which there is no room in weightier works. Only in one or two places I have taken the privilege of altering a ** local habitation or a name," when I wanted to say a little more about people than I liked to do without an incognito.; almost every one, however, is mentioned without any disguise. Every one was kind to us. We left Spain feeling very fond of its people, and only wish we could give as charming an impression of them to the world as they gave of themselves to us. I will quote in conclusion a delightful passage I met with the other day, and under cover of which I venture into print. ''A plan is required for an essay, and a plot for a novel, some unity of action for a drama, and a due subordination of parts for a \ I history ; but a book of travels may be written without plan, plot, unity, proportion, or arrangement of any sort, and into it the writer is at full liberty to cram anything or everything that he has ever heard, seen, thought, or read, on pictures, statues, churches, manners, morals, costume, national characteristics, statesmen, diplomatists, monks, nuns, modes of faith, philosophy, and gastronomy ! '* It may not be superfluous to mention that Azahar is the Spanish for orange-blossom. Netley, August, 1882. DRAMATIS PERSONS, StL. E, W. My brother. Myself. My maid. ,9- CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Arrival at Toulouse— Narbonne — Port Vendres — Descrip- tion OF Port Vendres and its Inhabitants ... PAGR CHAPTER II. A Day at Perpignan — Journey to Barcelona — A Self- satisfied American ... ... 18 CHAPTER III. Barcelona— ExPEDiTnoN to Monserrato ... • • • 22 CHAPTER IV. Tarragona — Valencia ... ••t ... oo CHAPTER V. Valencia — Ceremonies, Etc. .». ... 41 CHAPTER VI. Valencia (Continued) f •• 47 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. Valencia, 'Etc.— (Continued) ••• ••• PAGE .. 58 CHAPTER VIII. Valencia, Etc. —{Continued) ... 68 CHAPTER IX. Valencia, Etc.— (Continued) ... 79 CHAPTER X. Spanish Literature, Modern-Specimens op Verse, Etc. ... 91 CHAPTER XI. Departure from Valencia-Farewells, Etc.-Alicante ... 107 CHAPTER XII. Cordova— Adventures there ... 114 CHAPTER XIII. Cordova ••• ••• 125 CHAPTER XIV. Arrival at Malaga— Conversations about Justice in Spain —Sugar Trade .. ..• •• — •" ^^^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Malaga (Continued) — Journey to Seville CHAPTER XVI. Seville — Murillo's Centenary, Etc. CHAPTER XVII. Seville CHAPTER XVIII. Holy Week at Seville ... ••• CHAPTER XIX. Departure from Seville— Arrival at Granada ... CHAPTER XX. Granada CHAPTER XXI. Granada — Cordova to Madrid ... CHAPTER XXII. Madrid... ••• CHAPTER XXIII. Adventures at Toledo ... XI I'AGK ... 150 ... 162 ... 173 184 ... 211 ... ^^o ... ^Ot7 ... 2,51 ... 262 xu CONTKNTS. CHAPTER XXIV. Madrid — Departure from Spain ... I'AGK . 280 APPENDIX. Pepita Jimenez ... ... 294 A Z A H A R. ■*<>♦ CHAPTER I. ARRIVAL AT TOULOUSE — NARBONNE — PORT VENDRES — DESCRIPTION OF PORT VENDRES AND ITS INHABITANTS. Nov. dOth, 1881, Toulome, — This morning, when St. L looked from the window of his coupe-lit and found himself at a little place called Cap-de-Nac, not SO very far from Toulouse, he remarked that he thought he had broken the back of his journey into. Spain. Toulouse is not Spain, however, though a brilliant and cheering sun assured us we had made a long step south during the night ; and I expect the journey, though its back may be broken, will requke two more little coups de grace to finish it off. This time yesterday, at Paris, we had no idea that we should enter the country by this route. In fact, we had decided on Avignon as om- first stage, but finding all the coupe-lits on that line were en- gaged for some days to come, we resolved on this AZAHAR. less frequented one, and left at 7.40 p.m., arriving at Toulouse at eleven this morning. We have been here before, and know it to be a fine, large, busy town, but little visited, and with hotels rather behind the times ; Languedoc (of which it is the capital) being looked on by the rest of France as a little out of the stream of civilization. 2nd Dec, — We are not going on till to-morrow, and have been spending a quiet day here. I visited the market in the morning, where heaps of pome- granates and gourds told a tale of maturing hot autumns, and in the afternoon we looked at some of the wonderful old brickwork, of which there is so much here, mellowed by time into the semblance of dark red stone. The church of S. Sernin is a beautiful specimen of it. We got as far as a bridge over the Garonne, and saw near it a fine square court, with cloisters and tall towers (a former Jacobin foundation, now turned into a school and ware- houses), all of highly finished ornamental brickwork. 3rd, Narhonne, — If we had been still among the people who sing "Et je n'ai pas vu Carcasonne," we should certainly have stopped there ; but having once spent two days in seeing it, we were satisfied with a glimpse from the railroad, which passes very near the curious old town and fortress. NAKBONNE. Narbonne is only three hours and a half from Toulouse, but being now fairly in the south, we are taking things quietly. We are disappointed in the town, as we quite expected the capital of '^ Gallia Narbonensis '' to be bristling with Eoman antiquities, but did not find much to repay our somewhat cursory researches. It was occupied by the Moors, too, for some time, but there is not much trace of Arab occupation either. The Hotel de Ville is a fine build- ing ; and the cathedral, S. Just, has a beautiful, light, lofty roof of great height, a hundred and thirty feet, and a pretty approach, through an archway and cloistered walk, to a broad flight of steps. I looked for a long while at this archway, but the '^ antiquity " which most caught my eye was a little old grand- mother far up at a dormer window, with a pictu- resque high cap, and a network of wrinkles over a pink cheek, like a winter cherry. She was doing her washing in the mouth of a large dolphin, who formed the top of a water-pipe, and whom she had converted — I conclude by plugging his neck— into a neat wash- tub. When she had finished, and hung her scanty wardrobe in the window to dry, she removed the plug, the dolphin relapsed into a pipe, and the suds appeared in the street below. Sunday, 4th, Port Vendres. — We had discussed AZAHAR. long and critically what should be our next move. We were so fascinated by the wish to see the tiny republic of Andorre, on the borders of France and Spain, still governed by an independent syndic under its charter granted by Charlemagne, that even Murray's description of its one hotel by the single sweeping word *' intolerable," could hardly persuade us to give up a peep at its wild beauty, in a mountain nest inaccessible except by diligence. We even tried to find it tolerable, but failed ; and at last aban- doned the idea on account of the inappropriateness of the season for such an expedition, and lowered our ambitions to Port Vendres, seven miles from the frontier, invitingly and alliteratively described as a " primitive and pretty place," with one good inn, about four hours from here. We were to start at 4.30, but the train was forty minutes late. This seemed to strike no one but ourselves, and we found it was a very usual occurrence. It was not till after leaving Narbonne that we remembered we had never thought of asking for and tasting its celebrated honey ! We were to wait twenty minutes at Per- pignan, and naturally concluding that so long a pause implied a buffet, we calculated on dining there, and arrived very hungry about seven, to find that cafe noir, and horny pink sausages sold in slices, PERPIGNAN. were the only attainable luxuries. When the real and ideal come into collision, the latter goes to the wall. Perpignan is a most picturesque town; and we had intended to hang out of the train windows and see all we could of it in the dusk, as we left the station. Now it had become to us only a dreadful and disappointing little place, where we expected a buffet, and found only a burette; and it was not till we were well out in the country again that we stopped our flow of indignation to remark sheepishly, ''By-the-by, we quite forgot to look at Perpignan ! " We got to Port Vendres about nine, and fell ravenously upon a tough and tepid chicken, after a feeble struggle with which we went to bed. This morning was lovely, and we were aware of a certain spirit of summer about everything, more marked than on the previous days. We have been spending a mild, uneventful day. The place is seen at a glance, and makes a pretty little i)icture— a land- locked bay, which only a sharp eye would discriminate from a lake, so narrow and so enwrapped in rocks is its outlet — hills all round, some of them crowned with forts, a fringe of houses at the edge of the shore, and a fringe of shipping at the edge of the water. We are close down on the quay — you almost fancy you can AZAHAR. grasp the rigging of the nearest boat from your window. I am pleased to find we are in Eoussillon, a place which was familiar to me in early youth as the smallest bit in the puzzle map of France. M. Taine, who is great on the subject of '' arbitrary asso- ciation," might be interested to hear that I have always connected it with Eutland for that reason, instead of for the much better one that both are probably named from their red soil. Eoussillon has only belonged to France since 1659, before then it had been almost as often Spanish as French. The Hotel Durand is a half Moorish-looking house. On the first floor is a large flat roof, with a colonnade round it, which you have to cross from one part of the house to the other, and from which in front you look over a railing to the sea — only a narrow strip of quay between you and it. This flat roof is trelHsed over with vines, on wires from one upper story window to another ; and on it the Durand family seemed to spend the main part of their Sunday leisure, beginning the morning in one shady corner, and shifting their chairs with the sun as it stole across. They have been all their lives at the hotel, inheriting it from their parents. The present family consists of a husband, wife, and wife's sister; the ladies, very Spanish-looking, say PORT-VENDRES. they were born at Pertuis, a village near. They speak French as a foreign language, addressing each other '' in gibberish," W remarked, but I beUeve it to be a dialect of Catalan, as we are now so nearly in Catalonia. The husband is a slight, active gentleman, with a double eye-glass, and a good deal of cultivation ; and from him we proceeded to extract information, as we leant over the railing, and watched the passers- by on the full, busy little quay — chiefly sailors and fishermen, with dark faces and long scarlet caps, the bag-like end generally folded flat on the top of the head. The women wore peculiar caps, with large embroidered net crowns, and a smooth plain band of lace round the face. " I suppose you have seen Port Vendres grow up?" *' Certainly, we remember it only a little village ; in fact, as you see, it is still only a little town ; but it is becoming more important now since it has been made the chief starting-place for the French troops to Algeria. Two steamers go every week. We have steamers both to Algiers and to Oran ; one will start at ten to-night. The passengers will dine here before they go on board. Since the war began, of course, we have constantly had troops embarking; the passage is quicker and better than from Marseilles. The 8 AZAHAR. steamers are smaller, but they talk of beginning a new line in a few months." *' I see quantities of barrels on the quay ; are those wines of the country ? " " A great deal of it is. The wines of Eoussillon have always been celebrated. Malvoisy is one of our vins du pays ; but we have also a large trade into France, of wines from Spain, which are brought here to embark. Do you have them much in England ? I am sure they are very good when they start from here. I cannot say if they are less good when they arrive — if anything happens to them en route — at Cette, for instance " " Do you hear much of the war in Algeria ? " *' Only too much. It is not a war, it is a chasse. The Arabs lead our troops on and on into the interior, where they find little water and no provisions — that is their policy always. Algeria is a millstone round our necks ; it costs and costs for ever, and it is of no use to us. Then, we are not like you ; we do not under- stand how to manage colonies — at least our statesmen do not." '* Perhaps M. Gambetta will manage things better. What was thought about here of his appointment ? " C' What ? Madame is interested in politics ? So am I, enormously," interjected the wife's sister.) •mmmmmmmmmmmi^'mm i i m W. I m in. i» m i VIEWS ON FRENCH POLITICS. " Gambetta," said monsieur, with grave indul- gence, " may do well. I credit him with good inten- tions. It is true, that he has yet to fulfil them. But then he has long experience ; he has been ten years in diplomacy. We know him, but his ministers we do not know; he has appointed entirely new ones, and new men mean new measures. Then look at his Minister of the Interior, he is a man of only thirty-four years of age ; such youth is unheard of " Here madame interrupted to point out some ladies coming down the street with prayer-books in hand, returning from church. *' Ladies of Port Vendres ; in fact, daughters of a rival house, but not a rival — a wretched Hotel de la Poste, which no one would name with Hotel Durand." Oh, she knew them well ; but those toilettes she must avow she had not yet seen, and if I would allow her to pass she should like to inspect them closer from the balcony. This ended our conversation on politics, for next came a proces- sion of peasants, with flags and crosses. '' They are returning from saying a mass to S. Barbara ; she is the patron saint of the miners {i,e. quarrymen). Then a stalwart old woman came by, in a sort of sacking dress, striding along in a great hurry and shouldering a large axe. ** See, monsieur et madame, she is I .«^i.n4||f™«W-^^-*q!P*f^jj^i;-ijlW-.,^^i ,1 10 AZAHAR. PROS AND CONS OF PORT VENDRES. • 11 eighty years of age, and she still goes daily to cut wood in the mountains over there towards Spain." In the afternoon we sat about on the quay, went to vespers in the little church, and listened to the people talking Catalan. One old man asked us if we were taking a -passegge," and I think this was the only word I picked up. I went on fm^ther, and ex- plored some lonely little rocky bays towards the open sea; some of the rocks were very curious, hke splintered wood, of a reddish colour. I think this would be an agreeable centre for a good walker. I asked whether I could go far enough in a walk to look mto Spain, and was told, '' Cela depend du courage de madame." I was disappointed to find that the ^^ courage de madame " did not suffice to carry her beyond the tame vine-covered hills close at hand ; but I saw vistas of blue momitains beyond, one, the Canigou, with a lovely crest of peaks tipped with snow. There are no roads, they say, which are ^'carrossables," so, except an omnibus to the station, they keep no conveyances, and bad walkers must either ride mules or stay at home. The hotel, or rather inn, is wonderfully good for the kind of place ; but— there are a few buts— such as no bells, very tough meat, and one sohtary rough waiter, whom I saw zealously polishing up a plate with the flap of his waistcoat as he brought it to the table. There is a goaty flavour in the milk, and a garlicky flavour in the omelette and biftek ; but these are not capital offences. The people are exceedingly kind and civil ; and the beds are very clean, though the stairs and passages are not. Lastly, it is a delightful climate — fresh and balmy air and warm sun ; and such, I think, are the j)ros and cons of the jplace. The housemaid who '* did" my room, so far as it could be said to be done, informed me that she had only been got in to help while we were there ; and that she worked in a cork factory with twenty other girls, sorting bad corks from good. We dined this evening with the party who were just going to start for Algiers. There were several officers amongst them. My neighbour was civil (i,e, not military — but he was polite and urbane as well), and told me he had been settled ten years as a merchant at Oran, and that Oran trades extensively with Port Vendres. He said he thought peojDle might go this winter to Algeria as usual, and, if they were not told, would never find out that there was a war going on in the country. Madame has just escorted me to my room, and entertained me with much broad praise of the Eng- lish. " Ah ! it is they who are practical. When they 12 AZAHAR. take a journey, it is never without having all their renseignements — they know where they shall stop, at which hotel to descend, how long to stay ; while the French, they are always in the air; they know nothing." Luckily madame had not been present at our vacillations at Narbonne yesterday, nor knew that we had been within an ace of not *' descending" at her hotel, but of passing by Port Vendres; and I could only hope that we might not oblige her to re- arrange her opinions before she saw the last of us. ( 33 ) CHAPTEK 11. A DAY AT PERPIGNAN — JOURNEY TO BARCELONA — A SELF-SATISFIED AMERICAN. Port Vendres, Dec. 5th, 1881.— As though to punish us for over-looking Perpignan, we found we must go back there to change a circular note at the bank, as the landlord at Port Vendres could not do it for us. It seemed very simple just to run back an hour by train ; but there is not much " running " on this line, and but few trains. I could go at twelve, and, with luck, get back by three p.m., but otherwise not till eight. So I had luncheon (the two first courses were a raw artichoke and raw shell- fish) and set forth. Arrived at Perpignan, I had a mile to drive in an omnibus to the town, which is entered by a portcullis and a massive gate. It is a good-sized city, with twenty-seven thousand in- habitants ; but I had been told that it possessed only three voitures de place, and that if I saw one it would 14 AZAHAR. be wise to snap it up, to ensure getting to the bank and back to the train in time. So I hailed a fine old coach and pair with a post-boy, which was strutting about on the Place Notre Dame, where the omnibus stopped, and desired it to wait for me, while I spent the spare half-hour till the bank opened in looking about. I went to the cathedral and the exchange. The former had a fine nave and roof, and some good stained glass, and much heavy gilding in the chancel ; the latter had an open court and cloister, half Moorish, half Gothic. The bank turned out to be only five minutes' drive ; but when I reached it, it was shut — only an old clerk, wrapped in a plaid shawl, was pacing the street before the entrance archway. ** When would it be open ? " *' Perhaps at 2.30 or 2.45.'* " But I was told it opened at two." " And so it does, but not always — not to-day, for instance.*' '' But if M. Durand knew a lady was here, who will miss her train if she waits ? " " Perfectly ; but how do I know where to look for him? He went out at twelve to his cafe. He has since been in ; there were no affairs ; and he is gone out again, I do not know where." I Eat fuming for a few miuutefl; then> Meing I A DAY AT PEKPIGNAN. 15 had already missed the train, I dismissed my fine coach, saying bitterly that I should have plenty of time to walk to the station before seven o'clock, and strolled about the narrow streets, with projecting upper stories and heavy wooden balconies, till past three ; then again sought the bank, and the old clerk hailed me from afar with congratulatory waves of the hand, and ushered me into a tiny oflSce, with pigeon- holes all up tlie walls, and confaiuiug a sleek white- haired M. Durand. He protractod the interview, so as to get as mur>h conversation out of it as possible, and asked strings of quosHions, Inmting in his pigeon- holes for imaginaiy documents, and ejaculating *'He, he, he ! '* softly, in reply to my statements as to the habits and pecuh'arities of liondon bankers. At last we parted, with many profound bo\\'S on his part, and poor imitations of them on mme, and I was on the world again till 8cvcn o'clock. I must dme, I thought, if only to pass the time after dark, but it should be economically, to recoup the reckless expenditure on the cai-riage. So I went to the Hotel Petit Paris, which I remembered was mai'ked in ''Bradshaw," "eommercial, good," and humbly asked to ''manger quel«iuo-choBe." "Cer- tainly ; madame could dine at five or later, for three francs, including wine, and then go down in the 16 AZAHAR. omnibus to the train. She need not order her dinner — go — she would be satisfied." ''Had they a salon ? " ^'No, that unhappily they could not offer; so, being too tired to walk about any more, I returned to Notre Dame, and sat peaceably there for about an hour and a half, while the day faded into night and the stained glass came glowing out like stars as the sky darkened. Several schools, of boys and girls, came in for their twenty minutes' meditation, by detachments, and sat in a stiff row for that time, then said a prayer, and filed off. One set of boys close by me looked so good and so absorbed, in their large white collars and little frock-coats, but I could not help speculating what the effect would be if their thoughts were suddenly made Yocal. Some subtle calm influence of time and place may perhaps, however, have found its way in, and remained with them. At five, when I came out, it was already night, and the town looked very well by lamplight — an average of one lamp to each little street, projecting into the middle of it by a bar from the wall. I remarked, on sitting down to dinner, that a pile of ten plates was placed by me. It turned out that each plate implied a course. I had soup, a patty, a dish of tongue with caper sauce, a chicken with olives, a fish of some kind, stewed artichokes, roast T A DAY AT PERPIGNAN. 17 veal, lobster, a custard, apples, medlars, figs, and cakes! A good half-crown's worth; and ail the things I tasted were very good, confirming a remark we often make abroad, that commercial travellers are the people who thoroughly understand the art of getting attended to, and making themselves comfort- able on the most reasonable terms. After rumbling down in the hotel omnibus, I waited half-an-hour for the train to arrive; this surprised no one ! It came. I got in, and sat another half-hour ; this also surprised no one ! But we were then told there was a stoppage on the line, and it was uncertain when we might start. At this my fellow- passengers were much perturbed. They had not dined; there was no buffet at Perpignan; the town was far off, and now the prospect of food had become as dim and distant as the blue peaks of the Canigou. They exhausted themselves in eloquent remonstrance. One fat man — I think a commercial traveller — was quite angry at my calmness ; and the coldness with which I met a proposal that we should join in insist- ing on having a meal cooked at the huvette. '' He saw madame was ' philosophe ; ' these little contretemps did not derange her." He forgave me, however, when I explained that my philosophy was of the epicurean school, and was due to a recent dinner of ten courses. 2 18 AZAHAR. We passed the time, after he had stayed himself with bread and sausage, in conversing about this benighted " Midi," the stinginess of the Government, as regarded material to keep the line in order and men to work the trains — the further you got from Paris the worse things became, and here, in this utmost corner, they were worst of all. It was rather Spain than France, etc., etc. In fact, Eoussillon, oi which Perpignan is the capital, has, I suppose, in the course of its history, been '* Spain " almost as often as France, and the formidable-looking town-fortress has stood many a siege as it passed from hand to hand. At last, about an hour and a quarter late, we crawled gently off. It was lovely moonlight, and we wound along a few miles from the coast, following its curves and getting peeps of shining bays and snow-white flat-roofed villages in the midst of orange gardens, and, on the other side, of shadowy Pyrenees in the distance. On reaching Port Vendres we found only one omnibus at the station. It was shut. We rattled the door; it was locked, and no conducteur to be seen. At last a lady looked in through the window, and announced that he was profondenient endormi inside ! This end to the day was quite in keeping with the laissez alter of the rest of its course. I followed the CROSSING THE FRONTIER. 19 example of the lady, who said that, for her part, she could not wait till he woke, but should go off on her feet au grand galop ; and before reaching the hotel I met St. L , who was waiting for me, and seriously surprised at my non-appearance. Dec. 7th, — We left Port Vendres at eleven, and arrived at Barcelona about eight. The French train goes only a few stations beyond Port Vendres to a place called Port Bou, close to Cerbere, the frontier. On getting out, after sitting twenty minutes waiting for orders, we were received by a group of Spanish custom-house officers, all in bright green worsted gloves, who proceeded to examine us. This douane is no mere polite form. They opened every box and every bag without exception, plunged in one arm, and fished out a few specimens from near the bottom. If it happened to be a parcel, we had to open it. We stood by trembling, feeling as if we were in the hands of brigands ; but they were satisfied at length, and, though they shook their heads long and wisely over a bottle of Eno's fruit salt, they let it pass with a sigh. The re-arranging, re-strapping, etc., was left to our own unaided efforts. There was ample leisure for exchanging money, eating, etc., after all this, and we made a backward jump of twenty-five minutes from French to Spanish time. 20 AZAHAR. The Spanish first-class carriages were very com- fortable — on the Swiss plan, with a passage all through. In ours we found an American, and heard from him the first English since Paris. He was, of course, very angry with the country. " It was an old and dead one ; he liked a new and smart one." He had slept the night before at Pur— pig— nan, and gave us a long history of a dispute with a forr— iner, who had toted his things to the wrong hotel ; " a stumpy, undersized man, as all foreigners are,'' he sweepingly remarked. " Finally I had to lay one of these great Amerr — ican hands on his collar, and shake him out ! " He was delighted to find I had never been in America, and said he would tell me in three words just what it was like. *' Here you are in Spain, madam. Now, if you go from here into France, you find you've made a step higher; there's more en- lightenment, more civilization. Well, then, if you go on into England, you find you've made another step in the same direction ; everything is improved. And, then, if you go on into America, you find you've taken the last and highest step of all. An American is an intensified Englishman. He's got more rush, more energy ; in fact, as one of your own authors has said, he's a Greater Briton ! " This was an American of a sort I have often met with in books, but I must say THE "GREATER BRITON." 21 never in real life before, and I had almost thought it must have become an obsolete type. He remarked on a ruin we passed; and we said, with some com- placency, "You have no ruins in America yet?" " No, I'm glad to say not ; and I hope we never shall have. Why, sir, if we saw a place getting ruinous, we should soon have it down and build it up smart again ! " At every station there was a little knot of soldiers walking about the platform. Brigandage is now very exceptional ; but it was no longer ago than 1874 that a train was ** boarded " by brigands as it crept slowly on its way, and these soldiers (or Guardias Civiles, under military law) are to make us feel quite safe and happy. The scenery was not very fine, though hilly; the outlines were not striking, and it was a bare-looking country, olives and vines everywhere, but no turf or timber ; the soil a deep bright red. vVv'V r" 22 AZAHAR. BARCELONA. 23 CHAPTEE in. BARCELONA — EXPEDITION TO MONSERRATO. At Barcelona we went to Fonda Cuatro Naciones, on the Eambla, or great AUee of Barcelona. In the word Ramhla I hailed an old Arabic acquaintance, Bamle, or the sand (though St. L assured me it was called the Rumbler, from the perpetual roll of vehicles along it). This word, one of the numerous ones which the Moors left behind them, is usually applied in Spain to a dry river-bed, which is frequently, as it has been here, improved into a road. The Eambla has a double row of plane-trees, and a broad walk for pedestrians, and is very wide, long, and imposing. Dec. Sth.—The Spaniards sound soft "c" like '*th," which I find difficult to do; it seems so like putting on a lisp. However, I already hear St. L boldly talking of ** Barthelona '* and '' Valenthia,'* so I must foUow his example. We saw " Barthelona " to-day in holiday aspect. It was a greB,t Jiesta, and it was amusing to watch the crowds from our window on the Eambla. There was a continuous stream along it of cloaked gentlemen, and mantilla^d or kerchiefed ladies. The cloaks are generally lined with some bright colour, often scarlet and blue combined in the same cloak ; generally a little cape at the top, and always one end thrown round over the shoulder. It was impossible to get a carriage, we were told, on a festival day, so we amused ourselves on foot. I walked off first, with a cornier from the hotel, to the Poste Eestante, and found some letters ; but they requii-ed to inspect my passport before giving them up. In the afternoon we sat in a large square near the hotel, the Plaza Eeal, and watched the sports of the populace. There were schools let loose, playing at games; booths for selling lottery tickets, etc. When St. L had had enough and went in, I wandered on — occa- sionally consulting the map of the town I had got with me— into the older part of the town, and soon found myself in the thick of the fair. Most of the goods were laid out on the ground, but some on booths. I was struck by several stalls of little articles carved in cork, models of churches, etc. I made but few purchases. The first thing I 24 AZAHAR. bought was an almanac, with a view to finding out what feast we were all keeping. It was '* La Purisima Coneepcion de nuestra Senora Patrona de Espana y BUS Indias " (my first experience of the great length of names which obtains in Spain). My almanac, a pictorial one, I saw was written by '* the astrologer. Fray Eamon, the Hermit of the Pyrenees; " and it was further stated that it was ''revised by eccle- siastical authority." It is interesting to find oneself in a country where astrology is still an authorized science. I got to the cathedral and found a service going on, and numbers of the poorer classes attending it ; and an extensive sale of small *' objets de piete '' taking place at stalls in the west end of the nave. (N.B. I mean to give the briefest possible descriptions of cathedrals and public buildings, architecturally considered). This is a grand Gothic pile, early fourteenth century, with great height and width of nave, and splendid stained glass, which last, however, makes the interior rather too dark. It is entered by a singular open court, containing a large fountain, in which live some geese ; these, for some reason, are very old institutions, and partake of the character of "sacred geese.** I saw no more that evening, but went next day to BAROELOKA. 25 another beautiful church, S. Maria del Mar, about the same date as the cathedral. They are both perfect places in which to wander about and dream. Near to S. Maria is a very amusing market, with birds, flowers, and fish in great variety. This hotel is beautifully clean, and all sprinkled with sawdust, the smell of which, as one enters, is very suggestive of a circus. There is a reading-room looking on the Eambla; no attempt at a woman - servant of any sort. The waiters can all speak French, and some a little English, and say, '' Yes, missis,** with especial glibness. The company is mainly Spanish, but there are also some foreigners. We are much warned not to form our expectations of the rest of Spain from Barcelona, which is more " advanced,** we are told, even than Madrid. It is by far the first manufacturing city, not only of Catalonia, but of the whole country, and may be called the Manchester of Spain, cotton being its main industry, or Liverpool, as it is a sea-port, would compare with it better. The rest of Spain is shy of Catalonia, and considers it half French, from its vicinity to the frontier. 10th. — Yesterday witnessed a bold resolution on my part to go to the monastery of Monserrato, and return the same day. This necessitated starting by a 26 AZAHAR. 5.30 a.m. train, and in the dark. When I took my ticket (at a bureau in the town the day before) I was asked the name of my hotel and number of my room, and told, '* Your name shall be put on the watchman*s list, and he will call you at 4.30." I had heard him singing under the windows the night before, so was aware of his existence. I was already up when he rattled at the door, and soon after the coachman of the omnibus appeared, and stamped about in the passage till I was ready. In vain I showed my watch and made signs that it was a quarter of an hour too soon. He was unmoved, and only pointed sternly to the staircase. I saw to my dismay that it was a wet morning, and could hardly resist stepping back into bed again, but the thought of the wasted ticket prevailed, so I repeated, with forced cheerfulness, *'rain at seven, shine at eleven," trying to forget that it might not apply in Spain, and jolted off in the dark to the station. I can hardly think of an adjective strong enough to describe the roughness of a drive in Barcelona. Its roads and carriages are certainly not ** advanced.'* The latter are quite springless, and you tumble about inside like a loose parcel, and feel quite bruised and shaken when you get out. Of course I waited about EXPEDITION TO MONSERRATO. 27 forty minutes at the station, and bitterly cold it was, bare stone rooms with wide-opened doors, and a strong wind blowing through ; no huffet open, so I was disappointed of getting some tea or coffee. At last we got off. About seven it began to get light, and I saw a mountainous but very dreary-looking country, was still raining hard. At 7.45 I was dropped at a little station, Monistrol, on the line to Zaragoza. I was the only person who got out. A rosy, black-eyed young man ran up and asked if I wanted to go to Monserrato, and on my saying I did, he rubbed his hands with delight, and said he had not expected a "fare" to-day. It was quite exhilarating to find some one at least who was glad I had come. He took me to a lovely blue covered cart, the cover being of stout linen on hoops. It was drawn by two mules tandem. I first sought a small posada or inn, near the station, to try again for some breakfast; all they had to produce was a glass of cafe noir and some dry bread. There was no passenger but myself and a postman, whom we dropped, with his bags, at the first village. The driver, by name Juan-Battista, or Hwan, as he pro- nounced it, was a most friendly creature, and took 28 AZAHAK. great pains with his "fare/' continually thinking of some better plan to keep out the wind and rain, letting down little leather curtains with glass peep- holes in them, robbing himself of his plaid shawl to fill up chinks, and laying a sack containing the mules' dinner across my feet to keep them warm. He drove from the inside, and cheered on his mules with *' Arri ! " the same word as the Arabs use. It was a three hours' drive, through the grandest scenery, heightened in effect by the wild stormy weather. We kept winding higher and higher, back- wards and forwards, across the grey seamed face of Monserrato, which is rather a cliff than a mountain, 3900 feet high. A good-sized river, the Llobregat, is seen in the valley below, and at one point we crossed it on a bridge, hanging airily over a deep ravine. One peculiarity of Spanish mountains, as compared with Alps, is that being so much farther south, the various kinds of vegetation reach a much higher point before they cease. Arbutus in blossom, heather, and box, formed the chief undergrowth, and pines did not replace the olives till we had ascended a good way. When about two-thirds of the distance were accomplished the rain became snow, which, for the last few miles, lay thickly on the ground. When Juan saw the snow, he pulled down the JUAN-BATTISTA. 29 flaps of his cap over his ears, and remarked that to-morrow he should not be able to come up at all. I inquired anxiously if he was sure he should be able to get down that afternoon, but he had no doubt about that. It was wonderful how well we understood each other, considering that nearly every third word of mine was French or Italian ; one or other generally seemed to enable him to catch what I meant; and I made him often hark back and repeat what he had said slowly, and sometimes spell a word. I asked him if he could read, and he was quite insulted, and said his parents were ** in a good position, not poor, and had kept him long at school. He had not served in the army, his father had paid 300 scudi (about £40) to exempt him. He was now twenty-four, and had been driver for some years on a *tramvia' at Barcelona before he came to Monistrol." He produced a little illustrated periodical, which he insisted on giving me, and we read passages to each other, but without much enlightenment on my part. There was a good deal about '^bisbes," which, from the context, I guessed to be bishops, and their action as to baptizing the children of civil marriages. He told me this publication was " muy liberal — no catolico," and that I must hide it at Monserrato, as the fathers would not like it. I was afraid I might be encouraging Imsm tmimmmm'''ff('' 30 AZAHAR. MONASTERY OF MONSERRATO. 81 revolutionary sentiments unawares. I said I believed they had a satisfactory king and government now, and ought to be content ; but he said, ** No, the king is worth nothing, or the government either." The Catalans have the character of being very turbulent, and always the first to revolt in unquiet times, so I dare say they consider speaking evil of dignities as the first duty of a citizen. The monastery is perched on a flat ledge of ground, with a group of fantastic sugar-loaf cliflfs soaring above it, from whose serrated summits comes the name Monserrato ; highest of all is the peak of San Geronimo. There are various little hermitages among the neighbouring hills, but I was obliged to be satisfied with the immediate precincts. Monserrato is a great goal for pilgrims ; they say there were sixty thousand here last year. They are provided with rooms by the monks, and there is a small inn at which they eat. In 1835, when there was a great suppression of convents, some of the fathers of Mon- serrato were allowed to remain undisturbed ; they are Benedictines, and a very old foundation. The Church possesses a wonderful black wooden Virgin — I should think of great age ; this is exhibited at certain hours by drawing back a curtain. The church is the only part which is shown, and the fathers do not appear, at any rate to female visitors. I saw only a lay brother, who asked me if I wanted a room, and on my saying I did not, concerned himself no further about me. So I picked my way through the snow and slush to the church, saw all I could, and then went to the inn. Ignatius Loyola kept his vigil in this Church before dedicating himself to the service of the Virgin, as appears by an inscription on the wall. At the inn I was shown into a cold, bare, cell-like room, where I found a Spanish lady and gentleman, who had slept at the monastery the night before, I suppose as pilgrims, and proposed returning in Juan's conveyance. They were just beginning dinner as I went in, and as I sat down they confused me greatly by bowing and holding out their plates to me. I was quite unprepared for this. Would it be rude and unusual to decline the civility ? or would it be rude and unusual to accept it ? and ought I to offer them mine in return ? I said in my best Spanish that I was a stranger, at which they laughed heartily, and we became the best of friends. Their amusement may have been due to the fact that, as I afterwards reaUzed, I had been diligently practising Catalan, not genuine Spanish, with Juan all the way ; and Catalan is so much of a dialect as to be almost a different language, and of course mainly used by the lower ii 32 AZAHAR. classes. The little periodical was written in Catalan. ** Bisbe " would have been ** obispo *' in Spanish, and most other words proportionately diiBferent. By the time we had to start on our return, it had done snowing and there was even a gleam of sun ; and the views in descending were striking and beautiful, and new at every turn. I dropped my companions at the little town at the bottom of the mountain, where a carriage met them, and we shook hands warmly at parting. I was too soon for my train, so thought I would go to the inn again, and ask to stand by the kitchen fire for a few minutes, as I was still wet and very cold. Juan introduced me (mentioning that I was Ingles) into a small blackened raftered kitchen, where in one corner was a welcome sight — a roaring wood fire on the ground, under a great wide chimney. Three gentlemen were already sitting at it with their boots off, drying their stockings, but I was very glad of the fourth place. Several other people, some of them soldiers, dropped in and stood, all staring very hard and silently at me, of course an unusual appari- tion. They were very civil, however, making a great deal of room, and improving the fire till it was almost unbearably delightful. The silence was becoming rather oppressive, when at length one of the party considerately broke the ice by saying '' Ye-cs ? " in an SUBURBS OF BARCELONA. 33 interrogative tone, and very winningly. It turned out to be the only word he knew. I answered '' Si,*' and then ventured on a few more remarks, asked the land- lady for some coffee, etc., etc. Juan attended me to the last, and took my ticket for me. His own charge for all that long drive was only three francs, and he seemed to have no expecta- tion of a *' grolificacioncita " (short for a " tip"). I got back to Barcelona about 7.30, and found St. L had been calling on the consul, ako amusing himself with shopping, and now able to apjiear with ''a neat Barcelona tied i*oimd biB neat neek.*' Next day we took an afternoon drive and saw some of the suburbs. A hill called Gracias^ outside the city, commands a grand view of it and of the harbour. The tall chimneys of the manufactories arc, as a rule, outside the town, and appear from amongBt trees ; and there was no stuok}' haze over the city. I suppose it does not hang in this clear dry air. The fortressed hill of Montjuich was very fine in situation, command- ing the town completoh'. We foolishly omitted to ask the price of the carriage before starting. We had taken one from the hotel, hoping that it might l)o less shaky than the bcriinas, or voitures de place. To our disgust they asked twenty franca for the afternoon, saying that it 8 34 AZAHAR. was the usual rate for a luxurious carriage (carruaje de lujd) like that ! I need not say that '' luxurious '* was not a word which would have occurred to us in connection with it. We should, of course, have made our bargain beforehand, but it will be a lesson for the future. I saw a private carriage standing at the hotel door to-day. The coachman had black kid gloves, a dark green frock-coat with black buttons, and a black cap with a peak. The horses had brown silk saddle- cloths. I was anxious to hear which were the "Four Nations," from which the hotel is named; a question which has often puzzled me elsewhere. Here they hold that the four nations are Europe, Asia, Africa, and America ! ( 35 ) CHAPTEE IV. TARKAGONA — VALENCIA. II Dec. lAth, Tarragona, — We got here yesterday, only a four hours' journey from Barcelona, and are at the Fonda de Paris, kept by Italians. There are only two hotels here. This one is fairly comfortable ; there are a few bedrooms with fire-places, but St. L finds his draughty and ill-arranged. The rooms are all in suites, with a salon containing an alcove with a bed in it to each suite. It is a thoroughly wet day, and we have seen hardly anything. Dec, 15th. — A lovely day, and we have decided that Tarragona is a lovely place. It is on a hill with a broad flat top, and a wide street, shaded with trees, goes straight through the city across this hill, termi- nating at each end in a deep gateway, through one of which appears a vista of blue mountains, and through the other, of bluer Mediterranean. If you go through these gateways, you find that they occur in a massive - ■ ' r.i. U TT": 36 AZAHAR. CONTINUOUS SERVICE. 37 wall with ramparts and towers at intervals, which encloses the city ; but a good deal of the town has straggled outside and scrambled down, in the shape of steep staircase-like streets, to the plain on one side, and the harbour on the other. This wall is double, and a driving-road runs between the inner and outer one, also a terrace with stone seats ; and the outer wall is low enough on the inside for you to look over. Its architecture is curious, and reminded us of some we saw at Fiesole, being built of enormous stones of peculiar shape, the face being cut to a kind of rough point. This sort of wall is of uncertain but extremely early date, and usually called Cyclopean. Tarragona must have been a most impregnable place in the days of frequent sieges ; the Moors held it for a long time, and it has many Arab remains, to say nothing of Eoman ones. It is now outstripped by larger, busier places, but is still an important see, and its cathedral is one of the most beautiful I have seen— early twelfth century Gothic. It is very well placed, at the top of a broad flight of eighteen steps, with a pretty arcaded market-place straggling round their base. The portal is filled with twenty-one carved figures, larger than life, of saints and apostles ; these are of later date, about 1300. The whole is of warm yellow-grey stone, inside very dim and dusky, with the deepest Httle slit- windows, whence issue flashes of brilhant rose, pale green, and deep blue ; there are some gorgeous rose- windows too. Behind is an exquisite cloister of light interlaced stone-work, every column and capital different, surrounding a garden of roses, cypress, and oranges. The chapter-room and '' vestiario " look on this cloister ; and while I was sitting there the bishop and clergy came to the latter to disrobe after a service, passing in, robed in crimson and gold, and soon after emerging in plain black. Two or three who passed me bowed, but I did not venture to address them, thinking they might be shocked at such audacity in a '' dame seule," so I contented myself with the sacristan, who was dressed in red silk, and wore a yellow wig in rows of stiff curls. I observe that in Spain you are not, as a rule, shown about in churches and cathedrals. Some service invariably seems to be going on, and it is taken for granted that you are joining in it. And if you want to see them as a sight, you must apply to the sacristan out of service hours, i,e. from twelve to two, when they are generally closed. This is much nicer than in France and Italy, where you seldom have a moment's peace from guides. Dec. 20th, Valencia. — We got here on the 16th, taking a night journey from Tarragona. There is 38 AZAHAR. ARRIVAL AT VALENCIA. 39 only one quick train, leaving the former at 12.30 at night, and getting here at 8.20 in the morning. We are now pretty well settled at the Fonda Villa de Madrid, and expect to remain some time, as this was the place recommended to St. L for his winter climate. We hear this is the best hotel, and the rooms and food are quite satisfactory ; but it has no reading-room and no garden, and is in the heart of the town. We have chosen a corner room as salon, with two aspects (south and east) ; a large alcove out of it lighted by glass doors, for me, and a good-sized room, with fireplace, for St. L next door. The salon has no fire-place. The look-out is not unpicturesque, though com- pletely a town view. On one side we see the highly decorated facade of a nobleman's house (Marquis of Dos Aguas), with a grille of ornamental iron- work and white marble festoons and figures ; and, on the other, we look across an irregular little plaza (de Villarassa) to some Moorish-looking houses opposite, with flat roofs and balustrades, and cactus plants in stone jars ; and, beyond them, we look up to a little domed minaret, crusted with blue and white fluted tiles ; further off, appear no less than three church towers at different points, but only just thek tops over the house-roofs. We are, "al segundo piso,'* the second floor, which is more airy than the lower ones, and are to pay fifteen pesetas (francs) a day each for our pension. The company seems to be entirely Spanish, principally male, and rather commercial, but we see nothing of them, except at meals. There is a straggling luncheon from eleven to one, and dinner from six to eight. W dines in the same room that we do, and finds great difficulty in avoiding us ; and the waiters dine behind a screen at the end of the room, which is partly lined with glass cupboards containing china and stores. We all exchange beau- tiful bows on entering and leaving the dining-room. This seems universal in Spain, and is also expected on entering and leaving railway carriages. Dec, 21s^. — It feels to me much more balmy here than the Eiviera, but, then, I believe, we are now experiencing a warm wind, or *^ poniente." St. L 's thermometer (with a wood fire in the room) was 69° to-day ; and I sit by the open window with no fire. The vegetation is a safe criterion of temperature, and that is certainly semi-tropical. In a public garden near here. La Glorieta, I see not only jessamine and roses in bloom, but poinsettia trees in full blossom and tall bamboos. Then the dress of the inhabitants is, in some respects, light and airy. The ladies have ""•r •■%«: i „-i. I went to another service, on S. John's day, at the Church of S. Juan. This church is in the most picturesque bit of Valencia ; the large market-place is in front of it, and opposite is the Lonja de Seda, or silk exchange— a beautiful old Gothic hall, with twisted columns of that kind, I beheve peculiar to Spanish Gothic, in which there is no capital, but the spiral lines of the column spread out and become the lines of the roof. The large fruit-stalls of the market look t AZAHAR. most effective under the old walls of these buildings, especially some in which an old woman sits like a wrinkled Pomona, crouched on a high seat in the middle, with hundreds of large green melons piled round her, hiding her up to the waist, if indeed she can be said to have a waist, as she is generally stout and ample. At the service I mentioned, the Arch- bishop officiated ; and numerous ladies crowded on his path to kiss his hand — he had prepared for the emergency by putting on a pair of black kid gloves. He is short and stout, which effect was enhanced by his very full stiff white-and-gold vestments, and a tall massive mitre, which was taken ofif and put on again by an attendant deacon many times during the service. The sermon, which occurred as usual just before the Nicene Creed, was preached by a young man, and lastc 1 above an hour, the quarters being told off by a little warning bell, to keep him within bounds. He began, bowing to the Archbishop, *' Ilustrisimo Seiior." He spoke so distinctly, and I was so near, that I could follow a good deal of what he said. One other service, a Miserere, sung every Friday at the Collegiate Chapel of Corpus Christi, rather disappointed me, as it had been described to us as one of the most impressive services to be heard in Spain. The chapel is all darkened, a pall is spread A MISERERE. 55 in front of the altar, and every one kneels round ; then the picture over the altar slowly descends, and in its place appears a veil of pale grey ; this is withdrawn and shows a purple one, and this in turn is withdrawn and leaves a black one. At last this, too, is drawn, and shows a large crucifix and beautiful wood carving of Christ. After a pause the Miserere begins, and is very well sung. The veils are then replaced one by one, and the picture reascends into its place. But the machinery was rather evident in its working, causing the picture and veils to move with jerks, which greatly took off from the effect. The chapel is very fine, and full of good pictures by Eibalta (of the Valencian school) ; but it is too dark, even when the usual light is restored, to see them well. This is one of the places at which mantillas are de rigueur; and there are many cm^ious relics, etc., to a sight of which ladies are not admitted. I saw quite as many, how- ever, as I wished, in a chapel behind the altar, where an immense cabinet with very fine carved doors was opened and revealed rows of little silver and marble shrines, gold crosses, urns, etc., each containing a relic. A deacon rapidly read out the catalogue from a vellum manuscript, another pointing to each with a wand as he did so. Dec. 28th. — ^Yesterday Mrs. Dart, wife of the vice- i h 56 AZAHAR. consul, kindly said she would call for me and take me to see a charming lady who gives lessons in Spanish ; accordingly when we came in from our drive, I was told '*la consula " was awaiting me, and we set forth. The lady, Senora S , is a German by birth, but now naturalized in Valencia, where her brother was one of the professors at the university, and died lately. She is very literary, and is now assisting in bringing out a new edition of a Spanish cyclopaedia, in which she has undertaken the mytho- logical part ; and she is glad to spend her evenings in giving lessons. We entered her abode through an archway into a patio or open court, with a j)orter in a sentry-box. It is a private house, belonging to a noble family, who do not require their entresol, and let it to Senora S . We went up a dark staircase, felt for the bell, and were admitted into a pretty, very foreign Uttle apartment — four tiny rooms in a row, with folding-doors between each, bare tiled floors, and windows to the ground with balconies, looking into a thick little grove of orange and magnolia, with an undergrowth of violets, called the garden. I found her as charming as she was described, and we arranged that she should come to us in the evenings, after the hotel dinner. She speaks English extremely well. She spread us a little feast of A VISIT. 57 candied pomegranate-seeds, sponge cake, apricot jam, and a liqueur of which I forget the name. Mrs. Dart informed me that the first time you visit at a Spanish house it is the right thing to partake of hospitahty. While we were there, a very small professor stepped in, with a roll of documents, for a consultation. 58 AZAHAR. CHAPTEE VII. VALENCIA, ETC. — (Continued,) Jan. 2nd.—0xir drive yesterday was to the harbour, called the Grao. It is about three miles off, and there is a tramway to it. The town being on a plain, the sea is nowhere visible, unless from roofs and tower-tops. There is a long sea-wall, and two pro- jecting horns which form a bay; and inside was a good deal of shipping, chiefly smallish boats, some for Liverpool and Glasgow. It has been colder the last few days, and we have had no more poniente wind. St. L 's thermometer was 57^° this morning, after the lighting of his wood-fire, which by the way is disposed to smoke, and seems to draw out little draughts from all parts of the room. Still the sun is lovely every day and all day, and we have fine large windows at which the sun can stream in. They are furnished with pseudo-balconies (i.e. a rail projecting a few inches), and I hang over I ' DISSOLVING VIEWS. 59 mine a good deal, and generally find some amusement in the view. The first thing I see, about seven a.m., is a cow strolling across the plaza, wrapped in a woollen shawl, and with her calf tied to her tail by a long string. She wears an outside pocket in her shawl, containing a tin mug, which is filled for a penny by her attendant page, who walks behind her cow. Another soon follows, of less chilly habits, and in a spruce linen saddle-cloth. These are, I think, the only two cows in the neighbourhood. A little later, a flock of goats go tinkling across. They are here the main milk-purveyors. Next comes a stream of women to a fountain, or rather a spout from the wall, and a large stone basin below. They have double-handled pitchers of green or yellow ware, and often carry one on each arm. About nine o'clock, a tartana-stand takes up its position; and soon after, the various church-bells begin to clang, and ladies to go across in twos and threes, with their camp-stools and prayer- books, and some followed by servants. The principal services are at ten, though there are many earlier. Afterwards, all daylong, the plaza is a busy thorough- fare, and at night rather noisy than otherwise, especially now that the Christmas fiestas are going on ; and it is late before it is left to the watchman, 60 AZAHAR. who tells the hour and announces that it is *' sereno/' or '* Uuvioso," as the case may be, almost invariably the former. He is called the *' sercno," whether from the j)revalence of fine weather, or whether he was at first the sereno-Uuvioso, and dropped the last word (as we say the piano for the piano-forte), I decline to say. He is a beautiful old creature with his cocked hat, many-caped cloak and lantern. I forgot to say that on Christmas Day we had the unwonted dissipation of an English pair at dinner, passing through to Barcelona. We exchanged ex- periences with them at a gi-eat rate, and astonished our Spanish company, who had hitherto been under the imi)ression that we could only speak in very short disjointed and hesitating sentences, and they could hardly proceed with their dinner for sm*prise and curiosity. We think we shall never mind being stared at again, after the ordeal we go through here ; the company constantly changes, and every new-comer at once detects us. At first they seem uneasy — the result, perhaps, of having a ** foreign object " in the eye — but soon seeing that we are harmless, curiosity prevails ; and it is sometimes impossible to rest your eye on any opposite point of the table without meet- ing a wide-open pair of devouring black orbs, the owner kaniiij; slij^hlly forward over the tablu, and HOTEL COMPANY. 61 eating without looking at his plate, so as not to lose a wink. These, of course, are quite the extreme cases, but we are always interesting. Latterly we have had as neighbours a father with three young daughters, who are at the Jesuit's college here, and have come to stay with him at the hotel for a few days " Christmassing." They have rather rude, unformed manners, which their futbor excus^is by saying that, ** like himself, tlioy are provincialB." He is n widower, and is anxiously awaiting the time when his eldest girl can leave school ane of no use,'' they say; **p€oplodonot sit in the house: in the day time they are on the Alameda, and at night at tho theatre." There are several Valcncian pajKTS though ; one which amuses St. L by its length of name, *' Diario-Democratico-Posibilista." We often study these, and can understand them pretty well ; but the same likeness to Italian, which makes us find Spanish 60 easy to read, makcH it moBt tiresome to speak, as it is never qtvitc like. A» a specimen — ltd, ^* Ho croduto che fosse mio zio." Spa. ** Ho creido que fiiese mi tio." Each word shghtly different. Shopping, bill-paying, etc., are not difficult, except tliat you have to be 62 AZAHAR. careful of getting bad money, and also to get accus- tomed to calculating everything by reals. A real is twopence half-penny, and they speak of the largest sums in reals. The common people are poor arithmeticians, and even at ticket offices always do the sum with a bit of chalk on the counter. The shops are very pretty, especially the fan-shops and the sweetmeat shops. The latter contain various good things— white balls made of cocoa-nut, candied fruits, etc. The other day we had a present of a large slice of fig-bread, with almonds embedded in it. Spaniards seem to have good appetites, and no fear of indigestion. They intersperse tlieir courses at dinner with a good many raw olives, radishes, and sticks of celery, and generally end with a course of melon, in which I join, as the melons are excellent. My neighbour the other day ate cheese and raisins together, and seemed to like it. We have daily a dish of rice with little bits of meat in it, and very often puchero (the common form of oUa podrida) — bits of beef and bacon, peas, beans, artichoke, potato, etc., all stewed together very slowly in an earthen pot. Quite exceptionally we detect a twang of garhc in the dishes ; but it often assails our noses in the streets. Smoking is universal between the courses, as well as after dinner, and seems to need no apology at any NEW year's day on THE ALAMEDA. 63 time ; but I have seen no lady smoke, and begin to think that relic of Orientalism must be dying out. The mantilla, I suppose, is the remnant of the Eastern veil, but it has partially slipped off since Moorish days, the thick material being now worn more like a shawl, but just caught to the hair behind, and only the thin lace being worn in front, unless people are in mourning, when they wear the thick veil over the whole head. In the house, the head is always bare. On the Alameda lately we have seen a few hats on the younger ladies in carriages, very large and curly- brimmed, with gorgeous feathers— say scarlet and green, or sky-blue and orange— hanging far down the back. The children are often very gaily dressed, and are brought in large numbers to disport themselves on the Alameda. On New Yearns Day there was quite a crowd of carriages there, and we could only proceed at a foot's pace. We saw one or two new varieties of equipage ; one was a dog-cart and four, and another a unicorn team in a phaeton, the horses adorned with many large blue worsted balls on their heads and necks, which tossed about as they moved. This is the function of the daytime, and of the night, the theatre. This last is far more important than dinner ; indeed, you can see that the latter is just hurried through. Mr. 64 AZAHAR. A KIND SACRISTAN. 65 Dart tells us that the expression is *'to undress for dinner." Then they dress and go off. Every family has a box or "palco'' — often taken by two families between them, to use on alternate nights, and they would not think of missing their '* turno," as they call it. It is there that they receive their visitors, and do most of their calls. Their chief hospitality is offering little cups of chocolate to visitors; it is extremely good, but rather too rich and solid to have between meals. As there is no butter in Spain, except what comes in tins from abroad, chiefly from Denmark, I dare say chocolate is more suitable as an accompaniment to dry bread. I think the bread very good; it is snow-white, very fine and close, with a smooth, biscuit-like crust ; but it is not always that foreigners like it. They make biscuits largely, too. The wine is, of course, superior; but the common dinner-wine has a rather bitter taste, from the ad- mixture of grape-skins. We have met with nothing quite like claret among the vins du pays; the red ones are like port, and the white ones like sherry, or " herez." We have not yet got into the Val de Penas country, but this wine is found at every hotel. The white is the most renowned. In the morning of New Year's Day we went to the cathedral. A little beggar boy followed us all the way from the hotel, and even trotted up the aisle, and knelt devoutly beside us, saying *'Pst" at in- tervals, to remind us he was still there, and meant to renew the attack the moment we came away. We remained till after the service was over, and strayed about a little. The sacristan came up and asked if we would like to see the embroideries, as he was just putting them away, and could show us some very old ones, which were seldom used. Mr. Dart had told us that it was difficult for ''heretics'' to get leave to see these things, and that this sacristan was always very impracticable, so we were pleased, and felt it was a reward for good behaviour. He took us into the Sala Capitular (chapter-house), and through it into several other rooms, hung with pictures, some of them good ones, of the Valencian school. He showed us some wonderful old embroidery, chiefly chasubles and dalmatics, embroidered in gold and silver, with medaUions let in, on which were worked half-length figures in colours, as soft as paintings; a splendid cover for the pulpit, all in silver and gold, and other things. They were very neatly kept, in a cupboard in the wall, with leaves that pulled out, and one embroidery hung on each leaf. We had a second opportunity of seeing these treasures, and still greater ones, as Mr. Dart kindly 66 AZAHAR. got an order from the dean for us to see the '' Santo Calix," one of the special prides of Valencia, the original cup (they say) used at the institution of the Sacrament. It is made of a single sardonyx, four and a half inches across, and a double handle and setting of gold and silver studded with pearls. I asked the sacristan "how he thought it had come to Valencia ; " and he gave a full genealogy, how it had come down from one saint to another, and at last to a bishop of Valencia. He allowed that only the cup was original, and the setting an addition. He also showed us a little mummied form, '*one of the Holy Innocents," the '* Camiseta " of the Infant Jesus, and countless other treasures. Eelic-worship is most hotly pursued here, as Valencia is a highly super- stitious place ; but all over Spain it is very prevalent, and I dare say is the chief rock on which the intel- ligent modern Spaniard splits, thus partly causing the infidelity one hears of as spreading among the educated men. The frontales, or altar-cloths, were magnificent, and among them I was much pleased to have a close view of the London ones, two in number. Each consisted of a set of subjects in three medal- lions, on gold ground ; the crucifixion is one centre subject, and the resurrection the other. One of the side subjects is ''Christ releasing souls from Pur- PICTURES AT VALENCIA. 67 gatory,'' and Purgatory is represented by a building in flames, said to be copied from the Tower of London. We saw some colossal saints of solid silver, and of immense value, which are carried in processions, on wrought pedestals, with a fringe of silver bells, which ring as they move. The cathedral outside is patchy and unimposing, though it has an interesting detached Moorish tower, the Miguelete ; it yields to no other cathedral, how- ever, in the profusion and richness of its treasures. There is a small gallery of pictures in the town, all the best of which are by Ribera (Spagnoletto), Eibalta, and Juanes. These three are the chief stars of the Valencian school. They are also well repre- sented in the churches, but generally in provokingly bad light. It is still a place to which many young artists come to study. We like Eibalta's pictures the best of the three. Eibera is very dark and gloomy ; and Juanes very sweet and Eaffaelesque, but rather formal and monotonous. Eibalta has a beautiful S. Bruno among other pictures in this ^nuseo. There are also portraits of both Velasquez and Murillo, put down in the catalogue as painted by themselves. 68 AZAHAK. CHAPTEE VIII. VALENCIA, ETC. — (Continued.) Jan, 2Gth, 1882.— To-day we drove with Mr. and Mrs. Dart to a place called Burgasot, not far off in distance, though it seemed to take us a long time to crawl and bump along the road. There is a curious colony of squatters there, who have hollowed out houses for themselves in a cliff of soft stone. The first thing we saw was some little white cones stick- ing out of the ground. These were the chimneys. And then we went round to a lower level and found the doorways. 'We were taken into one of the dwell- ings, which was exquisitely clean, with snowy and dazzHng whitewash, done fresh for the new year. The mistress received us with a face beaming with pride, and with pleasure at being thus caught at the right moment. She was also very nicely got up herself, and looked rather like a wooden doll in a toy house. She had on a tight black jacket and CAVE-DWELLERS AT BURGASOT. 69 very short skirt of scarlet flannel, large plaits of hair fastened with pins of emerald and diamond (?), and a complexion hke a rosy-brown winter pear. The rooms were of most irregular shape, and she men- tioned that they had recently scooped a httle farther into the rock, on account of their increasing family. There was a rack against the wall, containing wooden spoons and forks scrubbed nearly white, and above, a beautiful device of jugs, mugs, and cups of quaint shapes and colours, hung on nails ; the beds were in little alcoves or shelves hollowed in the wall; the doorsteps of coloured tiles. We looked into several others, also beautifully neat and tidy. The people were all sitting out at their doors, and the women spinning. The houses seemed quite dry and warm inside. They have to pay a trifle to the governor of the province of Valencia for leave to build— or, rather, to scoop— and a nominal ground-rent, but are otherwise free of charge. Besides this, we saw some old pubHc granaries close by, underground, dating from four centuries ago. They dragged off one of the great round stones which close the roof, and let down a primitive little oil-lamp by a string, that we might see the bottom. They said the governor still used these granaries to store seed in, which he lent to '0 AZAHAR. poor people at sowing-time, and they paid him back at harvest. After we got home I called on Seiiora S (who is quite as often called Dona Elisa), and she took me with her to see the Marqnesa and her daughter Filomena, in whose house she lodges. They talked very politely to me, not requiring long answers, though we improve so rapidly under our present tuition that I am now equal to a simple conversa- tion. Filomena was very pretty, with a delicate profile, white complexion, and grey eyes. She had just been with her father to a funeral ceremony, and was in a thick black mantilla. One of their forms of politeness is to speak of their own house as yours. When I went, they said, '' I hope we shall see you again in this your house." She showed her tame parrot, and made him perform little tricks. Alto- gether she reminded me a good deal of Moorish ladies I have seen. We have a celebrated tenor, Gayarre, staying at the hotel, and singing at the opera. He sang in London last year. We had long observed a rough- looking old man, who sat rather apart from the rest at dinner, with a young soldier, and one or two other people. We now find this is Gayarre's old father, who has passed his life as a blacksmith, and is now A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. 71 reposing on his son's laurels, and always travels about with him. The young soldier is a cousin, w^hom he is helping forward in life. The great man himself never appears, but dines in his apartment. Mr. and Mrs. Dart kindly took me with them one night to the opera. It was a very good night, Gayarre singing in '' La Favorita " for the last time. This is considered his best role. He is an immense favourite here, being a Spaniard ; and the opera is a favourite, because the scene is in Spain, I was told. Such is the extreme patriotism of the country. We bumped off in a tartana a little before eight, feeling rather as if we were going to market — soberly at first, but the pace improved as we went on, as in the narrow streets the driver peeps round the corner (and corners seemed to come about every twenty yards), and if he sees the coast clear, he makes a rush to avoid meeting another carriage. At last we wheeled round endways, and, with a final violent collision between me and Mr. Dart, backed up to the theatre door. It was a very fine theatre, the largest in the place. Our seats were in the stalls, and there ladies wore morning dress, but in the boxes evening dress. High dresses of light gay colours prevailed, and natural flowers. Many ladies w^ore powdered hair over cushions; ''fringes" were 72 AZAHAR. universal. Many faces looked rather artificially got up, with rouge, black eyelashes, etc. There were many very pretty faces and beautiful eyes among the quite young people ; but stoutness and shapelessness seem to come on very early in life. The company is much more en evidence than in an English theatre, as there are only quite low divisions, perhaps elbow- high, between the boxes, and the seats in them are rather raised. Altogether the seeing and being seen appear to be half the battle ; and as they come regularly every night, and, of course, often hear the same piece, they are naturally less absorbed in the music. There were very long intervals between the acts, during which the gentlemen all put on their hats, lighted their cigars, and walked about, and a hubbub of talk arose, while soon a light haze of tobacco- smoke veiled the too dazzling brightness of the scene. The ladies remained in their palcos and *' received." Their gesture of greeting friends at a distance is very amusing, much like our beckoning. When they really beckon, they turn their fingers downwards instead of upwards. Mr. and Mrs. Dart of course knew a great many people. I was told to guess the age of a lady near. I thought two or three and thirty ; but she was seventeen last week, and already quite a A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. 73 portly matron. They come out on leaving school at about fourteen, and then adopt mantillas, till then wearing hats. The applause was enthusiastic and deafening, rather detrimental to effect, beginning just before the end of the cadence, and imperfectly squashed by hisses. Gymnastic feats and high notes seemed to be especially admired, a pity in this case, as Gayarre is quite young, and his voice already sounds a little fatigued and strained. It is a lovely tenor ; and the prima donna, Biandolini, an Italian, also had a grand voice, but not much execution. Both acted badly — he, as a monk, after singing '' Spir'to gentil " beauti- fully, stepped off in the most springy and secular way, adjusting his cowl coquettishly ; and she was, I should think, the finest and most double-chinned novice who ever took the veil. It was a very amusing evening — a long one, as, with these intervals between the acts, it was not over till 11.30. Another night we went to I Puritani, and sat in the boxes. A day or two after, I went out shopping with Mrs. Dart and a Spanish friend, named Dona Teresa. I inquired her surname, but Mrs. Dart, who has known her for many years, said she did not think she had ever heard it, or had forgotten it ; people are so universally known by their Christian names. She was 74 AZAHAR. A SPANISH MARQUIS. 75 a tidy little old lady, with white hair, a mantilla and muff. She shopped with great decision, insisting on reductions in everything, marching out of the shop if she could not get things at her own price, while we trotted meekly behind her. Under her tutelage I bought some silk handkerchiefs, but I could see she despised me for choosing the gayest and least Eng- lish-looking, without sufficient regard to quality. She talked a great deal to Mrs. Dart about her daughter Teodora. She, it seems, is engaged to a young man who betrays a certain reluctance to name the day, and Teodora has now told him she cannot be kept in uncertainty any longer, and has given him a week, by the end of which he must have decided. The lover is never supposed to enter his lady's house till they are engaged, all the preliminary part being done by greetings from him in the street to her on the balcony, or in the window with iron grille, and then by interchange of little notes, which the parents affect not to see. This is the etiquette for a young girl ; but in the case of a widow, even if young, more freedom is allowed. Besides the handkerchief shops, we visited the Plateria, full of shops of jewellery of all kinds, but especially ornaments of silver (plata), filigree buttons, worn by the country people on their velvet jackets and breeches, pins for the women's heads, etc. Dona Teresa seemed to think that foreigners going alone to these places would be greatly overcharged. W has also acquired a shopping friend, Senora S 's maid, Damasa by name. She escorts her mistress to us in the evenings, as no Spanish lady walks alone, and sits with W during the lesson. Their intercourse is carried on entirely by signs, but they seem to exchange a great amount of information. We have been introduced to a noble marquis and his family, el Marques de San D . He reminded us at first sight of Washington Irving's remarks on the extreme shortness of stature of Spanish grandees. I longed to measure him, and, as the bluest blood is said to be implied by the most diminutive height, I dare say it would have been no insult. He reached a shade above my shoulder, but had enough presence to supply a marquis of six feet. He invited us, before we parted, to come and inspect a fabrica of tiles in which he took great interest, which, in fact, belonged to him, and accordingly, a few days afterwards, we met and proceeded thither. He was the same courtly personage as on the previous occasion, very proud of a little inferior French, which he produced for our benefit, and also of a small highly-polished, curly- brimmed hat, with the aid of which he made beautiful »illi itfi* — wiWii iiilM»l 76 AZAHAR. bows. The rest of bis dress was bidden by a rough blue ulster, which reached nearly to his feet. He lives in Valencia, but goes every year with his family to Biarritz, and seems to consider himself quite the cosmopolitan. The manufactory was only a short walk from his house, and he spent the interval in depreciating its merits in every way. He was ashamed of taking us there, he said ; it was so utterly simple, so ordinary ; he only showed it us in order that we might see for ourselves that there was nothing to see, etc., etc. ; but we soon found that this was by no means the light in which he really regarded it, and that he expected bursts of delight, which we could hardly supply from our limited vocabulary; and when we had repeated ** muy bonito ; me gust a mucho (very pretty ; I like it very much) through the first three or four rooms, I was obliged to nudge Senora S , who had come with us, to introduce a little variety into our form of panegyric. The fahricante, or head person, who showed us about, was a delightful old man, a shade shorter than the marquis, and curtailing himself unnecessarily by stooping, with his hands on his knees, to get a good view of our faces from below, and watch the admiration as it rose and spread. He was eaten up with zeal for Spanish art, which VISIT TO A FABRICA. 77 rather took the form of invective against other nations. He had been to the Paris exhibition, and worked him- self into a rage about the inferiority of every other country rep]pesented there in the matter of tiles and china-painting ; spoke with the most withering scorn of lady amateurs and their Decalcomanie, as he called it ; but reserved his chief fury for Minn-tonne, whose name he pronounced with the most amusing expres- sion of rage and hate, and added epithets with a gesture of tearing them out of his mouth with his fingers and hurling them at the company, which was startlingly effective. The chief merit he seemed to claim for his work was durability. He seized a very pretty tile, and scratched it with a file to show how well the glaze stood ; then he took an unglazed one, and scrubbed it with his handkerchief till, as he showed us, he had scrubbed a hole in the latter, without damaging the painting. He made some rather good criticisms on a little English tile he had got, and seemed to treasure for the purpose of gloating over its defects. The subject was a rather stifHy drawn '' Kate Greenaway " figure, and he said he did not know if that was the style of dress the EngHsh admired, but, at any rate, they might have drawn it well, and he pointed out the want of ease in the curves, etc. ; but, worse than 78 AZAHAR. this, he assured us it was stencilled, not drawn; it was a trick, a deception ! One merit he claimed was probably genuine, yiz. that his work was much cheaper than Minton's ; at least, he showed us a large piece of flooring — enough, I should think, for a boudoir, most elaborately painted with flowers and leaves — which, he said, climbing on a heap of tiles to tell it confidentially into St. L 's ear, we should have for 2000 reals (£20), which seemed to us very cheap. The tiles and vases are made of a reddish clay, nearly brick- coloured, and are coated with a thick whitish com- position, on which, when hard, the painting is done. We saw one or two of the artists at work, and the designs, including landscapes, figures, and studies of animals and plants, were extremely good. The baking furnaces were fed with piles of heather, rosemary, and gorse in blossom, from the little marquis's estate — most fragrant fuel; and we picked a bouquet from it, to his profound surprise. With such cheap firing, and the clay close at hand, too, they can afford cheap work. These tiles go all over Spain, but w^e did not ascertain that they are much exported. ( 79 ) CHAPTEE IX. VALENCIA, ETC. — (Continued.) I THINK I have not yet mentioned Tonica, a little woman who brings lace and jewellery to tempt the passing strangers at the hotels. She was first sent by Mrs. Dart to show me some lace, and has since several times brought bargains to my room, and, spreading her wares on the ground, sat in the midst of them, descanting on their *' preciousness '' (precioso is a very favourite adjective). She is only a go- between from French or English ladies who want to buy old lace, to Spanish seiioras who wish to dispose of their old-fashioned mantillas and buy newer ones, or perhaps Parisian bonnets, and who must be flattered to find how eagerly we bargain for their cast-off clothes. Tonica says, if she makes a bad bargain they give her hardly anything as commis- sion, and, of course, mukes this an excuse to ask for iiwa cosita para mip "a trifle for myself.*' She flew 80 AZAHAR. THE AUDIENCIA. 81 backwards and forwards several times between me and a sefiora, for whose old flounce I was in treaty, and who, she assured me, was going away by the next train. This, of course, was to drive me into a corner, but I was unmoved. She was most eloquent with me to give one more douro, seizing my hand in both hers with a fervour which would have greatly astonished a calm, superior English shopwoman. " It was far too cheap," she said, ** even with that addition. It is a present, which I offer you," kissing her hand to it, as a mark of profound admu-ation. At last, seeing I was obdurate, she affected to rush off once more, and came back saying that, at the last moment before starting, the lady had come down to my price ! I dare say she was poor; but I do not think it can be a very expensive place. The price of meat is always placarded about the town, and varies a few centimes from day to day. Veal is generally one franc and a half a kilo (7hL a lb.), and mutton and beef 6^(L or Id. A large melon costs 4W. to 6d. ; lemons the same a dozen ; biscuits of all sorts did. a lb. I believe the poor people burn pressed grape-skins a good deal. We see men working in the fields outside the town, dressed in short, wude, white Hnen trousers, not gathered in at the hmCf bare le^s, and hempen I' li sandals, largish black hats, and sashes round the w^aist. They plaster their stacks over with mud instead of thatching them, and they generally have a cross at the top. It has now rained here for three or four days, and orange-growers are getting anxious, as the fruit is just now being gathered for shipping off, and must be got dry. There is a grand row of laden trees on the Alameda. On one cluster we counted thii'ty, between no two of which you could put a finger. We asked what was dono with these, and were told they were distributcxl to the hospitals and other charities. To-day it was rather finer^ and we went off with Mr. and Mrs. Dart to Ree the Audiencia, or building where the courts of justice arc held by thd civil governor. It was anciently the parliament house, when Valencia was a kingdom. It is, inside» the most beautiful building here — date about 1480, and style a mixture of Moorish and Gotljio. The chief room is perhaps eight}' feet long. It is on the first floor, and has a grand ceiling, canned in Valencian pino, a reddish wood> very like cedar ; the patteni in squares, with richly.carved gallery, on >jlender, carvud wooden pillars, runs round the room at the toj>, just billow the ceiling, and rests on a deep cornice ; below tliis n 6 82 AZAHAR. THE DESAMPARADOS. 83 a broad band, divided by light wreaths of leaves and flowers, round medallions containing groups of mytho- logical figures ; and fauns, satyrs, etc., are climbing about the gallery pillars and roof, the whole in the same soft red wood. A Moorish-looking dado of tiles meets the woodwork, and into this dado are let frescos, groups of the deputies, ecclesiastics, and officers of the old kingdom of Valencia. The tile work is much patched, and the doors, floor, and windows are modern, and hideous with bright gilt and white paint ; but the upper part is lovely, though a little additional height, if it could be got by lowering the floor, would be a great improvement. There is another fine carved ceiling on the ground floor, but cut up into several small rooms by modem partitions. We went round the little gallery, where the date is carved on one pillar, and then out on the roof, up a dark narrow staircase without a bannister, and very peligroso, or perilous. There is a capital view of the city from this roof. You see the five bridges across the river ; the Moorish gateways of the town— one. the Pucrta Serrano, especially picturesque ; the public gardens, with groups of cypress and deep-green pine, and a isolitary pahn hero and there; and the flat yellow and brown country stretched out beyond, with the blue hills of Saguntum V I in the distance ; the harbour, and the sea. Close at hand you look down on the many richly-coloured domes and roofs of glazed tiles— dark-blue, red, and white. The roof we were on had gold-coloured tiles, liighly glazed, and showing prismatic colours in the sun ; this is a variety that can no longer bo produced now. A prominent object in the view was the tall, slender tower of Santa Catalina, on its picturesque plaza, very near our hot<^l, and a great landmark. We afterwards went to the chapel of the Virgin of the Desamparados (the Virgin of tlie Unprot^-cted). This is the favourite chapel of the Valencians, contain- ing an image said to be the most richly adorned in Christendom, as it has been endowed and cmiched bv almost every Spanish sovereign and grandee for tlie last four hundred years. We were taken up to a small chamber behind the image, where you arc nearly on a level with it, and can see it much better than from below; even here, though, it rcquii^s candles. It turns on a pivot, and is behind a glass. It is about life size, dressed in brocades, with dark hair hanging loosely down iK'hind. The cxx)Ym is one crust of jewels ; the sleeves and breast of tlie dress all worked with goms, and the skirt all festooned with strings of pearls and other precious stonc«. The Child on her ai*m is even more richlv adorned: one ' 84 AZAHAR. enormous emerald especially struck us from its size and brilliancy. The last offering to the Virgin is an anchor of brilliants hanging from her wrist, given by the present King. There is a small common walking- stick passed through her arm, contrasting with the jewels, which was given by him when he was a boy at Sandhurst, and paid his fii'st visit to Valencia ; he had nothing else to give, but promised to supplement his offering if fortune favoured him, and has kept his word. She is only taken out once in a hundred years, unless on the occasion of a pestilence or a dearth ; she is then carried round the city in procession, an inventory of her jewels being taken before she starts, and again on her return. Mr. Dart remembers how, some years ago, after a long drought, she was carried round, and how that very afternoon a slight shower fell, the first one for weeks. This was of course an immense jubilee for the people, though the sceptical might say that the archbishop delayed to give the order until the ** man's hand'' appeared in the sky. She has regular estates and farms, and an agent to manage them, the rents going to the expenses of her chapel. Great waste, perhaps, but looking at it sim- ply as a question of the amount of pleasure given, I expect all the inhabitants of the place> to a man, would vote for keeping up the whole iustitntlon if LIFE AT VALENCIA. 85 asked, instead of having the money spent for them in any other way ; for they seem, all alike, believers in miraculous images or not, to take the keenest dehght and pride in their festivals, especially in those of this then- great patroness. Moreover, they seem to be an easy-going set, with but few wants, so that they are not indignant at outlay on superfluities ; neither much food or much fire occur to them as sovereign goods as they do to us, and even the beggars overflow with joviality — dance, and sing, and prefer their requests with smiles. They make great use of diminutives. *' Sefiorito," they say, "yo pobrecito, deme un cen- timito," i.e. ** Little gentleman, I am a little poor man, give me a little centime." The boys are cer- tainly rather rough, and sometimes nearly throw you down in racing about or swinging round you as they rush about in pursuit of one another. The streets are still rather full, as the Christmas fair hangs on ; they look very picturesque when filled with strollers. The tall houses have most irregular outhnes, projections, balconies, and deep cornices. There are often broad lengths of bright-coloured stufifs hanging down from the upper balconies into the streets, as advertisements to a shop ; and many of the shops have signs, too, hanging out in front — very often a gilt sun, or a little round oil-painting of 86 AZAHAR. LIFE AT VALENCIA. 87 a saint; and masses of shawls and handkerchiefs hang in patterns up the wall nearly to the roof ;— all this helps to hght up the streets. Jan, 23r^. — About ten days ago was the " Santo " of the king, viz. S. Ildefonso. There was a levee, or hesa-manos (kiss-hands), held by the governor of the province of Valencia, and the town was full of smart uniforms. At these levees, instead of the guests going up in turn to the great man, they stand round the room, and he goes round to them. There was also a tertulia or soiree, at night, but only for gentlemen. The people of the hotel professed great contempt and indifference about this event, the waiters affecting not to know why the bells were ringing. *'0h, they supposed it was the cumpleanos (birthday) of some royalty.'' Personally Alfonso XII. seems to be very much liked by the peoj^le, but they all remember too many changes to look up to kings as very permanent institutions. He has been twice akeady to Valencia since his accession. There is a very disrespectful picture hanging unabashed in the hall— of the devil running off with all the present ministry, tied up in a bundle on his back. There seem to be many more democratic papers than others, many of them speaking strongly in favour of civil marriages, and, just now, a great deal against a projected great pilgrimage to Rome (the " Eomeria " they call it), to condole with the Pope on the indignities of last year. This pilgrimage is a vexed question, and all mixed up with politics. The archbishop, who is a good preacher, but not popular, as he is said to be a Carlist, and Valencia is very anti-Carlist, has preached several times on these two subjects — civil marriages, and the romcria ; natur- ally, against the first, and in favour of the second. He preaches with great zeal and fire. The pulpit is so large that he can take four or five steps across it, and towards the peroration he becomes much agitated, and hurries backwards and forwards. He has room for three or four attendants in the pulpit with him, one of whom holds a magnificent gold cross on a pedestal behind him. I can generally follow him pretty well, but his style tends rather to declamation than argument. All papers ahke, advanced and otherwise, give the same prominent place to the religious branch of social life; it is headed *' Bole tin religioso," and comes close to *'Boletin del Teatro." First are mentioned " Saints of to-day,'* '* Martyrs of to-day," and a list of services in their honour; then ditto for "to-morrow," and then follows a string of notices such as this, " All the masses said to-morrow in the church of S. , will be for the repose of the soul of Senor , in honour of the — ^ anniversary 88 AZAHAR. LIFE AT VALENCIA. 89 of his decease. All his friends and acquaintance are hereby invited to attend, especially at the principal one at o'clock." Then his friends and acquaint- ance, particularly his female ones, go, and meet all the rest, sometimes attending two or three at different churches on the same day. There are also constant novenas, comprising numerous services, in honour of different saints; in many of these the congregation take their full share, chanting litanies in Spanish, in alternate verses with the priests, and singing many hymns. Since I last wrote we have had a heavy thunder- storm, but we hear this is unusual. It was not pre- ceded by any great warmth ; in fact, it is invariably a little cold after sunset, making a wood-fire an agreeable sight. This storm was accompanied by heavy rain. The roads outside the town looked exactly like roughly ploughed ground for some days after, and our driver protested against being asked to go along them, so we had to restrict ourselves to the Alameda. Even to get there you have to run the gauntlet of a sUght examination at the town gate, consisting merely, however, of the ofl&cer opening the carriage-door, looking in with a bow, and saying, ** Buenas tardes." Before we knew that this meant " good afternoon," we always replied to the civiHty by shaking our heads vehemently, and exclaiming, *' No, no ! " It is now a little finer and drier, and our last variety of drive was on Sunday, to a church called *' Jesus Extramuros," almost in the country, with a cemetery just beyond it, and quite a grove of tall palms, thirty or forty, grouped round a farmhouse, with steep thatched roof. We passed bean-fields in blossom, corn about eight inches high, and willows with their downy yellow '' goslings " out ; also we met some well-grown lambs being driven along the road. The church, with its round dome of rough deep-blue tiles, edged with white, stood out very well on its open space. A service was going on there, and when the sermon was imminent, St. L , not attracted by the prospect, stole off, picking his way with some difficulty through a kneeling mass of school-girls, in uniform, and went home in his carriage, leaving me to walk later. This was a pleasant variety, and though it is a flat uninteresting country, the sunset lent a temporary glamour to the scene. As I got nearer the town, the road became more and more animated with Sunday walkers, schools, etc., etc. I met a baby's funeral, which I could hardly believe to be a mournful procession as it approached, for a band preceded it, playing the most lively music. However, next came a crowd of children, some of 90 AZAHAR. them carrying the coffin, which looked just like a small bed, covered with rose-colom-ed silk and lace, and the little head lying on its pillow, with a wreath on. When I was inside the town again, the Calle San Vicente, a favourite resort, was even more thickly packed than usual with its Sunday crowd. A mass of people were moving slowly up it, about thirteen wide, reaching from wall to wall, so that it was impossible to move briskly against stream. I heard that a Frenchman had gone up in a balloon, on a donkey, which accounted for the crowd. He soon came down, and alighted on the roof of a house ! The streets have curious long names, generally rather pretty. San Vicente Ferrer was a great hero here (and persecutor also), and has many places named in his honour. Then we have such names as Calle de Pobres Estudiantes, de Cofradia de los Sastres, del Beato Santo Juan de Eibera, etc., etc. One can hardly imagine such a lazy people having taken the trouble to write up such a long story. Names of people are abbreviated, or at least changed, very oddly, to something very unlike the names themselves. Joseph becomes Pepe ; Francis, Pasquito, etc. However, as a Spanish friend re- marked, *' It is just as, in EngUsh, you say Dick for Eobert ! " ( 91 ) CHAPTEE X. SPANISH LITERATURE, MODERN — SPECIMENS OF VERSE, ETC. We do not meet with much English, but the other day, when we were taken to visit a large school, we were told that one of its committee, who happened to be there, could speak our language, and he was requested to come and be introduced, as a special attention to us. When he came in, though there were two Germans present, he at once fixed acutely on St. L as the Englishman, without promj)ting ; and, bowing to him, said ^^ith great aplomb, ''You felt sick?'' This was a vague question, though so personal ; and while St. L was adjusting himself to see that it was a graceful recognition of his position as a foreign health-seeker, our friend thought of a better phrase, and said, " Of what do you complain ?" and bemg satisfied on this head, added, '' All right ! " and then dropped the conversation. Dona Elisa \\ 92 AZAHAR. speaks beautifully, but then she is by birth and education a German, though she has lived here for so long. Soon after we came, she took me one day to the university, where she spends a good deal of her time in the library, copying, consulting, etc. There are fifty thousand volumes. We spent a long time there the first day, and wandered amongst the books, attended by a most polite lay brother, who ran violently from end to end of the room on any work being asked for, and dragged out heavy volumes, till his forehead was bedewed with the toil. There were not many manuscripts, or illuminated books ; the former were principally cancioneroSf or collections of ballads, and books of devotion ; the latter, chiefly heraldic devices, and there were some early en- gravings, also of heraldic devices. We saw fourteen editions of Don Quixote (pronounced Kihotte). There was a museum to be seen, t6o, and a fine patio, with a fountain and a statue of Luis Vives, a Valencian, and great patron of the university, who studied at Oxford, and was tutor to the Princess Mary till he objected to Henry VIII.'s divorce from her mother, and was im- prisoned for six months in consequence. The students came thronging out at one o'clock, all in cloaks and pot hats, some looking very young, THE UNIVERSITY. 93 about fifteen. There are two thousand, all day scholars. Women may be admitted to the examina- tions if they please, but as yet very few have availed themselves of this privilege ; still, a few years ago, not any went in, so it is an idea which is becoming familiar. The university is fed from a lower school, called the Instituto. There are here also two thousand boys ; and the same professors give lectures. It is a govern- ment school, and the cost is very low, each pupil paying three douros (fifteen francs) a year for each subject he learns. Most boys belong to the town, and live at home ; but there are also many boarding houses for them, where, we were told, they can board and lodge " sufficiently comfortably " for two and a half francs a day ! This could hardly give them good fare, we thought ; but, no doubt, for four, which would still be extremely cheap, they might live in clover. As with all our exertions there were still a few of the fifty thousand books left, which I had not looked over, I was politely begged to come again whenever I liked, bring my brother, go straight to the library, and do what I pleased there, etc., etc. You cannot go in the first place without an order, or being intro- duced by some one ; and I imagine the professors have 94 AZAHAR. had very few ladies to see them, as an interest in letters is not a common characteristic of Spanish senoras. They seemed to be far from overdone with visitors, questioners, and so on, and to take a deep interest in any interest taken in them, if I may use such an awkward expression; so we soon became friendly, and especially with one professor, whom I will call Don Manuel, who, though very stiff and shy at first, ended by commg to 6<^ U8 at the hotel, and several times spending a long piece of the evening, bringing books with him to talk about, and exchanging facts about our imiversitieB and theirs with St. L . Like the generality of Spaniards, he could speak no lanj^uago but his own, though he knew a great deal about other nations and their liUTature«; and having been bom in Valencia and always lived there, we felt tlmt he was a pure well of Spanish undefiled, and eojoyed drawing him out. He soon confided to us that he was ** writing a book/' of which, when finished, he should do himBolf the honour to send US a copy. He is still youn;:, perhaps thurty, bo has time before him for his career ; but he— and I have already observed the same vein in several Spaniards— is quite too depressed and hopeless about the future of his country, saying, '* What is the use of writing books ; who will care for them here ? A I^ROFESSOR. 95 i4 We only read translations of French novels ; ** and speaking with a kind of pathetic irony about the low estate of Spain, though with an occasional gleam of the keenest pride in her grand past. It was as if ho longed to find some food for self-esteem in the present, but, failing it, was driven to dwell on bygone days. He was unable to believe in the possibility of even a modest original school devclopmg itself in any depart- ment, out of the material of his contemponiries. If this want of faith in themselves and their future 18 generaJ, it is enough to account for the extensive copying of other nations, and of their former sel?e«p wliich obtains among recent poets and novelists- We have now turned over a good many of then- works under the auspices of our various friends. They geneialiy mention in the preface that they have borrowed largely ivom old sources, and quote largely from them as well ; but, with all this help, there is a poverty of imagination, and a dearth of incident in most of their books. Juan Valcra is one of the moat popular novelists. I have read two stories by him, " Pepit^i Jimenez " and '* Dofia Luz," both very amusing. In these the two heromes are identical, even to their hair and eyes ; the former being rubio, and the latter verdc in each ease. "Pepita" has reached a seventh edition; 96 AZAHAR. ** Dona Luz " is quite lately come out. Both he and Alarcon, another favourite living author, deal largely with the weaknesses of priests, and the abuses of the confessional, a subject not too charming in itself; but to a foreigner, the touches of Spanish life which keep constantly occurring are amusing enough. Both authors mould themselves somewhat on French models. Peyrolon, a third, harks farther back for inspiration, and writes idyllic stories of village life, in very good taste, but is unfortunately a little dull. " Los Mayos,'' by him, is a pretty little book, turning on an ancient May-day rite, and describing old customs very minutely. He is a philosopher also, a strictly conservative one, and has written a little book called "Man not a Monkey,'' undertaking to confute the ** Origin of Species." Darwin, perhaps more than any one, has thrown the apple of discord into modern Spain. He has his school of warm admirers, with whom we found that our having been well acquainted with some of his family was almost a sufficient basis on which to erect a philo- sophic reputation for ourselves ; and there is another school, who speak of '' Darwinismo " with the pro- foundest aversion and horror. Among the former is Nunez de Arce, a living poet, rather a *'poet of the people,'* considered by many the chief star of " DARWINISMO." 97 the day, who has written an ode beginning, '' Genio immortal ! prof undo Darwin ! " and proceeding in the same strain. Fernan Caballero (nom de plume of a lady, Cecilia Bohl de Faber) made, about twenty years ago, a decided stir in the stagnant waters, the circles of which widened out till they reached even to France and England, or certainly the former, in the shape of translations, but then she was half a German; and even she, though she certainly has imagination, is rather formed upon Bulwer, and can seldom resist making a quotation from him. As though to disclaim her foreign extraction, she is absurdly ultra- Spanish in tastes and ultra-intolerant in opinions. *' Darwin- ismo " in its most diluted form, the faintest soupcon of the monkey, would be abhorrent to her ; I dare say she would even abjure nuts, pet weakness of Spaniards though they be ! Don Manuel, though he did not talk much to us on religious subjects except incidentally, sometimes apologized quite bitterly for the superstition and bigotry of Valencians, which he says is j)roverbial. *'In no other city are women obliged to wear man- tillas at this or that service ; nowhere else do they always cross themselves on stepping over the threshold, to avert misfortune," etc. One day he said, '* What is 98 AZAHAR. to be done with my country -people ? How can they be enlightened? I should like to tear down all these superstitions, and teach instead the laws of sanitary science; but they are too woven in with our social frame work." I said, *'In pulling down the ivy you will pull down the wall with it, if you do not take great care." He rejoined very sadly, *' After all, I do not want to pull it down; in that very ivy my nest is built; but it is dying, without any pulling down from me." In fact, the superstitions he was speaking of are such essentials in the lives of the mothers and wives, that the domestic nest would be rudely shaken by any effort after a great change. Women, it has been said, are always the best conservatives, and here it would almost seem that they cling more and more to their credulities, and have redoubled their observances, in order to atone for the defalcations by which their male relations tempt Providence ; so that the dis- tance between the masculine and feminine point of view keeps widening. These defalcations, however, are, so far, more in thought than in act ; as what with early impressions, their own latent superstition, which is probably far stronger than they themselves know, and the force of habit, the men conform in the main to their old VALENCIAN SUPERSTITION. 99 accustomed ways, though often speaking of them as a concession to female weakness. Besides, they naturally long for something which the laws of sani- tary science do not supply, and are reluctant to part with what is, after all, the best thing they know, the only thing they have, to supply this something, before they have found anything better to replace it. As Touchstone said of his bride, '' A poor thing, but my own ; " so the modern Spaniard says of his super- stition-encumbered faith. In reply to Don Manners apologies, we used to tell him that, at least for her intolerance and fanaticism, Spain had an excuse; that it was a habit she had acquired in the days when she was the postern gate against which the attacks on the fortress of Christian Europe were directed, and when she made her long lonely stand for the faith against '' unchristened heathen houndes," keeping it alive through centuries merely by the fierce tenacity of her love for it ; and, then, when at last there were no Moors left, religious warfare had become such a necessity to her, that she put the Lutherans in their place and fought on still. On the subject of superstition, St. L and I were both aware that we always bowed to magpies, and counted our cherry-stones ourselves, but we thought it would be a pity to disturb the conception 100 AZAHAR. our friend had evidently formed of the strength and freedom of English thought, so kept our counsel. Don Manuel was quite ready to agree as to Spain having been our bulwark against the Moors, but we did not find him quite so cordial when we turned to another view of the subject and talked about the wonderful benefits which in some respect these Moors had conferred upon the country. He would not allow that the vigorous gutturals, which seem to give so much more backbone to Spanish than Italian, were derived from Moorish sources, or that those metres which are peculiar to Spanish verse were of Arabic origin ; but we each found authorities to back us, and came to no conclusion, except that there was a great deal to be said on both sides. The language, which, by the way, they never speak of as Spanish, but always as Castilian, contains a few very odd words which do not seem to be cognate to either Latin or Arabic : perro, a dog ; cerdo, a pig ; cordero, a lamb, I will mention among them. All the old ballad poetry which has the Cid for its centre (the Thee we pronounce him now) I expected would be too old in language for us to understand, but having been handed down from father to son, and mostly the work of unknown authors, it has been treated without much ceremony, and a little modern- Ill SPANISH LITERATURE, 101 ized by each person who undertook to collect and edit it, and the date of the language is only the date of the special collection in each case. We liked the specimens of old ballads, and the group of fifteenth century poets extremely. Don Manuel and Doiia Elisa used to lend us ponderous volumes of plays, too, from the great galaxy of dramatists of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The following are two short passages — one from Calderon, and one from Lope de Vega — which I translated as exercises, and give, first, because I think they are rather characteristic of that vein of sportive sadness which I mentioned as having observed in present-day Spaniards, and sliow that they inherit it from their forefathers ; and, secondly, because they are also characteristic specimens of the formal pattern to which both poets often cut their luxuriant ideas, stringing together the similes in a little summary at the end. Probably they have been translated before, but I give them on the chance that they have not, for those who do not read Castilian. Some one once said, '* You may lose all the spirit of this passage if you read it in a translation ; but you must lose it if you do not read it at all." The first is by Lope de Vega, from '' El Domine AZAHAR. Lucas." I have kept to the fourteen-Une sonnet form of the original, and also to the rhyme. It is a lover's complaint. " If love had lost his darts, and hell its fire, Then, wretched mortals to torment and slay, They in my burning heart could find straightway All flames, all darts, which they could e'er desire. If Neptune, while I drown in woe, should view His proud perennial currents running dry. Then might he from mj fount draw fresh supply And from my blinding tears an ocean new. Or if the venom'd viper should complain Her poison lost, she needs, fresh store to gain, But search my breast, with its imperious pain. And though the bird of heaven no air should find, I, with my sighs, could a whole world sustain ; I who in one am poison, fire, sea, wind I '* Senora S , with, I thought, great grammatical acumen for a foreigner, ohjected to my use of the verh '' complain " in this manner ; but at length I won the day by finding a precedent from Shake- speare,* for whom she has an admiration which would justify his use of any word in any way. The second is by Calderon de la Barca. I am ashamed to say I cannot remember the exact title of the play. The heroine is speaking to her confidante. (( Ah, Sirena! all complain, Why must I unheard remain ? * u Kape of Lucrece," line 1839. CALDERON. 103 The faithful flower complains, and grieves If the breeze assail her leaves ; The sun — his daily death to die In diamond throes that thrill the sky ; Sweet vocal echo doth complain And gives the last sigh back again, • In faint remonstrance at her pain. 'Plains the ivy, she can love. As her fading wreath will prove, If she lose from her fond clasp The strong rock she still would grasp ; 'Plains no less the simple bird, And in love's dim prison pent Thus her sorrow would content. Though her sad song find no word ; To the earth complains the sea, And with sad lips ceaselessly Lays soft kisses on the shore, W^hich returns them nevermore ; But the fire, with fiercer love From within, her heart would move. Is it much then that my grief Also thus should seek relief? Why, when all things else complain, Flower and echo, sun and sea, Fire, rock, ivy, wind, and tree, Why must I unheard remain ? " Dona Elisa occasionally treated us, her pupils, like children, and brought us national dainties when she came to give her lesson. One day, indeed, after we had been asking questions about Spanish sweetmeats, she sent us a large collection of specimens to taste. There were three kinds of turron, the special '* goody " of Valencia, of which there are whole booths in the 104 AZAHAR. A SPANISH PROFESSOR. 105 fairs and markets, but which we have never felt quite equal to venturing upon ; but Doiia Elisa assured us hers was dependable as to cleanliness. One kind was a soft white almond paste, cut in wedges, and with pieces of citron in it; another was a much stickier composition, also white, with whole almonds in it ; and the third was brown. Then there was preserved lettuce-stalk and candied pumpkin, both very good, fig-bread and quince-bread. Besides this, she sent us some ** cacahuete," which we often hear cried in the streets, and which is a kind of pig-nut, like a double nasturtium seed, eaten roasted ; chufa, another pig- nut ; and altramuz, or baked lupin seeds, all largely eaten by young and old. Don Manuel dropping in, unbent from his usual gravity, to show us sundry little tricks which boys played with these nuts and seeds, making them pop and so on; and how the cacahuete contains inside, when skilfully opened, the likeness of a tiny sculptured face. He always seems so wrapped up in learning that we were quite glad to see him relax. His enthusiasm about books is quite a study, and his zeal in his vocation does one good to see. Indeed, one of the things which first attracted us to him was that one day I asked him how he liked his work as professor, and he replied most emphatically, " Es mi locura " C' It is my passion ; " literally '' my madness "), which we thought an interesting variety from being called on to condole — as is so often the case when one asks people engaged in teaching about their occupa- tion — on its being ''such dreadful drudgery," ''the same old routine," etc. He has hard work, lecturing in both the university and the instituto. We asked if he could often go away, and found that they have a long summer vacation, as in our universities ; but at other times he could not leave the city, even for a day, without a written permission from the governing body, and this, he said, was very molesto (trouble- some), as, if a professor should be sent for on urgent business, he would still have to hunt up the governing body at their several houses, and wait for their permission to start. Feb. 12th, — Valencian experiences are coming to an end for us, and we shall be gone before the carnival. The festivities for it begin long before- hand, and the shops have been full of masks for some time. There was a grand invitation ball (masked) last Sunday, for all the great people of Valencia, and there is to be another to-night. An old gentleman, with a most benevolent face, who smiles constantly at us across the dinner-table, a day or two ago produced \ 106 AZAHAR. two tickets for it, and gave them to us, explaining that ladies were to be masked, but not gentlemen, and also mentioning that there would be little, if any, dancing, as it would be too crowded. He had been at the last, and could scarcely move about. We could not very well go, especially as we then rather expected to be starting on our journey the morning after, so reluctantly said no. ( 107 ) CHAPTEE XL DEPARTURE FROM VALENCIA — FAREWELLS, ETC. ALICANTE. Feb. 15th, Alicante, — There is no doubt that getting about in Spain is attended with little difficulties for those who are not robust, and I believe we stayed at Valencia two months partly because it was so hard to get away comfortably. We both liked the place, though, for many things, and were sentimental about leaving it. I can hardly say how often we went over the pros and cons of the journey to Malaga ; the two land routes each presenting its obstacle. The northern one involved a long detour and change in the middle of the night at a small junction in the mountains (Alcazar de San Juan) ; and the southern one, more direct, involved an interval with no railroad (from Alicante to Orihuela), to be done by diligence or carriage on a bad road. On each line there is only one good train a day, and that 108 AZAHAK. (excuse the *'bull") is at night, and no coupe-lits going through. " Of two evils, choose the lesser ; " but we amended this into '' Of two evils, choose neither," and elected the third alternative of going by sea, which, with all its dismal possibilities, seemed on the whole the easiest. So we made inquiries, and heard there were three steamers a week to Alicante — passage twelve hours ; and by Mr. Dart's advice w^e chose the Laffitte, to start on Monday, the 13th. The papers are the only source of public information, and they mention no starting hours, as Spaniards seldom commit them- selves to an exact time, generally adding ''mas o menos " (more or less). However, it was to be por la tarde (towards afternoon), and we announced our departure, and went through some sad farewells. In the morning Don Manuel came in with three large volumes from the university library, to which he was sm-e we should like to devote an hour before starting ; and, soon after, Damasa, from Sefiora S , appeared, laden with three more for the same purpose. We had time to look at all six ; for next appeared Mr. Dart's clerk, come to tell us that there was ''quite a shocking wind," and the Lafitte had not been able even to get into the harbour, to say nothing of getting out of it again en route for Alicante. At first we were BOUQUET, BUN AND NOVEL. 109 quite cheerful and composed, and said " It did not matter ; we would go by the next boat. When was the next ? " " Not till this day week." " But we were told there were three a week." " Yes ; but they all start on the same day." We plunged again into discussion of the overland routes, one person advising us to go to Madrid and back as the shortest in the end ; but, on the whole, we were inclining to the extra week at Valencia, when, on Tuesday morning, came a note from our kind friend, Mr. Dart, to say that the wind had gone down, the Lafitte had come in during the night, and was waiting till afternoon ; so we repacked, and got oflf at 2.30 for the harbour. I have told all this in detail, as it is characteristic of the vagueness and difficulty of getting hold of exact particulars of time and circumstance, which con- stantly beset us in arranging our Spanish journeys, but which I shall not constantly enlarge upon. Senora S , apprised of the change, appeared with Damasa, bringing us a delightful bouquet, to inhale en route ; a josefina, or large bun, peculiar to Valencia, for our refreshment ; and a Spanish novel for literary pastime. Don Manuel could not get away, but sent messages. Mr. and Mrs. Dart also 110 AZAHAR. ALICANTE. Ill made a friendly effort to see the last of us, but calculated too much on our unpunctuality, and only appeared in their tartana just as we were swinging round to leave the harbour. The steamer, a Spanish one, was small, but fairly comfortable and well appointed; almost empty of passengers. We took tickets at a bureau on board, 54 reals (13i francs) each. These do not include food, which you order at a restaurant. I stayed on deck till dark, and saw the last of Valencia del Cid, which faded at length to a grey spot between the two horns of projecting headland, which form its bay. About four a.m., and while it was still quite dark, we stopped with a shudder, and I started from a doze, quite sure we were shipwrecked. It was Alicante, however, and we had a long, tiresome waiting-time till daylight, the sun now rising at 6.57. The Spanish family, who were our only fellow-passengers— a father and mother with two children (Pilarina and Antonio)— got up, made their toilettes— each parent undertaking one child— had their breakfast, of chocolate and a glass of water after it, sweetened with an azucarilla or meringue dissolved in it, and then the two children drove their father very happily round and round by his cloak till it was day. At seven, I went on shore with W and the luggage, leaving St. L to finish his night com- fortably and appear later; the steamer remaining at Alicante all day, there was no hurry. It is a very striking little place, quite down on the shore, with a long Alameda of fine palm-trees close to the sea, and a white cliff behind, crowned with a fort, capped with little turrets. This is called S. Barbara. We went ashore in a little boat, the Spaniards waving their handkerchiefs to us as we departed. They were going on direct to Malaga. Fonda de Bosio being full, they have put us into a dependance, where we have rather grand rooms — a fine salon, with pictures and ornaments, a fireplace, etc. From one window we look into a large school-yard, with two tall palms and a well in one corner ; the other window fronts the sea and fort. The hotel is quite as good as the one at Valencia ; indeed, rather more advanced in some respects. We are waited on by five ladies, who also manage the laundry and sewing establishment. Our own especial attendants are an old lady, named Teodora, and a very pretty youthful Maria. 20th, Alicante, — We have now been here some days. It is a quiet little place, with little or nothing to see. If the roads were not so bad, however, our ii 112 AZAHAR. drives would be charming, as there is just now a perfect sea of almond-blossoms, backed by blue hills, all round the town. We have been (in a large omnibus with a coupe, the only conveyance to be had) to several huertos, or country gardens, where they give us flowers and oranges, and let us sit on stone seats and bask in the sun. There is usually a house at each huerta, where the gardener lives; and the proprietor has a few rooms, and brings out friends in the afternoon ; or, in hot weather, comes to stay a few weeks. It is certainly warmer here than at Valencia, and the air is most balmy and dry. We still have a little fire in the evenings, but the thermometer in the middle of the day without one is sixty-two or sixty- three degrees. We can dine here, or go across to the Fonda. We generally do the latter, and dine at little round tables, while the landlord slopes about the room, saying polite things to everybody. He tries us very much by generally coming up just as we have been helped to something we cannot possibly eat, when he wrings his hands in despair, says, *'Tsch, tsch," and proposes improvements, *' a little vinegar," etc. The cuisine is really very good, only some of the dishes are too elaborate and highly sauced for our taste ; and pimento, which we think very nasty, is often used as ALICANTE. 113 a condiment, and also sent in as a vegetable. We have one very fine fish, a denton — fine as to size, I mean — but St. L pronounces him somewhat tasteless. We have goats* milk only; the butter, they say, with pride, is ''ultramarine"! The oranges splendid, and of many varieties. There are no English here at the hotel, at least, we have not come across any, but they are considered in the arrangements. Witness the following printed notice in the hall, which I have copied for its choice diction and etymology : — '' Fonda de Bosio. Great departments for families ; confortable rooms at different prices. The central office of all the railways is found on the low storey. Particular carriages. M. Mrs., the travellers, who will be kind enough as to honour him with their confidence, will there be treat with the gretest con- siderations. They will find a superbe dining-room, confortable restaurant, coffe house, and billiard. The service will be performed at every hour, and in the particular appartments, if they wish so. The cleanlinex and care and equity will be the base of all these things." 8 114 AZAHAR. CHAPTER XII. CORDOVA — ADVENTURES THERE. Feb. 2Sth, Alicante.— -We shall have been here just a fortnight when we leave to-morrow, which is our present intention. On finding that it is possible to order a berlina-cama, or coupe-lit, to come here for us from Madrid, and also that the steamer would take three nights and two days to make the short trajet from here to Malaga, the scale seems to turn in favour of going by land, especially as a strong poniente, or west wind, which often lasts a long time, is now blowing, and would be against us if we went by sea. This is the hot wind, and the thermometer is sixty-eight degrees in my shady room. The carnival has taken place during this fortnight, and, though much cried down by the inhabitants as being a very small thing here, was an amusing event in its way. We spent the afternoons of both Sunday CARNIVAL AT ALICANTE. 115 and Shrove Tuesday in sitting on the Alameda, which, with its fourfold avenue of date-palms, made a most picturesque background for the gay AHcantians in their masks. They did little but parade up and down, and indulge in a little Punch-and- Judy kind of acting, and in some boleros and fandangos with castanets. The principal '' swells " were the children, on whose disguises their parents had bestowed much care, and watched the result with great pride. Some very small girls, dressed in trains and white man- tillas, with powdered hair, high comb on one side, and large fans, were charming. We saw one, late in the afternoon, being carried home half asleep by her nurse, the fan hanging languidly from her hand, and the small powdered head resting comfortably on the nurse's shoulder. There were tiny boys, too, in cavaher hats and plumes, short velvet cloaks, swords, etc. There were booths of sweetmeats, men crying cacahuete to eat and jarabe (syrup) to drink, and roUitos — small ring-shaped cakes, flavoured with ani- seed — to two of which our coachman kindly insisted on treating us ! On Ash Wednesday we expected everything would be over, but at night we were again brought to the window by sounds of music and mirth, and saw a stream of people pouring by. Then came a procession 116 AZAHAR. on horseback, with torches ; then a very small coffin, under a glass case — as usual in Spain — and resting on a grand car ; then more cars, music, soldiers, and populace. Presently Celestina, one of our five house- maids, came in and said, *' Did you see it ? '' "Yes. What was it?" ** That was the funeral of the sardine. We always have it on the first day of Lent. *' The sardine ? " " Yes ; don't you know ? A little fish, very good, but we must not eat it in Lent, so we bury it on Ash Wednesday " (laughing heartily). " But I thought you might eat fish ? '' ** Oh yes, we do really, and meat, too. It is easy to get permission ; only this is a custom." There was a masked ball at the theatre on Shrove Tuesday, and as it is only just across the street I thought it would be worth going to look on for half an hour, though I knew it would not be a very grand performance, as there are no smart people here, I imagine. I proposed to the head waiter to escort me, ^itli ^Y ^ and we went about ten o'clock. Only gentlemen paid entrance (two francs), and ladies went in free, so I suppose we passed in as the waiter's party. The room being very hot, we went up into a box, and looked on, as if at a play. The masks were A MASKED BALL. 117 chiefly worn by ladies, gentlemen being in hats. One lady was meant for an Englishwoman, and wore a riding-habit, and brandished a whip, and had a beauti- ful hat, tied with red ribbons. The waiter, after a little pressing to go and tread a measure with the lady of his heart, or, failing her, with the best sub- stitute he could find, confessed that he should like to have just one polka, so went off, and we presently saw him leading a lovely mask in pink silk to the dance, and floating gracefully round with her. In the morning of Ash Wednesday, I went to the Church of San Nicholas, and saw the ceremony of sprinkling ashes on the heads of the priests and acolytes. There was a sermon, in which this ceremony was alluded to, the text being, '* Dust thou art," etc. The subject was death, and the preacher told an anecdote very well, apropos of death awaiting us every- where, of a traveller who was being rowed across a bay, and, entering into conversation with his boatman, learned that his father, grandfather, and great-grand- father had all been boatmen like himself, and had all been drowned. " I wonder, then," he said, '' that you follow the same calling. How is it that you are not afraid to go on the sea ? " The boatman reflected, and said, '* And how, then, did your father die ? " **He died quietly in his bed.'* '*And your grand- 118 AZAHAR. father and great-grandfather ?" '*The same." '* How is it, then, that you are not afraid to go to bed ? '* I think the audience detected no fallacy in this reason- ing. Again, speaking of the universality of death, he said, ''All good people have had to die ; the apostles died, and S. Chrysostom, and all the popes. And bad people, too, have had to die — Judas, and Luther, and the atheists ! " On the 25th, we drove to Elche, ten miles off, and only one hill on the road ; but we took two hours and a half getting there, in our ponderous omnibus and pair. The country we passed through is, for Spain, wonderfully fertile, with many little fields of corn and barley, the latter just in ear, and bean-fields, and many orchards of almonds, palms, and olives; but there were also numerous tracts of desert, i,e, of caked whitish sand, strewn with stones, and tufted with esparto grass, and little dry plants. We passed many loads of esparto grass — a small thin rush, largely exported, and woven into matting (the mat-weaving is a great industry all about here, both with esparto, with aloe or palm-fibre, called pita, and with a coarser reed called jiinco. We have bought some of each). Elche must be a quite unique place in Europe; we were delighted with it. It is imbedded in a palm forest, four Spanish leagues round. From the top EXCURSION TO ELCHE. 119 of the church tower you get a grand view of it, and of tiie Moorish-looking town in the midst of the palms, and far out over the sea. The posada was primitive, but quite possible to stay a week in, I should think. We saw some swallows skimming about as we sat out on its flat roof, the first we have noticed this year. After wandering into one or two of the huertos, and hearing the account of their wonderful annual crop of dates and pomegranates, we watched some groups of men sitting out at their doors, making hempen soles for the sandals they all wear. Three- fourths of the population are engaged in this trade. We wanted to buy the pair we had seen made, but they said they were working for a dueno (master), and could not sell them; but they insisted on fetching him, and he insisted on giving them without being paid. There is much more costume at Alicante than at Valencia. The men wear pointed velvet hats, and velvet jackets with numerous hanging buttons of filigree silver, knee breeches, also with silver buttons, and sashes. Many of the women are very handsome ; those from one particular district wear a single large plait hanging down their backs. The carts are made 120 AZAHAR. FAREWELL TO ALICANTE. 121 of reed matting, and the mules are hung with bells in rows, leather fringes, and bright saddle-cloths. "Mend-the-roads,"* as he appeared on the road to Elche, was also a very showy individual, with a large brass plate on his hat, and Peon Caminero on it, and scarlet facings and cuffs to his short velvet coat. He is provided with a box without top or bottom, set up on end, as a shelter from sun or shower. We saw one sitting eating his dinner, with several attendant children — all framed round with this wood-work, as if set in a picture-frame. The real landlord here is, as at Valencia, a homely old man, whom one would naturally take for a porter, generally sitting in his little entrance-room all day, and deputing business and conversation to a much smarter son, who has '* perfected himself,** he modestly says, in France. Seiiora Bosio is dead, but a daughter, married to a captain of artillery, lives here with her children. I always talk to the old father, now I know who he is. The other day I went rather early to his little bureau to get some change, and found the head-waiter just in the door- way, swathed in a sheet and being shaved. I had to avoid his convulsed glance, compounded of a wish to start up and bow, and apprehension of being cut if he * Shropshire local name for a road-mender. moved; and Senor Bosio and I conversed over his head with great decorum, till he invited me to walk round him. Seiior Bosio had told us several times of a wonderful bunch of grapes in his garden, still hang- ing, and which he thought would last till the new ones came in, as they ripen here in June. We failed to go and look at it as he proposed, so to-day he sent it on a large dish as a present, with a bouquet of flowers. It was really a grand cluster, and we are quite sorry he should have wasted it on us. We shall sometimes think with regret of a shady plaza near, in which we constantly sit— a great resort of mule-drivers and shoe-blacks — and with a large booth in the middle, where water is sold, brought from a distance, as the water of the place is strongly impregnated with magnesia and '* wastes soap,*' they say. Close to this garden dwells a photographer, a cheap one, to whom I rashly sat, and came out very odd indeed — six copies for ninepence. He was most anxious I should make it a douro, and have them coloured, and was exceedingly indignant that I hesitated. *' What ! '* he exclaimed, '' you tell me that you are staying at the Fonda Bosio, and yet you stick at a frioleria (trifle) like ^that ? " My refusal sprang less from parsimony than from doubt of his ability to do me justice ; but I could not wound his 122 AZAHAR. amour propre by hinting at this, so went away mis- understood. March 2nd, Cordova. — We took a warm farewell yesterday of Alicante ; our five housemaids, who have all been in service here for long periods — two of them fifteen and seventeen years respectively — insisting on shaking hands with us, and hugging W. , and all the waiters and the landlord waving us off from the door. We came here direct, in a coupe-lit — you have to take the four places, as it comes expressly from Madrid— it is well worth doing for those who deprecate night changes. We were twice shunted, once at La Encina and once at Alcazar de S. Juan. Except the length of the journey (it should be nineteen hours, but was twenty-one), there was nothing to complain of. There were stops for dinner and breakfast, the latter about 8.30, at Menjibar, where we were all set down like school-children to a long table with cups of coffee and hunches of bread prepared for us, also soft flat cakes, the size of a soup-plate, each adhering to a sheet of paper. This aspect of the journey is la prose de la vie, to which I seem naturally to have given the place of honour. The poetry consisted in a beautiful moonlight night, during which we sped on and on through tracts JOURNEY THROUGH LA MANCHA. 123 of undulating bare hills, alternating with plains strewn with olive trees, which last went flitting past us in the soft ghostly light, sometimes like groups of pilgrims, sometimes like regiments of soldiers — one could well imagine Don Quixote addressing them as wayfarers, or challenging them as hostile knights. This thought of Don Quixote was a natural one, because during part of the night we were passing through La Mancha, past Toboso, sacred to Dulcinea, past the point where he was knighted, etc. At one place near Alcazar there were even windmills, descendants of course of those at which he tilted, and as there are about twenty, the family must have increased largely. We were lucky in having a moon, or we should have passed through all this tract without having an idea of it. At each station, night and day, there were beggars on the qui vive, and water-sellers, crying, " Quien quiere agua ? " St. L was much exercised by the appearance of apparently the same little beggar girl at several stations, identical in dress, face, and voice ! Was it the commonness of the type, or could she travel in the train and get out to beg whenever it stopped ? We shall never solve the mystery. In Spain beggars are authorized. In several places we have seen them wearing a badge, with ''Pobre de Cordoba," or what- 121 AZAHAR. ever the town might be, on it; and they told us " Government" had put it on, to mark them out as worthy objects of charity. When it got hght, at 5.30, we were already in Andalusia, and immediately observed the general fertile look and added flush of green. ( 125 ) CHAPTER XIII. COEDOVA. 4 In time, though not quite in due time, we got to Cordoba, spelt with a *' b " by its own people. The station was wreathed with festoons and flowers, and we learned the king had passed through yesterday on a visit, and is expected back in a week. It was wonderfully colder — I think partly owing to a change of wind ; and at Fonda Suiza, the best hotel, to which we proceeded, there are no rooms with fireplaces, so St. L , for the first time, was reduced to a charcoal brasier. First a round table, with the shortest of legs, was brought in. It had a hole in the middle, into which a large brass plate, full of bm-ning charcoal, was fitted ; and a brass spoon, with which to stir it up, was laid by the plate, as though it were a meal prepared for a fire-eater. It keeps alight a wonderful length of time. When we went down to luncheon, soon after 126 AZAHAK. CORDOVA. 127 arriving, St. L , examining his new dining-room with a view to draughts, fixed an anxious eye on a door standing slightly ajar, and presently stole off and shut it ; but soon, to his disgust, seeing it ajar again, he appealed to a waiter. " Would you kindly keep that door shut ? I feel the draught very much." "I wiU keep it shut, if you wish, sir," said the waiter, who had watched his movements with some surprise. ''It is the cupboard door," he added gently. Of course we were very tired after our journey, and spent the afternoon in resting; but latish I took a short ramble through some of the narrow, paved streets near at hand, and peeped into many a picturesque patio. Most houses are furnished with them, having an archway from the street, closed inside with a door of elaborate, slender iron-work, and a vista through it of. shrubs, flowers, and Moorish arches. There are also small heavy balconies to many houses, sometimes across a corner, filled with the gayest flowers, bursting through the bars and tumbling down the wall— canariensis, stocks, carna- tions, and iris. Then to bed early, though we had the unwonted attraction of a reading-room, and a few elderly English papers to supplement new Spanish ones. * i» ^1 In the latter we saw the contest for Northampton, now proceeding, duly recorded, and evidently watched with some interest. f March ^rd, — I knew St. L would be late afoot a :ter his long journey, but, being satisfied that he had survived it, by hearing him softly whistling the "Pastoral Symphony" from the adjoining room, I thought I would improve the shining hour by a solitary ramble, especially as I was not sure of remaining more than one day. It was not a very shining hour — showery, in fact, and gusty, but with gleams at intervals, and a becoming day as to light and shade. Our street is called '' Paradiso " ; and, study- ing a map in the hall, I found a long winding lane, called '* Jesus Maria," would take me to the cathedral, or, as it is always called, the mesquita or mosque. It is, in fact, as much a mosque in general appearance as it ever could have been. It is surrounded by a high wall, thirty to forty feet high, with buttresses. In one corner of this wall stands the Great Tower, with open belfry, and a huge door of solid iron, richly worked, called the Door of Pardon ; through this you enter into the Court of Oranges, and cross it to the cathedral. Formerly the nineteen aisles all stood open to this court ; now most of the doorways are blocked up ; two or three are still used. I need not fl I 128 AZAHAR. ADVENTURES AT CORDOVA. 129 say that this court is full of orange trees, and it was filled with scent also, not of the blossoms, but of the fruit, which is hanging heavily on the branches. There is a large stone tank in it, with carved edges and little minarets at each corner. I lingered here for some time, and then went inside and wandered about. It occurred to me, as I went in, that the effect was rather like that of one of the large old apple orchards one sees in Herefordshire ; the forest of short irregular pillar-stems, the mass of interlaced arches you see not very far overhead as you look up, and the variety of shades of colouring all favour this idea. The slender pillars are some grey, some green, some brown, according as they are of porphyry, granite, or marble. There are 1096 of them, all collected by the Moors from various places. Many come from Constantinople, and many from Carthage. The arches are mostly built of alternate red and white stones. They are Moorish in shape, but double, with a second arch above, which gives a somewhat crowded look to the roof. The Mecca niche remains as it was — very richly carved, inlaid with gold and bright colours, and gemmed with gorgeous mosaic. A large choir and altar have been placed in the heart of the build- ing, very beautiful in themselves; the choir being entirely of carved wood, but, of course, greatly block- 11 ing up the general view. It would have been a grand thing if they could have left the building as it was, and only altered the worship. One very striking object is a magnificent antique silver lamp, which hangs by chains from the roof, just in front of the altar. On leaving the cathedral, I went down a steep bank to the bridge over the Guadalquivir (corrupted from Wady-el-Kebir, ''the great river**). All this tract of the city, I thought, was most striking. It is an irregular old bridge, built 'on a curve, and with a tower and gateway at each end. A large space in front of the gate-tower seemed to be a gathering place for muleteers. A group of twenty-three fine donkeys, laden with sacks, and with no harness but a muzzle of rope, were gathered, with their drivers in black velvet jackets and red sashes, round the steep steps of an old inn. The river was full and muddy ; the only full river I have yet seen. Standing on the bridge, I looked down on some old half-ruined mills — one on each bank, and two in the river — with boats moored below them, and people in gay costumes moving about in the sun, loading and unloading sacks; as the mills, though they look ruinous, are still used. On one bank was a group of birch trees, just coming out, and blue hills behind. Altogether 9 130 AZAHAR. it was such a beautiful subject that I wondered I was not quite familiar with it from pictures : it must certainly have been often done. It would require some courage though, on the part of the artist, to represent the bridge as it is, hardly two of the sixteen arches aUke — some low, some high, some round, some pointed. It was built, a.d. 716, by Hakem II., and, I suppose, was the pride of the town, as the arms of Cordova are a bridge over a river. This is the only bridge. You see from this point that it is a walled city, though the walls are now in ruins. Towering above the bridge on the town side is a tall slender column, with an angel at the top. This is called the Triumph of Rafael. A small leather banner hangs at the base of the column, bearing an inscription in old Spanish : *' I swear to thee, by Jesus Christ the Crucified, that I am Eafael, the angel, whom God has appointed guardian of this city.'' This column is in a little plaza, with a parapet overhanging the river, and a stone seat along it ; and here I stopped to rest. In spite of my mantilla, I had had several offers of guides as I went looking about me, but had shaken them off successfully. Two came up while I was here, and I drove them away ; and was looking peacefully out over the river when I heard more steps, and saw out of the corner ADVENTURES AT CORDOVA. 131 of my eye a third man, and forestalled him by saying decidedly, "I want nothing, thank you; nothing :' To my surprise he laughed, and said, "You want nothing, chica ? I was not going to give you any- thing ; '* and, looking round, I saw it was a gay muleteer, who was going to use the parapet as a table for his dejeuner, and perhaps thought I was giving an obscure hint— an '' indirectillo," as the Spaniards ex- pressively call it — that I should like some. In the afternoon we both together saw the mosque properly with a guide, and went inside the mihrab, etc. We also took a lovely drive all round the walls. It is a beautiful combination here of natui-e and art, and would, I think, be a delightful sejour for an artist, the still, unbusy, gi-ass-grown streets offering pictures at every turn. We saw, among many, one of a convent (Padre de Gracias), with dear old irregular turrets and gateways ; a higli mossy garden wall, over which a few palms and orange-trees had popped their heads, like adventurous recluses peeping out into the world; and the soft dark-blue velvet ^of the Sierra Morena, stretched as a background behind it all. I longed to carry the whole scene away with me. In the evening, at dinner, a young lady sat next me, with the eye on my side tied up in a handker- '\l 132 AZAHAR. chief, so that I could not catch it ; but, thinking she seemed to be alone and dull, I spoke to her in French ; (after speculating on her nationality, we were only- sure she was not Enghsh from an occasional use of the knife.) She responded at once ; in less than five minutes she had shown me her bad eye, and we talked on without pause till the end of dinner. She was Spanish, but could speak French. She lived in Madrid, and had come, with her baby, for a little change of air ; but the day after arriving had been stung by a poisonous spider, and was now, the moment it began to improve, going back without having seen anything. Her vivacity and flow of language were wonderful. She rattled on very amusingly about Madrid life and ways (Madree, she called it). It was evidently to her the one place in the world. The queen, she says, is proud and un- popular ; but then we have heard differently from other people, so I conclude she is a CarHst. She proudly pointed out the baby. It was at the opposite table, where W and other servants were dining, sitting up on its nurse's knees, eating ragout, and taking sips of red wine, as a preparation for its night in the train. It was a year old, she said. March 6th witnessed our journey from Cordova to Malaga. As we left the town, at 11.30, the streets i 1 I JOURNEY TO MALAGA. 133 were being decorated with pink calico and evergreen arches, in preparation for the king, who is expected on Thursday, on his way back from a visit to the Marquis de la Vega in this neighbourhood. It is curious, in a town like this, to think of the varieties of people for whom the streets have been draped in pink calico, or whatever in the past answered to that festive fabric. The elder Seneca, and Lucan the poet, who were both born here, probably had no pink calico; at least, during their lifetime. The ''great captain," Gonsalvo of Cordova, on the contrary, was thoroughly appreciated by his native city, and his memory survives in names of streets and promenades. I must add, though, that he was not actually born here, but at a village near, called Montilla, now celebrated for wine. We had a really beautiful journey, through the finest scenery we have yet met with in Spain ; but this was only the latter part of it. At first our amusement consisted in the little scenes at the stations, at all of which we stopped, though the train called itself a correo, or express. At Montilla, a certain Salvador and Antonia were seen off by a large gathering of most affectionate friends. We judged them to be a bride and bridegroom, by the smartness of their party — ladies with large fans for parasols, and .U - JW- 134 AZAHAR. ORANGE GROVES. 135 their mantillas caught back with iSowers, perhaps a ranunculus, or a red rose. There was much kissing ; Salvador embracing his male friends, as well as his female ones, in such a tragic way that it might have been the " Gran Capitan" going off to the wars, but for the comparative calmness of Antonia, who was much concerned with the arrangement of her veil, which was to protect her face from dust on the journey. An elderly man on horseback, attended by three gaunt yellow hounds, watched them off from outside the station. At each station there was a well with a roof, and a huge water-jar, the height of a man, standing by it. We made a few experiments in sweets from the baskets of the girls on the platform ; and St. L flattered himself he had detected the derivation of bun, on being offered a cake called a hunuelo. After leaving Bobadilla, which had a restaurant and furnished us with coffee about four, we entered on a mountain pass, that of Guadalhorce, and went through tunnels, twelve in number, which, though they always broke off the view at the most enchanting point, yet allowed us many beautiful peeps up at shattered battlements of red rock far overhead, and down into deep ravines clothed with prickly pear and an occasional pomegranate or wild cherry. Sometimes we looked down upon the round tops of an orange grove, showing like yellow gorse bushes below us ; sometimes we caught sight of the Httle river at the bottom of the pass. When we came out into the plain beyond, the orange and lemon groves which filled it looked Uke golden autumn woods, as they lay in the evening sun. A few were stripped of their fruit ; but on most of them it still hung, and the ground underneath was all strewn with it— in some places lying on a carpet of daisies and grey periwinkle. The fruit was of a very deep brilliant colour, and often with one reddened cheek, like an apple. The groves went quite down to the river's edge, with sometimes a laden bough hanging over the water, and they shaded off into tall reed-beds, or mingled with groups of dim green olives. Occasionally half a dozen peasants went by, driving donkeys laden with oranges up to the ears, and at the few cottages we passed there was generally a great heap by the door. It was a scene which would have looked very pretty in a pantomime and delighted English children; no doubt it could be easily managed in London, whither a large part of these very oranges sooner or later find their way. We were quite sorry to leave this district, and wished there was a place within its bounds at which to stay a day or two. There is one called w 136 AZAHAR. ( 137 > Alora, where there is a little inn, at which people sometimes stay, but we did not hear of this till after- wards. Just outside the valley the river broadened into a small lake, which was quite golden in the sunset, and looked like another orange grove in a liquid form. A man was crossing it on a mule, which was up to its girths in water, and he had thrown his legs over its neck to keep them dry. They were very smart legs, in yellow velvet breeches hung with silver buttons, and white drawers appearing at the knee-openings; and a women in a geranium skirt, who was awaiting him on the bank, looked at them, we thought, with a pride of ownership, which suggested that he was her lover or husband coming back from the fair. We picked up a few statistics on oranges from a fellow traveller, such as that the trees bear best from fifteen to twenty years of age, and that a full crop is from four to six thousand on a good-sized tree. CHAPTEE XIV. ARRIVAL AT MALAGA — CONVERSATIONS ABOUT JUSTICE IN SPAIN — SUGAR TRADE. About 6.30 we got to Malaga, and went to Fonda de la Alameda. We thought the town looked uninterest- ing as we drove through it from the station, but made no further observations that evening, except that it contained some very noisy inhabitants, who seemed to have selected the space round the hotel for some orgies which lasted most of the night ; but I was, perhaps, more alive to this fact owing to another distressing circumstance, viz. that my pillow was, I could not help suspecting, a bag of potatoes put into a pillow-case. At last I got up and struck a light to investigate, when I found it consisted of lumps of hardened flock. Having removed the pillow and re- stuffed the case with a shawl, I at last went to sleep. The next few days we spent in dwelling on the past and planning for the future, the present not offering much of interest. The hotel is only moderately ,', 138 AZAHAR. comfortable. The people are most civil, but even civility does not altogether soothe the irritation pro- duced by ringing five times without getting an answer ! There are a good many English here ; and, for the first time, we have found an EngHsh doctor, bearing the suggestive name of Visick, and supplemented by a chemist, Dr. Prolongo, as in Spain it is the chemists who bear the title of - doctor.'' There is also a Church of England service at the consulate on Sundays. I need hardly mention that the chief trade of the town is in raisins. One of its sights is the raisin estaWishments, where the fruit is packed and de- spatched. Some chests are labelled (alas! my country ! ) - English facersr and contain the fine raisms to be laid at the top of each box, and catch the eye of a too credulous public. Wine cellars are also among the sights, as this province is a great wine-producing, or at least wine-manufacturing, one. As in Spain ''our common air is balm," so our viti ordinaire is nectar, and here bears such grand names as Manzanilla, Val de Penas, etc. Much raisin wine is also made. We have only taken one drive of any length. We left the direction to our coachman, and, to our momentary surprise, he drove straight into the bed of the river, the Guadal-medina, and proceeded along it. DRIVE IN THE RIVER-BED. 139 The bed was empty, so it was no intrusion — empty of water, that is, but full of stones and dust. Once a year, however, it becomes a roaring torrent. Driving briskly under the centre arch of the bridge, we wended our way through a large desultory market held just round it. There were many stalls of seeds and nuts of different sorts, such as Spaniards love, little booths of odd shaped knives, baskets, and donkey panniers, and a great deal of alfombra or matting. We went on for about two miles up the river-bed, which was less rough than one might have expected, a good deal of sand being mixed with the stones. The view was not very pretty, bare reddish hills, dotted for some way up with prickly pear, shutting out any more distant view ; one, crowned with a Moorish tower, was rather picturesque ; it was called the Gibralfaro. Along the banks were aloes and tall reeds, and a few little huts with reed thatch — I should think shelters for goat-herds, as we saw many going about with their flocks of large dark goats. There seem to be extensive harbour improvements going on here. Another day we drove to see them, and watched great blocks of stone being pitched down from a hill overhanging the shore, and loaded first on trucks and then on barges, and taken out to the end of the wall they are building. 140 AZAHAR. A MISSION AT MALAGA. 141 The cathedral is an enormous pile; imposing chiefly from its size. It looks rather like a pig with one ear, as it is intended to have two corresponding towers, but only one has reached maturity ; the other seeming to have been nipped in the bud at an early stage of growth by that chill blast, '* want of funds." The complete one is some three hundred feet high. Inside is some beautiful wood-carving in the choir, especially a row of figures behind the stalls, in very high relief ; the heads and limbs quite detached from the background — date early seventeenth century. There are two Lenten missions going on : one at the Cathedral, and one, for children, at Los Martires, a fine old church. I went to a service at each. The one for children was just what one might have seen in England in arrangements, etc., perhaps a little lighter in tone than would be general with us, but this may have been only from the more animated ways and gestures of everybody. They had first an address, interspersed with questions, from the pulpit ; the priest addressed them as " chiquillos,'* and " chiquillas.'* He enlarged upon their behaviour to poor people, old people, people with infirmities, and told them of Elisha and the bears. Then they sang a hymn — the choir singing the verse and the children all joining in a chorus in much quicker time — it began '* Ah, Maria, madre mia," but I could catch no more. Then the second half of the sermon. This turned on saying their prayers; and he asked the boys who they thought were most neghgent on this head, themselves or the girls ? Of course they all said '' the girls." Then the girls were asked, and said ''the boys." And the priest said that for his part he beheved one was as bad as the other. I did not wait for the end of this ; indeed, I thought both it and the cathedral service too long. The latter was two hours and a half, and, besides, it was necessary to go very early as it was very crowded. There was first the Santa Eosaria (a Litany), then a platico or discourse, a short per- formance on the organ, then a long sermon, and a long Lenten hymn. The ])latico was familiar in tone, and lightened by a few anecdotes, at which a little gentle laughter was allowable, and arose in a murmur. The subject was confession ; and a propos of how it may be evaded or abused, he told of a lady who, when she came to confession, always diverged into telling of her husband's delinquencies, and to cure her of this, the priest said that for each of her own sins she was to say an Ave ; but for each of her husband's to have ''three flagellations." The sermon was entirely serious. One remark in it was, " It is not enough to believe ; the devils beheve— Protestants believe ! " The h. 142 AZAUAR. dialect of Andalusia puzzles us, as they slur, or almost leave out all the s's. Cristina, the housemaid, always, as she leaves the room, says, *' atadepe ; *' this turns out to be '* hasta despues,'' the Spanish form of au revoir. By this you will see she is a lady of polished manners. W was taken to see some Spanish dances at a cafe; and to console me for not going too, Cristina kindly proposed to dance for me herself in my room, and went through a rigadon and a bolero with great spirit, using her fingers as castanets, to mark the time, with loud clicks above her head. Malaga ought to be an interesting town. It is immensely old, going back to Phoenician days ; and it has in more recent times had a finger in every pie, such as Spain is in the habit of cooking for her children (revolutions, rebellions, etc.) ; and there are various ** martyrs' memorials'* in the town to the patriots who distinguished themselves. The town is surrounded by hills, and, when they are softened by sunset and blue distance, one sees that the situation is very pretty, with the town in the bosom of the hills, and the vast cathedi-al soaring up from its midst. The English cemetery (the fii'st heretic one allowed in Spain in 1830) is a very pretty Bpot, rich with wigicria, bougainvillea, and Inbiacus, jiow in full blosjiom, aud sloping off behind into hillB MALAGA COXTIXUED. 143 and olive grounds without any formal boundary. The olive grounds, too, are now full of wild flowers- periwinkle, mallow, star of Bethlehem, gazenea, wild mignonette and lavender, borage and hawk-weed, are among the most common. The people one meets out in the country look • ather wild and gypsey-like. Yesterday, driving back from a pueblo (village), called El Palo, we met a number of its inhabit^ints, coming home from market, we supposed ; a good many riding double, on mules and donkeys. The latter were very smart, with embroidered cruppers, bells, and baU fringes of coloured wool over their eyes. There were several caits drawn by enormous oxen, heavily yoked, and their noses nearly touching the ground ; the carts also nearly on the ground, made of mats stretched on a slight wooden frame. We saw, during the same ride, a set of fi.shcrmen drawing in tlieir nets, a gi'oup of about twenty men. They made a pretty picture in the evening sun on a smooth bit of shore, with their red sashes and legs bare from the knee. They seem to catch cluuHy red mullet, and a tiny fish called bo^iuerone^ ; but some- times a good .sized tunny is caught. St. L remai'ks that Spanish hfe is the ghost of Oriental life ; and wu are always meeting this ghost / riM 14i AZAHAR. TALK WITH A MALAGUENO. 145 in broad daylight, I dare say more alive to bis presence from baving so lately seen the living man (last winter in Egypt). He recalls the departed Moors in a hundred ways ; flitting into sight now in a gesture, now in an expression, now in a song. The other day a woman used the very same gesture the Egyptians do to express that some one was asleep, i.e. leaning her head on one hand. Yesterday we were sitting on the Alameda, when a little party of poor children began to dance, and, seeing us watching them, came just in front of us. It was a most Oriental little proceeding. There were six of them, all girls, in scanty frocks, and with sandals, and handkerchiefs on their heads. They drew a circle in the dust with a stone, and one sat on the ground, drumming on a bit of wood for a tambourine, and the rest clapped their hands in rhythm, all but one, who danced, advancing, retiring, spinning round, and clicking her fingers. At the end of each figure they all threw their arms round each other and kissed, and then changed parts. Only one boasted a pair of castanets; the rest used those which Nature had provided. A Spaniard, silling on the same bench with us, said (when they at length suggested a wish for 6om6 ^^ centimitos ''), ''You have danced very badly, and I shall give you nothing.*' This was al80 exactly what an Eastern would probably have said, without any idea of special harshness. We gave them a penny amongst them ; and they were delighted, and spun off, kissing it and their hands to us, and expressing by gestures how much they disliked the Spaniard and liked us. He was, however, quite indifferent, and only remarked that he thought they were ''a miserable family.'* He then transferrt'd his whole attention to ur, and wiiij very curious. He and I made valiant efforts each to divert the stream of conversation accordinjcj to our own wighes, as wo both wanted to ask questions and not to answer thorn; but he beat me hollow* from his greater fluency and stronger curiosity. " Why had we come to Malaga ? Not on business ? "SVhoro had wo come from ? France or England :> And if England, was it in actual London that wo lived? What was London like? And w^re we a matrimonin (married pair)? Oh! a brother and sister, and unmarried? But did we think it pi*ol»al.lo we might yet marry ? And np to what age in Kngland was it usual to do so ? ** etc., etc. We ascertained that he himself was a bachelor, a native of *'Madroe," and settled in Malaga as a merchant ; that he thought it a dieagreeaWe place ; and that affairs were very dull just now; but I failee used as roads. They do not even trouble tliemselves to mend them : the periodical floods acting as waywardens, swoepinij away accumulations, and fresh spreading tho gravel and sand. I have seen no imusaal fruits or f!K)utliern plants here, except custard apples, which are sold in the market ; but it is, perhaps, rather e^irly in the year for finding such things. There is a kind of sweet 160 AZAHAR. potato, though— not a yam— which is peculiar ; they make it into a kind of compote. March 23rrf, Seville.— Onv journey yesterday from Malaga took us back part of the way towards Cordova, through the orange district. We diverged at Laroda, and then came into a rather arid plain country sprinkled with palmetto, and grazed (?) by a few scattered goats and black pigs herded by children, all looking very lazy and happy. Our journey was a very noisy one, as the train was full of recruits, who behaved in the most jovial way at the stations, where they generally found a large crowd of inhabitants come down to see them ; they sang, danced on the platform, drank water from the engine-tap, etc., etc. Occasionally they were called over, and all answered *' Presente.*' About four we reached Seville, having started at 7.30 a.m. The city lies on a flat plain ; the cathedral had been in sight a long time, with its tall Moorish tower, called the Giralda, from its weathercock— a figure of Faith, fourteen feet high, which turns on a pivot; this was, of course, very famihar to us by reputation, and was a salient feature in the view. Just outside Se^dlle we saw some very curious ploughing going on ; thirty ploughs we counted all working in the same field, and apparently following JOURXEY TO SEVILLE. 161 each other, with a crowd of attendant men ! There must have been some method in this apparent mad- ness, but we had passed out of sight while vainly endeavouring to guess what it might be ! 11 •••^■■f! 162 AZAHAR. SEVILLE. 1G3 CHAPTEE XVI. SEVILLE — MURILLO'S CENTENARY, ETC. March 2(jth. — Seville has now become a little familiar to US, though it is not a city which can be grasi)ed in one drive, like Cordova. I took a long walk with an Italian cicerone who haunts the hotel, hoping thus to acquire a general idea ; but though I did return with some notion of the place, I found the rai)id skips from one age to another which marked om- progress rather confusing. **This is the street where Tcdro the Cruel committed a murder one dark night, and would never have been found out if an old lady looldng out of her window had not recognized him by the creaking of his knee. This is the house in which Cardinal Wiseman — your Cardinal — was born. In this square Figaro is said to have had his shop. This is the stone put to mark the point to which the Guadalquivir rose in the great flood of 1876, when the town was in the dark at night for a week, and the people in the flooded houses had to be fed by long poles passed in at the windows. From this point you can see the village of San Ponce, where Trajan and Adrian were born. This is Murillo's house; and here is the great tobacco manufactory, where 5000 women are cm- ployed." . . . I came in not quite sure whether it was Trajan or Cardinal Wiseman who had founded the tobacco manufactory, and which of them Figaro had shaved ; but my perceptions cleared as I disentangled the skein in the cool leisure of the Fonda de Paris. We think the hotel will quite have its head turned by our surprise at its cleanUness and fashionable ways— a menu, waiters with clean white ties, really bright forks and spoons, a separate servant's dining- room ! It is very dear; but, then, Cordova and Malaga were dear without any compensating smart- ness. In the afternoon of the day on which I took my ^valk, we went for a didve, again taking the cicerone, and lionized a very curious old house, called Casa de Pilatus, built by a Spanish nobleman three centuries ago, in memory of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It is an imitation of Oriental architecture— a wonderfully faithful one, and interesting as belonging to an age when one would think the idea of copying older art HF>- rnm^ 164 AZAHAR. PEDRO THE CRUEL. 165 had hardly arisen. It is most lavishly decorated, with tile-work in elaborate patterns and rich colours, and coats of arms in the centre of the medallions; and beautiful screens of twisted ironwork shutting off recesses. It was the point of departure in old times for a Yia Crucis to the cathedral, and a black cross stands in the patio. I forgot to mention that the house is said to be on the model of Pilate's house at Jerusalem, but I do not know if this is on any authority, or was merely thought of to account for the name — as in the case of the mountain Pilatus, on Lake Lucerne, really called from the ''cap " of cloud it wears in some winds, but concerning which a legend about Pilate has arisen. On the staircase wall there is a Httle shrine with the figure of a cock, behind a glass. There is a beautiful chapel and a pretty old neglected garden. We finished the afternoon in the gardens of the Alcazar, leaving the palace itself for another day. The present queen was at Seville, for the first time, a few weeks ago, and we thought what a new experience to her, her stay in the beautiful Alcazar must have been. Eoyalties still use it as their residence when here; and in warm weather they dine in an open court, shaded by awnings and cooled by fountains. The gardens are lovely — full of fish-tanks edged round i\ with richly patterned low walls of porcelain tiling, and cypresses cut into quaint shapes, coats of arms and badges ; one fine old wreck of an orange tree is there, three hundred years old, and quite hollow ; and a sort of gallery, with a terraced walk on the roof, and a cloistered one below. Numerous jets of water play down the centre of the paved walks, and keep up a soft tinkle on the stones. These gardens were chiefly laid out by Charles V., but the older part and the palace are even more woven in with memories of Pedro the Gruel, who did a great deal of restoration to the Moorish building, added much of his own, and left the marks of a man of taste upon the whole place. His bad name, to the superficial inquirer, goes far to hang him without trial ; but he has his admirers : efforts have been made to rehabilitate his memory, and perhaps some Froude of the future will yet turn him out as a maligned hero. At any rate, he was undoubtedly a man of two aspects, and it is curious that, in many of the inscriptions about the palace recording his works, after ''the Cruel" is added, as though in an explanatory parenthesis, " or the Dis- penser of Justice." There are many memories, too, of his beautiful and gentle favourite, Maria de Padilla, to whom he was privately married, and who seems to have influenced him much and often for good. Their 166 AZAHAPw. daughter Constance, who married our John of Gaunt, appears side by side with him in the east window of Carhsle cathedral,* said to be as beautiful a specimen of stained glass as can be found anywhere — perhaps even in Spain. 26th. — Yesterday being Sunday, we found our way in the morning to an English service very near the hotel, held in a Spanish Protestant Church, which was formerly a nunnery. In the afternoon I was told that a service was to be held, which takes place only once a year, in the Orange Court outside the cathedral, especially for the charity schools and foundling hospital of Seville. A narrow street leads from hotel to cathedral, crossing the great square and resuming its thread obliquely on the other side. It brings you out just opposite the Puerta del Perdon, which has a beautiful, richly carved horse-shoe arch, a remnant of the mosque; above this is a large white ItaHan-looking sculpture of the money-changers being expelled from the temple ; and above that again appears the Gothic battlement of the cathedral, which tops the wall of the Orange Court ; — a confusion of styles, certainly, but when each is beautiful, why should they not grow side by side like * See account of the Arcliooological Meeting at Carlisle, August, 1882. tmm nw SERVICE AT THE CATHEDRAL. 167 flowers in an old-fashioned ''mixed bed"? In this cathedral there is not much of the mosque left, only this door and the court, with the old fountain for ablutions in the middle, and the great detached tower in the corner. Though the tower is of brick, yet, curiously enough, at a distance it assumes just the same w^arm, grey stone tint as the Gothic cathedral ; but, then, what with the mellowing of time, the shade given by the sunk patterns on each face, the numerous little stone windows and balconies, and the strips of coloured tile-work let in, there is not much red left. Inside, the cathedral is all Gothic; and if the mosque at Cordova was like an old orchard, this is like a grove of grand forest trees ; the interlacing of the arches begins so far up aloft, and there are famt peeps of stained glass so distant and so high, just where a glimpse of the upper blue sky might look in through the boughs. The transept dome is 175 feet high, I was too early, and wandered about for some time inside and out. One has to forget some scaffold- ing outside, and some repairs going on wdthin, in order to be undisturbed in one's enjoyment of all the beauty. There are i^reparations, too, ah-eady in pro- gress for Holy Week, w^hen an enormous tabernacle is :-^.>a-»-^^.^a£:^:: 168 -AZAHAR. put up at the west end of the choir, just over the tomb of Columbus's son Fernando, who lies there. The inscription on it alludes so slightly to the son in comparison with the father, that people often think it is the tomb of the great Columbus, as they first read it. (Colon, he is called here, which sounds like an allusion to colonies.) Fernando's modesty and filial feeling, if he wrote his own epitaph, are very touching. The great Columbus died at Valladolid. After sitting in the court some time, looking at the small stone pulpit in the wall, from which, as is recorded on its base, San Vicente Ferrer preached autos (lefe against the Vaudois, it struck me forcibly how very hot the preacher would be, as it was full in the sun, and even I, sitting in the shade of an orange tree and not preaching, was so hot ahready; so I inquired, and found the semce was not to take place in the court at all, on account of the heat, but in the sagrario, a sort of separate church at the other end of the court ; and that there was a crowd waiting at the door to rush in when it was opened. Of com-se I rushed in with them, impelled by that painful wish not to miss anything, which sometimes gives so much unnecessary trouble in a foreign city. After all, there was nothing veri/ interesting in the service, and I reflected, when I emerged, bruised and flattened, LA CARIDAD. 169 two hours afterwards, that the waiting outside had been the pleasantest part. A church filled by a crowd, unrestrained by seats or benches, is unplea- santly pushing, and became especially so when a lane was forcibly opened through it for a procession of banners and lamps to go through, followed by the schools. The actual passing by of the children interested me, however, and I did not begrudge them their cleared space. Interminable files of little girls, some in black mantillas, some in white, from the day- schools held at different convents; less picturesque little boys from the public Government schools, foundlings from La Cuna (the cradle), a large hospital, which I had noticed in the town, with a wicket in the wall, at which a nun receives any child left outside, without questions ; blind children, each led by a lame companion, all followed in succession. Many people spoke to the children, and patted them as they passed by. St. L and I visited a charitable institution in its own home the other day. La Caridad, an asylum for old men who were incurable, chiefly for the sake of its pictures. We first saw its chapel, which contains six Murillos and other good pictures, and sculptures by Montafies. The Murillo I liked best was very ap- propriate to the place. S. Juan de Dios is carrying 170 AZAHAK. a poor sick man to the hospital, and an angel, unseen by him, is behind, putting his hand to help him with his bmxlen. The old - sister " who showed us about, said she was one of thirteen, and they had eighty inmates ta take care of; but, then, they did a great deal for themselves. (The - ancianos,- she caUcd them.) When she took us through the rooms, however, we saw that a large proportion were bed-ridden. Every- thing was beautifully kept, but very simple. There were four long salas, distinguished by the beds in each having counterpanes of a different colour ; there was an altar at the end of each, at which mass is said daily; and each ^^anciano's " bed had the name of a female saint written on the wall above it, each different. Each also had a little cupboard in the wall by his bed-head for his private treasures. The marble floors would .have looked chilly in England, but here they only suggested ideas of refi^eshment. One old man, who had been a tailor in his palmy days, was making himself, with great enjoyment, a pair of stout blue linen trousers agamst the hot weather; another, who was blind, was tuning a little instrument he had invented himself; another "ancient" had collected several others round his bed, and was reaiUug to tliem with great unction. GYPSEY DANCES. 171 We asked him what his book was, and it was called " The Light of Faith." At the end of the last sala was a door in the wall, connected with the kitchens, through which the dinners were given out. Over it was a list of the hours for meals, headed, " These are the hours at which we serve food to our lords and masters, the poor." One evening I went with some other people from the hotel (for we Ijavc various English p^jople here) to see a performance of gyp«oy dances, of which a pro- gramme was 8€nt round. The audience was very small, only a single row of .spectators round a room, of which the performers occupied the centi-e. I found myself sitting next the Japancsi? Enil)ed wax with a shovel. Incense was also blessed, and five grains stuck into the candle in the shape of a cross. A very long service, of passages from the Old Testament with collects between, next followed; and then a procession went to the font and blessed the water, mixing oil in it. They came back chanting the litany, and I— who 202 AZAHAR. had remained near the altar for fear of losing my place — thought it looked and sounded very pretty as they came from afar, winding in and out of aisles and round pillars — for the cathedral is so vast that at first there was only a little distant grey cloud of incense, and an indistinct array of banners, and violet priests, and gold, and a faint chant — swelling and brightening till they came up again, and stood to finish the litany, during which the altar lights were all relighted, and the celebrants went away and changed their violet for white and gold, and the mass proceeded. At the Gloria in Excelsis there was a bright flash and three deafening explosions, and the great violet curtain parted suddenly to each side and flew back, the organ pealed out, and a row of bells, which hung from the choir balustrade, began to ring. The noise was so tremendous that it was not till it subsided a little that I was aware all the great bells of the cathedral were ringing too. St. L , who did not come to this service, said that the volley of firing quite reverberated through the hotel, which is a quarter of an hour's walk off. After this, the service finished as usual. On Easter Day, the first service took place at two in the morning, and I heard the bells ringing very HOLY WEEK AT SEVILLE. 203 gaily at that hour, but was too tired to get up. There was a grand service later, at about eight or nine, which we saw, when all the clergy went in procession across the square to the archbishop's palace to renew their vow of obedience, and brought him back to the cathedral, or rather, he brought them, walking at their head in his ermine cape and a long white train held up by priests, and extending his hand over the people as he passed, with a benignant smile. He is very white-haired, and very infirm and stout. His name is Lluch y Garriga. Six other gold mitres followed him, but whether they were bishops or mitred abbots, I do not know. I was very glad I happened to stand quite close to this procession, so as to see the embroidery on the vestments well, as it was a beautiful sight. The canons each had an embroidered cape adorned by a group of figures in a large medallion, exactly like a Xminting, even when looked at close. There were some brilliant little acolytes in scarlet and green, who looked like paroquets flitting about. The credence table was set out with all the costly plate of the cathedral — beautiful chalices and monstrances; the urns for the oil ; a cross, said to be made from the first gold Columbus brought back from the New World ; and countless other things. 204 AZAHAK. Several parts of the service sounded very familiar, such as our '' Easter Sentences," sung to a chant I thought I knew. There was a pretty hymn which I know I have heard in English, but cannot recollect how it begins, in which occurs the line, '' The Lamb redeemed the sheep," which I have been unsuccessfully trying to recall ever since I heard it. The whole service ended with the papal benediction, given by the archbishop to all the people. This is how Holy Week was kept in Seville. Of course, I should not have been an Englishwoman if I had not murmured "too theatrical'' at intervals. But we ought to remember there must be a north and south, a frigid and a torrid zone in ritual, as in every- thing else, and it is arbitrary to draw the line just where our own emotion falls short, or perhaps I should say our own wish to express our emotion in outward act. Spaniards like to have their feelings dramatized for them, and clothed in purple ; we like to keep ours outwardly calm and decorous; and this (whispered insular pride within me) is not because we have less imagination, but more. All representations fall so far short of our ideal that we prefer to have none, and spin our own web of imagery from within — we, that is, of the cultivated classes — I am not at all sure HOLY WEEK AT SEVILLE. 205 that it is safe to conclude that the bulk of English men and women prefer doing without representations. We may forget also that if feeling is too carefully shut up and hidden away, it may '* grow pale and spectre- thin and die ; " and that in carefully weeding out irrever- ence zeal may be weeded out with it. At any rate, I expect this would be the case here, with this excitable, enthusiastic, yet somewhat uncultivated people, and that, if they had nothing to appeal to the dramatic and the pictorial, their zeal for the services of the Church would not long survive. The wise Jesuits, who always went with the stream of the natures with which they had to deal, and got into the fortress by adopting the dress and language of the besieged, utilized this strong dramatic element when they were re-evangelizing Spain, retained and embellished the old Autos or miracle plays, and increased the grandeur of the services ; and now such food for the imagination has become a necessity. Probably most foreigners have felt, like ourselves, that things which would be a shock at home seem to come naturally here. For instance, we should be shocked at seeing the little acolytes clattering light- heartedly down the altar steps, and racing off, waving their tapers, to join the procession. But here it all seems to be part of their nature, and you would as 206 AZAHAE. HOLY WEEK AT SEVILLE. 207 soon think of calling a robin irreverent if you heard him singing in a church, or saw him perching and flitting about during the service. In thus speaking of shocks, I am naturally only concerned with, as it were, the outside show of the services. Of course some of the doctrine, and especially the intolerance one often detects, would frequently be a shock to one's judgment ; but as regards the ritual, I believe we should very soon become inured to it, because we should feel it to be of a piece with the rest of our surroundings. And though a tropical forest, with parrot plumage and scarlet blooms and rich scents, is not more different from a still wintry grove, with dim mosses and network of branches against the pale sky, than are the beauties of a Spanish service from those of an English one, we should end by admitting that both were beautiful, and each suited to the country in which it has grown up and developed itself. The perfect freedom of the cathedral during the whole week to all comers and goers was very nice to see. It was appreciated — for there were numbers of extremely poor people there — but apparently never abused. We used to like to see shabby women and rough-looking boys perhaps lying on the chancel steps, and, gazing up, quite absorbed, through the \i I gold lace- work of the screen, at the rainbows of stained glass above. After their squalid homes, it must have seemed to them like a peep into Paradise, and I dare say the glories of their cathedral go far to form their ideas of heaven. Certainly criticism as to the services is very much disarmed by the extreme beauty of the building, which seems to reflect back some of its own grace and dignity on all that takes place within its walls. We should be more fastidious elsewhere. For instance, if the rending of the veil had displayed anything tawdry or poor behind it, we should have been much more inclined to condemn than we were when the violet curtain drew back and disclosed a tall cliff of rich carving, honeycombed into dim gold caves hung with stalactites, and each enshrining its figure of a saint. The only thing we really thought unworthy of the rest was the monument, but we should hardly have dared to express the sentiment. It was rather a hard week's work, as I missed very few of the services. I had to absent myself from the washing of the poor men's feet, which I should have liked to see, but reflecting to St. L after- wards, that I must have missed either that or the procession of barefoot clergy, he wisely remarked that I should have many more opportunities of seeing the 208 AZAHAE. bare feet of a beggar than of a bishop, and that therefore I had chosen discreetly. He, after the manner of his sex, took things much more quietly and seemed to find a very few attendances at the cathedi-al sufficient. I heard of one service which takes place at Corpus Christi, which I regretted did not occur at Easter too, in which the choristers dance before the altar, and which is kept up exactly as it has been for many centuries past. By far the greater part of the ceremonies take place at very early hours, and are mostly over before twelve o'clock. On Easter Day we went to the En^- hsh service, as weU as to the cathedral. The day ended with a great bull-fight ; and when we wanted a carriage in the afternoon, no driver would take us unless we were going to " los toros." While we were discussing the point at the carriage-stand, a stranger came up and joined in, takmg oui- side of the question and we ended, with his help, in persuading a driver to take us. The stranger said he heartily agreed in our dislike of a bull-fight, and that, for his part, he thought it "la funcion la mas bestial" (the most beastly function) that he knew, and that, though he was a Spaniard, he had never liked it. We were surprised to find such sentiments, as we thought the love of the national sport was universal. We indulged EASTER DAY AT SEVILLE. 209 our coachman and ourselves, though, by driving up and down in the Delicias, and seeing all the world of Seville as it came out to refresh itself in the cool evening air, when the fight was over. It was a most gay throng, both of drivers and walkers, streaminf^ backwards and forwards under the blossoming trees. The ladies on these occasions, and very seldom on any other, wear ivkite mantillas, which look very festive, and are often extremely becoming. There were various foreign grandees, as well as native ones ; for this week and the following, the Fair Week, gather a crowd from all parts. Great preparations are already making for the fair ; a large flat expanse outside the walls being covered entirely with streets of tents and booths. It is by no means an ordinary fair, we hear. Many of the principal families of the neighbourhood have each their private booth, and spend the day in the fair, having meals in their booth, and entertaining friends there. There was a sort of preliminary fair on Easter Eve, chiefly for sheep, and especially lambs, as it is the right thing to have a lamb on Easter Day. We drove through the fair, and got out aud walked about to the different pens, thinking it might be rather in- teresting to hear the price of sheep, and compare it with English prices; but it was so impossible to 14 -*.».'E£r,rcr^ tiX nT"-.-*^ 210 AZAHAR. avoid giving the impression that we were intending purchasers, and the prices in consequence went up so alarmingly, and such contradictory statements were made by different people about the same sheep, that we gave up in despair the attempt to find out anything trustworthy enough to record. I was very anxious to get the music of Eslava's ''Miserere" to give away at home, and seeing it advertised in the window of a music-shop, I went in to inquire for it. It turned out, however, that it was only in manuscript, taken down by ear, and only the air arranged for one instrument, and this they offered as a great treasure, and asked sixteen francs for it. I did not think it worth getting under these circum- stances, but expressed surprise that there was not a cheap edition of it printed in score, as so many people who had heard it in the cathedral would buy it. They said, "Ah, that would be impossible ; it is the ' pro- priedad ' of the cathedral. Eslava was one of the canons, and not even he himself, if he were alive, would have the least power over it. All that he wrote would immediately pass out of his own possession and belong to his superiors." He wrote a great deal more church music, but it all remains in manuscript. ( 211 ) CHAPTER XIX. DEPARTURE FROM SEVILLE — ARRIVAL AT GRANADA. The weather has been occasionally very hot since we have been here, and the sun is burning in the middle of the day. We sit under the black shadow of an orange' tree on the plaza very often, and watch the children picking up the blossoms, which they collect in little baskets to make into a sweetmeat. Some- times we have indulged in a glass of orangeade at one of the numerous stalls in the plazas. It is made before you, from a basket of oranges, the woman, who stands on a high stool inside, taking great pride in showing you that she goes through the whole process without touching the oranges or the glass with her fingers, using only wooden tongs, spoons, etc. We have had no melons at the hotels since we left AHcante; but here they give us sweet lemons, or limes, which, however, we do not think at all a good substitute. Instead of butter, they give us here 212 AZAHAR. quince cheese, which appears at each meal in great squares all down the table, and is very good. One day we had leave from the '' Jefe de Palacio " to see the rooms in the Alcazar, which are not generally shown. The usual rooms, which are most rich and beautiful, we had seen before, but they are so well known by description that I will not dwell upon them. They are of about the same date and style as the Alhambra, but, being still constantly used as a royal residence, this palace is in excellent preservation. The little chapel upstairs, entirely lined with tile-work, is one of the things which re- quires a special permission, and is very interesting, built by Isabel, wife of Charles V. ; the tiles are beautiful. In one of the private galleries is a little collection of portraits of the nurses of the royal family, which, we thought, was a very nice little tribute of affection from the infants and infantas. We shall now be bidding farewell to Seville in a day or two (April 11th), and shall be sorry to leave all its beauties, not a quarter of which I have attempted to describe. Its churches alone would take a long time to see exhaustively; they present so many varieties of architecture and mixtures of Moorish and Gothic. There is a whole suburb of the town called the Triana, on the opposite side of the Guadal- DEPARTURE FROM SEVILLE. 213 quivir, and this used to be the gipsy quarter ; but since the breaking out of an epidemic there (I think cholera) some years ago, a great deal of improvement and rebuilding has been found necessary, and the gipsies have consequently been somewhat disturbed from their old quarter, and are now scattered about more promiscuously. During our stay here we have seen in the Spanish papers the death of Longfellow, and he is mentioned, with the greatest affection and respect, as a poet who genuinely appreciated SxDain, and was appreciated by her in return. They speak especially of '* Hiawatha," and dwell on his having copied the metre from the usual ballad metre of Spain called the ''redondilla," consisting of four trochees in each line. In the Spanish poetry this metre is sometimes rhymed and sometimes not, though Longfellow has always made it blank verse. April 24:th, Granada. — We have been here now nearly a fortnight, and quite concur in the general voice which pronounces it to be the gem of Spain — an emerald — as it is the only really green spot, and the yellow wastes all round will do for the gold setting of the gem. It is many degrees cooler than at Seville. Of course we expected this, but the difference is more marked than we had anticipated, and St. L 214 AZAHAR. congratulates himself on having left Granada to the last, instead of, as most people we met were doing, coming here hefore Seville. Our plan involves a little going over the same ground, so the other is best for those with whom time is an object, and warmth is not. We arrived at night, after a journey of thirteen hours from Seville. We came through in one carriage, but changed om* line twice, and made several long and tiresome pauses. After leaving the train we were only aware of climbing up and up from the city through groves of tall trees, with an occasional lamp twinkling like a glow-worm among them, and at the top reaching an hotel, and going up and up again to its third storey, from whence we looked out into leafy tree-tops, and heard them rustling, and water splg^sh- ing somewhere near, and nightingales singing, when- ever we woke in the night — all perfectly un- Spanish sounds. This hill, of course, w^as the Alhambra, and most people come up to the two hotels here instead of remaining below^ in the town. They were full at first, with an influx of people who had been spending Holy Week in Seville, and went back there for the great fair. Shall I describe the place ? I recollect once, as I was learning water-colours, and trying to brighten up GRANADA. 215 my sunset with another wash of '* cadmium yellow," my master said warningly, '^Eemember, the nearest approach you can get to light, is white paper, and every touch of colour you put on makes it darker ! '' I often apply this dictum to my descriptions of beautiful places, and think that every additional sentence takes something from the effect. As, how- ever, to those who have not been at Granada a blank page of white paper would not be of much use, I must briefly describe its situation, but will attempt no details, as they have been so well and so often given before now. Granada, then, is a large city in a fertile oasis at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, which causes the fertility by sending down its melted snows and interposing its great shadow. It is watered by two small streams, the Darro and the Xenil. The Alhambra is on a hill immediately above the town, the very lowest spur of the Sierra. The Moors girdled this hill with a wall and great towers at intervals, so converting it into a huge fortress, and an almost impregnable one, as the hill-sides are so steep as to be almost precipices, and the Darro, on the town side, goes close round their base like a moat. The walls used to enclose a good-sized town or suburb, and now, though there are not many houses remain- ing, they still include a parish church, a convent, a 216 AZAHAR. military prison, and all the celebrated ruins. Alham- bra means ''the red," and is supposed to be so called from the red colour of the fortress walls and towers ; the soil is red, too, as red as Herefordshire, but then that would apply equally to the whole neighbourhood. Two of the towers, the oldest bit of all, dating before even the time of the Moors, are called par excellence the Vermilion Towers, but we cannot agree that they are any redder than the rest. On the opposite side of the ravine which bounds the Alhambra hill is another height, on which stands an old summer palace of the Moors, called the Generalife (nothing to do with a general, as we had always imagined previously, but a corruption of ''The Garden of Alarif,'' the king's architect). Behind this palace, again, rises a hill, crowned by a bit of ruined fortress, called Silla del Moro (the armchair of the Moor), from whence he (the Moor) used to look down on the beautiful prospect at his feet. From this and other high points there are splendid views into the heart of the Sierra Nevada and over intervening lesser ranges. One little dark violet hill, some ten miles off, very like Pontesford Hill in Shropshire, is called "El Ultimo Sospiro del Moro " (the last sigh of the Moor), because from hence poor Boabdel is said to have turned back to take his last look at all he was leaving, ■K^ataffWl^tBftillKWW GRANADA. 217 when expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella after the Conquest in 1492. I had a very poetical dream on this subject the other night, which it would be a pity not to record. From my window I can always hear the elm-trees rustling and a fountain dripping, and, I suppose, these sounds make the more impression on account of the usual great stillness of Spain — no trees, no birds singing, no water. I must have woven them into my dream, for I thought a Moor was ex- plaining to me that it was quite a mistake to call that hill the "Ultimo Sospiro." "What you hear now," he said, "are the last sighs of the Moors," and I woke apologizing for my stuj^idity in having required to be told such an obvious thing. They must indeed have sighed to give up Granada. When one thinks of their own arid land across the Mediterranean, where water is such a treasure, one sees how they must have revelled, especially when they first came, in a place like this — all freshness, moisture, and coolness. They quite made it their own by the works they accomplished there and left behind them for posterity ; works in which they borrowed nothing from the conquered people, but remained exclusively Moorish. We have thus the very remarkable com- bination which gives the traveller quite a new sensa- tion — Oriental architecture, luxury and refinement, 218 AZAHAR. with surroundings of Alpine beauty such as green turf and daisies, brooks and blue hills and snow- peaks, on all of which you look forth from a dehcate Moorish window in an arcaded and divaned hall, lined with coloured marbles and azulejos, and bordered by myrtle trees and orange gardens with cool foun- tains. There is a great contrast between the inside and outside of the Alhambra palace and towers, the latter being massive and plain, with smooth almost windowless surfaces of reddish stucco over brick and rough stone ; and when you step inside them you are at once in a fairy cave of fretwork and colours and slender colonnades of alabaster. From their position against the hill-sides you enter the rooms on the inner side at a different level, near the top of the tower, and then going to the windows, or rather window-frames, you find yourself looking sheer down into the ravine, the tree-tops beginning about where the base of the tower ends, which gives a great sense of height. I think I have been to the palace of the Alhambra nearly every day since I came. After once going round with a *guide you are quite independent and unmolested, and can roam at will through the courts and little secluded gardens and galleries and halls. It is especially beautiful at sunset, when rays come THE ALHAMBRA. 219 straying in and tinting the fretwork, and you get lovely peeps of distant country from every window. There are numerous fountains, which are not gene- rally j)laying, but the last few days the Count of Flanders, brother of the King of Belgium, has been here, and the fountains play in his honour. The first time I went after his arrival I found them all splash- ing away, and their musical tinkle was a great en- hancement to the scene. The twelve lions in the Court of Lions, which are arranged dos-a-dos round a fountain in the middle, each had a jet coming out of his mouth, and the sweet little garden of Lindaraja had its oranges and myrtles sprayed over from an alabaster basin in the middle. The dear Moors, with all their talents, did not excel in pourtraying animals ; and I am afraid we might have taken the lions for twelve rather stiffly carved cats, if we had not known better. They had no practice, however, as they were not allowed to carve living forms at home ; so I suppose I was WTong in saying that they adopted nothing from Spanish art, and that they did so far modify their ideas as to admit some representations of living creatures, for though many things in the Alhambra are Spanish additions, the Court of Lions is genuinely Moorish, and the fountain has an Arabic inscription round the base, mentioning the date of its ■?p^l*' 220 AZAHAR. THE ALHAMBRA. 221 erection. Each lion has a pipe in his mouth (for water) ; their manes are carved into stiff points, like the dorsal fin of a fish ; and their legs go straight into the pavement without feet. There are great incongruities and contrasts which assail one's eye as one wanders ahout. Many rough and unfinished, many neglected and uncared-for rooms ; staircases leading nowhere, and so on. But then the perfect parts are very perfect; and the Moorish idea of secluding everything, and hiding it away round a dark corner, or approaching it along an intricate passage, has the fm-ther end, besides with- drawing it from observation, of enhancing its effect greatly when you come suddenly upon it, emerging perhaps almost from the dark, into one of the beau- tiful carved rooms with domed ceilings inlaid with cedar and ivory, honeycombed recesses and couches of coloured tihng in patterns of wonderful complication. Some of the slender-columned courts, supporting the most elaborate stucco-work, all faintly yellowed with age, like old lace, look as one might imagine a highly magnified group of cup-mosses and lichens might do. Perhaps *' graceful '* is the adjective which occurs oftenest to you in looking at it all. There is a great deal to interest one in observing tlie mixture of Spanish and Moorish work. For instance, you meet with three kinds of tiles — the Arabic mosaic tiling; the flat Arabic tihng done in square slabs, but often to imitate mosaic ; and the tiles of Charles the Fifth's time, also in square slabs, but done in relief. There are endless convolutions of the words, *' There is no conqueror but Allah," and the monogram of Mohammed the Fifth, adorning the walls and cornices ; and alk^rnating with these oome little shields emblazoned with '* F. Y.^** for Ferdinand and Isabella, and with the little lions and castleSy the arms of Leon and Cabtile. The old mosqae has an altar at one cud with a star of Bethlehem over it^ and the sacred niohu for the Koran in a small inner rece.s$. There is some transition work, too, 05jp and strange primitive perspective, riie^^e arc apparently by a Moorish artist ; as, for one thing, a Christian knight is depicted being unhortscd by a Moslem ; yet it does not convey the id( ' Arab art, nor would it be likely that a Moor should paint groups of liuman figures. The intelligent curator of the Alliambra, Seiior Contrenis, who has written a book abont the antic[uitics, and is very kind in answering questinns, allows this to be a difficult point. He suggests, 222 AZAHAR. however, that they might have heen done under com- pulsion, by a Christian captive, and thinks also that the Moors undoubtedly relaxed, when in Spain, from the strictness of their prohibitions as to representa- tions of the human form. ( 223 ) CHAPTEE XX. GRANADA. The first day or two we were here it was very wet, so we did not advance much with our lionizing, and only stumbled upon some things by chance, and with some sense of shock ; as, for instance, when we were overtaken by a sudden hard storm, and rushed for shelter to an open door, which we saw was that of one of the towers, but which admitted us to a private house. The owner invited us in very politely when he found us in the doorway, pointed out proudly how he had filled the little Moorish horse-shoe window-frames with plate-glass, showed us his photographs, and in- troduced us to a lady in a very fine hat and feathers. We asked if the tower had any name, and were told, *' Oh yes ; Justicia ; " but so great was our ignorance that it was not till we got home and looked it out that we found, with some revulsion of feeling, that we had been in some rooms adapted as living rooms in the 224 AZAHAR. upper part of the Gate Tower, the celebrated Puerta de Justicia, where the old Moorish kings *' sat in the gate," administering justice, and inside which, the phantom army of Moors, in '' Tales of the Alhambra," disappears down a dark passage into the earth. How- ever, there is a prosy side to everything. As I was dreaming in the Alhambra one morning, two Ameri- cans came in, looked briskly and critically about, and after a short inspection turned to go, one saying to the other conclusively, '' Well, this is only a case of stucco turned out of a mould ; not an expensive job. I think I would undertake to turn it out at two dollars a yard ! " The fact of all the beautiful apjparent carving being really cast in a mould was, I will allow, a slight shock to us when first it dawned upon our minds ; but I do not think it lessens one's idea of the ingenuity shown. The joining of the patterns is so skilful as to be indistinguishable without the closest inspection. Although the Alhambra is the chief centre of interest, it is by no means the only one. The first thing we saw on emerging from the Hotel Washington Irving, where we are staying, was a most effective gipsy strolling about. He soon offered himself as a guardian and guide, and we became sworn friends at once, and have since passed many hours wandering MARIANO THE GIPSY. 225 about under his wing, now on a donkey, now on diy land. Mariano is the show gipsy of the place-a profes- sional beauty, who considers it quite his business to show himself off, gently calling attention to his fine eyes, or his embroidered leggings, as a tradesman might to his wares. He offers his own photos for sale, and is continually posing, fixing a mournful gaze upon you, silently suggesting that you should draw him. His dress is that of an Andalusian majo (St. L , on being asked to define a '^majo," explains him to be ''a swell of the lower orders- bandits, bull-fighters, and smugglers, if good of their kind would belong to the ''majo '' class). His short jacket and breeches are of the darkest blue velveteen, profusely hung with buttons of silver filigree; the breeches open at the knees to show the white drawers. Beautifully worked leather leggings, with long yellow fringes, open at the calf to show the white stock- ings, a scarlet sash, and a black velvet hat with round tufts, complete his wardrobe. Fortuny, the artist, who has painted many of his best pictures about here, and of whom the opposite hotel, the Siete Suelos, proudly records on its walls that he lodged there for a year, took Mariano away to Eome with him when he left, and kept him there four months— I 15 226 AZAIIAR. suppose that he might have a typical Spaniard at hand whenever he wanted one for his foregrounds, and Mariano is justly very proud of this distinction ; and feels that other people are scarcely worthy to express him on paper. He soon introduced us to his cueva, or house scooped in the rock. Here his wife lives and tells fortunes with an old pack of cards of very odd pattern; she keeps it beautifully clean, but I did not care for her half-bold, half-insinuating manners, and preferred her husband, who, though rather unblushing in his requests, is very easily snubbed, and has nice honest mournful eyes like a dog's. Gipsies are said to have a peculiar glassy look in their eyes which marks their genuineness. I am not sure whether it was imagina- tion which made us fancy we detected this in Mariano, but his complexion was decidedly gipsy-like, almost swarthy enough indeed for an Arab. I said, **Did you make this house, Mariano, or was it your father ? " " Neither," he said ; '' it was my little grandfathers " (*'mis abuelitos "). I believe even the poorest Spaniard has grandfathers and a pedigree ; and as the gipsy caves are supposed, at any rate some of them, to be the former dwellings of a race of troglodytes, Mariano may have been claiming for his little grandfathers a very remote antiquity. VISIT TO THE GIPSIES. 227 There is a regular gipsy quarter in the town, called the Albaicin, and as it is not a pleasant place to visit alone, I got Mariano as an escort, and he was a very good cicerone, as, of course, he knew the points of his own people. They live against a hill-side just outside the town, closely grown with prickly pear, which is trained so as to shade the fronts of the houses, or caves as they are well called, for they look from the outside just like fox-earths, windowless, and only a hole up through the bank above to serve as chimney. Still, inside they are very superior, rich in glass, crockery, and cutlery, and with very good beds. Mariano took me to see a sick relation of his own, a poor man evidently dying; I should think of con- sumption. He was lying on a shelf hollowed out in the rock, on which was made a very clean bed, with a worked pillow-case, and white sheets. Mariano in- sisted on rousing the poor gipsy to tell him a senorita had come to see him, and I tried to atone for the disturbance by giving him a few pence. Mariano laid out my present in a row on his pillow, and screamed into his ear, '* Three large coppers," at which he smiled feebly. His wife, with an orange complexion and straight long blue-black hair hanging down, with a rose in it, was a very picturesque object as she stood in her dark doorway, roofed in with the large, 228 AZAHAR. SACRO-MONTE. 229 fleshy pale green leaves of the chumbo, or prickly pair. A day or two after this, Mariano told me the poor man had died ; and we saw his funeral wending up past the Alhambra to the cemetery beyond. The funerals are rather horrible sights, as the pauper funerals are without coffins, and even in the case of those who are better off, but still of the poorer classes, the coffins are open. But to go back to the Albaicin, The children, some of whom I recognized as hotel plagues, were very importunate, and, even restrained by Mariano, followed me in crowds, breaking into dance and song on the smallest encouragement. I wished to hear some of the gipsy language, and they indulged me with a few words ; but as far as I could make out they talked Spanish to each other. And Mariano seemed rather to resent the idea of their having any very distinctive ways ; denied indignantly that they still kept up some Moslem rites, as we had heard asserted ; assured me that they went to the same schools as the other children ; were baptized and married in church ; etc., etc. This may have been that he did not consider me worthy to hear about their peculiarities; but, at any rate, these are not wandering gipsies, but live in the same houses all their lives, and even, he says, from generation to generation, so they have probably become more or I less assimilated to their neighbours. Mariano always took the holy water if he came with us into any church in the course of our wanderings, and said his prayers like anybody else. When we had roamed for some time about the Albaicin quarter, and I had been obliged to take tastes of several kinds of syrup and water at the caves of Mariano's friends, and had seen an upper room which one cave-owner had ingeniously made, with a ladder up to it, and was very anxious to let to me if I would take it, we left the gipsies, and climbed up to a chapel, perched on a steep hill-top behind, and commanding a grand view. It is called San Miguel el Alto, and is a prominent landmark. Below us, on the further side of the hill, and temptingly near, was Sacro-Monte, a large monastery, worth seeing for its fine situation; so I proposed to get across to it, though they said there was no regular road. There was a goat-path, which I thought would suffice for my donkey and for Mariano, so we started. Its nearness was deceptive, as we soon found that a deep gully intervened, and we had to creep laboriously down one side and up the other, I walking, and the donkey being led. And our troubles even then were not over, as, when we were really near the monastery, a gentleman, carrying a blunderbus on full cock, and »WWV««*wte- %••'•■* -•^*^» -— X^W.-^, -•• 230 AZAHAR. wearing an official badge, a guardia, appeared in our path, and said we must not go that way ; there was no road. He had been watching us for some time, and had come across to intercept us. *' Which way must we go, then?" we asked humbly. "Not a7itj Avay. You must turn back and start again from the toAvn by the road." This was too cruel ; so wc pro- ceeded to attempt softening his heart by extreme deference, free use of *' Your Grace," and so on. It was amusing to see a complacent smirk gradually stealing over his face, as the conviction gained upon him that he was a finer fellow than he had pre\T[ously imagined; and though he was obdurate for some time, saying it was ''unheard of; nobody went that way," we at length accomplished the melting process without using any silver as a solvent. The use of it might doubtless have hastened matters, but my small change had been exhausted during my sejour in the Albaicin. By the time we reached Sacro-Monte I was very hot, and glad to rest. The view of its situation from outside is the chief attraction ; indeed, ladies are not allowed to see anything inside except the chapel and a crypt with a miraculous spring in it. There is a terrace in front, witli a row of cypresses, built over a ravine, and from hence I looked sh*aight across to SACRO-MONTE. 231 the Alhambra, and got a good idea of our situation there, i.e. on the top of a comparatively low hill, with mountains all round, or, as an acquaintance at dinner aptly described it, "as if you were standing on a lump of sugar at the bottom of a tea-cup. I was home before eleven, as I had started at a very early hour in order to avoid the heat, which is often great in the middle of the day» though wc are three thousand feet high* It in vexy cool in the mornings and evenings, and we are also liable to sudden changes and spells of cold, lasting two or thi'ee days at a time; sometimes the comes to an abrupt end at the cemetery, about half a mile further on towards the mountains ; and the other way 232 AZAHAR. is down the steep hill into the to\vn, and carriages charge a high price for coming up it again. Walkers can go down on foot, pick up a carriage, and take a drive, drop it at the foot of the hill coming back, and walk up. We have been down several times, however. The cathedral is adorned with the grand alabaster tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of their daughter, Joan the Mad, and her husband, Philip. Isabella has a beautiful, calm expression, a good illustration of her interesting character. There is also a very curious set of coloured wood-carvings behind the altar, representing the conquest of Granada, Boabdil giving up the keys, and other scenes. The relics of Ferdinand and Isabella are well worth seeing, too — some of the banners they took to battle, the portable altar that always accompanied them on campaigns, Queen Isabella's prayer-book, etc., etc., not to mention some very fine '' Alonzo Canos:' The first time I went, three very large brindled cats were playing about, though mass was going on, and bounding round the pillars, and up and down the steps. I suppose they keep the church mice in order, but they certainly do not keep good order themselves. Another interesting plac^ we went to nee was tbd Casa de los Tiros, now occujned by the Italian consul. THE GENERALIFE, 233 It belongs to the Pallavicini family, who also own the Oeneralife. It has a very cm-ious room, with paint- ings on wood panel in medallions, of some of the old kings ; and several relics of Boabdil are kept there, his sword amongst other things. These Pallavicinis are the same family who own the well-known show place at Pegli. An heiress took the Generalife into their family, together with the Spanish title of Campotejar, which iiiey bear together with Pallavicini. The Generalife is a delightful resort^ especially' on a hot afternoon. The garden is the pietore of a retreat for Oriental indolence and luxury: a largo tank in the middle, with jets of water all round it, and then masses of black cypress, cut into arcades and pillars, and making ghade everywhere, with narrow dim walks threading through the trees, and seats every few stops ; and an easy accent, a few steps at a time, to higher walks and terraces, with cool thorough di-aughts blowing through the open colon- nades which lead to the palace from the hill-sides beyond. Some of the cypress trees are of gigantic size, towering up like forest twes, and vnth maBsive stems. These arc not cut into shapes, but left to nature. We find a good deal of street amuRement ijrovided here for us. The two hotels just front each other, as 234 AZAHAR. I said, with an avenue of elms between, which avenue extends into a beautiful grove, lasting down as far as the town gate, with broad walks through it, not unlike the Quarry Walk at Shrewsbury, but on a much steeper incline. At the hotel end of the avenue is a fountain and stone seats, and round here is a great rendezvous — there are sellers of flowers and different small wares ; gipsies offering to tell fortunes ; singing and dancing ; and, at night, a great deal of playing on the guitar and banduria. The banduria is a form of guitar, which approaches the violin in character, and some of the performers on it, especiallj^ one blind man, play it extremely well. The other day we had a sham bull-fight. It was enacted by a real matador, a poor man who had lost a leg in consequence of a hurt in a real bull-fight, and now earns money by this little performance. A boy put on a mask of a bull's head, and went through various forms of charging the man, who appeared first as a picador, and then changed into a matador. The bull looked very absurd, and rather as if he were holding his head down to have it scratched. At length the man, who was beautifully got up as a majo, was carried away by his enthusiasm, and, flinging his cap up into the air, exclaimed, "I will conquer or die ! " and gave the bull a peculiar stroke on the A SHAM BULL-FIGHT. 235 horn. This enrages the real bull intensely, and the matador, after giving it, has to vault quickly back over the railing among the spectators to avoid his angry rush. Of course our poor matador, with his one leg, could not play this part very well. However, with a little connivance on the part of the bull, he escaped with his life, and the bull then allowed him- self to be quietly finished off, and carried a hat round for pence, like any old cow ! This finale drew forth an anecdote from some one : I do not vouch for its truth. The present king's mother. Queen Isabella, was once at a bull-fight when this stroke was made, but, as she happened to be looking away at the moment and missed seeing it, she ordered that the matador should do it agam. This is frightfully dangerous, as the bull, of course, is doubly enraged the second time ; but the poor matador dared not refuse, tried it, and was killed ! The worst feature of this spot as a sitting-ground, is the beggars, who are as unblushing here as elsewhere in Spain. The little gipsies are the most importunate. Some of them have picked up a few words of English, and can say, '' Sammani ; " which we did not at first recognize as *' Some money ; " *' Geef me," and a few other scraps. Some of them are very wild, pretty- looking children. One of them showed us her shoe 236 AZAHAR. with a hole in it, and said, *' See, here is a place at which the whole Ayuntamiento could come out (mayor and corporation). Once, to our astonishment, three very respectably attired boys, one with a watch- chain, accosted us and begged. "We said, ** What, with a gold chain ? '' He said, " Oh, it is not real gold,'* and continued pertinaciously till we became stern and decided, when he raised his hat very politely, said, *'Bon soir," and decamped. Next day we saw him begging again, but noticed that he had removed the chain. I see that in describing the Alhambra I left out one sweet little spot, perhaps the one I most admire, so I will repair the omission now. It is called the Garden of los Adarvcs, or of the Bastions, and is one of the little nooks which are economized out of the angles of courts and towers, and I sui^pose had soil enough carried up from below to make them into gardens. I went there the other day, by invitation from the old gardener who keeps it, to see the sunset from a little mirador, or observatory, at one end. I entered by a deep Moorish porch, lengthened by a trellis and vine. Inside, it consists of a long narrow terrace, with, on one hand, a low, very broad wall, over which you look far, far dowTi, on tlie tops of the lower towen? and on the city; and, on Ihc other hand, THE GARDEN OF LOS ADARVES. 237 a very high wall, draped with luxuriant masses of red roses, interlaced with laden lemon boughs, and large pale-coloured cedrats, with great snowballs of guelder- rose, and pomegranate bushes. In two angles of this wall are two old square fountains, with dolphins and carved ledges. Along the broad low parapet was a row of stone pots of red ranunculus and verbena, burning like fire in the sunset, and ull the towers ako were ruddy iu its light. Some sort of shrub, with bronze foh'agc just coming out, made a fringe below the towers and terraces, and feathered do\sii one side of the glen till it melted into the cool apple-gre^n of the elm woods, where some few nightingales were just rehearsing ihe '* music of the moon *' for their evening concert. The Sierra Nevada roso like a creut of pearl above it all, and the nearer hills wcru blue and violet. All the city below was only dimly seen shimmering thnmgh a golden mist which overhung it> a cypress here and there in some town garden standing out clear and dark from the rest. While I was looking, the " toca de oracion," or call to evening prayer, rang out from all the town churches. AIt(>gether, it was an en- chanting moment, and I VTM quite i>orry when, from my lofty mirador, I had seen it all fade and cool down again into uniformit}^ and I had to come down to the 238 AZAHAR. terrace, with *' good night " to my old gardener and a priest, who was sitting with him, enjoying Eis cigarette, and go reluctantly in to the hot hotel dining- room and dinner. The elm-trees, which I have mentioned more than once, were a present to the country from the Duke of Wellington, who, I dare say, suffered much when in Spain from want of shade, and acutely thought that Granada was the likeliest place for them to thrive in. The people here say they are the only ornamental, i.e. non-fruit-bearing trees in the country; but this is, of course, a slight exaggeration. ( 239 ) CHAPTEE XXI. GRANADA — CORDOVA TO MADRID. April 27th. — I regret to say we have come to our last day here. It has taken me nearly the whole time to get familiar with the Alhambra, there is so much of it, and so much detail in it. It is quite one of the places that one feels it a privilege to have known intimately. I have been putting off paying a moon- light visit to the Moorish palace as long as possible, in order that the moon might improve, and now I shall wish it good night and good-bye at the same time. Mariano has been hanging about us very sentimentally the last day or two, proposing farewell strolls, etc. Last Sunday there was a bull-fight at Granada, and the day before, I argued the matter a little with Mariano, who asked me if we were going. First I said — *' It is so cruel to the horses." '*0h, but," said Mariano, "they never take good 240 AZAHAR. TALK ABOUT A BULL-FIGHT. 241 horses, whom it would be a pity to ill-treat ; only very bad horses, who do not matter.*' " But they feel just the same." " Do they ? Ah ! well, that cannot be helped. But the owners — it is clear they do not feel as much as when it is a good horse ; and it is, after all, they who are of the most consequence.'' I next said, *' I wonder how people can care about watching a bull-fight, when they know exactly what will be the end of it. If the bull could sometimes get away, or if there were a chance that he would come off conqueror at the last, I could understand their getting excited about it." ** Oh," said Mariano, with great contempt, '^ if I thought it would not end in the bull being killed, I certainly would not go. It would be a very poor thing to give my pesetas to see the bull get away after all." I felt I was rather getting the worst of it. I tried to draw a more graphic picture of blood and wounds and torture, laying some stress on the fact that nice people, such as myself and the seiior, did not approve of such things ; that in England we never had them ; that it was waste of money, of time ; that it was only fit sport for savages; winding up with — *'And now, Mariano, can you, after all this, still say you Hke bull-fights ? " *'I? — muchisimo ! But, then" — with a rueful face — *' Jhave no pesetas. Now, if you, who really dislike them, as you have been telling me, were" — with a coaxing expression — *' to let me go instead ? " I was obliged to leave Mariano to his own be- nighted ideas, hopeless of producing the smallest change by any eloquence of mine. One of our last drives was down into the town, as far as we could get along the ravine of the Darro, which is a beautiful bit, then to the paseo of the Xenil, the other river of Granada, and on to a splendid "Cartuja," now quite empty of monks, outside the town on the further side. Here we saw, amongst many other treasures, a curious set of fresco paintmgs in the cloister, several of which profess to represent Henry VIII.'s persecutions of the EngHsh Carthusians. In one, they pointed out to us the Tower of ''Londres," which has a high hill rising behind it — (could it be Primrose Hill or Hampstead, moved a little, and idealized ?) — but is otherwise not unlike the tower. The inside of a dungeon is seen, with some unfortunate Carthusian monks chained by the neck to pillars in the wall. In another picture they are being flayed alive. We were quite struck at first, and wondered we remembered so little about this persecution, and had had no idea of such horrors, 16 1212 AZAHAR. till another picture, in the same cloister, representing the crucifix bending clown to acknowledge the prayers of a Carthusian who is kneeling before it, reminded us that they probably depicted both the reverses and the triumphs of their order from the same imaginative point of view. We had a vague idea at one time of moving into apartments, as it is a possibility here. The hotel is kept by very civil people (Hijos de Ortiz), but the waiting is very remiss ; the bells all out of order, the rooms left untouched till the middle of the day, and so on. We were promised that things would be very different another year ; that it was owing to a recent change of dynasty, etc. ; but that was no consolation for "the present distress.'* It was no use being angry with the lazy, good-humoured servants. We were much amused at hearing from a lady and gentleman, who were with us there, that the lady, in despair, one day had made her own bed and tidied her room; and when the housemaid at length ap- peared, pointed this out to her, expecting her to be overwhelmed with confusion; but, on the contrary, she became radiant at the sight, and exclaimed, " And have you made the gentleman's, too ? " We soon concluded that it would not be worth while for us to move for so short a time, but we FAllEWELL TO THE ALHAMBRA. 243 rather liked the excuse of looking into some of the houses, and seeing what we might have had. One of the most attractive places was a set of rooms in a really old part of the Alhambra, including the actual window from which a little Moorish prince was lowered by his mother down into the ravine below, tied in a shawl, to save him from the soldiers' pursuit. This part of the Alhambra is called the Torres de las Damas, and seems to have been a separate estabHsh- ment, perhaps for some of the royal suite in Moorish days, as it has a little mosque of its own, still very perfect, though rather spoilt by gaudy restoration. The house where these rooms I mention are to be found, has also its Spanish associations. On the door of the mosque itself the Spanish arms are quartered, and a door at one side bears the inscrip- tion, " The dweUing of Astasio de Bracanomte, Squire of the magnificent Sefior Count of Tendilla, Alcayde of this Fortress." The bit of restoration, done by D. Eafael Contreras in the Moorish palace itself, is of a very superior order, though even that is rather a shock from the brightness of its colouring, as one enters the restored room from the dim mellow tints of the untouched part. The idea most people have formed of the Alhambra is from the rooms at the Crystal Palace, 244 AZAHAR. and they are extremely like D. EafaeFs restored part. On the town gateway, and in several other places, the arms of the town appear— a pomegranate burst- ing open-a very pretty device ; but, I believe, it is quite an assumption that the name Granada comes from pomegranate. A '' grenade," which, I beUeve, is generally thought to be so called from having been first used at the siege of Granada, does really, I find, owe its name to its likeness in shape to a pome- granate ; and the tallest and strongest men, ^chosen to throw the grenades, were called grenadiers.* I have now paid my moonlight farewell. The first court and large square pool, with a broad cut myrtle hedge round it, looked very well, as its arcades were faintly reflected in the water ; and in the bath- rooms, the ceilings, perforated with stars to let in light, admitted the evening sky of dim blue also very becomingly. The guardians have all become great friends, and they collected to say good-bye . They are not naturally there at night, but you have to announce beforehand if you wish to go, and get an order from the curator, and then one attends to let you in. May 5th, Madrid.— Vfe left Granada early on a lovely morning, Mariano, of course, seeing us off, ♦ « Words and Pliices," p. 294. AT CORDOVA AGAIN. 245 and numerous friends throwing roses into the omnibus as we started. Early as it was, 8 a.m., we were considered very idle and behindhand for not going by the only really good train, for which we must have left the hotel at 4.30 a.m. As a punishment for taking this, the second-best, we were twelve hours getting to Cordova, where we again halted for two or three days. On the way we had luncheon for the third time at Bobadilla, with which place we are now quite familiar — at least with its station. As we got lower and lower into the plain, from the spurs of the Sierra Nevada, we found the atmosphere "warming up " considerably ; and Cordova was a different place from what it had been at our last visit. In some of its narrow streets the summer awnings were already stretched across, on wires, from one top storey to its opposite neighbour, which gave a very Oriental and bazaar-like appearance. The three days we spent there were extraordinarily hot, as a special wind was blowing — our old friend, the poniente — which, though almost a gale, rather heated than cooled the air. I went out early before the sun was high, and resorted to the churches later, which were always cool, unless by chance there was a crowded service. One morning I looked into a convent chapel, ^tKiaMMnMa 246 AZAHAK. where, inside their double-grated screen, two motion- less nuns were kneeling before the altar. Presently a third came in, and turned the little wheel arrange- ment which rings a circle of clattering and jangling bells. At this sound the rest of the community filed in, two and two, stopping to kiss the floor as they passed the altar. They had long white trains over black robes ; long white veils also, which they dropped over their faces as they turned to the grating in walking to their seats, though there was no one but myself in the outside chapel, and then threw up again as they faced round the other way and sat down. They then proceeded with cheerful monotony to recite the Psalms, sitting and standmg alternate^. They went on industriously for more than half an horn-, and had shown no signs of leaving oflf when I came away. The chapel smelt delightfully fresh and aromatic, as, being a high day, it was strewn with sprigs of wild thyme and flowers. Late in the afternoon we went out again, and sat on the Paseo del Gran Capitan, and watched the citizens taking their evening stroll. It was amusing to see how they extract entertainment and specula- tion from the smallest circumstance. Every little purchase is made into a game of chance — from the " loteria " tickets, for which there are booths in every CORDOVA. 247 public place, and which seems to be the universal minor vice of the country, to a mysterious tin cylinder with a revolving top, which a man carried about and offered. We were curious, and said, '' Yes ; " and it then appeared that it contained cakes, and we were to give a halfpenny, and then twirl round the teetotum top of the cylinder, and receive the number of cakes to which it pointed— perhaps rather demoralizing to children, to prepare them thus early for larger ventures. I continue to think Cordova would be an excep- tionally nice place for an artist to make a long stay at ; the streets are so quiet that one might draw in them without attracting much crowd or annoyance, and the pictures they present are charming. I took one early ramble under the guidance of a boy, to see a few remaining spots I had failed to find by myself, and we went to the market, where there were fasci- nating potteries, some coloured, some of a whitish clay with raised flowers upon it ; baskets of a peculiar make, with gaily coloured straws woven in ; quantities of yellow flannel, which seems a very attractive fabric to the ladies of the place, and piles of green worsted gloves. Santa Marina, a very curious church, was the goal of my walk, a rather distant one, but through very tarn 248 AZAHAR. TALK ON SPANISH POLITICS. 249 picturesque streets, with the people all sitting out at their doors pursuing their avocations, and seeming quite surprised to see a stranger walk by. The church was Gothic, with a wonderfully deep portal and pro- jecting buttresses, and an apse with three lights. There are only three express trains a week from Seville to Madrid, touching at Cordova ; consequently, they are very full, and the poor Cordovan passengers only get the leavings of the Seville ones ; the number of carriages also is very limited. We had five fellow- passengers on the night we went, though we had gone in very good time, and also taken a commissioner to fight for us. Our fellow-passengers were all Spaniards, and they smoked and liked all the windows shut ; the ladies did a good deal of toilette, and they altogether succeeded in ''making night hideous,'* but in return were all most friendly and good-natured, and we had some difficulty in refusing to taste all their provisions. Indeed, I was obliged to take a sup of wine from one gentleman's glass, as a cloud gathered on his brow at my first hesitation, and he began, ** If you do not think it good enough ; " and I knew that a Spaniard considers a refusal very rude, so had to say that our ways were different, and that we some- times refused rather from reluctance to have a good thing wasted upon us. We tried to forget the powerful atmosphere in conversation, and talked about the disturbances, which, though not serious, are prevalent just now in many towns, especially the northern ones. One traveller, a Barcelona merchant, gave us an account from a friend there of the shutting of shops and barricading of streets last week. It w^as a sort of demonstration in favour of protection, stirred up by discontent at the terms of the Spanish-French treaty, which is under discussion, and also by a prospect of raised taxes '' on fabrics." Senor Sagasta is the present prime minister ; but Senor Camacho, who answers to our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of the Hacienda they call him), bears the chief burden of popular displeasure just now, as the treaty is his pet child. '' Oh, he will fall ; he will fall ! " said the Barcelona merchant. ''He cannot stand against the feeling of the country, and the feeling of the country is in favour of j)rotection." We asked " what the king's feeling was ? " " Oh, the king has no feeling; he is merely a constitutional king ; he merely obeys his ministers. He is a good young fellow, but " We thought the account of the emeute in Barcelona — if such it could be called — was rather amusing. It seemed to be a mere excuse for idleness ; all the shops were shut and business suspended, and the whole 250 AZAHAR. population turned out into the streets and paraded about in large bodies, not doing anything particular, except, just for form's sake, breaking a few windows. At the same time the newspapers had talked very seriously about it, saying we could not tell what news the next post might bring ; and, of course, there ia always the chance in such a case that things may take a serious turn. He says they are not yet quite comfortable, and some streets are still closed for business. We had left at 9.15 p.m., May 2nd, and got into Madrid at 9 a.m. next morning, a very quick rate of progress for Spain — a hundred and thirty miles in twelve hours. The countrj^, chiefly New Castile, wa& not interesting. Madrid stands in a barren, desolate- looking region; it is seen from afar, as it is on a, plateau 2240 feet high, and looks more pictm^esque than I had expected. It was a great contrast from Cordova, when we had arrived at our hotel, Fonda, de Paris, on the Puerta del Sol, the great square, and proceeded to make ourselves at home with the view from our windows; all was so broad, so modern, so Parisian, so animated ! The sidewalks were considerably wider than any street in Cordova ; the atmosphere, too, felt quite different — brisker and colder. We could hardly believe we were in Spain. ( 251 ) CHAPTEE XXII. MADRID. I SHALL pass rather lightly over our five days in Madrid, as its aspect must be almost as familiar as that of London — the Prado first cousin to Hyde Park, the Escurial just such an excursion as Windsor, etc. ; so I shall only pick out a few tit-bits from our lionizings. I should like, though, to bear my testi- mony to its being neither so ugly nor so unhealthy as we had been led to expect. Indeed, the accounts given of it in the latter respect were so alarming that it seemed almost tempting providence to stay there at all, and we made our plans so as to cut it as short as possible ; " people invariably get ill there," and other such depressing information was continually meeting us. But in our short experience we found it much, like other places, though, no doubt, we were there at a good time, and it is a very trying climate during much of the year. As to its beauty, though it has, na 252 AZAHAR. MADRID. 253 doubt, its unattractive recently built quarter, strictly imitated from Paris, yet it has also its older streets and squares, and some of its points are very charac- teristic and striking. For instance, its situation on a high steppe throws it into very fine perspective, causing many of its streets to be on steep inclines, and the principal ones end in large gateways out into the country, through some of which you see peeps of the Guadarrama range ; this is snowy all the winter and spring, but now presents only a few white patches near the top. Another feature of the town is the very fine statues in its squares, real w^orks of art, and quite a pleasure to sit and look at. There is a very fine one of Philip III. in the Plaza Mayor, a picturesque, columned square in the old town, wliere the Autos de P6 used to take place ; one of Cervantes in the Plaza de las Cortes, where the Spanish House of Commons stands; a modest building with '' Congreso de los Diputados " over the door, just now a centre of great interest, because the taxes which have caused so much prospective disquiet are there under discussion. But the finest square is Plaza del Oriente, which has forty-four colossal stone statues of Spanish kings and queens encircling its centre garden, and facing out- wards, and in the middle a very grand and spirited bronze one of Philip IV. on a rearing horse. This square also contains the palace, an enormous but not interesting exterior. St. L says he has been much warned against damp beds in Spain, but can recommend a very dry one here : i.e. the river-bed, spanned by imposing bridges, but quite innocent of water. I feel I should be failing in the respect due to age if I neglected to tell an anecdote, without w^hich no Spanish diary is complete; viz. that when the French troops entered the vacated city in 1808 and saw this dry bed, they exclaimed, ''What! has the river run away, too ? " If we had been one day earlier in arriving, we should have come in for the great demonstration which takes place yearly on the 2nd of May, in honour of the heroes of that day in 1808 (the year Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed). The whole town, including the king, went in funeral procession to the obelisk on the Prado, erected to their memory, and adorned it with wreaths and banners. When we first went to the Prado these were all still hanging there, the wreaths, all of violet or white flowers, still fresh. The obelisk is a pretty feature, towering up from the rows of stumpy acacias, which form the chief drapery of the Prado. It has no other great beauty, except its large fountains with figures of sea-gods and dolphins, of which the inhabitants are justly proud. The king and queen are here, busy entertaininf^ 254 AZAHAR. i the Count of Flanders, who left Granada about the same time we did. Their small infant Infanta is often to be seen taking her carriage exercise on the Prado ; and yesterday we saw the king and queen going to the chapel of N. Seiiora de la Atocha. This chapel con- tains a very celebrated virgin, one of the black images, covered with jewels ; and as she is the especial pro- tectress of the royal family, they pay a regular weekly visit to the chai)el on Saturday afternoons. I saw the chapel, which is full of monuments to recent heroes and statesmen, and is also hung with old banners ; it is kept very dark, and you can only just distinguish the face of the virgin. It would be wrong not to say a word or two about the picture gallery, especially as I devoted most of my available time to it. I gave, perhaps, the lion's share of attention to Velasquez, as he is so scantily represented in other galleries, that it is only after being here that you can be said to have seen him. There are sixty-eight pictures of his, and you come away after studying them, quite feeling that you have made acquaintance with a great and new *^old master." He seems to have been the only great Spanish painter who was not completely a church painter, I mean who did not devote himself entirely to executing orders for church pictures. We felt quite VELASQUEZ. 255 sorry in this gallery for MuriUo, who had to repeat himself so often ; like Tennyson's bird, - that has but one plain passage of few notes,'' he went on and on painting a virgin in blue and white draperies, standing on a crescent moon, and though you are delighted with the sweetness and rapture of the few iirst, as you go on you find a sort of sign-painter idea of Inm IS gaining possession of you. There are some few sacred subjects by Velasquez, but they do not give the idea of having been suited to his genius, though one, of S. Antony in the Desert, is a very fine picture. He was pre-eminently a court painter. He has a wonderful power of catching the spirit of a face and figure, and revealing the inner man through his outward garb of flesh, with such strong individuahty that you feel you require no assurance to convince you that it is a likeness ; and as his pictures are of an era when the affairs of England were much mixed up with Spanish ones, they have additional interest from this individuahty. I found myself gazing at a small picture by him of the Infanta, who was destined for our Charles I., and whom he came here to visit, and speculating' with deep interest on what turn affairs might have taken if he had married her instead of Henrietta. She had a very un- Spanish look— rather German— with thick i( 256 AZAHAK. I fair hair, and a sensible placid face. The four favourite dwarfs of Philip IV. are also excellent. There is a very large family group of Philip IV. and his wife and children, in which Velasquez represents himself standing at his easel painting the picture. The king and queen are reflected in a looking-glass so as to give a back as well as a front view of them. Velasquez has a red cross on his breast — the Order of Santiago — which tradition says the king painted there with his own hand, as a reward on the completion of the picture. Another picture in this gallery in which the artist includes himself is one by Vandyke. He represents himself as a young, slight, fair youth in black velvet ; a contrast to his ''sitter," who was Lord Bristol (ambassador here when Charles and Buckingham came). He has a sturdy English face, with an expression of honesty and some perplexity upon it, which amused and interested us, remembering what history says of his disgust at Buckingham's behaviour, and at the falling through of the negotiations for the match between Charles and the Infanta. The gloomy, rugged, but powerful old Eibera, or Spagnoleto, whom I mentioned at Valencia, is also well represented here by fifty-eight pictures; and Coello, of Phihp II.'s time, who was previously PICTURE OF AN xVUTO DE FE. 257 unknown to me, and paints very sweet soft faces like Carlo Dolce's, chiefly portraits. Another very clever portrait painter, who has a whole room to himself, is Goya. He is much more recent — died 1828 — and his chief royal portraits were of Charles IV. 's family. The rough sketches for these are also exhibited, and are most spirited, and so are a number of his political pictures and caricatures. But I must enumerate no more, and wdll conclude with a word about only one other — by Eizi — of an Auto de Fe in the year 1680, on the Plaza Mayor. The personages are all said to be portraits, but the interest to us was seeing a contemj^orary repre- sentation of the scene. It is a very large picture, and I could recognize the place. The royalties (Charles II. was then king) are looking on from their balconies ; a carpet and waxlights are arranged in the middle of the square, and the '^ Inquisition '* is enthroned. The chaplain is exhorting the victims from a temporary pulpit, and a priest is preparing to say a mass for them. In the background a group of donkeys is waiting, on which the victims, who are standing before the grand inquisitor awaiting their sentence, are to ride to the pile prepared for them outside one of the town gates. St. L discovered here the long-sought original 17 258 AZAHAR. of our picture of Sarah dismissing Hagar. It is by Paolo Veronese; and we were very glad to have it identified, and decided that ours is a very faithful copy, and that the original is quite as ugly. There are two thousand pictures in all. The oJBficials are very civil, and one or two of them rather well-informed, able to talk about Murillo's three styles (the cold, the warm, and the misty) and other such high flights of art. They are also open — for a gratificazioncita — to allowing people to remain a little after hours, which, as the gallery closes at the inconveniently early hour of three, is an agreeable trait in their characters. Another interesting place is the Archaeological Museum, though, I will allow, the name is somewhat repelling. It contains a rather different set of things from the stereotyped curiosities, of which dittos are to be found in each collection ; but, be easy, I am not going to describe them. I merely wished to allude to a curious set of sculptures, found at a place called Yecla, not very far from Alicante. I do not know when they were found, but they have only lately been put here. They 'are smallish figures, considerably below life-size ; some of them — apparently of priests and priestesses — hold a cup in both hands, from which flames are rising; their hair is in the shape of the \ \ \ v \ CUEIOUS SCULPTURES. 259 wig one Imows so well from Egyptian statues. One, apparently of a woman, had the sun with a man's face on one shoulder, the moon on the other, and in the middle, a star, just over the cup of flame which she held in both hands. There were various inscriptions on these statues, in Greek letters; and the guide assured me that they were in an unknown tongue. I could make nothing of them. I copied one with great pains for St. L , the shortest I could find. It was not on a statue, but on the base of a small pillar about two feet high, of which there were several, the capital of which appeared to be carved into a rough representation of a butterfly. St. L also failed to make any sense of the letters. The photographs at Madrid are very good. Laurent's shop is perhaps the best; it is only too tempting to look through his large piles of photos of all parts of Spain, almost invariably good. I spent a long time there one day, getting reminiscences of the various places we had been at. There is a splendid armoury here, but it was under repair and could not be seen. It is necessary to get an order to be admitted into it, for which you apply at a bureau in the palace itself. We were amused at the officials first directing us to the right place for the order, and, when we found it, making it 260 AZAHAR. out and giving it to us, without ever mentioning that the armoury had been closed for some weeks, and would not be re-opened for some time. We, of course^ inferred that we were to have an exception made in our favour, when we got there and heard the sad state of things ; but even the oifer of a douceur, though it produced an earnest wish to deserve it, wa& ineffectual, as the armour has actually all been moved and packed away in a loft for safe keeping during the repairs. We thought this whole proceeding very characteristic. We went on, however, and saw in another part of the palace the royal stables and coach- houses, which are a curiosity in their way. The horses, two hundred in number, are worth seeing ; the Arabs are beautiful slender creatures, and there were some very fine English and Irish horses. The stables are built round patios, or courts. Some of them are on a lower level than the street, a sort of sunk storey, and you walk down an incline to them, which would not be considered a good position in England ; but of course damp is not an important consideration here- The most curious part, though, is the coach-house, which is historically arranged with carriages from every reign ; so that you can walk along and trace the development in the art, and see how ornament has given place to comfort. There is one coach made EOYAL STABLES. 261 of tortoise-shell, another with the linings and cushions beautifully embroidered; this last is still used when the king goes to open parliament. There are also the bull-fighters' dresses, lances, etc., from the days when it was really a royal pageant, and even kings used to enter the lists in person. The Moorish saddles and trappings were very gorgeous ; the saddles with a hump before and behind, and often of red leather. There were even the royal hearses to be seen in this curious collection, which is so large that it takes a long time to see even cursorily. 262 AZAHAK. CHAPTEE XXIII. ADVENTURES AT TOLEDO. As we were due at Biarritz on the lOtli to meet L , we found we could not spare both a day for Toledo and one for the Escurial. Both are train excursions, and, owing to the Spanish habit of having a very- meagre choice of trains, take a whole day each. So, after anxious weighing, I (both were longer than St. L cared for) elected Toledo, partly from com- paring their respective attractions (to me, that is), and partly because we should pass the Escurial in leaving Madrid; and it is in full view from the station, where we found we had a quarter of an horn*, so could get an idea of its size and situation, which we were told were its two strong points, most of its best pictures being now in Madrid. It is curious how one rectifies false impressions by visiting a country. We had always ignorantly imagined the Escurial (of course we knew it was Philip II.'s construction of A DAY AT TOLEDO. 263 combined monastery, palace, and burial-i)lace, but that it was a mistake to suppose it had been built to imitate S. Lorenzo's gridiron) to be in, or at any rate, just outside Madrid, instead of thirty miles off and just on the borders of another province, as the boundary of New and Old Castile is just by it. I had a nice day for going to Toledo, May 3rd, and got off by an eight o'clock train, beginning the day by a severe quarrel with the driver of my '' coche de sitio," who accused me of giving him a bad peseta. I hastily reclaimed it, before he had had time to exchange it for the bad one which he no doubt had ready in his pocket, and haled him before a '' guardia civil," who decided in my favour, and, flushed with victory, I started in good spu'its. It is only forty-four miles to Toledo, but takes three hours to go. It is quite a quiet, dull old town now, with only one moderately comfortable inn, and most people only go for the day ; but it is so full of antiquarian interest that it would be easy to spend a week there, and we should have done so if we had been able to spare time. As it was, I thought a glimpse would be better than nothing. In old times, Madrid was a little upstart offshoot of Toledo, and is still ecclesiastically subject to it, having no cathedral of its own, but a bishop who is a suffragan of Toledo. Formerly the King of Spain, jyfaJL- gl i M l i**- i f'tTi i^i n ii iMft t mmm 264 AZAHAR. and also the pope himself, were canons of Toledo, and used to go through the form of asking to be exempted from their share of duty every year ; and its university was as celebrated as its cathedral. We went through a bleak, wild country, passing nothing of interest except Aranjuez, where the court go in summer, and which appeared as a spot of green in the bare brown waste. Toledo came in sight about 10.30, on a natural fortress of rock, with the Tagus, a real river, full of dark-green water, swirling round its base. A train seemed quite a sacrilegious way of approaching the venerable pile, only without committing this sacrilege I should never have seen it at all. However, on reaching the station we got into a picturesque, un- comfortable omnibus, drawn by five mules befringed with red and yellow ball hangings, and then we felt happier and more in keeping with our surroundings ; and toiled up a zig-zag road till, on a high level, we came to a bridge over the Tagus into the town, with a tower and portcullis at each end, and then up winding streets through the plaza, or market-place (called "Zocodover," zoc being from the Arabic zoug, a market), to Fonda del Lino. Several guides offered themselves, and I could see there would be little chance of finding my way without one, so I chose one, named Mariano, A DAY AT TOLEDO. 265 but a great contrast to my last friend of that name, being a respectable little old gentleman in a shooting-coat and spectacles, with an inces- sant flow of conversation, but not insisting on constant attention. He had a printed list of the *'monumentos,'* or remarkable things, and I chose out those I chiefly wanted to see, and found him very well-informed, and devoted to the place, of which he is a native. He assured me that if he could only speak a little French and English, he should be by far the best guide in Toledo, and I dare say he was right, but that, as it was, he was always cut out. As, however, the **Castilian" of Toledo is supposed to be the purest Spanish spoken anywhere, I was glad to hear that instead of bad French. We went first to the grand Franciscan convent, S. Juan de los Eeyes, as our farthest point. The chapel is very fine, and the cloister perfectly lovely — Gothic of the 15th century; built by Fer- dinand and Isabella, *'los Eeyes,'* par excellence. Its being now more or less in ruins is no detri- ment to its beauty ; the cloister especially, which used to be shut in with stained glass windows, must be prettier now, open to the sky, and with long shoots of rose twining in and out of its slender shafted columns, and round the feet of the saints, which are 266 AZAHAR. grouped in every niche. Outside the chapel hang hundreds of chains, which were votive offerings from Christian captives, who were released when Granada was taken from the Moors, and who, I suppose,, brought their chains here to hang up, as to a place of peculiar sanctity. Toledo itself had been recon- quered from the Moors long before, by Alfonso VI. ^ in 1085. These captives, however, Mariano sensibly remarked, ''were not prisoners for their faith's sake,"- as the Moors in Spain were never religious persecutors, but were just ordinary delinquents, and probably not particularly worthy of being set free, only Ferdmand and Isabella graced then- conquest by a general release of prisoners. Finding such a liberal spii'it, I ventured on the remark, ' ' Spain owes a great deal to the Moors," which is generally very coldly received; and Mariano said, " Oh yes ! he only wished Spain had always been under such wise rulers, who built and organized and introduced irrigation," etc., etc. What different conquerors from the French, who, when they came to Toledo — this was in 1808 under General la Houssaye — sacked and spoiled, and carried off waggon-loads and waggon-loads and waggon-loads of precious things from the cathedral, the churches, and convents ! I said — *' All Spaniards agree with you about the French, CONVERSATION WITH A TOLEDAN. 267 but I don't think they agree with you about the Moors, do they ? " He said, '^ No ; but that is because they are fanatical. Oh, most fanatical ! " tearing out both his eyes, and throwing them away to express their fanaticism. *' If a Moor did anything good, they say it was a ' diablillo ' (a little devil) who inspired it ; but if it was a son of the church who did the very same thing, they say it was inspired by a little angel." *' And how comes it that you are not fanatical ? " " Perhaps it is because I live in Toledo, where I see round me the works of the Moors — of the Jews — and can consider them, and I like to read about them ; and also I have thought about it, and I think— do you agree with me, senorita ? — that we are all children of nature. Do you see ? Children of nature, ' hijos de la naturaleza,' we, and the Moors as well; and the same God made us all." These sentiments from their generality and incontrovertibility, were such as any senorita could agree in. We trotted about the town for a long time after this, seeing Moorish remains in different houses, many curious mixtures of Spanish and Moorish work, and transitions of style. Old Gothic remains, also, some as early as the time of Wamba (a.d. 672), who mmi'^i^H»»»mmm^ li Wi, ■.iip i *m » 266 AZAHAR. CONVERSATION WITH A TOLEDAN. 267 grouped in every niche. Outside the chapel hang hundreds of chains, which were votive oflfermgs from Christian captives, who were released when Granada was taken from the Moors, and who, I suppose^ brought their chains here to hang up, as to a place of peculiar sanctity. Toledo itself had been recon- quered from the Moors long before, by Alfonso VI. ^ in 1085. These captives, however, Mariano sensibly remarked, "were not prisoners for their faith's sake,'' as the Moors in Spain were never rehgious persecutors, but were just ordinary delinquents, and probably not particularly worthy of being set free, only Ferdmand and Isabella graced thek conquest by a general release of prisoners. Finding such a liberal spirit, I ventured on the remark, ' * Spain owes a great deal to the Moors," which is generally very coldly received ; and Mariano said, '' Oh yes ! he only wished Spain had always been under such wise rulers, who built and organized and introduced irrigation," etc., etc. What different conquerors from the French, who, when thev came to Toledo — this was in 1808 under General la Houssaye — sacked and spoiled, and carried off waggon-loads and waggon-loads and waggon-loads of precious things from the cathedral, the churches, and convents ! I said — *' All Spaniards agree with you about the French, but I don't think they agree with you about the Moors, do they ? " He said, " No ; but that is because they are fanatical. Oh, most fanatical ! " tearing out both his eyes, and throwing them away to express their fanaticism. *' If a Moor did anything good, they say it was a * diablillo ' (a little devil) who inspired it ; but if it was a son of the church who did the very same thing, they say it was inspired by a little angel." *' And how comes it that you are not fanatical ? " ** Perhaps it is because I live in Toledo, where I see round me the works of the Moors — of the Jews — and can consider them, and I like to read about them ; and also I have thought about it, and I think— do you agree with me, sefiorita ? — that we are all children of nature. Do you see ? Children of nature, * hijos de la naturaleza,' we, and the Moors as well; and the same God made us all." These sentiments from their generality and incontrovertibility, were such as any seiiorita could agree in. We trotted about the town for a long time after this, seeing Moorish remains in different houses, many curious mixtures of Spanish and Moorish work, and transitions of style. Old Gothic remains, also, some as early as the time of Wamba (a.d. 672), who 268 AZAHAR. was a great hero here, and whose name appears over the principal gateway, and in various other places. We also saw two synagogues, with most curious work, and Hebrew inscriptions, and cedar roofs, now closed and kept as curiosities. Each place was locked, and at each a '' cosita " (trifle) was expected. I submitted for some time, but €ven a worm will turn, and my turning-point was at a small chapel which was already standing open, and where there were some Moorish arches. The man in charge, who had not left his seat outside the door, asked for *' a little thing " when I went out. And I said, '' Why, what have you done to deserve a little thing ? As far as I know, you only said, ^ Good morning.' Do you want to be paid for that ? " He said, *'No; but it is a rule to give 'a little thing' to the porter ? " However, I said there was an exception to every rule. Mariano had discreetly walked on, so as to escape responsibility ; but when I rejoined him he applauded me, though in a low and cautious voice. Presently he remarked that he was seldom hungry, not more than once in the twenty-four hours. He eat at mid-day, or earlier, then afterwards he took some water, a few lettuce leaves, a little bread, but nothing more. However, the moral of this was that he felt his diurnal attack coming on now, and we were A SPANISH DINNER. 26» near his house, if he might just run in for ten minutes ? I agreed, all the more readily as I was very tired myself (I had eaten at the inn before starting) ; so I chose a charming point of view, where a wall furnished a seat, commanding the Tagus, with gay washerwomen fringing its banks, and kneeHng on the rocks out in the stream; also the city walls and gates, and the great square Moorish Alcazar on the height above— a massive low tower, called Wamba's tower, outside the walls, and across the river, the remains of a Koman amphitheatre. It was a grand view, but beyond my sketching powers ; and I very soon found it rather too exposed to sun and wind, and sought the shelter of Mariano's house, to which he had previously invited me. It was quite a spacious house, with nice old window-seats made in the thick- ness of the wall, and a Gothic coat of arms over an inside door. Of this last he was very jn'oud, and had got a drawing of it done by an artist friend. He was sitting up in state, just going to begin dinner, and waited on by a deferential old sister. They insisted on my tasting each dish, taking no denial, and bring- ing me the dish with a spoon before begmning it themselves. It was a good opportunity of trying genuine Spanish cookery. He had *' gazpacho," i.e. a sort of broth of water, vinegar, and oil, thickened with 270 AZAHAE. bread and onions — a horrible compound ; '^puchero," i.e, a mess of garbanzas, or large chick-peas, white beans, lettuce, and bits of meat, which was not at all bad ; and a dish of olives with oil ; very good white bread ; and a bottle of red wine of the country, like weak port wine. He lived with his sister, he said. He had never been married. *' I had a novia " (sweetheart), " but the poor little thing died. I chose another, and she also died. Then I said, ' It is destiny ; I am not to have children of my own.' At the same time, I think there is no happiness so great as that of married people who love one another ; but I am now sixty — all that is past for me." I will not detail any more buildings, but go on to the cathedral, which I left till towards the end, in order to be more leisurely there. It has one crocketed spire, the '* crockets " unusually long, like rows of spikes round it at intervals. It was meant originally to have two spires, but the design was changed, and the second was finished off as a dome. It is rather too involved in narrow streets to be imposing from without, though one facade fronts a small plaza, and has a beautiful entrance, the Puerta del Perdon. The site was first that of a cathedral, said to be as old as the time of the Virgin (!), and dedicated to CATHEDRAL AT TOLEDO. 271 her ; then the Moors made it their great mosque, the greatest in Spain in its day; then, long after they were gone, St. Ferdinand, in 1230, pulled it all down and began the present building ; and Ferdinand and Isabella finished it. It is beautiful Gothic, rather florid, with a strong dash of Moorish in the older parts. The two styles together make almost too rich a mixture, and the eye seems to want some simple lines on which to rest from its labour of admiring details. But you can hardly quarrel with the general effect, it is so lavish of beauty and finish, and so grand in proportions. The latter are, in ground-plan, simple and uniform. I believe Mr. Street has settled that it was schemed by a French- man. He considers it a grand edifice, and that the religious awe it inspires is irresistible. '*An atheist," as Napoleon I. remarked at the cathedral of Amiens, *'must feel uncomfortable here." The stained glass is quite indescribable. I can hardly fix on any special details, but perhaps the Capilla Mayor, with tombs of Alfonso VIII. and other kings, and of Cardinal Mendoza, Ferdinand and Isabella's prime minister, and Archbishop of Toledo, is the most wonderful piece of carving. Stone and marble seem to have been conquered and made aerial, and the angels look as if their wings were really supporting 272 AZAHAR. them in the air. San Isidro, the shepherd saint and patron of Madrid, appears often in these sculptures. Cardinal Ximenes, Mendoza's successor, who is always, by the way, called Cisnero, enlarged this chapel, but most of the detail is of earlier date. He also had been archbishop here. There is an 18th century freak of fancy which I was guilty of admiring, though even Mariano reproved me for doing so, and no doubt it was wretched taste on my part. It is behind the high altar, a round slanting aperture in the dark roof, through which you look into a fresco-painted dome beyond in broad daylight ; and round the brim of the aperture, carved angels are leaning down and looking over, as though out of heaven, their long wings stretching over and across the opening. The choir stalls are carved in groups representing Ferdinand and Isabella's conquests, and are well worth examining. While I was looking at these, a priest came up (to borrow a match from Mariano !), and I heard him ask what countrywoman I was, and Mariano's reply that he thought I was a German— probably because I had been aiding and abetting in his abuse of the French, but it was only as cathedral-spoilers that I did so. I disclaimed the country with which Mariano TOLEDO. 273 had provided me, and thought I would take the oppor- tunity of asking to see the vestments, which are the grandest in Spain, and luckily escaped the general spoUation. As usual, he made a little difficulty about it, said he would go and see, and so on, but presently came back with the sacristan, and I was admitted to the chapter-house and sacristy. The number alone of the vestments is oppressive, as they have a separate set for every red-letter day— frontals and hangings and priests' vestments all going together en suite. Some are very ancient ; some of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella are wonderful with gold fringes and delicate little worked figures like paintings, and their motto, '' Tanto monta," very prominent in the devices. The things in the rehquary, the plate, custodias, etc., are also very magnificent. When I came back, vespers were going to begin, and reflecting with sentiment that it would probably be my last time of being present at a Spanish service, I resolved to stay for them. There is a splendid deep-toned old organ ; and the windows looked quite exquisite in the softening light of late afternoon. But the service was but an unquiet one to me ; soon my female neighbour edged a little nearer to me and whispered, "And how do you like the cathedral?" I said, ''Muchisimo"— anything short of ''isimo " is 18 274 AZAHAR. quite inadequate — and relapsed into decorous silence. But after her next little prayer, she proceeded, "I saw you speaking to the priests. Did they consent to show you the ropa (things) ? Are they not beauti- ful ? " " Preciosisimo," I said, and again relapsed. But it was no use to look repressive. Soon came a third question; and Mariano, at the same time ad- vancing, knelt beside me on the other hand, and pro- ceeded to unfold his plan for employing the rest of the time ; so I gave it up, and soon came away. I wanted to rest in the cloister, and found a broken step to sit on; and to beguile Mariano into letting me stay a little, I asked him some questions, and elicited a story. No doubt his may not be the fullest or truest version of it, but at any rate I will give it. I said — " Why is that door opposite called ^ The Door of the Lost Child?''' **I will tell you why," said Mariano, with a satisfied air. ''First, sefiorita, you must know that there were many Jews in old times at Toledo. They had been there for a long, long time ; they came when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, to escape being taken by him into captivity. Then, ages after- wards, when the Goths came, and King Wamba, they found Toledo full of the descendants of these THE LOST CHILD. 275 Jews. They did not kill them, because, they said, * These, at any rate, can have had nothing to do with the crucifixion of Jesus, for they were already here long before.' But though they spared their lives, yet they persecuted them ; and the Jews hated them in return, and to revenge themselves, favoured the Moors, and took their side against the Christians. But you will say, ' When am I to hear about the lost child ? ' His name was Cristobal, and he lived in the parish of San Andres. His mother was blind, and she used to stand asking for alms in the street, where now stands this cloister and that door, and her child used to come with her. And just outside was the Jews' quarter, and they saw the child playing about every day, and thought they could tempt him away, because his mother could not see where he went. So they showed him a pair of red shoes, but the child only came a little way for those, and then he did not care for them, and ran back. But then they showed him an orange, and rolled it a little way down one of their passages ; and the child ran after it down the passage, and so they caught him. And they carried him out of the city to a village eight leagues off, called Guardia, and there they scourged him. And for some time he did not cry, but at last he cried and flaid, 'I cry now, because you have given me one 276 AZAHAK. stripe more than was given to my Lord Jesus.' And the Jews were frightened, but they went on, and at length they crucified him. And they cut his heart out ; but at the moment that they cut his heart out the Jews all became blind, and at the same instant the child's mother recovered her sight, and she said, ' I Imow that this must be in consequence of some- thing that is happening to my child ; ' but she never Imew what had happened to him till many years after. And this story is painted on the wall round the corner of the cloister there, and I will take you to see it, and that is why the door is called ' of the lost child.' " I had put him into a vein of story-telling, and I next had to hear, as we walked along, how King "Wamba had been poisoned by an enemy, and all thought he was dead. He was dressed as a monk for his burial, as was the custom of Gothic kings ; but it had only been a temporary insensibility, and he revived ; but, having once put on a monk's dress, he could not take it off again, so resigned his throne,, and went into a cloister, and his enemy's end was gained. Don Koderick, too, was connected with Toledo. He saw a beautiful lady washing in the Tagus, and carried her off; '' and her father called in the Moors to help him to revenge himself on Don . T - - • •f-'^'^-'-'ts,.— ", r j,^-. T .^ t ". - , ...SI . JOURNEY BACK FROM TOLEDO. 277 Koderick, and that was how they first came to Spain, and it cost Don Eoderick his life." Meanwhile we had been pacing about the streets, seeing the remaining lions. It is a quiet, deserted place now, full of sad grandeur. The silence is due not only to the absence of trade, but to the fact of there being only one street along which carriages can go ; the rest are all narrow paved lanes] and flights of steps, built with a view to intricacy — no doubt for safety in time of invasion, and also as a protection against heat. One narrow passage was called the Street of the Lettuce (or Lettuce Lane sounds better), " so called because it is so cool." I excused myself going to the sword manufactory, which is an extra-mural lion and some way off, and would have crowded my afternoon unpleasantly. It is " not what it was," they told me. I went, however, to a depot in the town, and saw specimens of the work, and bought a minute "Toledo blade" for St. Lastly, I had to make my way back to the Zocodover to rejoin the omnibus with five mules, and go to my train. Mariano took me to a water-seller's booth, and I had some biscuits and Tagus water, and then sat on a cool stone seat at his doorway ; Mariano attending me to the last, and, with his spectacles on, 278 AMHAR. busily totting up the ''monumentos '' I had seen on his printed list, and putting a cross to each, "that I might study them in the train going back.'* He evidently made it a point of honour to leave out as few as possible, and, through knowing the short cuts well, snatching a passing glimpse of a curious door- way, or taking a ** point of view " in the stroke of his gallop, we seemed to see a great deal without appear- ing to hurry. He gave me his card, ''Mariano Portales," and I promised to recommend him. We crept down the steep hill and over the Tagus again. It has often been remarked with regret that this was not made the capital of Spain instead of Madrid, as the Tagus is, or could easily be made, a navigable river, and would have connected the traffic of Spain and Portugal, as it goes to Lisbon. The situation of Toledo is, moreover, infinitely superior to that of Madrid. I got back by 8.30, travelling with some Spaniards, who spent nearly the whole time in a very keen materialistic discussion ; at least, it could hardly be called a discussion, as they were all agreed, but they vied in producing instances, and telling stories of miracles, such as that of Lourdes, with great incredulity. One of them bought some buns from a girl at the FELLOW-TRAYELLEKS. 279 window, and offered to get me some. I accepted, and he gave me a string of six ring-shaped cakes threaded together, for which he refused to give more than a halfpenny. I should certainly have been asked four times as much. I asked if it was not beating her down too much, and he said, " Oh, no ; it would be iniquitous to give more ; at a third-class window she would sell them for a farthing." He refused to let me refund the halfpenny, saying, '' It shall stand over, senorita, until I visit London." This was the last really Spanish excursion I made. Madrid looked strangely broad and modern as I again entered it. St. L had been spending a tranquil day, lionizing the town a little in a carriage, and making journey inquiries. 280 AZAHAR. CHAPTEK XXIV. MADRID — DEPARTURE FROM SPAIN. May 9tky Madrid. — To-day we are actually leaving Spain, having been in it just five months, and our twenty hours' journey from here to Biarritz will com- plete the sum of eighty-five hours, which we have spent in its trains. On the whole, as an invalid's country, it is doubtless inferior to Algiers and Egj-pt in climate, and to the Eiviera in comfort, but superior in climate to the latter. I am speaking, of course, of southern Spain. At the same time, there is no reason whatever for its being less luxurious and comfortable than the rest of Europe. It probably soon will be ''just the same as other places" in these respects; for the country has every possible natural advantage, and wants only money and energy — two mighty wants — but I should think there is no doubt that the supply of both is developing, and that a tranquil half- century is aU they need to enable them to catch up other countries. At present they do not much care THOUGHTS ON MODERN SPAIN. 281 about catching us up, or about having us here in Spain at all, and do not try, as other countries do, to attract foreigners. They are very proud, and, I think, keenly sensitive to their little shortcomings, and this results rather in a wish to be left alone, and a suspicion that foreigners are " spying out the naked- ness of the land." With individuals whom we knew better, and had convinced of our appreciation of them and our kind feelings, it resulted in a rather pathetic wish to find out why they were different from other people, what it is in them as a nation which strikes foreigners oddly, etc., etc. To those who can dispense with fireplaces, bells, butter, and a few other items in the list of '' things needful," the backwardness of the country is an additional charm. It is delightful to be carried back a little way into the past, and I think there is sufficient likeness of national character between them and the English to encourage the idea that we see in them some semblance of our former selves. Once we were so closely linked together, when our royalties were all near cousins to each other; and then it was rather they who patronized and en- couraged, and we who looked up and imitated — con- stitutions, universities, art, colonial wealth, all objects of envy. Now, while we have been advancing, Spain 282 AZAHAR. has stood still, so that we may feel in visiting her as though a bend in the stream of Time had brought us opposite a point higher up in its course, and we could look across and see its scenery and the growths on its banks ; or, to change the simile, we feel as a botanist might, who finds in some shady corner a backward, belated specimen of some flower he had wished to see, but thought it was out of blossom, or a naturaHst who meets '' the common frog " for the first time in its tadpole stage. The Spanish-French commercial treaty, as I have said, just now excites a good deal of interest. As a rule, Spaniards do not seem to be politicians ; it is only in the quite upper classes that anything like "views'* exist. We asked various poor men ''how they liked the Government ? " '' what they thought of the king? " and such like home questions ; and, except in Catalonia, got such answers as, *' I don't concern myself about such things;" ''he does very well for- me," with a shrug ; " so long as we have peace I don't care." Catalonia has decided likes and dislikes, and is rather a disrespectful child, but too thrifty and prosperous not to be treated with much consideration by the mother country, who only indulges in a snub when opportunity offers. All provinces alike appear to have a latent contempt for a constitutional king, HOW WE STRIKE A STRANGER. 283 and, even while praising liberal measures, to speak as if they thought them rather "good for the present distress " than intrinsically admirable, and to look back with a sigh to old despotic times. " Ah, thcij were something like kings," one Spanish gentleman said of James I., of Aragon, and S. Ferdinand. But this is because in their annals the days of despotism were also the days of glory ; and, though they know now that there may be despotism without glory, they have yet to learn that there may be glory without despotism. Whether from the effects of their long internal troubles and changes, or because it happens that just now they are depressed about harvest prospects and high taxes, they always seem to us rather dispirited about themselves as a nation, and very humble and unambitious. A suggestion was thrown out some time this winter — I forget whether by England or France — that Spain should undertake the settlement of Egyptian difficulties, and, in return, take rank as one of the great powers ; and about this various quiet jokes were made, that the honour would not equal the trouble, etc., etc. We have heard much admiration of our Enghsh Parliament, especially as to its being, according to them, so superior to party considerations. " It is always magnanimous, always instructive ! " Once, this winter, a proposal to make 284 AZAHAR. some demonstration about the persecution of the Jews in Eussia "was made by a Conservative, and seconded by a Liberal, but opposed by a Jew, on the ground that interference would do more harm than good. Think of these three things together; can anything be more truly great ? " This was on the authority of Spanish papers, as I never happened to see it in an English one ; so my facts may be inaccurate, but I mention it to show ''how we strike a stranger." I also heard Mr. Gladstone once highly commended for some minute financial details which entered into one of his speeches; ** things which turned upon questions of a halfpenny. When our statesmen will do likewise, instead of wasting their eloquence upon poetry and generalities, we shall have some chance of prosperity ! " Very few Spaniards to whom we talked seemed to go so deep as to distinguish one English party from another very critically. They appeared to look upon us all in general as a delightful mixture of perfect discipline and devoted loyalty, with absolute freedom of thought and action. Of course, from all praise addressed to ourselves we had to subtract largely for politeness, but, even thus, we flattered ourselves that a decided residue of admiration was left ; and several of the things I have just quoted were only overheard. SPANISH POLITICS. 285 We hear, of course, a good deal of political talk at hotel dinners, and such like occasions, as there the guests are in great part men of business, who are constrained to follow the subject of jDolitics with personal interest. We often hear abuse of the *' fusionists," those ''pseudo-liberals," whose conduct "becomes every day more abominable," and of whom they speak with other such mild animadversions ; but the high taxes, "which will soon reduce Spain to the alternative of starvation or emigration," is the most exciting theme ; and even the less rabid say, " It is a pity Senor Camacho and his colleagues could not divide the Commercial Treaty by a marked space of time from the raising of the taxes, instead of giving the two pills to be swallowed together, and leading the people to think of them in connection more than is necessary." All this digression has grown out of our reflections on leaving Spain. We had been for some time j)ursuing a bit of information relative to "wagon-lits," which seemed constantly to elude us, double, and turn ; at length, after being several times solemnly assured to the contrary, we ascertained that wagon-lits did run through from Madrid to Biarritz, and resolved in con- sequence to commit ourselves to one. We regretted not being able to linger a few days 286 AZAHAR. on the way ; and if we liad not already seen Burgos on the occasion of a week's run we once took thither from the other side of the Pyrenees, we should have contrived somehow to take that in ; even as it was, we regretted not paying it a second visit. I still think that its cathedral is as beautiful as any we have seen in Spain ; and it is a dear old city, full of quaintness and beauty, replete with memories of the Cid, and with a crowning glory outside the walls, at the Car- thusian convent of Miraflores, where is the exquisite piece of carving in the chapel, the alabaster tomb of Juan II. and Isabella, erected by their daughter, A.D. 1493. It was here, too, we saw the convent of Las Huelgas, outside the town, where are seventeen nuns, one from each of the noblest families in Spain : each has her coat of arms with all its quarterings emblazoned over the door at which she has entered and left all such vanities behind for ever; but we found with some surprise, that even within, distinc- tions of rank are observed, and that there is a set of '' commercial " nuns also, who do not mix freely with the others, sit below them, and wear a different dress. All these we thought of, and talked of again, as we reluctantly settled to flit by without a pause. And there were also a hundred other places, not lying on our road, but which we felt would have well occupied THE ESCURIAL. 287 another half-year, for Spain is really too large a country to be seen even cursorily in one winter. Salamanca, Segovia, Leon, and Santiago, are names which alone open a vista of further things to see and do ; but, for us it was time, like Bryant's waterfowl, again to *'rest and seek a summer home, and scream among om- fellows," or, in prose, to return, via Biarritz, to England. May 11th, Biarritz, — Well, we started, about 5 p.m., and our first excitement after leaving Madrid w^as passing the Escurial, which we did about sunset. It was full in view for some time before we reached it, and we stayed in its shadow for about a quarter of an hour. Before the days of railroads it must have looked a most appropriate spot for the royal burial- place, and one can fancy the slow funeral j)rocessions wending their way from Madrid through the savage, silent scenery ; now coming in sight of their goal, now losing it among the undulations of the high wind- swept plain, clothed, instead of gay gorse and heather, with soft folds of funereal rosemary and the wild blue lavender. Now, of course, the royal funerals take place there under very different circumstances ; but not even the vicinity of the station can destroy the gloomy grandeur of the whole place. The building itself, as one sees it from the railway, is nothing but a 288 AZAHAR. vast square grey pile, with a slate-coloured roof, and pierced by numbers of uniform rows of little windows. It soon grew dark after we left this point. We passed out of New and into Old Castile, and then knew nothing further of our surroundings till, at day- break, we found ourselves in the heart of the moun- tains. Spain takes a grand farewell of the traveller who leaves it by this route, keeping one of the choicest bits of scenery to surprise him with at the last, as he is borne through the Pyrenees, wondering alike at their extent and at their wild, desolate beauty ; instead of being a mere boundary line of mountains, they seem to fill the whole north-west corner of the country, and the train takes hours to traverse them. The lack of water, and the lack of inhabitants, are the two features which force themselves most on your notice. It is an extreme relief to the eye to rest, very occa- sionally, on a good body of water; as when, at Miranda, you cross the Ebro, and keep it in sight for some little way, winding through a lovely tract of landscape. Now, in the height of summer, there are glades bright with yellow broom, and fringes of wild rose and hawthorn, wherever a marshy pool or a little streamlet gives them any encouragement to live. As we emerged on the French side, crossing the Bidassoa, which here divides the two countries, there FAREWELL TO SPAIN. 289 was something at first almost oppressively luxuriant in the rich flowery green fields just ready for hay ; but it was curious how, in a few hours, we became acclima- tized, and next day at Biarritz observed nothing so wonderfully fertile or rich about the country. We had a very easy douane at Hendaye, unlike the fierce ordeal which had greeted us on our entrance, in December, at Portbou. Here we had to drop our wagon-lit, and betake ourselves to the French train, making, at the same time, a skip onwards of twenty- five minutes into French time. Sixteen miles further took us to Biarritz, passing by the picturesque old town of Fontarabia, which looks very well on the opposite side of the river, and is reached by ferry- boats. We hit off our rendezvous at Biarritz very neatly, our companions arriving from England just a few hours after us. We afterwards, with them, retraced our steps just across the border, and visited San Sebastian, which is itself so far Spanish as to possess a bull-ring, and commands drives to very Spanish -looking towns and villages in its neighbour- hood. It is, in some respects, an attractive little sea- place, besides sharing extensively in the '* Peninsular War '* interest, which attaches to all this district. We all studied the '' Subaltern," and traced his steps in various directions ; and we also explored the Basque 19 290 AZAHAR. PROTECTION OR FREE-TRADE? 291 country a little, looking at some of the curious churches, and seeing some pretty valleys ; one place, Cambo, in the valley of the Nive, is a beautiful spot. I see there is one unrecorded conversation still left in my note-book. So in order that Spain may occupy the last page of the book, I will end with it. It was one we happened to come in for between a ''Protec- cionista " and a '' Libre-cambista," or Free-trader. I should like to call especial attention to the eloquent and important part I myself took in it. I cannot remember how it arose. At the point where I begin, it was already in full flow. The Protectionist is P ; the Freetrader, or Libre-cambista, i ; I am E. P. When people are fanatical, they will not even hear or read anything on the other side. If it were not for fanaticism, we should all be Protectionists. Why, even France and England can't manage their treaty of commerce, because, when it comes to the point, they each find that they want to protect their own weaker industries. £. But P. The seiiorita does not agree! I have said something wrong. What is it ? E. I only P. I see ! You need not say another word ! What you would say is, that if difficulties were made it was by France and not by England. You are perfectly right ; it remains, however, that there were difficulties. Yet those are two acknowledged in- dustrial nations. Much more ought we to protect, we whose industries are all comparatively weak. It is foolhardiness— the courage of ignorance— which has made us lower the tariff of duties (derechos aran celarios) and let our industries engage unprotected in a competition in which they must be beaten. L. But if they are so weak, is it any use to protect them ? If we can't carry them on without an abnormal quantity of work and trouble, isn't it better to let them take their chance ? P. How do you mean ? L. I mean that to protect them involves waste. If a native spinner or weaver has to work like one hundred to produce what a foreign workman can produce by working like seventy-five, there is twenty- five wasted. And if, to protect that weak workman, you do not allow the strong workman's produce to be imported, who suffers the loss of that twenty-five? The consumer. Is it not so, senorita ? E. Clearly. P. But the consumer is not a different being from the producer. He is probably a producer himself in 292 AZAHAB some other way, and what profits one profits the other in the long run. Do you not agree with me, senorita ? E. Certainly. L. But we must think of the future. You see, Spain is suffering from the past — from all her internal troubles. While we have been busy with them, other nations have become more formidable trade rivals than nature intended them to be. Now, if you can get things from abroad twenty-five per cent, cheaper than at home, it relieves pressure, and lets Spanish in- dustrials get their heads above water. P. But what irritates me is to see Spanish lawyers, doctors, and officials pocketing their gains from the industrial classes, and then going straight off and spending them on cheap foreign produce, instead of on native goods. And no retaliation is possible ; because a Spanish industrial cannot employ an English or French lawyer, doctor, or official. L. Never mind; think of the future. It is free- trade which makes nations great and rich. Let us have it in Spain ; and native products will become so good and so cheap that not only the Spanish lawyer and doctor will prefer them, but the English lawyer and doctor too. P. May it be so. My wish and that of all her SPAIN OF THE FUTURE. 293 sons is to see Spain raise her head among the nations. May I hope, senorita, that you join in this wish ? E. Certainly. I dare say she could beat us all if she tried. 294 AZAHAB. APPENDIX. PEPITA JIMENEZ. When, at Valencia, I wrote a few words about Don Juan Valerate novels, I knew nothing of him, except that I saw his hooks in every book-shop window, and heard him spoken of as the most popular of contem- porary Spanish novelists. We now know him to be Spanish Ambassador at Lisbon; and he has very kindly told me that I may take any illustration of Spanish topics from his books. Profiting by a good oflfer, I will give a sketch of '' Pepita Jimenez,'' which, he says, has never been translated into English, though he thinks it possible a translation may be in progress, as his permission to make one was granted some time ago.* With characteristic Spanish self- depreciation, he says that *' the modern literature of his country neither obtains nor deserves much atten- ^ Tlii» tnUMlalkiTi, by Mr. TIikmbm Mooco, li, I iMor^ eomploted. and will probftlly ht iboorily publisbt^. PEPITA JIMENEZ. 295 tion in England." In a certain sense it is impossible to contradict his experience ; but it is well worth the study of foreigners, at any rate, as enlarging their knowledge of a deeply interesting language, country and people. As a novel, I would not criticize *' Pepita,'* even if I could; its tone and standard of manners are too different from the one on which the present generation in England has been formed. It stands more on that earlier level, where '* Clarissa Harlowe" and '* Evelina " are found. I do not com- pare its merits with theirs, but merely its description of the state of society. Of the conquering and compelling of circumstances, there is nothing ; every- body drifts as the current of life takes them ; and it takes them far astray, in some cases, from the path we should have wished them to pursue. It was not as a novel that I read it, and now pass it on in a condensed form, but as a transcript of Spanish modern life, given in an easy, flowing style, and with an occasional j)inch of Quixotean salt to enliven its pages. Don Juan deprecates having had any aim in view in writing it ; but for this assurance I should have supposed he meant to point out, in the first place, the inadequacy of a priest's education to supply him witJj armour for the complex battle of life, made in 296 AZAHAR. some ways more complex for liim, instead of less so, by his vows ; and, in the second, the mystification of the moral sense, produced by fostering a habit of religious talk which transcends in fervour the feehngs it professes to represent. But he must be allowed to know best what he intended ; and we can learn what we please, whether he meant to teach it or not. He opens by accounting for the writing of the book on the imaginary ground of a packet of letters having come into his hands, which had interested him so much, that he thought he would give them under disguised signatures to the world. The bulk of them are labelled, ''Letters from my nephew," and are addressed by a young man, twenty-two years of age, Luis de Vargas, to his uncle, the dean of a cathedral city. This uncle has brought him up for the priest- hood, beheving him to have a decided vocation. He has, at the time the story opens, completed his studies and passed his novitiate, but not yet taken the irrevocable vow ; and before doing so he is to spend a few months at his home on a farewell visit. He has not seen his father for some years ; the latter, on becoming a widower, having entrusted Luis altogether to his uncle's care, but only intending him to be well educated. He is disappointed to find he wishes to enter the priesthood, instead of succeedmg to the PEPITA JIMENEZ. 297 family estate ; for the father has an estate, and is a person of some consequence, and cacique of his village, where he hves the life of a gay old bachelor. The letters begin by describing Luis's arrival at home and first impressions. He finds his father (who, *'in spite of his fifty-five years," is, he respectfully expresses, devoted to the i^leasures of the chase and to flirtations) especially taken up with a beautiful young widow of twenty, a near neighbour and landed proprietress, Pepita Jimenez. The stern, youthful criticism with which Luis regards his father's ways, his efforts to describe him at once charitably as becomes a Christian, and yet to appear sufliciently shocked, are very well given. Luis can never himself take any personal interest in anything outside his vocation, yet, ''as Pepita may some day be my stepmother," he feels it his duty to cultivate her acquaintance. It is needless to say that he soon finds a feeling hitheiiio unknown to him dawning in his breast ; and the rise and progress of this feeling is detailed in a series of letters, which are almost con- fessions, to his uncle, the dean. Luis himself is quite deceived as to the state of his heajrt, and tells his every thought to his uncle, without any idea of what important admissions he is making. He only knows that he feels unusually hapi)y, and his zeal for 298 AZAHAR. his vocation burns brighter than usual in conse- quence. His outpourings about Pepita are alternated with longings to complete his vow, and ''plunge into the remote east '' as a missionary. The third person, indispensable to the novelist for clearing the way, and saying and doing for the hero and heroine what they cannot say and do for them- selves, is found in Pepita's confessor, the old vicar of the parish, '' eighty years of age," but active and able to take long walks with Luis, to whom, looking on him already as a brother priest, and as being fresh from the new lights of his education, he propounds cases of conscience, and tells him in confidence some passages from Pepita's confessions, mentioning no names ; but '' Love has eyes,'' and Luis has no hesita- tion in attributing what he hears to the right person, and thus learns that Pepita's sentiments curiously resemble his own ; also that she, too, has had some idea of embracing '' a contemplative life." She is a prettily drawn character, utterly free from coquetry, full of good deeds, the favourite *' daughter in religion " of the good old vicar, and his mainstay in charitable schemes ; married at sixteen by her mother to a rich old man, without voice of her own in the matter, and now left free by his death, and heiress of all his property. Luis's father, who is by way of being the PEPITA JIMENEZ. 299 bad character of the story, is also freely pressed into the service of removing obstacles, which he does by constantly throwing Luis and Pepita together, and refusing to be roused into jealousy of his son. '' The first time we met " is thus described in one of Luis's letters. *' Three days ago we accepted the invitation to Pepita Jimenez's house, of which I told you in my last letter. She lives in such a retired way that I had never met her anywhere before. She seemed to me as beautiful as I had already heard her to be, and I observed that she behaved to my father with so much affability that I do not wonder he should harbour some hopes, at least viewing things on the surface, that she may in time consent to give him her hand. . . . '* She dresses neither in the costume of the pro- vinces nor in the style of great cities, but a^^pears to mix both in her dress, so that she looks like a lady — but a country lady. I think she avoids the aj^pear- ance of giving much care to her exterior — no cosmetics or rouge are discernible ; but the whiteness of her hands, the polish and finish of her nails, and the neatness and fairness of her whole attire, denote that she attends to these things more than would be expected from the dweller in a village, and especially i) 300 AZAHAR. from one who is said to despise the vanities of the world, and think only of the things of heaven." (This description shows what Germans would call great Sach-kenntniss for a young recluse of twenty-two.) **She keeps her house/' he proceeds, '' heautifully clean and in perfect order. ... In order to give poetry to her entourage, she puts everywhere, in the patio, the rooms, and galleries, a quantity of plants and flowers ; no rare plants or exotic flowers — on the contrary, the most common ones of the neighbourhood, but beautifully cared for. Various canaries in gilded cages animate the whole house with their trills. . . . She has several servant-maids, and it cannot be by mere accident that they are all pretty, so that she must have selected them with great care ; and, besides, Blie has, after the custom of old maids, several animals which keep her company — a parrot, a little woolly white dog, perfectly well washed, and two or three cats, so gentle and sociable that they allow themselves to be nursed. "At one end of the principal drawing-room she has something like an oratory, from whence shines out an infant Jesus, sculptured, and coloured rose and white, with blue eyes. The dress is of white satin, with blue mantle covered with little gold stars ; and the Child is covered with trinkets and jewels. The PEPITA JIMENEZ. 301 little altar is adorned with flowers, and round it are pots of holly and laurel, and on the altar itself, which is up several steps, many tapers are burning. . . . ''It cannot be denied that Pepita is discreet. No silly joke, no impertinent question about my vocation, about the orders which I shall soon receive, passed her lip. She talked to me about the affairs of the place, the farming, the last harvest of wine and oil, and of how best to improve the elaboration of the wine, all quite simply and naturally." (His expecting a '' silly joke about his vocation " at a first introduction seems to carry one to the days of Miss Burney, when, for instance, in Evelina, Mr. Brangton says to her during his first call, '' You must try and get a good husband, miss.") " On the way home, my father talked to me decidedly of his project. He told me that he had been a great scape-grace and was not yet all that could be wished, but that he could amend his life if this woman would love and marry him. Then, taking for granted that she was going to love and marry him, he went on to speak about his affairs. He said that he was very rich, and that he would leave me well provided for, even if he should have several more sons. I replied that, to accomplish the ends and aims of my life, but very little money would be requisite ; and that my 302 AZAHAR. PEPITA JIMENEZ. 303 greatest pleasure would be to see him happily married, and in the society of his wife and children, forgetting his former follies. He then enlarged to me on the subject of his love with much openness and warm feeling. I was the father, and he a youth of my age, or even younger. He told me that Pepita had already had from fifteen to twenty proposals since her widow- hood, and had declined them all. As for himself, he explained to me that to a certain extent she had refused him also, only he flattered himself that her refusal would not be final." . . . Time passes. Don Pedro (the father) will not hear of Luis leaving him yet, though he makes several efforts to go back to his uncle ; and, meanwhile, he becomes insensibly more and more deeply engrossed with Pepita. Under her advice he learns to ride, a point hitherto neglected in his education. '' I told my father of my wish to begin riding, and I had no desire to conceal from him that it was Pepita who had inspired it. My father was very much delighted. He embraced me, kissed me, said that it was not you alone who were to be my instructor ; that he, too, was going to have the pleasure of teaching me something. He was sure that in two or three weeks I should be the best horseman in Andalusia, fit to ride to Gibraltar as a contrabandist, and return from thence mocking at the custom-house, with a leather bag of tobacco, and a good bale of cottons, to astonish all the horse- men who exhibit themselves at Seville Fair," etc., etc. . . . Soon after, caracoling past Pepita*s window on his father's horse, Lucifer, he is nearly thrown, and she, watching the occurrence from behind her reja, betrays her agitation, and greets his mastery of his steed by ''waving her beautiful hands and smiling." His father next insists on his playing tresillo (a game for three, translated ombre), at the evening parties to which he takes him, and expresses great concern that his stock of games is so childish and so slender. "Your uncle has educated you under a bushel," he says, ''making you swallow theology and yet more theology, and leaving you in the dark about all the other things you ought to know ; for the very reason that you are going to be a priest, that you cannot amuse yourself by dancing or falling in love when you go into society, you must play at tresillo ; if not, what ivill you do, unhappy one ? " So he plays at tresillo with Pepita and the vicar, and tells himself that he is sacrificing his own wishes to his father's in doing so. We soon find him remarking to his uncle, " If I could feel that my father only entertained a caprice, not a real passion, for Pepita, it would rejoice me to see her remain as she is, in her chaste widowhood ; I 304 AZAHAR. PEPITA JIMENEZ. 305 and when I should be far away from here, in India, or Japan, or some even more dangerous mission, it would be a comfort to me to write to her, and tell her about my wanderings and my labours ; and when, already old, I came back to this place, I should hke very much to be intimate with her, who also would be already old, and to have spiritual discourses and ' platicas ' with her, as the vicar has now.*' After this, things rapidly assume a more serious complexion. Luis still persuades himself that he is fighting bravely. He writes to his uncle, '' I shall start on the 25th, without fail. Once with you, I shall be better. You will give me the courage and energy I need;" . . . and . . . *'the image of this woman shall be cast out definitely and for ever from my soul. I will make a sharp scourge of my prayers and penances, and with them I will scourge her from thence, as the money-changers were scourged from the Temple." But in the next page, '' I have been twice again to see Pepita." In extenuation of his utter weakness of purpose, we must admit that he receives no extraneous aid whatever. His uncle answers his despairing appeals to be saved from him- self with platitudes, advice to "think of death," and "of the instability of the things of this life," with references to precedents in the hves of the saints- but the following letter from him to Luis's father betrays the low expectation he has of his words taking any effect. '' Dear Brother, — I am extremely sorry to have a piece of bad news for you, but I trust that Heaven will grant you patience and long-suffering, so that you may not be too much vexed and grieved. Luisito has been writing me for some little time past the strangest letters, in which I discover, amid all their exalted and mystic language, a strong and culpable inclination of the most mundane nature for a certain pretty little widow of your neighbourhood, who would seem to be somewhat bold and coquettish. Uj) to this time I had deceived myself into thinking that Luisito's vocation was real and permanent, and I flattered myself I was going in him to present to the Church a virtuous, exemplary, and wise priest ; but the letters I refer to have destroyed these illusions. Luisito shows himself in them rather a poet than a saint ; and the widow will make an easy conquest of him. Although I am writing to admonish him to fly from the temptation, I take it for granted that he will succumb to it. I ought not to regret this, because if he is to fail, and discover a turn for gallantry and flirtation, it is better the fatal weakness should mani- fest itself in time, and before he has taken his vows ; 20 306 AZAHAR. nor should I see any grave inconvenience in the little widow being, as it were, the crucible in which his aptitude for the priesthood should be tried, whether it is of pure gold, or mixed with base alloy, were it not that, as I hear, you are yourself paying your addresses to her, and perhaps are in love with her. . . . This would create a dreadful scandal, and, to avoid it in time, I write to you to-day, in order that you may make some pretext for sending or bringing ; Luisito back to me — the sooner the better." To this Don Pedi'O, who strikes me as the most unselfish and praiseworthy of the whole party, replies as follows : — ** Dear Brother and venerable Spiritual Father, — Many thanks for the news you send me, and for your good advice. Although I consider myself rather acute, I must confess my dulncss on this occasion. Vanity blinded me. Pepita Jimenez, since my son's arrival, had been so affable and kind, that I promised myself she was going to make me happy. Your letter has opened my eyes. I now understand that in becoming so kind, the little rogue saw nothing in me but the papa of the downy-chinned young theo- logian. I will not deny that at the first moment this disenchantment mortified and vexed me; but after mature reflection, my mortification and vexation have PEPITA JIMENEZ. 307 changed into pleasure. The boy is excellent. I have become very fond of him since he has been here. I parted from him and gave him up to you to educate, because my life was not a very exemplary one, and in this village for that and other reasons he would have grown up a young savage. You went beyond my hopes and intentions, and within a little have turned Luisito into a father of the Church. To have had a saintly son would have flattered my vanity ; but I should have regretted having no heir of my house and name, who should give me pretty grandchildren, and after my death should enjoy my possessions. . . . Perhaps it was the conviction that it was now a settled matter — that there was no chance of this, and that Luis was going to teach the catechism to the Chinese, which decided me to marry in order to carry on the succession. Naturally, I turned my eyes on Pepita, who, instead of being bold and forward, as you imagined, is the most gentle creature, more guileless than the heavens, and rather loving than coquettish. . . . Now my vanity takes refuge in this, that if she does not love me, at least she loves mine. May God bless them both and prosper this love. Far from sending back the boy to you, I would now keep him here almost by force, if necessary. I have de- cided now to conspire against his vocation. I long 20—2 308 AZAHAR. to see him married. . . I will make a point of letting you know when the wedding is to take place, in order that you may either come yourself to perform the ceremony, or send the lovers your blessing and a good present." So the story ends with a general giving up. Luis gives up his vocation, Don Pedro gives up Pepita, and the dean gives up Luis ; the only bit of self- sacrifice in it all being Don Pedro*s. There are many interesting allusions to manners and customs, which come in too briefly and inci- dentally to be picked out and presented alone. Some are described a little more fully. The following, for instance, is a characteristic account of a certain festival day, the Invention of the Cross, on the 3rd of May : — ** The whole village was very animated. In every street there were six or seven crosses covered with May flowers, but not one was as beautiful as that which Pepita erected at the door of her house. It was like a sea of flowers, in which the cross was almost hidden. At night we had a feast at Pepita's house. The cross, which had stood in the street, was brought in and placed in one of the lower rooms, where there is a piano. And there Pepita had pre- pared us a pretty poetical little pageant, the like of i I PEPITA JIMENEZ 309 which I remember when I was a child, but have never been present at since. From the top of the cross hung seven broad ribbons — two white, two green, and three scarlet — emblematical colours of the theological virtues. Eight children from five to six years old, representing the seven sacraments, holding on to the seven ribbons hanging from the cross, danced very simply and gracefully round it. Baptism was a child dressed as a catechumen in its white tunic ; Holy Orders, another child dressed as a priest ; Confirma- tion was dressed as a Bishop; Extreme Unction, a little pilgrim with staff, robe, and scallop-shells ; Matrimony was a bride and bridegroom ; and Penance was a Nazarite, with cross and crown of thorns.* It was not so much a dance as a maze of evolutions, obeisances, and genuflexions, to the sound of music, which the organist played very pleasingly on the piano, something like a march. " The children, who were all from the houses of Pepita's labourers and servants, after playing their part went off to bed with presents, and well feted and petted. The ' tertulia ' continued longer, till two o'clock, and then there was refreshment, that is, cups of fruit syrup, and, at the end, chocolate with sponge cake, and water with azucarillas." * Only six Sacraments are g^ven in the original. 310 AZAHAR. But I must not extract further from the book. I have told enough to show that it is very amusingly written. Plot and incident are somewhat scanty, and the interest centres rather in the pourtrayal of the workings of character ; but this is given with consider- able skill and perception of finer lights and shades ; and the little incidental descriptions of scenery and seasons, of trees and flowers, are very graceful and pretty. I'RINTED HY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. /. W. dr* .s . — <- .i II * t \ ^'J •-n-JEl ^&TZ---^ 1 I DUE DATE 1 ri JU N 1 S 1PR] ^^v — vv^ ^•- * vJ iT'vH t^ , ULiOl'di k^. 201-6503 Printed |in USA Elil A 2.S har. I (0 UJ c < QC ^ t m| '00 (Al I/) I SI < S o o t '^^PyM':Pm ■v*-. N-'v