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 J 
 
AUTHOR: 
 
 STEELL, WILL 
 1866-1941 
 
 J 
 
 TITLE : 
 
 IN SEVILLE, AND THREE 
 TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DA TE : 
 
 1894 
 
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 MAY 
 
/ 
 
 IN SEVILLE 
 
 » • 
 
 AND 
 
 IK' 
 
 Three Toledan Days 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIS STEELL 
 
 Author of "The Death of the Discoverer," 
 
 "IsiDRA," Etc 
 
 New York: 
 
 HILLIER MURRAY AND COMPANY. 
 
 Vanderbilt Building;. 
 
 1894.. 
 
irmrr riir.tii. 
 
 '"S' 
 
 Copyright, 1894, 
 
 BY HiLLiER Murray and Company, 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
 P. F. McBreen, Printer. 
 
 216 and 2i8 William Street. 
 
 New York. 
 
 
 i 
 
 X 
 
 I 
 
 
 M 
 
 :>,« 
 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 With one exception, the articles which make up 
 this book have appeared before in print, and the author 
 takes this opportunity of cordially thanking the editors 
 of Harper's 'Ba^ar, Godeys, the Ttmes-T)emocrat of New 
 Orleans, and the Herald of Chicago, for permission to 
 use them again. 
 
 17611)5 
 
♦ ♦ Dedication 
 
 My dear frank— 
 
 If this book can look confidently to any one for in- 
 dulgence, it must be to you, who «re, in some degree, 
 responsible for it. Except for the idea of pleasing you, 
 it would never have appeared between covers, but had 
 been, perforce, content with the piece-meal life it has 
 hitherto led in the files of various journals and maga- 
 zines. Your responsibility goes deeper, for I can almost 
 assert that yours were the eyes that saw, and yours the 
 hand that set down, much that is here described. If that 
 is not true to the letter, in spirit it is incontrovertible. 
 
 All that follows you have already read three or four 
 times over. I suppose you will read the book now, and 
 we may regret together that the spirit of our delightful 
 winter in Seville is not more faithfully preserved. But 
 there are hints within these pages which you and I alone 
 can appreciate. How could I reveal some of our innocent 
 secrets to others? Do you think the attempt would have 
 been successful had I unstoppered the vase of personal 
 reminiscence? We would have lost some of its subtle 
 aroma without enriching the common air. 
 
 In truth, I do not think this book can dull the edge 
 of our recollections, any more than the newspaper letters 
 which we wrote about Seville while we were living in 
 
 i 
 
Seville. They were careless things, and this is not much 
 better. But keep the book which I inscribe to you, as we 
 keep hotel bills, (receipted) and other legal evidence that 
 we really have been in Seville. Otherwise, as the years 
 crowd up to a decade since we were there, we might 
 wonder if it were more than a delightful dream. Put it 
 away and when we talk again of Seville, it will not be on 
 the lines this book lays down. It will be as formerly: 
 
 "Do you remember ?" "Have you forgotten ?'* 
 
 — incidents as undignified and joyous as youth itself. 
 And you may be sure, my dear Frank, that not a moment 
 of that gay and charming winter has been forgotten by 
 your friend 
 
 WILLIS STEELL. 
 
 To FRANCIS M. Livingston. 
 
 If ■ 
 
 in SEVILLE. 
 
 h 
 
 < f 
 
u 
 
 1 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 I 
 
 THAT first week in Seville was a very 
 lonely one. It was the rainy and guestless 
 season, when dining in the great hall of the 
 Fonda de Madrid, where we were quartered 
 all alone, was a duty that subdued our spirits 
 like a funeral. Two places were laid for us 
 at the head of the board, which extended its 
 linen-shrouded length through the immense 
 room, and we had not walked to our seats 
 many times before the table began to wear a 
 look of reproach, as if but for us they would 
 take off the white cloth and leave it to the 
 repose natural to the season. There came 
 no cheerful French commercial travelers, no 
 Spanish clerks, who are great supporters of 
 table d'hote, to help us out, for the reason 
 that another ordinary of the city is more 
 popular with them ; but, on two evenings, we 
 had the company of a thin, tearful English 
 lady, who acknowledged what courtesies we 
 could give with monosyllables and ends of 
 
 .^ 
 
2 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 smiles. Before the close of dinner, however^ 
 she grew emboldened to beg our escort, 
 next day, to the Tobacco Manufactory. 
 Would we take her? Her party was leaving 
 Seville next day but one, and she was so dis- 
 trustful of the commissionnaires ! 
 
 We were charmed. I think, at the time, 
 we would have been attracted by a wooden 
 woman if, by a stretch of the possibilities, 
 she could speak English — and the pale, fem- 
 inine guest lapsed confidential. She had 
 come to Seville with two ladies, who had not 
 stirred out of their rooms since arriving, 
 three days before. '' Are they sick?" we in- 
 quired with sympathy. 
 
 *' Sick ? No !" she answered, almost in tears. 
 ** They have simply been lying down, read- 
 ing novels. What is your idea? To come 
 to Seville to read Besant's novels, without 
 stirring a foot to see the place where Carmen 
 made cigarettes! It is just preposterous." 
 
 When she had gone, and with her the En- 
 glish novelist's admirers, whom, by the way, 
 we never saw, the dreary state of the Ma- 
 drid's dinner weighed heavier than before, 
 and ac length seemed insupportable. We 
 lost appetite, and must have broken the 
 cook's heart, it he was a conscientious artist, 
 by sending back so many dishes untouched. 
 At this juncture we sighed for a place where 
 
 i 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 5 
 
 there would be less to eat and more com- 
 pany to eat it. That conjunction is found in 
 its highest development, we reflected, in an 
 American boarding-house ; why not in a 
 Spanish ? 
 
 Then it was that we discovered in our 
 wanderings in the streets of the Love of God, 
 of Jesus, of Santa Isabel — each very clean, 
 very dark, and very winding — one named for 
 a more familiar saint, the O'Donnell, which, 
 for that reason, we closely scanned. So it 
 came about — I remember no more romantic 
 chance— that one day we rang Mariana's 
 bell. The dim and narrow hall that we were 
 admitted to, the dim and cold cuarto bajo, or 
 room off the hall, which, we were told, was 
 at our disposal ; the slatternly maid who told 
 us this, with explanations in a Spanish we 
 could not understand, because, as we after- 
 ward learned, it was Catalan, and lastly, the 
 appearance of Mariana in person, a tall, 
 buxom woman, with hard, white cheeks and 
 a cold smile— surely none of these induce- 
 ments was tempting enough to cause us to 
 take up our abode there. But we did, and 
 I can think of no other temptation. 
 
 Stop ! There was Margarita ; she was the 
 cook, an Irish woman of perhaps fifty winters, 
 stout and ruddy; Margarita it must have been 
 who clinched the bargain. She came out of 
 
IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 her kitchen on learning that we were En- 
 glish, and wept big, slow tears at the sound 
 of her mother-tongue, which she had almost 
 forgotten. 
 
 Poor old Margarita ! Every morning, while 
 we remained, she came into the dining-room, 
 or stood, with arms folded under a small 
 triangular shawl, just inside of the door to 
 demand what we would eat for breakfast : 
 ** An egg now ? " or '* a bit of beef ?" only for 
 the sake of hearing the answer in English. 
 Margarita had not many ideas in her kindly 
 old head and fewer memories; she could not 
 remember when she left Ireland, but she was 
 a saucy girl there, and she had forgotten when 
 she came to Spain, and why. She was certain 
 of but one thing, which she seemed to think 
 explained the rest, as it certainly did, she had 
 married her **sojer" and accompanied him. 
 
 Once we visited Margarita's kitchen ; that 
 was not too remote, being at the end of the 
 hall, two doors only from our chamber and 
 adjoining the dining-room. It was a large, 
 gloomy place, lighted by two disheartened 
 windows, and seemed so fit for the brewing 
 of an insane potion that after seeing it we 
 forgot to grumble at the table, in our wonder 
 at any food palatable proceeding thence. 
 Margarita, indeed, was a cheery gramalkin, 
 and her songs went up through the huge 
 
 t 
 
 » 
 
 overhanging chimney about as continuously 
 as the smoke. A brick dresser, with several 
 furnaces in which charcoal was burned, filled 
 the space under the chimney, and its surface 
 was constantly occupied by pucheros that 
 were going to the fire or had but come off. 
 Other pucheros, stone pots, hung on nails on 
 the walls, of every different size, like the 
 progeny of prolific parents. From that 
 kitchen, Margarita said, she had not stirred 
 for three years, except when it was neces- 
 sary to go out into the street to haggle with 
 a cheating carbonaro ; and, in truth, she 
 seemed to be there day and night ; the door 
 was rarely closed, and during the day we 
 could hear her moving heavily about, and at 
 night see her sitting in the draught, with the 
 triangular shawl drawn over her head, and 
 smoking a pipe as objectionable to the nose 
 as an extinct volcano. 
 
 The comedor of Mariana's pension, on the 
 contrary, was an exceedingly cheerful room, 
 really being the patio, enclosed with a glass 
 roof, under which so gayly sang half a dozen 
 canaries that I fancied they took the glass 
 for an ordinary layer of atmosphere. The 
 table, covered with a cloth no longer white, 
 filled the place. It was thronged at the 
 dinnerr hour with a piratical company of sul- 
 len, scowling boarderS) who extinguished 
 
IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 the cloth beneath arms, elbows and shoulders. 
 The first impression made by our fellow- 
 guests was not happy; but it improved as 
 we came to know them better, though it 
 would be untrue to say that the young men 
 who ate at Mariana's table ever grew less in- 
 attentive than they showed themselves to be 
 on the first day, to many of the commonest 
 and widest established axioms of good breed- 
 ing as practised in other parts of the world. 
 It seems important, having said this, to define 
 their position in the world, for Mariana's 
 was a polite pension, and her boarders were 
 cadets and young government clerks, and 
 many of them the sons of noblemen, though 
 her principal support was drawn from the 
 medical college, whose dissecting-rooms 
 were just around the corner. 
 
 Except the cadets, who wore very becom- 
 ing fatigue caps, all the men kept on their 
 hats at table, and we seemed to be breaking 
 our daily bread in company of a second-hand 
 hat shop, that boasted its ability to turn any 
 sort of old head covering into an indistinct 
 resemblance to the last Paris fashion. The 
 monotony went deeper, for, except the cadets 
 again, who flaunted the flag of youth in their 
 cheeks, the countenances of this dinner 
 tertulia had been touched by the same brush, 
 one dipped in the soberest colors of the 
 
 palette. In respect to age, also, no guest 
 seemed to have the advantage of the others 
 — all were young, and all were also old ; in 
 appearance and in conversation they were 
 young old men, who had seen the world and 
 realized how hard life was in it, save in times 
 of revolution. I do not wish to be under- 
 stood to say that their appearance and con- 
 versation affected this knowledge, a trick 
 not uncommon with young men the world 
 over. It was the contrary with these youth- 
 ful Spaniards, a spirit of worldly wisdom 
 affecting them, and weighting the brightest 
 with a measure of sadness. Their talk of the 
 events ot the hour, political and economical, 
 never made one smile with the half-pitying, 
 wholly envying feeling that young Ameri- 
 cans inspire in their elders when they give to 
 commonplaces the accent of fresh discovery. 
 One felt that these young men were handling 
 parts of the machine which had crushed 
 them, and speaking out of the fullness of in- 
 herited despair. 
 
 We had removed from Mariana's, and 
 gained a wider Spanish experience before we 
 realized that the manners of her boarders 
 were perfect copies of their elders, for in the 
 vivacity of their prandial discussions or quar- 
 rels, if bandying depreciatory diminutives of 
 proper names and distributing light adjec- 
 
8 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 tives among fathers and more remote ances- 
 tors may be called quarrels, our fellow 
 boarders seemed to be very young. Ours 
 was a table of words, where we ate and de- 
 bated with equal voracity. No subject was 
 too sublime or too petty for Mariana's pailia- 
 ment, and we were equally divided, the right 
 side of the board from the left, over them all. 
 If the Left jeered at the bailerina of a salon 
 cantante, the Right instantly spoke up in 
 her favor; but Right and Left usually spoke at 
 once, or, if either seized a moment of silence, 
 to begin to declare an opinion, the other side 
 was up, shouting a perfect din of " aba— aaa 
 — jos," and keeping it up till breath gave out 
 all round the table. 
 
 Such reputations as were made and un- 
 made in the same instant at Mariana's ! The 
 Prima, of the Ctrvante sings false, cries 
 the Left, and Right almost instantaneously 
 shouts that Spain enjoys in her another Maria 
 Garcia. Sefior Sagasta at one moment is the 
 leader of his party and his country's good 
 angel ; at the next he is a dolt, a trickster, a 
 puppet— ^^abaaaa-jo!" • Down with him ! 
 
 It was not easy for the stranger to make 
 nice distinctions in these family jars, so to 
 speak, or to know the exact line that divided 
 friendly difference from hateful dissension, 
 but I observed that one young man who sat 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 9 
 
 near enough to the head of the table to be 
 neutral, though mostly a silent and diligent 
 feeder, always spoke up at those moments 
 when blows appeared imminent, and by a 
 sally, between two spoonsful of beans, buried 
 the hatchet in a laugh. This peacemaker 
 had nature to aid him ; he was short and 
 stout, with a droll obliquity in one eye that 
 gave a perennial comical expression to his 
 countenance, and a tang to his words that 
 never failed to settle Mariana's swarming 
 bees. He wore the capa parda, and a very 
 shabby one it was, in keeping with his cloth- 
 ing and well cherished hat ; but poor and a 
 commoner though he was, the other boarders 
 took their cue from an intellectual superiority 
 they never questioned. 
 
 In any account, however sketchy, of our 
 huespedes Emilio, the dining-room boy 
 must not be omitted. A little touch of 
 Emilio had to be added to each diner to bring 
 him into shading with the others, but if he had 
 not acted as a universal blender Emilio's per- 
 sonality would compel him into the relation. 
 He had entire charge of the comedor, and 
 kept it in a state of slovenly neatness— neat- 
 ness at second hand— that reminded one of 
 the mental state of Sancho Panza. At meal- 
 time he brought from the kitchen knave, 
 cavalier and king, as the three courses of a 
 
f 
 
 I 
 
 ko 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Spanish dinner are denominated, whenever 
 they Were required (the service was compli- 
 cated by late arrivals and went forward 
 backwards), besides carrying oil, vinegar and 
 salt from one end of the table to the other, 
 supplying napkins, replenishing baskets of 
 bread and fruit, carrying off dishes, and 
 doing all in a blundering way, as if he were 
 moving about in twilight, for which he re- 
 ceived a sufficient amount of abuse. Emilio 
 was, indeed, somewhat impervious to scold- 
 ings, for he was quite as full of native cun- 
 ning and hereditary deference as the Squire 
 in the first half of Book First. He could not 
 have been more than fourteen years of age, 
 though his skin-dried, colorless face, under 
 a faded silk cap with a peak, would have 
 suited an old man. He had spindle legs, sup- 
 porting what was bound, in time, to be a 
 paunch, and I would like to meet Emilio 
 again, in order to see if this descendant of 
 the governor of Barataria fulfilled, in phys- 
 ical proportions as well as in shrewdness and 
 credulity, the promise of his youth. 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
 , 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 II 
 
 tl. 
 
 THE calle O^Donnell is a little street of 
 Seville, very short, very narrow, and 
 very quiet. For some time we held it in light 
 esteem as a place for the determined sight- 
 seer to escape from, but after accident had 
 discovered to us that it contained within itself 
 the elements of Sevillian life, the O'Donnell 
 rivalled for our attention with the Mercado. 
 Inapproachably picturesque had seemed to 
 us the Mercado— a quaint conflux of streets 
 to the east of the fashionable Sierpes— and a 
 pen-and-ink sketch of it will show by con- 
 trast what a pastel of the O'Donnell ought 
 
 to be. 
 
 The Mercado had scores of tiny shops with 
 
 fronts to be taken out every morning, not 
 much larger than those of a Moorish bazar, 
 and, like them, containing merchandise of a 
 surprising variety : knives and daggers, but- 
 tons and beads ; rugs, carpets, rolls of cloth, 
 and every thing in the line of confections, from 
 prunes to preserved watermelons. This old 
 quarter follows the Arabian custom in group- 
 ing together the shops where the same kind 
 of goods is sold. There are the booths of the 
 clothing-dealers, gaudy with pink, blue and 
 orange vests and scarfs. There are the silk 
 
i 
 
 12 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 mercers' shops, and the hardly less bright 
 booths of the leather merchants, where thou- 
 sands of sets of harness of every conceivable 
 color for horses, mules and asses are hanging 
 upon the walls. And there are the dens of 
 the armorers, where all sorts of knives and 
 blades and spears are kept, from the primitive 
 Iberian bident— a long pole with a crescent 
 of steel — to the matador's straight Toledan 
 blade. 
 
 The neighborhood of the Mercado is na- 
 turally the favorite stage of street players ; 
 the violin and the guitar — chiefly the guitar 
 ^and a concertina or two, are forever wail- 
 ing there like starved kittens for food. But 
 the O'Donnell, as it has less traffic and fewer 
 idlers, rarely has any street players of its 
 own. What music it enjoys it overhears at 
 long range, from the begging musicians of 
 the Plaza Magdalena, or the Plaza del Duque, 
 which stop its progress north and south re- 
 spectively. The shops of the O'Donnell are 
 larger and emptier than the Mercado's 
 booths, but it is not easy to detect differences 
 between their customers, those of the O'Don- 
 nell buying in as small quantities and taking 
 as long a time about it as those of the Mer- 
 cado. Whenever we sat behind our reja 
 and ate iron, as the Sevillians say, we learned 
 as much about the habits of the people as we 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 13 
 
 could hope to do by posting ourselves in 
 the crowded and fatiguing Mercado, and 
 with the advantage, not to be despised, of 
 personal comfort. 
 
 The day begins early and in the most in- 
 teresting fashion. Beneath my observatory 
 (the window, barred like a prison's, is scar- 
 cely a man's height above the street) flows a 
 stream of feminine life on its way to the mass 
 in the neighboring church in the calle de las 
 Armas. I can even lie in bed and count them 
 as they pass— by a rosette of lace, a bit of 
 fluttering ribbon. But I despise a soul so 
 sluggish. I will rise, dress myself, and lean 
 gently against the iron bars. Softly as I take 
 my station, still as I remain, the devotee com- 
 ing towards my window knows I am there. 
 Her eyes are cast down, her step demure, 
 her hands folded— I regret that I am going 
 to see only the top of her head — until she is 
 directly beneath me. Then her hands fly 
 apart, her head sways quickly back, and two 
 great black eye^ dip full into mine. She 
 smiles maliciously, deliciously. Oh ! was I 
 not right when I said she knew I was there ? 
 
 At the mouth of the O'Donnell a pastry 
 cook has his shop, a fine place painted in 
 yellow and blue, indigestible colors, and it 
 makes an obstruction in this feminine stream 
 that no woman wave of it can get around. 
 
I 
 
 14 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 She is powerless to avoid drifting in there 
 as in an eddy to eat a cake and hear the news. 
 The woman behind the counter has a face as 
 ugly as her tongue is unctuous — which is 
 paying her a left-handed compliment, for no 
 courtier could surpass her in flattering the 
 purchasers, most of whom are evidently cus- 
 tomers of long standing. 
 
 '' Ave Maria ! " she cries, covering at the 
 same time a cake frosted with pink and white 
 sugar. '' Don't take that one. Dona Yoletta, 
 Take a chocolate to deaden your own colors, 
 or the men will pull this shop over my 
 ears." 
 
 ''I've a message for you, madonna, from 
 — the padre." 
 
 Next she detains a well preserved beauty 
 who has despatched her morning sweet. 
 Then ensues a medley of whispers and 
 screams, in which the cunning shopwoman 
 mingles praises of the lady's beauty and enco- 
 miums of her own du/ces adornados, 
 
 A more mysterious shop, one which had 
 many women callers, but sent them away 
 looking unhappy, kept four or five doors 
 from the pasteleria. Its attractive windows 
 usually displayed a fine toca or mantilla, or 
 some costly trifle of lace and silk, but its 
 shelves were bare. This shop was always 
 open at night, and to a late hour. Often after 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 15 
 
 I have blown out my candle I have seen a 
 light streaming through the panes. Once I 
 went in to ask the price of an elaborately 
 embroidered scarf which hung in the window, 
 A small boneless man, looking more like 
 a Burmese than a Spaniard, came forward 
 with a suspicious air. He quoted an extrav- 
 agant price, and without permitting me to 
 examine the scarf, lifted it down and with- 
 drew into the back room. A few minutes 
 after he returned to hasten my departure. 
 In general the noble Spaniard who keeps 
 shop is indifferent whether you buy or not, 
 but this one carried indifference to the ex- 
 treme of Oriental contempt. I learned later 
 that the suspicious little man was not a 
 genuine shopkeeper, but a go-between of 
 noble ladies whom poverty compelled to sur- 
 render their grandmothers' laces, and other 
 ladies whose ancestors had neglected to 
 provide them with such feminine patents of 
 nobility. 
 
 After the religious have gone, the street, 
 or that side of it which I see, falls back into 
 a delicious doze, induced by the transparent 
 shadows, like veils of blue tulle, blown softly 
 up and down by the cool, fresh morning 
 breeze. The walls directly opposite my win- 
 dow rise very high ; I cannot see the sky 
 above them. They have neither shape nor 
 
\ 
 
 i6 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 17 
 
 form, being the backs of buildings that front 
 on the Sierpes, and if they ever had any char- 
 acter repeated coats of Hme ha^^ sunk it out 
 of sight. These walls have neither windows 
 nor doors, and they look as if they had been 
 thrown up merely to reflect the sun dazzlingly 
 in the afternoon, and in the morning to trans- 
 late the indescribable transparency of the 
 shadows. They have another use, it seems, 
 which is to frame between them a pretty 
 house with balconied windows, a street door 
 having the Moorish arch, and an ogive win- 
 dow on the ground-floor. This little house 
 is whitewashed also, the brown tiles of the 
 roof now yellowing against the sky supplying 
 the only touch of color, but it has the look of 
 being happily inhabited. And presently the 
 look becomes certainty. A pair of rounded 
 arms reach forth, and hang on the iron rail- 
 ing a drapery of crimson damask embroidered 
 in gold arabesques. While I am straining 
 my eyes to see through the half-open shutters 
 the sun leaps down and seizes for his own the 
 brilliant stuff. Instantly the O'Donnell, 
 which had been state before, becomes 
 pageantry. 
 
 Breakfast-time comes and goes, the men of 
 the quarter have returned to business, and 
 the O'Donnell at last begins its day. Itinerant 
 merchants turn the corner around the pastry 
 
 1 
 
 
 shop, and pass slowly up and down the street, 
 driving before them mules and asses laden 
 with straw and charcoal, and shouting 
 through raucous throats: "Paja! paja ! 
 Carbon ! Cabrito !" These men, worn by 
 privation and burned by the sun, are clad in 
 poor, gray garments, but their animals have 
 gaudy caparisons of red or yellow cloth, 
 hung about with bells, and ornamented with 
 tassels and plumes. In their wake come 
 fruit-venders wnth baskets of oranges and 
 pomegranates; and as this traffic is principally 
 left to women, it makes the liveliest hour of 
 the morning in the O'Donnell, when cooks 
 and fruit-women join battle. Scornful and 
 indignant exclamations arise on every side, a 
 stifled hum floats down from the Magdalena 
 Plaza, and standing at the door of our hues- 
 pedes, Margarita shrieks and implores and 
 dismisses her favorite market-woman all in 
 
 one breath. 
 
 At length the bedlam of bargaining ceases. 
 The merchants have retired, and the domes- 
 tics are left in possession of the street. Now 
 is the opportunity of the organ players and 
 inountebanks. This is the moment when 
 cooks are at leisure and open-handed, as those 
 should be who have gained a great battle. 
 
 The w^omen stand in their doors, sur- 
 rounded by their purchases, and scan the 
 
 > 
 
iS 
 
 IN SEVIJ^LE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 19 
 
 Street up and down, as if inviting the players. 
 Sometimes the invitation is accepted. See 
 this party of two— or is it three B— that enters 
 the O'Donnell. It stops beneath my reja. 
 The man throws his guitar across his arm 
 and strikes a loud chord. The woman sets 
 down two bundles; one of them looks as if 
 it possessed life, and she unrolls and spreads 
 out the other— a faded carpet — on the pave- 
 ment. Then she takes up her concertina and 
 accompanies her husband, while the first bun- 
 dle — yes, it possesses life— begins to dance. 
 Now I am glad that my window is raised the 
 height of a man above the street. If it were 
 lower I should see nothing, for every cuchina 
 has emptied itself, and the curious crowd is 
 dense indeed. Yet I see for a long time 
 without comprehending. What is it that is 
 dancing ? Is it an automaton ? Is it a 
 human being? The music stops, with a long 
 piercing note, and the dancer looks up. It 
 is a female dwarf, a creature with a woman's 
 face and bust, but without legs. When the 
 wind of the cachucha blows out her volu- 
 minous skirts, I can see that she dances on 
 stumps. She looks like an evil disposed 
 gnome, a descendant of the two hideous 
 dwarfs in Las Meninas, and to the piece of 
 money that falls on the carpet she responds 
 by blowing me a repulsive kiss. 
 
 ^1 
 
 Fortune loiters in the O'Donnell to-day. 
 Here comes a troop of recruits on the way 
 to the Ayuntamiento. Coarse but open 
 countenances these fellows have, and they 
 plainly relish the sarcastic speeches that 
 reach their ears from the women on either 
 side. In lieu of answer, which is forbidden, 
 the soldiers slyly flaunt the vulgar scarfs tied 
 about their waists— a gesture which enrages 
 some of the women and amuses others. A 
 young officer of an aristocratic pallor and 
 slimness rides a magnificent horse in front of 
 the band. He looks neither to the left nor 
 to the right, yet warm eyes and a flattering 
 silence pursue him. A lame old man and a 
 tiny boy, both enveloped in ragged garments 
 varnished with dirt, come next, pushing and 
 pulling a wretched little donkey packed to 
 the level of my window with household furni- 
 ture. The old man, who is dripping with 
 perspiration, replies bitterly to the torrent of 
 female abuse showered upon him, and the 
 tiny boy yells out in his childish treble a 
 string of adult oaths. Three mangy dogs 
 that have been driven out of ^ the plaza del 
 Duque, where they spent the night, pass fur- 
 tively along in the centre of the street, in- 
 creasing their pace at the cries of the 
 women, and glancing up with hopeless eyes, 
 like the pariahs that they are. A stone that 
 
20 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 somebody throws strikes one dog. He does 
 not even stop to yelp, but speeds on faster. 
 A sudden silence falls on the tongues of my 
 neighbors. It tells me that the frightful old 
 woman, her head bound with a red handker- 
 chief, now passing in the street noiselessly 
 and without raising her eyes from the ground, 
 is a fortune-teller. One tall girl, with defi- 
 ance in her mien, runs out of a doorway and 
 slips something into the old woman's lifeless 
 hand. Then she retires and shuts the door 
 before the flaming head-dress of this madre 
 de Triana has vanished into the plaza. She 
 knows that as soon as the gypsy is out of 
 hearing her fellow-servants of the quarter 
 will shriek with scornful laughter ; and she 
 knows, too, that not one of them but has paid 
 the old woman a lee for a handsome 
 caballero. 
 
 Attended by a crowd of ragged boys, 
 bright eyed and rich complexioned, like 
 Murillo's models, a hand-organ turns into the 
 0'Donnell~a true hand-organ, rare in Seville. 
 There is a clapping of hands, a cheering as 
 of one woman, but, alas! it is too late. 
 Smothered commands issue from the inte- 
 riors. It is time to prepare the puchero if the 
 O'Donnell is to dine to-day, and the mis- 
 tresses are calling in their servants. Angry, 
 cxpostulatory, with many a backward glance. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 21 
 
 the women obey ; and the grinder, who had 
 already resumed position, shrugs his shoul- 
 ders and wheels his organ in the direction of 
 the plaza. 
 
 A repose, a quiet that is not at all melan- 
 choly, settles upon the street, out of which 
 the blue shadows have long since departed. 
 I perceive that the sun is shining hotly on 
 the upper half of the blank wall opposite, and 
 revealing, with its implacable light, green 
 and iron-red crevices that were not noticeable 
 before. All the cracks and discolorations of 
 the painted shutters, now tightly closed, all 
 the dilapidation of the tilCvS, the broken rails 
 of the balcony in the little house that ap- 
 peared but a moment since so new and pure, 
 are painfully obvious now. I look to see if 
 the crimson drapery has caught fire. It no 
 longer hangs on the balcony. While I have 
 been intent on the life below my window, the 
 round arms have emerged and withdrawn 
 again. 
 
 How hot it is ! Occasionally a man or a beast 
 passes in the street, but they seem like fig- 
 ures in a dream. The people walking in the 
 plaza resemble dark shadows floating across 
 a calcium-lighted screen. The solid buildings 
 opposite appear to shake and tremble in the 
 furnace, and I should not be surprised to see 
 their tiles fall down, their sides crumble, and 
 
2i 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 23 
 
 the red flames leap skyward. But I should 
 wish to save out of the gerteral destruction 
 the pretty house I admire so much ; or if I 
 could not succeed so far, at least to rescue 
 its mistress. Where is she now ? In the can- 
 opied court, among palms, in a dusky golden 
 ^reen atmosphere, sunk in yellow silk cush- 
 ions, and listening, with her head supported 
 by one of those pretty arms, to the ripple of 
 a fountain? 
 
 Alas ! my reja is growing painfully hot to 
 the touch. The sultry air hangs leaden. In 
 a little while the fierce sun will enter. 
 
 But it is hotter across the way. The sun 
 has climbed down from the upper windows 
 and is licking the defaced tile-work of the 
 arched door. Its burnished tongue passes 
 over every rosette, into every recessed hive, 
 along every stalactite of the ogive window. 
 It reveals to me another row of ogives, small- 
 er and behind the first, of which in shadow 
 or out of the direct ray they look like the 
 ornamental filling. The intruding sun throws 
 them out in their true value, and I see that 
 the interior row is carved in a lace-like pat- 
 tern of arabesques rarer and more delicate 
 than those one may run and admire. It is 
 always possible to know true Arabian art, 
 which spends its greatest elaboration on 
 things which must be hunted for. I see also 
 
 that this inner row of ogives have escaped 
 the whitewash brush. All that fine lacework, 
 all those tiny circles and crescents and ro- 
 settes, were once brilliant with pink and yel-' 
 low and green pigments ; they are not abso- 
 lutely faded now ; indeed, they are sparkling 
 at this moment, like stones which when 
 dipped in water recover instantly a liquid 
 freshness and brightness. 
 
 The sun is back on the tiles ; a reddish 
 shadow hangs midway between street and 
 roof. The windows and doors of the 0*Don- 
 nell are pushed open, with one exception — 
 the window I have been watching through- 
 out the afternoon. From the other houses 
 women come forth and seat themselves in 
 doorways and balconies ; some carry rocking- 
 chairs into the street ; and there, knitting, 
 sewing, spinning wool, singing songs, or tel- 
 ling the sins of the absent, they pass the hours 
 before dinner. These tertulias are made up 
 of mistresses and maids, a beautiful equality 
 seeming to exist among them, and white 
 dresses of silk or gauze mix with print gowns 
 of pink and blue. Most of these women 
 show a fondness for decorating themselves 
 with flowers — carnations at the throat, roses 
 nestling in blue-black hair. Three or four 
 domestics have Madras handkerchiefs twisted 
 over their foreheads, and I can count as 
 
I 
 
 24 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 many sefioras who wear shawls of crepe de 
 Chine draped about their shoulders. The 
 scene is very animated and charming, and re-^ 
 calls Venice by its brilliancy pf color, which 
 is never, in general effect, loud or common- 
 place. And yet the traveller who knows 
 both will not liken the women of Seville to 
 the women of Venice. 
 
 I sit in my window and join fervently in 
 all the gossip going. (It is dusk now in my 
 chamber, and I am not obliged to conceal 
 myself.) One merry nimble spirit made me 
 an accessory to the crime of slandering a 
 jeweller's wife who dwelt somewhere in the 
 calle O'Donnell. I did not know Mrs. Jew- 
 eller, and it was hardly possible that I should 
 ever see her, but I drank in the evidence as 
 it flowed from her accuser's ruby lips, and 
 promptly judged her guilty. The crimination 
 came in. such liquid accents, accompanied by 
 such ringings of silvery laughter, that the tale 
 of Mrs. Jeweller and her swain remains a mu^ 
 sical memory like Parasina. Of course it was 
 not so sad or so bad ; in fact, the jeweller's 
 lady stood accused of nothing more serious 
 than carrying on a flirtation of glances with 
 the leader of the San Fernande orchestra, a 
 pale handsome youth in the opposite balcony. 
 But, Maria Santisima ! she did her hair every 
 day a la Francesca^ stuck a rose in it and 
 
 ! 
 
 •*l 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 ^•5 
 
 placed herself directly under his eyes. 
 V/ere there letters between them ? Quien 
 sabe? But it was the wrong way for the 
 woman to go about keeping what is sworn, 
 and, por Dios, there were still unmarried 
 girls in Seville ! 
 
 The O'Donnell is left to itself. There was 
 a rustling of feminine garments, a scamper 
 ing of feet, good byes exchanged, as soon as 
 the first grave and sober seiior turned into 
 the street. He is followed by others. Heavy 
 footsteps fall, and dark forms, singly or in 
 groups of two and three, pass my window. 
 The narrow way closes up, the houses seem- 
 ing to draw closer together, as if for com- 
 panionship and protection against the dread 
 of night. The sky is dark blue, almost black, 
 but clear and apparently very far off. Lights 
 gleam in patios. The pasteleria at the corner 
 is a blaze of glory ; the pawnbroker's win- 
 dows throw out luring beams ; and back, 
 away back, in the depths behind the ogive 
 window, shines a tiny point of light like a 
 cigarette. Whence the all-powerful influence 
 of mystery ? As night solemnly falls in this 
 quiet corner, I am filled with conjectures 
 about this closed house that nevertheless is 
 inhabited. A sickening thought comes. I 
 put it away, but it returns. Is it possible that 
 she is Mrs. Jeweller ? 
 
26 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 III. 
 
 ADMISSION into thevte intime of Seville 
 did not immediately follow the instal- 
 lation at Mariana's. For a week longer we 
 strolled the streets, like the tourists we were, 
 and not like the citizens we wished to be- 
 come. And for a week longer the waiter of 
 the Cafe Suizo served our chocolate with the 
 indifference he feels for all transients. But 
 a brighter day was coming, and it dawned 
 rosy clear when one of us remembered 
 enough of his algebra to help the cadet who 
 occupied the chamber behind ours, over the 
 hedge of an equation. He used to lie in bed 
 lo keep warm, cloak and fatigue cap on, puz- 
 zling over x's and y's, and throwing dirt on 
 the tomb of Algebar, who invented and gave 
 his name to that branch of mathematics, 
 which is the hate of all brave cadets. Out 
 of gratitude the young soldier transformed 
 himself into an invaluable cicerone, and it is 
 but justice to say that our pleasantest adven- 
 tures in Seville were due to him. He made 
 Sevillian majos of us (so far as indifferent 
 material permitted), and if we never leai ned 
 the proper distance to follow behind a beauty 
 in the paseo, if we never acquired the correct, 
 stony, respectful, but burning stare, with 
 
 ) 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 27 
 
 which to ogle her, it was not his fault, but our 
 natural obtuseness. In other matters his 
 coaching met with more success. We were 
 quick to adopt the peremptory tone that 
 transformed the surly camerero into a quick 
 and docile servant. We comprehended the 
 distinction between applause at the opera 
 and applause at the salon cantante, and we 
 learned a few soft musical phrases to express 
 admiration, that passed current with almost 
 all Spanish women. These were twice 
 blessed, or at least they blessed us, for after 
 we had said in effect to a lady, whom we en- 
 countered at a church portal, that the mother 
 of such a divinity deserved the gratitude of 
 all men, we were cheered by the thought 
 that we were less alien than before. 
 
 Moreover, through walking often in com- 
 pany of the senorito, the cadet, we soon had 
 a bowing acquaintance with many Sevillians, 
 who drove every evening in las Delicias. 
 This was a tantalizing privilege, to be sure, 
 and we never ventured to exert it when we 
 walked alone ; yet it did us no harm to hope 
 that acquaintance at sight would ripen event- 
 ually into something warmer. Meanwhile, 
 we extended our list of male associates to 
 include all our cadet's comrades, until we 
 could pride ourselves that no other civilians 
 had as many friends in the army. They made 
 
28 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 pleasant companions, provided one lent an 
 unwearied ear to the tales of love. Each 
 of them had his Julita, his Martita, his 
 Blanca, who was the diamond of girls. Nat- 
 urally, old acquaintanceship took precedence, 
 and so long as our friend, the cadet, cared to 
 discourse of his inamorita — which was just 
 as many hours as were not wasted at drill or 
 in the algebra demonstration room — we 
 accompanied him. We burned ; we froze ; 
 we spoke tenderly or passionately ; we re- 
 proached her, we scorned her, according to 
 his mood. Perhaps I should say according 
 to her mood, tor the cadet's Martita was, in 
 lact, a diamond of a girl, and very hard. 
 Days, nay weeks, would go by, and she 
 would respond to his letters, handed in 
 hourly, not one line, not one word, nothing! 
 " Yet for thy sake, proud girl, I burn triple 
 candles over that accursed algebra ! If thou 
 hadst not sung at the tertulia of thy aunt : 
 
 Ni en batella el buen guerrero, 
 
 I had not clothed myself in shackles ! " 
 
 But next day, or as it sometimes happened, 
 the same day he had given vent in reproaches 
 like the above to his tortured spirit, he would 
 have a different song to sing over our coffee. 
 He had received a little note from her. Ah, 
 yes, it lay here (tapping his heart), it lay 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 29 
 
 buried here ; none but she and he would 
 ever know what that sacred page contained. 
 Seiiors, you apprehend ? The treasured 
 secret of love ! Then he would take it out of 
 his pocket and read it aloud, word for w^ord. 
 He would have been a dull swain, therefore, 
 who, with our advantages, had not soon 
 learned how to fall in love in Seville. An 
 observing man will very quickly discard the 
 trappings that Figaro has left for amatory 
 inheritance. He will break or throw away 
 his guitar, and instead of clinging to an iron 
 grille during the rheumatic hours of night, 
 he will buy himself a pair of tight boots with 
 French heels, get *' new legs and lame ones,'* 
 and spring-halt it up and down the paseo un- 
 til his fancy alights. Then the very next 
 step he will take — not a halt one, let us hope 
 — will be to inquire out her tertulia, and gain 
 admittance to it. After that the course of 
 true love in Spain runs in a channel parallel 
 to that of other countries. To-day, in Se- 
 ville, Figaro is a barber, pure and simple. 
 
 Most of the cadets and a few of the younger 
 officers, frequented the pasteleria of Juan 
 Pulin, that foreigners call the Cafe Suizo, and 
 there, over chocolate and pastas-secas^ or the 
 famous little rolls of Alcala, we sat many 
 long evenings that seem monotonous in ret- 
 rospect. They were not so really, for each 
 
30 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 of US exerted himself to talk louder and faster 
 than the others, and our combined lungs 
 blew up a wind of interest that sent the con- 
 versation craft dancing merrily between the 
 ports of dinner and bed. What we talked 
 about was of no consequence ; it was the 
 noise we made in talking. Everything else 
 in these meetings was fictitious ; our pleas- 
 ure was make-believe, our excitement pre- 
 tense ; only the noise was genuine, and very 
 characteristic. Though it is a proverb of 
 Spanish officers that they spend the time off 
 duty in sleep or play, 1 .do not remember 
 that I ever heard our friends call for the 
 cards. They exhibited their proficiency by 
 telling stories of exciting games, in which 
 they had participated, and lost, or won pro- 
 digious sums. 
 
 When the clock struck eleven we were in 
 the habit of separating, but on certain nights 
 we left the pasteleriaat that hour to enter on 
 the real business of the evenmg. This began 
 by constituting ourselves into a body of special 
 police, charged with the extraordinary pro- 
 tection of the corregidor, the chief of the mu- 
 nicipal administration. I do not know that 
 he was in danger on these particular nights, 
 or why, if our business respected his author- 
 ity, we so carefully avoided the regular 
 watchmen. These were points too fine for a 
 
 > 
 
 k 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 31 
 
 foreign understanding, but we comprehended 
 at least, that the expedition was harmless. It 
 was quite different with the majos born on 
 the soil. They believed themselves beset 
 with deadly perils, and their spirits rose in 
 proportion as the pretence gathered reality 
 from eyeless night. In and out of dark, lit- 
 tle streets, avoiding the lamps at the corners, 
 clustering and muttering in doorways, under 
 porches and balconies, we stole from shade to 
 shade like a band of Spanish Sioux. After 
 an hour or two of this exciting chase after 
 our own shadows, we would gravely march 
 to the Nueva^ whence the rest would accom- 
 pany us, hasta el rincon, to the corner of our 
 street, shake hands in turn and vanish. 
 
 At the inauguration of each midnight stroll 
 we hoped it would develop an adventure, 
 but it never did, and when we went home I 
 laughed at my heart for having beat a little 
 faster at the setting-forth. But laugh as I 
 might when safe in bed, I never failed to 
 dream of Pedro the Cruel, and his bloody 
 rambles. One, in particular, haunted my pil- 
 low, for no better reason than that my own 
 hand filled in the meagre outline furnished by 
 the Annals of Seville, The compiler of that 
 book gives in a few words the tradition to 
 which a street of Seville, called Candilejo, 
 owes its name. Walking there one night. 
 
1^ 
 
 < 
 
 32 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Pedro quarrelled with a man who was sere- 
 nading beneath a window. Th-ey fought, and 
 the king killed the amorous cavalier without 
 witnesses, except an old woman, who stuck 
 her head out of a window and lighted up the 
 tragedy with a little lamp, candilejo, that she 
 held in her hand. 
 
 This is treating carelessly a scene which 
 promises so much. Indeed, it ought to run 
 like this : It is night ; the city sleeps. Enter 
 Don Gomez (why conceal the name of a man 
 who is soon to die ?). He advances a few 
 steps. " Tis here ; behold the house ! She is 
 behind that jalousie ! " 
 
 With nervous steps Don Gomez crosses the 
 street, places himself under the window, 
 takes his guitar, and begins to sing a romance 
 that deals with tears, sighs and all that fol- 
 lows. As the poetry is a little worse than 
 usual, it is probably his own composition. 
 
 At the third or fourth seguidilla the blinds 
 rustle gently, and a faint cough reaches Don 
 Gomez. That tells him she is listening. Hav- 
 ing attained his end, Don Gomez casts aside 
 the guitar and enters into a low-voiced con- 
 versation with the unseen lady. Don Gomez 
 is full of words. He knows by heart all the 
 Moresque romances, of which the Andalusian 
 tongue is so rich. He is eloquent and mu- 
 sical. The conversation proceeds like a song, 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 33 
 
 when suddenly there falls a note of discord. 
 Yet to call it so is paradoxical, for the note 
 comes from another guitar. The startled lov- 
 ers see a man crossing the street, wrapped in 
 a mantle. He twangs the opening chord. 
 
 ** Oh, heaven ! " cries the maiden. ** It is 
 your rival ; it is Don Ruiz who is coming to 
 serenade me. Fly, for the love you bear me, 
 lest some misfortune happen to you." 
 
 **Fly? Never!" cries Don Gomez. "I 
 should be unworthy of you if I could run 
 away," and, raising his voice : " Cavalier* " 
 he exclaimed to the man who continues to 
 advance, '* the place is taken and this lady 
 does not appreciate your music. So, if it 
 pleases you, seek your happiness else- 
 where." 
 
 " Who dares advise me ? " cries the new 
 comer. " Rash youth, retire and yield the 
 place ! " 
 
 ''I will not yield to any man," cries Don 
 Gomez. 
 
 *' Not even to " mutters the other, with- 
 out completing his sentence, except to drop 
 his mantle and reveal his face. 
 
 Don Gomez recoils a pace ; nevertheless, 
 he repeats stoutly : *• Not even to my king ! " 
 
 Enough had been said, and the swords 
 were out. The king was adroit, and besides 
 he had in his left hand an iron shield, behind 
 
34 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 which he sheltered his body, while Don 
 Gomez had only his sword and mantle. He 
 defended himself with grace, and tried all the 
 expedients known to good swordsmen to 
 force his opponent's guard. At one moment 
 it seemed as if he would succeed in gliding 
 his sword underneath the king's shield, but 
 the heavy iron came down and dashed his 
 weapon to the ground, while Pedro's sword 
 penetrated his side with such force that the 
 point broke after entering a hand's length. 
 Don Gomez uttered a groan and fell bathed 
 in his blood. 
 
 At that moment the watch was heard ap- 
 proaching. The king rose, threw aside the 
 sword, picked up the guitar, and spurning 
 his victim from the path with the words, 
 " So perish all who cross my love ! " he made 
 off in the opposite direction. 
 
 And the lady ? It is not certain there was 
 any lady concerned ; the Annals of Seville 
 mention an old woman merely. It is curious 
 to note that in my dreams it was always the 
 old woman who came. At first I paid her 
 no particular attention, for, when the dream 
 began haunting, I took an active part, alter- 
 nately playing the bloody Pedro and the ill- 
 starred lover. But as time went on and our 
 nocturnal strolls remained nocturnal strolls 
 and nothing more, I grew less and less able 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 iS 
 
 to play a leading role^ and since it seemed 
 equally impossible to retire from the stage 
 altogether, the night finally fell when I acted 
 the old woman holding up the little lamp. 
 
 IV. 
 
 BUT Pedro is not the glory of Seville. 
 Not even a city which has no military 
 history would exalt a coward to this place,. 
 and the large class of Sevillians— and other 
 people — that can respect a man who- offsets 
 turpitude with audacity, turn from Don 
 Pedro to Don Juan when they crown the 
 hero of Seville. But lived there ever a man 
 who deserved to be called Don Juan, with 
 all that name now implies? 
 
 Or is Don Juan a myth ? Call him so if 
 you wish to throw dirt on the city of Seville, 
 but do it from the plain outside her walls, 
 for if you once go within, you will remain to 
 believe. The people can show you the monu- 
 ments of not one merely, but two Don Juans. 
 They can point out the houses where they 
 lived and where they died ; they can carry 
 you to the graves of both. How can you 
 scoff after that ? 
 
 Seville has two Juans in her legends, be- 
 cause it is impossible to fit them all to one 
 
36 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 37 
 
 man. Rejecting the grossest anachronisms^ 
 one has left a vast quantity of material out ot 
 which to construct two such superior beings; 
 Don Juan Tenorio and Don Juan de Manara. 
 The common people regard them as one per- 
 son, but the guides, in the interest of trade, 
 preserve a distinction. They show you the 
 house of Tenorio, now the property of the 
 nuns of San Leandro, and they cause you to 
 read in la Caridad the ostentatiously humble 
 inscription on the tomb of Manara : ''Here are 
 the ashes of the wickedest man in the world." 
 The guides then cease to make fine dis- 
 tinctions, and relate stories which may belong 
 to one or the other — you may take your 
 choice — of how Don Juan made strange 
 propositions to La Giralda, the bronze statue 
 that surmounts the Moresque tower of the 
 Cathedral, and how La Giralda accepted 
 them ; how Don Juan, walking warm with 
 wine, on the left bank of the Guadalquivir, 
 demanded a light of a man smoking a cigar 
 on the right bank ; how the smoker, who was 
 no other than the devil in person, extended 
 his arm farther and farther, until it stretched 
 across the river, and presented his weed to 
 Don Juan, and how that mauvais sujet, after 
 lighting his own cigar, returned His Maj- 
 esty's, with a careless " Thank you," and 
 passed on. 
 
 I 
 
 Many tales are related of the childhood 
 and youth of Don Juan de Manara (these 
 M. de Latour has agreeably collated), while 
 of Tenorio, at a tender age, whom it is easy 
 to suspect for that reason, of being a common 
 plagiarist, legend is dumb. 
 
 The charm of these stories consists in their 
 fidelity to nature and to the epoch. They 
 form a solid foundation capable of support- 
 ing a complicated structure in the style of 
 the Arabesque. Out of them the genius of 
 Prosper Merimee constructed his famous 
 story, which is condensed in the following 
 narrative : 
 
 Don Juan, so called, although he had been 
 christened Manuel, was born at Seville, 
 about the year 1622. This makes him by 
 four years the junior of Murillo. whom he 
 afterwards employed to embellish his chapel 
 of repentance. He was the son who arrived 
 late to delight the heart of a hero of the 
 Moorish wars, Don Carlos de Manara. 
 
 Spoiled by father and mother, as became 
 the sole heir of a famous name and a great 
 fortune, Don Juan, from infancy, was abso- 
 lute master of his own actions. In his father's 
 palace no one had the hardihood to correct 
 him. The parents, indeed, took some pains 
 to educate him, but their methods were con- 
 flicting. 
 
38 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 The mother wished her son to be devout, 
 like herself, and by caressing him and stuff- 
 ing him with sweets, she persuaded the child 
 to learn litanies, rosaries, and, in fact, all 
 the obligatory and non-obligatory praj^ers. 
 On his part, the father taught Don Juan 
 the romances of the Cid and Bernardo del 
 Carpio ; related to him the revolt of the 
 Moors and encouraged him to exercise him- 
 self all day hurling the javeline, firing the 
 cross-bow, or even the arquebus at a manna- 
 kin dressed like a Moor, which he had set up 
 in his garden. 
 
 The same diversity appeared in the fur- 
 nishing each gave Don Juan when at his 
 eighteenth year they sent him to school, at 
 Salamanca. His mother gave him chaplets, 
 scapularies and blessed medals. Don Carlos 
 gave him a sword with a hilt damaskeened 
 in silver and engraved with the arms of his 
 family. The event proved the superior use- 
 fulness of his father's gift. Salamanca at 
 that period resembled, it should seem, a 
 camp full of swaggering soldiers, rather than 
 a peaceful university, presided over by 
 learned priests. As for the unhappy city 
 which gave its name to the institution, 
 it was absolutely dominated by the insolent 
 and undisciplined students. By day they 
 ran from shop to shop, seizing whatever took 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 39 
 
 N 
 
 their fancy and making a promise to pay 
 which was rarely kept, and by night their 
 serenades, chari varies, abductions, robberies 
 and duels prevented the citizens from sleep- 
 ing, except in cat-naps. 
 
 At first it seemed likely that his mother s 
 teaching would influence Don Juan. Upon 
 arriving at Salamanca, he went to all the 
 churches, and asked the guardians to show 
 him the sacred relics. 
 
 Unfortunately for religion, it was in one of 
 the holy edifices that he met the leader of 
 the wild set who ruled the city. 
 
 The name of the student was Don Garcia 
 Navarro, with the qualification " of the short 
 patience and the long sword." An edifying 
 figure was Don Garcia when Juan first saw 
 him. He was kneeling before a chapel, in 
 the midst of a circle of the faithful. Don 
 Juan had made his prayer, and about to rise 
 from his kn^es, when he perceived that his 
 neighbor, a handsome, well made youth, who 
 had been there when he came, still appeared 
 to be plunged in a devout ecstacy. A little 
 ashamed of having ended so soon, Don Juan 
 began to recite as many litanies as he could 
 remember. His mother had taken care that 
 they should be numerous, and Don Juan oc- 
 cupied considerable time in dispatching them. 
 But his pious neighbor had not budged. 
 
40 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Weary of emulating this endless orison, 
 the young Count was preparing to move off, 
 when the devout caught him by the cloak, 
 and whispered, with his eyes still cast down, 
 "Senor student, you are a new comer 
 amongst us, but your name is well known to 
 me. Our fathers once were good friends, 
 and, if you permit, their sons will not be 
 less." 
 
 A few words sufficed to introduce the 
 young men to each other. Don Juan was 
 fascinated by the other's politeness, and felt 
 all the more drawn to Don Garcia when that 
 young gentleman, without wasting time, di- 
 rected him to look towards three women who 
 knelt apart on a strip of Turkey carpet. One 
 ol them, gray haired and wrinkled, could be 
 no other than a duenna. The other two 
 were young and pretty, and did not keep 
 their gaze so low on their beads that Juan 
 could not see how black their eyes were, how 
 soft and yet how lively. 
 
 *' Do you see the senorita, with a chaplet 
 of yellow amber? " muttered Don Garcia, as 
 if still at his prayers. 
 
 "That is Dona Teresa de Ojeda; the 
 other is her elder sister, Dona Fausta. 
 They are the daughters of an auditor of the 
 Council of Castile. I am making up to the 
 elder; do you try your luck with Teresa. 
 
 
 I V 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 41 
 
 Come,*' he added, " they are rising and going 
 out of church. Let us hasten in order to see 
 them mount into the carriage. Perhaps the 
 wind may raise their basquinas and show us 
 a pretty leg or two." 
 
 Such was Don Juan's meeting with Don 
 Garcia and with Teresa, both of whom were 
 intimately connected with the succeeding 
 events of his life. Don Garcia found Juan 
 an apt pupil, and the two young men, after a 
 month's serenading under the window of 
 their mistresses, succeeded in obtaining a 
 rendezvous on the banks of the river Tormes. 
 Dona Teresa took Don Juan's hand and 
 Dona Fausta that of Garcia. As long as the 
 sisters could remain, the two couples prom- 
 enaded and then separated with the promise 
 not to let escape a single opportunity of see- 
 ing each other. And they kept their word 
 so well that before Don Juan had sojourned 
 three months at Salamanca poor Teresa 
 had given him indubitable proofs of love. 
 Don Garcia had the same gift from her 
 sister. 
 
 At first Don Juan loved his mistress with 
 the feverish passion of a youth for the first 
 woman who gives herself to him, but Don 
 Garcia demonstrated that constancy was a 
 common-place virtue, and at last the two 
 students agreed so well on this point that 
 
( 
 
 42 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 one evening they sat down to play, having 
 their mistresses for the stakes. Garcia wa- 
 gered Dona Fausta; Teresa was Juan's 
 wager. Don Juan won. 
 
 Accordingly he ordered Don Garcia to 
 draw a note of hand on Dona Fausta, enjoin- 
 ing her to put herself at the bearer's dis- 
 position, exactly as he might have ordered 
 his banker to pay a hundred ducats to one 
 of his creditors. This order Juan pre- 
 sented to Dona Fausta the same night, not 
 without trepidation. She read it quickly, 
 and at first did not comprehend what it 
 meant. She read it again, and could not 
 believe her eyes. Don Juan watched her 
 closely. Fausta wiped her forehead, rubbed 
 her eyes; her lips trembled, a mortal pallor 
 spread over her visage, and she was obliged 
 to clutch the paper with both hands to keep 
 from dropping it. Finally, commanding her- 
 self by a desperate effort, she cried : 
 
 " All this is false ! It is a horrible lie ! 
 Don Garcia never wrote it ! *' 
 
 Don Juan replied : 
 
 '* You know his writing. He does not 
 appreciate the treasure he possesses, but I - 
 I accepted, because I adore you." 
 
 She threw him a glance of profound con- 
 tempt and reperused the paper. From time 
 to time a great tear escaped and glided, un- 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 43 
 
 noticed, down her cheek. Then she smiled 
 wildly and exclaimed : 
 
 " It is a jest; is it not? Don Garcia is out- 
 side ; he is going to come in ?** 
 
 " It is no jest, Dona Fausta, I swear by the 
 love I bear you. I shall be very unhappy if 
 you will not believe me." 
 
 ** Teresa — my sister ! " gasped Fausta. 
 
 " 1 never loved her." Don Juan replied. 
 
 ** Wretch ! " she cried ** if what you tell me 
 is true, you are a greater villain than Don 
 Garcia." 
 
 " Love pardons all, beautiful Faustita. Don 
 Garcia abandons you ; he is your false The- 
 seus ; let me be your Bacchus." 
 
 Without a word she seized a knife from 
 the table and advanced menacing Don Juan. 
 He had seen the movement, caught her hand 
 and disarmed her. Fausta had recourse to 
 screams. She filled the house with her cries. 
 
 Don Juan now thought but of escape. He 
 tried to gain the door, but Fausta interposed. 
 She was bent on punishing him. And now 
 alarming noises began to be heard; slamming 
 doors, rushing feet and voices of men. Don 
 Juan had not an instant to loose. He made 
 an effort to hurl Dona Fausta far from him, 
 but she had seized his arm with a grasp im- 
 possible to shake off. She redoubled her cries. 
 At that instant the door was thrown open and 
 
1 
 
 44 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 a man holding an arquebus appeared on the 
 threshold. He uttered an imprecation and 
 fired. The lamp went out and Don Juan felt 
 Fausta's grasp relax while something warm 
 and liquid bathed his hands. Fausta fell or 
 rather glided to the floor. Don Alonzo had 
 killed his daughter instead of her ravisher. 
 Under coverof thesmoke from the arquebus 
 Don Juan leaped towards the staircase. In 
 the hall he received a blow from the father's 
 weapon and a sword cut from a lackey. 
 Neither injured him much. Sword in hand 
 he sought to extinguish the fiambeau the lack- 
 ey carried and cut a passage out. The ser- 
 vant rapidly gave way ; not so Alonzo de 
 Ojeda, a man ardent and intrepid in spite of his 
 years. He precipitated himself on Don Juan 
 and thrust at him with his sword. Don Juan 
 •parried several strokes and no doubt he sought 
 only to defend himself, but his skill was great, 
 and soon Fausta's father heaved a great sigh 
 and fell mortally wounded. Don Juan darted 
 down the staircase and into the street with- 
 out being pursued by the domestics, who had 
 gathered round their expiring master. But 
 he did not escape without being recognized 
 by Teresa. Roused by the noise of the arque 
 bus, she had arrived in time to witness the 
 duel between Don Juan and Don Alonzo, and 
 she had fallen senseless beside her father's 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 45 
 
 body. The wretched girl knew but the half 
 of her unhappiness. 
 
 Don Juan was justified in thinking there 
 was nothing to detain him longer in Sala- 
 manca. He determined to abandon Minerva 
 for Mars. "To Flanders!" he cried; "to 
 the wars in Flanders I I will go to kill here- 
 tics. In that way and quickly I shall bury 
 my peccadilloes." He promptly put off his 
 student habit never to be resumed. In its 
 stead he put on an embroidered leather vest 
 such as was worn at that time bv the soldiers, 
 a great splash hat, and he did not forget to line 
 his belt with as many doubloons as he could 
 borrow. Then he took the road on foot, left 
 the city without being recognized and 
 marched all night and all the following morn- 
 ing, till the heat of the sun obliged him to give 
 over. 
 
 At the first village he bought a horse and 
 joining a caravan of merchants, he safely 
 reached Saragossa. Here he rested only long 
 enough to pay his devotions to Our Lady of 
 the Pillar, to ogle the Arragonese beauties 
 and provide himself with a domestic. Then 
 he made his way to Barcelona, where he em- 
 barked for Civita Vecchia. Fatigue, sea-sick- 
 ness, new faces and the natural lightness of 
 Juan's mind, all united to make him forget 
 the horrible scene he had left behind. In 
 
46 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 enjoying the pleasures of Italy, he neglected 
 for some months the principal end of his voy- 
 age, but funds commenced to fail him, and he 
 joined a party of compatriots, brave and light 
 of purse like himself, and they took the route 
 for Germany. 
 
 Arrived at Brussels Don Juan entered the 
 company of an Andalusian captain, who, 
 charmed with his graceful air, treated him 
 well and according to his taste, that is to say, 
 he employed him on all perilous occasions. 
 Fortune favored Don Juan, and on the day he 
 won an ensign, he avowed his true name and 
 recommenced his former life. He passed his 
 days drinking and his nights serenading the 
 prettiest women of Brussels. He had received 
 pardon from his parents and letters of credit 
 on some bankers of Antwerp. He put the 
 latter to good use. Young, rich, brave and 
 handsome, his conquests were numerous and 
 rapid. Nothing would be gained by recount- 
 ing them in detail ; it should suffice the reader 
 to know that when he saw a pretty woman 
 all means to obtain her seemed good in the 
 eyes of Don Juan. Promises, oaths and vows 
 were the jests of this unworthy libertine, and 
 if brother or husband called him to account 
 for his conduct, he had wherewithal to re- 
 spond to them— a good sword and a pitiless 
 heart. After a single campaign his compan- 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 47 
 
 ions were wont to refer to Don Juan as the 
 youngster ** who had put more men to death 
 and more women to worse than death, than 
 two Cordeliers or two bravos of Valence.** 
 
 In the midst of this debauchery the news 
 came that his mother and father were dead. 
 His seniors advised him to return to Spain 
 and take possession of his majority and the 
 vast wealth he had inherited. This advice 
 accorded with Don Juan's own wish. Long 
 since he had obtained grace for the murder 
 of Teresa's father, Don Alonzo de Ojeda, and 
 he regarded that affair as entirely forgotten. 
 Above all, he had a strong desire to exercise 
 his peculiar talents on a larger theatre. He 
 rolled on his mind the delights of Seville, and 
 the numerous fair women who were only 
 waiting his return, doubtless, to abandon dis- 
 cretion. So doffing the cuirass, he set out for 
 Spain. At Madrid he broke his journey, had 
 himself remarked at a bull-fight for the ex- 
 traordinary richness of his costume and made 
 some conquests, but he did not remain long 
 there. He hurried on to Seville, where he had 
 no sooner arrived than he astonished little and 
 great by his ostentation and magnificence. 
 
 Every day he gave a feast to which he in- 
 vited the most beautiful ladies of Andalusia. 
 Each day saw new pleasures, new extravagan- 
 ces, new orgies organized in his family palace. 
 
 »^ 
 
48 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 He became king of a crowd of libertines who 
 obeyed him with a docility like that often 
 found in the associations of criminals. There 
 was no debauch in which Don Juan feared to 
 plunge, and as a vicious rich man cannot be 
 dangerous to himself alone, his example per- 
 verted the Andalusian youth who took him 
 for their model. An illness which kept Don 
 Juan in bed for a few days failed to inspire 
 him with repentance. He merely command- 
 ed his doctor to restore him to health for the 
 avowed purpose of running into new excesses. 
 During his convalescence, Don Juan amused 
 himself by drawing up a list of all the women 
 he had conquered and all the husbands he 
 had deceived. He divided the list methodic- 
 ally into two columns. In one he wrote the 
 names of the women and their summarv: in 
 the other the names of the husbands and their 
 professions. He had much trouble to remem- 
 ber the names of his victims and he regretted 
 that the catologue was far from being perfect. 
 One day Juan showed this list to a friend who 
 was visiting him; and as in Italy he had en- 
 joyed the favor of a woman who boasted of 
 being the mistress of a pope, the list com- 
 menced with her name, while that of the pope 
 headed the column of husbands. Then came 
 a reigning prince, then dukes, marquises and 
 so on down even to artisans. 
 
 
 \ 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
 ii 
 
 ! 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 49 
 
 "Nobody has escaped me!" cried Don 
 Juan; "from a pope to a shoemaker. Not 
 one class of society but has furnished its 
 quota." 
 
 His friend examined the catalogue and re- 
 turned it, saying in a triumphant tone : 
 
 ** It is not complete !" 
 
 " How ! Not complete ? Who is wanting 
 in my list of husbands?" 
 
 " God,'' said the other. 
 
 " God ? It is true, there is no nun here. I 
 thank you for showing me where it lacked. 
 Ah, well ! I swear to you on my honor as a 
 gentleman — in what convent of Seville are 
 there pretty nuns ?" 
 
 A few days later Don Juan was in the 
 country. He began to frequent the convents 
 in the vicinity of Seville. Kneeling very 
 close to the lattice which separated the 
 brides of the Savior from the rest of the faith- 
 ful, he threw ferocious glances on the timid 
 virgins, like a wolf in a sheep-fold who seeks 
 for the plumpest lamb to devour it first. He 
 soon remarked, in the church of Our Lady 
 of the Rosary,' a young nun of ravishing 
 beauty, which was rendered more noticeable 
 by an air of melancholy like a thin veil drawn 
 over every feature. She never raised her 
 eyes nor turned them to the left or right. She 
 seemed entirely absorbed in the divine mystery 
 
50 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 delebrated before her. Her lips moved quickly 
 and it was easy to see that she prayed with 
 more fervor and unction than her compan- 
 ions. The sight of her recalled to Don Juan 
 old memories. It seemed to him he had seen 
 this woman somewhere, but it w as impossi- 
 ble to recall time or place. So many por~ 
 traits were engraved more or less deeply on 
 his memory that confusion was a necessity. 
 Day after day he returned to the church and 
 took the same place near the lattice without 
 succeeding in making Sister Agatha raise her 
 eyes. This he had learned was the younof 
 nun's spiritual name. But the difficulty of 
 triumphing over a person so well guarded by 
 her position and by her modesty, only served 
 to inflame the desires of Don Juan. His van-^ 
 ity persuaded him that if he could find a way 
 to draw Sister Agatha's eyes upcfn him, the 
 victory would be half gained. This is the 
 expedient by which he attracted her atten-v 
 tion. One day he placed himself as near her 
 . as possible, and, profiting by the moment of 
 the elevation of the Host when every body 
 was prostrate, he passed his hand between 
 the bars of the lattice and emptied before 
 Sister Agatha the contents of a vial of per- 
 fume. The pentrating odor which suddenly 
 enveloped her constrained the young nun to 
 raise her head. As Don Juan had placed him- 
 
 ' 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 SI 
 
 self directly in fron<- of her she could not fail 
 to see him. At first a wild astonishment 
 pictured itself on her features ; then she grew 
 deathly pale ; she uttered a feeble cry and 
 fell fainting on the flags. Her companions 
 pressed around her and bore her to her cell. 
 Don Juan, retiring very much pleased with 
 himself, thought : '' This nun is truly charm- 
 ing, but the oftener I see her, the more 1 
 am convinced that she already figures in 
 my catalogue." 
 
 Next day at church, a note was handed ta 
 him. 1 1 read : ** Is it you, Don Juan ? Is it 
 true that you have not forgotten me? I have 
 been very unhappy, but 1 was growing recon- 
 ciled to my fate. 1 am going to be an hundred 
 times more unhappy now. I ought to hate 
 you, you who spilled the blood of my father, 
 but I cannot hate you or forget you. Have 
 pity on me. Come no more to this church ; 
 you do me too much harm. Adieu, adieu, I 
 am dead to the world. Teresa." 
 
 "Ah! it is Teresita?" exclaimed Don Juan 
 when he had read it. " I knew I had seen her 
 somewhere." 
 
 Whoever has read so far in this edifying 
 history knows its hero too well to imagine 
 that he obeyed Teresa's piteous prayer and 
 refrained from his pursuit. He went the 
 next day and the next, and so often to the 
 
52 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 church that Teresa's last feeble resistance of 
 the man she had ever tenderly loved was 
 broken dou^n. At the end of some days she had 
 no more force left to struggle. She announced 
 to Don Juan that she was ready for all, and, at 
 the height of joy he prepared for her escape. 
 He chose a moonless night. He smuggled into 
 Teresa's cell a silken ladder with which to 
 scale the walls of the convent. A package con- 
 taining a street costume was hidden in a 
 corner of the convent garden. Don Juan 
 himself was to wait for her at the foot of the 
 wall. At some distance a litter drawn by ^ 
 vigorous mules would be in readiness to carry * 
 Teresa rapidly to his country house. Don 
 Juan neglected nothing that could insure the 
 success of the abduction. 
 
 The chosen night came. Don Juan gave 
 the necessary orders to his domestics for 
 Teresa s reception, and spt out alone and on 
 foot for Seville in the great heat of the day, 
 so that he would not arrive there before 
 nightfall. In fact, it was black night when 
 he passed near the Torre del Oro, where 
 a servant awaited him. He asked if the litter 
 and mules were at their place. All was ready. 
 His instructions had been followed to the 
 letter. There only remained an hour to 
 elapse before giving the signal agreed upon 
 with Teresa. Don Juan covered himself with 
 
 I 
 
 
 I 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 53 
 
 a great brown mantle, and keeping his face 
 concealed so as not to be recognized, he 
 entered Seville by the gate of Triana. 
 
 Heat and fatigue forced him to sit down in 
 a deserted street. There he began to hum 
 the airs that came into his head. From time 
 to time he consulted his watch, and saw with 
 chagrin that the hands advanced slower than 
 his impatience. 
 
 Suddenly a solemn and lugubrious music 
 struck upon his ear. He recognized the 
 chant that the church had consecrated to 
 burials. Soon a procession turned the corner 
 of the street and came towards him. It 
 advanced slowly and gravely. No footfall 
 sounded on the pavement, and it seemed to 
 Don Juan that each figure glided rather than 
 walked. At this spectacle Don Juan ex- 
 perienced, at first, that species of disgust the 
 idea of death inspires in an epicurean. He 
 rose and was about to withdraw, but the 
 great number of penitents and f:he pomp of 
 the cortege surprised him and piqued his 
 curiosity. As the procession was entering 
 the door of a neighboring church Don Juan 
 caught one of the persons who carried the 
 candles by the arm and asked him politely 
 whom they were burying. The penitent 
 lifted his head ; his face was pale and haggard 
 like that of a man but just risen from a sick 
 
54 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 55 
 
 bed. He replied in a sepulchral voice : " It 
 is the Count Don Juan de Manara." 
 
 When Juan heard his own name pronounced, 
 he felt the hair starting on his head. But the 
 instant after he recovered his mocking smile, 
 and followed the procession into the church. 
 The funeral chant re-commenced, accompa- 
 nied by the roll of the organ, and the priests 
 began to intone the de profimdis. Despite his 
 •efforts to appear calm, Don Juan felt his blood 
 congealing. He approached another penitent 
 and demanded : 
 
 ** Who is the dead man whom they are 
 burying ? " 
 
 '' The Count Don Juan de Maiiara," replied 
 the penitent, in a voice hoarse and ominous. 
 Don Juan seized a pillar to keep from falling. 
 Finally he made a grand effort, and caught 
 the hand of a priest who passed near him. 
 This hand was cold like marble. 
 
 " In the name of Heaven, my father," cried 
 he, "who are you, and for whom are you 
 praying?" 
 
 " We pray for the soul of Count Don Juan 
 de Manara," responded the priest, fixing him 
 with a dolorous look. 
 
 At this moment the church clock sounded. 
 It was the hour fixed for Teresa's abduction. 
 
 " The name, the name again ! " gasped Don 
 Juan. The priest replied still more sadly; 
 
 iB.-« 
 
 " The Count Don Juan de Mafiara." 
 
 " Jesu ! " cried Don Juan, and fell senseless 
 on the pavement. 
 
 Night was far advanced when the watch 
 passing perceived the body of a man stretched 
 across the portal of the church. The archers 
 lifted him up, supposing it was the corpse of 
 an assassinated man. 
 
 They soon recognized the Count de Mafiara, 
 and they threw cold water in his face and 
 sought to re-animate him, but seeing that he 
 did not recover, they bore him to his house. 
 Some said he was drunk, others that he had 
 received a jealous husband's blows. No one, 
 or, at least, no honest man in Seville loved 
 him, and each person had his say. Don Juan's 
 servants received their master from the hands 
 of the archers and ran to fetch a surgeon. 
 They bled him abundantly, and presently he 
 came to himself. At first, however, he only 
 uttered words without meaning, inarticulate 
 cries, sobs and groans. Little by little he 
 began to consider attentively all the objects 
 about him. He asked where he was and how 
 he came there. Then, having drank a cor- 
 dial, he made them fetch him a crucifix and 
 he kissed it for a long time and bathed it in 
 a torrent of tears. Next he begged them to 
 bring him a confessor. 
 
 Don. Juan had been frightened almost to 
 
\ 
 
 I 
 
 S6 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 57 
 
 death. But he did not die. A few para- 
 graphs farther on you will see that he made^ 
 some years after having attended his own 
 funeral, a gratifying and exemplary end. 
 Indeed, his conversion began with the arri- 
 val of the confessor, at whose feet Don Juan 
 threw himself, related the vision of the night 
 before and offered confession. The Domin« 
 ican exhorted him to persevere in his re- 
 pentance and administered the consolation 
 religion does not refuse to the greatest crim- 
 inal. He promised to return in the evening 
 and retired. 
 
 When the father returned Don Juan an- 
 nounced that he had formed a resolution to 
 retire from a world where he had given rise 
 to so much scandal (Don Juan's own words) 
 and he had determined to exit in a thorough- 
 going manner consistent with his rapid pace 
 in wicked courses. To accomplish this he 
 gave half of his fortune to his relatives, who 
 were not rich ; another part he consecrated 
 to building a chapel and to found a hospital, 
 while he distributed the remainder among the 
 poor. 
 
 Before entering the convent he had chosen 
 lor his retreat, Juan wrote to Teresa. In 
 this letter he disclosed his shameful purpose, 
 recounted his life and conversion, and de- 
 manded her pardon. Last he entreated her 
 
 to follow his example and save her soul by 
 repentance. This letter he confided to the 
 Dominican after having read it to him. When 
 Teresa read it she cried: ''He never loved 
 me!" A burning fever raged in the unhappy 
 girl*s veins, inflamed by the anxiety she felt at 
 Don Juan's failure to release her from the con- 
 vent or to explain the reason of his absence. In 
 vain the succors of medicine and religion were 
 offered her; she repulsed the one and ap- 
 peared insensible to the other. She died after 
 some days which she had spent in delirium, 
 exclaiming constantly : "He never loved me ! " 
 And now behold two years later Don Juan, 
 or brother Ambrose, tonsured and garbed in 
 black. Behold also, his life which was an un- 
 interrupted exercise of piety and mortification. 
 The recollection of his sins (so aver the devout 
 Sevillians) was always present with him, but 
 his remorse was tempered by the quietude of 
 an approving conscience. One day, at noon- 
 tide, when the heat makes itself felt most 
 oppressively, all the brothers of the convent 
 were reposing according to custom. Brother 
 Ambrose alone worked in the garden, bare- 
 headed in the sun, one of his self-imposed 
 penances. Absorbed in his task he scarcely 
 perceived the shadow of a man which fell 
 across him. He thought it was one of the 
 monks who had descended into the garden, 
 
1 
 
 S8 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 and without looking up he saluted him with 
 " Ave Maria." There was no response. 
 Surprised at this motionless shadow, he raised 
 his eyes and saw before him a tall young man, 
 his form covered by a mantle which fell to 
 the earth, and his face half hidden beneath 
 the white and black plumes of his hat. This 
 man contemplated brother Ambrose in silence, 
 with an expression made up of malignant joy 
 and profound contempt. For some moments 
 they looked into each others' eyes. Then the 
 stranger, advancing a step and throwing back 
 his hat to show his features, said : 
 
 " Do you recognize me ? " 
 
 The monk gave a negative sign. The stran- 
 ger pursued coldly. " I have a name as well 
 as you, Don Juan, and a better memory. My 
 name is Don Pedro de Ojeda ; I am the son 
 of Don Alonzo de Ojeda, whom you mur- 
 dered. I am the brother of Dona Fausta de 
 Ojeda, whom you murdered. I am the 
 brother of Dona Teresa de Ojeda, whom you 
 murdered." 
 
 Don Juan trembled. ** My brother," said 
 he, gently, " I am a wretch covered with 
 crimes. To expiate them I have renounced 
 the world, and donned this habit. If there is 
 any way to obtain your pardon indicate it. 
 The rudest penance will not frighten me, if 
 thereby I can avert your curse." 
 
 ; 
 
 1 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 59 
 
 Don Pedro smiled drily. 
 
 " Give over hypocrisy, Senor de Manara; 
 I do not pardon. My curse is yours already, 
 but my patience is too short to await its 
 effect. I bear on me something more effica- 
 cious than curses." 
 
 With these words he threw his mantle 
 open, disclosing two long rapiers. He drew 
 the foils and planted both in the earth. 
 
 " Choose, Don Juan," said he. " They say 
 you are expert. Let us see what you can 
 do." 
 
 Don Juan made the sign of the cross and 
 answered : " My brother, you forget the vows 
 I have taken. I am no longer the Don Juan 
 you knew; I am brother Ambrozo." 
 
 " Brother Ambrozo, if you will. You are 
 my enemy, and, under any name, you owe 
 me vengeance." 
 
 Speaking thus, he pushed the priest rudely 
 against the wall. 
 
 " Seiior Pedro de Ojeda ! " cried Don 
 Juan, " kill me, if you will ; I shall not fight." 
 He folded his arms and regarded Don Pedro 
 with a calm but intrepid air. 
 
 " Yes ; I will kill you, assassin, but first I 
 shall treat you like the coward you are." 
 He gave him a buffet, the first Don Juan had 
 ever received. Don Juan's face flamed to a 
 purple red. The rage and fury of his youth 
 
6o 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 rekindled in his soul. Without a word, he 
 threw himself on one of the swords. Don 
 Pedro took the other and stood on guard. 
 Both attacked with the same fury and the 
 same impetuosity. Don Pedro's sword lost 
 itself in the woolen robe of Don Juan, and 
 failed to find his body, while that of the 
 monk forced itself up to the hilt in the breast 
 of his adversary. Don Pedro fell bleeding to 
 the ground. 
 
 For a long time Don Juan stood gazing 
 with a stupefied air at his enemy extended at 
 his feet. As he came to himself, he recog- 
 nized the enormity of this new crime. He 
 fell on the corpse and sought to recall it to 
 life. But Don Juan had seen too many 
 wounds to doubt for a moment that this was 
 mortal. The dripping sword lay near and 
 offered a way of escape. Fleeing this temp- 
 tation of Satan, he ran to the Superior, and 
 bursting into a torrent of tears, related to 
 him the terrible scene just passed. The 
 Superior was a man noted for presence of 
 mind. He comprehended at once what 
 scandal would reflect on the convent if this 
 adventure were made public. Nobody had 
 seen the duel, and by acting promptly he 
 might keep it even from the members of the 
 brotherhood. Aided by Don Juan, he trans- 
 ported the corpse into an underground hall, 
 
 5 
 
 " 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 6l 
 
 of which he took the key. Then the Superior 
 ordered brother Ambrozo into his cell, and 
 went and consulted with the Corregidor of 
 Seville. The story was given out that the 
 dead man had fought a duel with an un- 
 known cavalier, and had staggered into the 
 convent to die. 
 
 So ends the last story of Don Juan that 
 deals with fire and sword. The remainder of 
 his life flowed on like a calm stream between 
 banks covered with the sad flowers of melan- 
 choly and repentance. 
 
 Never again did it overflow its banks, 
 swelled by a return of the freshet of youth. 
 For ten years longer Don Juan lived in the 
 cloister, and he died venerated as a saint 
 even by those who ha d suffered from his 
 early errors. On his death-bed he begged, 
 as a last favor, that they would bury him 
 beneath the threshold of the church, that all 
 who entered might soil him with their feet. 
 He also wished them to engrave this inscrip- 
 tion on his tomb : Cenizas del pcor hoinbre que 
 ha habido en el Mundo, But the executors of 
 his wishes judged too tenderly to carry out 
 in full the dispositions dictated by his excess- 
 ive humility. They buried him in the 
 capillo mayor of the chapel he had founded. 
 They consented to engrave on the stone 
 which covered his mortal tenement the 
 
62 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 epitaph he had composed, but they softened 
 this also, by adding a recital of the facts of 
 his miraculous conversion. 
 
 V. 
 
 IN the prize ring of my mind Honesty and 
 Banter have been fighting out a round. It 
 is over. Honesty is under the rope, and as a 
 result, a countryman in authority at Seville, 
 during our sojourn there, is compelled to sit 
 for his portrait. With the best intentions. I 
 cannot keep him out of these pages. He is 
 my King Charles' head, and, withal, a figure 
 so queer, antic and laughable, that 1 may 
 write of him without travesty, easing my 
 conscience by doubting, if, as an original odd- 
 ity, he is his own property. 
 
 Some trifle that I have forgotten took us 
 to call on this official the day after we 
 arrived, a trifle that seemed imperative, 
 when we were told that his office lay close 
 by, in a hotel across the square. We went 
 over, and were shown into a small room on 
 the ground floor, which contained the air of 
 liberty. As the windows looked out on the 
 sunny Plaza Nuova, the air of liberty was 
 very hot and close. 
 
 4Lb 
 
 1' 
 
 .. • 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 63 
 
 We waited here a half hour, when the 
 official opened the door and paused on the 
 threshold to throw us a searching glance 
 before entering. In turn we examined him. 
 His figure was tall and thin ; his complexion 
 purple and mottled ; his hair and beard sandy 
 gray ; in fine, at the moment of entrance he 
 looked more like a spruce Castilian than a 
 fellow citizen; so much so that we began 
 making mental grasps at Spanish words of 
 salutation. But the next moment we saw 
 that this was only an imitation Spaniard ; 
 the spruce, stiff manner sat uneasily upon 
 him, his walk was a combination of shuffle 
 and strut — an inferior copy of the dignified 
 Spanish stride. He seemed to feel that the 
 performance was a caricature, for he stopped 
 half way, gave a little '^hem!" and then 
 came forward, fastening with nervous fingers 
 the hooks into the eyes of the imaginary con- 
 sular garment. It would be difficult to imi- 
 tate the magnificence he threw into the 
 greeting. *'Take seats," he said, but his 
 tone meant *' kneel." 
 
 When he spoke again it was with a new 
 voice, a querulous, nasal ** down East '* voice, 
 but with the English inflection — a marvelous 
 combination which must be heard to be ap- 
 preciated. This whimsical voice was pecu- 
 liarly adapted for complaints about Spanish 
 
 i 
 
64 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 hotels, Spanish servants, and Spanish life in 
 general. I supposed it was the little difficulty 
 we had brought to his notice which set him 
 off, but I soon learned that condemnation of 
 everything Spanish was a favorite course 
 with him. A little later he took on the 
 patronizing speech of an old traveler, and 
 later still he resumed the Spanish grandilo- 
 quence which was so foreign to his tongue. 
 VVe were puzzled to decide which were his 
 natural accents, and yet he was the same old 
 man through them all. Whether he spoke 
 like a Castilian or a cockney, or an Eastern 
 Yankee, amid all the foreign accents and mis- 
 pronunciations that he had raked together 
 from every country of Europe to poison his 
 mother tongue, he remained a quaint, pa- 
 thetic person, hungry for honor, anxious to 
 be liked, a lonely, homesick old man, who 
 offended the Sevillians and bored his com- 
 patriots. 
 
 When he was not talking it was easy to 
 place the old gentleman. One had seen him 
 scores of times sitting in the village grocery 
 store, with his boots on the stove, nibbling a 
 section of dried apple, and discussing district 
 politics. Sometimes, even while talking, he 
 forgot for a moment that he was obliged to 
 sustain the dignity of a whole nation, and 
 relapsed into a simple citizen whose own 
 
 i 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 6s 
 
 concerns interested him more than inter- 
 national polity. Then, listening* to his con- 
 versation, we knew that we had met him in 
 Glastonbury or Bangor. But he never fairly 
 started to speak of himself before he caught 
 up the purple, and wrapped it about him in 
 a shamefaced fashion. At such times it was 
 comical to read in his eyes the distress he 
 felt at having shown himself unmasked. 
 
 He was one of the horde of expatriated 
 Americans, unable or unwilling to return 
 home, who roam over the continent of 
 Europe in search of the culture that most 
 commonly but succeeds in reducing them to 
 the standard of European commonplace. It 
 had the contrary effect on our friend, by sub- 
 merging him in a friendless situation which 
 entirely washed away the commonplace. He 
 was so isolated and felt so sharply the pangs 
 of loneliness that he became poetical. To me 
 he will ever stand for the image of Exile. 
 
 Of his history we learned only what a few 
 bitter words pieced out with conjecture could 
 tell, to the effect that in America — at home ! — 
 he had children who consented to eke out his 
 little income so long as he remained abroad. 
 This is not enough, or it is too much to hang 
 a romance on, according to one's school — 
 but his present environment was pathetically 
 friendless. He could not speak the language, 
 
66 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 and the efforts to learn it and so placate the 
 Spanish merchants, with whom he had to 
 deal in his official capacity, always rubbed 
 them the wrong way. His assumption of the 
 Spanish gravity — since it was a caricature — 
 insulted the natives. In the truest sense, he 
 was like a clerk who is without capacity to 
 perform his duty and please his master, yet 
 is not honest or brave enough to cast out the 
 bit of salary and wander careless on the 
 common of poverty. The old man's address, 
 extremely haughty to tourists, approached 
 cringing toward petty Spanish shipping 
 clerks, behind whom lay the complaisance 
 of his own children. 
 
 His manner had turns of great simplicity ; 
 we saw him constantly while we remained 
 at Seville, and learned all shades of it. He 
 delighted to map out for us routes of travel, 
 and I am glad to remember we never refused 
 the notes of introduction (addressed to peo- 
 ple who had time to die or forget him) or 
 sundry information he took such a childish 
 pleasure to impart. Five years before we 
 met him he had made a tour on foot along 
 the Italian coast from Castellamare to Genoa, 
 and he directed us to a shop in every city 
 on the way, w^iere he urged us to make a 
 special purchase and mention his name as the 
 A mericayi gentleman who walked ! 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 67 
 
 And how fond he was of dress ! He could 
 not accept the fact that he was old and no 
 longer quite the glass— if he had ever been— 
 fashion would choose wherein to view her- 
 self. As soon as he heard that his American 
 friends had lately come from Paris he put 
 them through a catechism of the modes such 
 as a young majo of Seville might have drawn 
 up. Texture, color and cut were his topics, 
 and in discoursing of them he felt the cloth, 
 held it to the light and snipped it with the 
 scissors in a way that denoted understand- 
 ing, though at second-hand, for our country *s 
 representative really dressed himself in by 
 gone fashions. It was hard not to laugh 
 when he presented his ancient person touched 
 up with an extra toilet, but to laugh when he 
 was so serious would have been cruel. He 
 invariably replied to our compliments : '' Oh, 
 these things are a trifle passe." (We could 
 have wagered that an American tailor stitched 
 them together twenty years before.) '' I think 
 of taking a run to Paris to spruce up a bit.*' 
 Waking up one Sunday morning, my 
 emotions were inexpressible to perceive our 
 friend in my room preening himself before 
 the glass. He had bought a round gray felt 
 hat of the easy style beloved by travellers, 
 and was now trying its effect in different 
 positions on his head. First, he cocked it 
 
6S 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 over the right ear ; second, over the left, and 
 then rolled it back off the forehead to ex- 
 pose a fringe of sandy-gray hair. When he 
 discovered that I was watching him he was 
 not a whit abashed, but promptly challenged 
 me to admire the ridiculous hat as jaunty and 
 becoming. 
 
 This incident implies that he spent as much 
 time in our company as he could manage and 
 we could not avoid. How many letters has 
 he interrupted ! How many delightful morn- 
 ing naps has he ruthlessly broken ! But I 
 forgive him, and if 1 remembered the 
 number would set it down without malice. 
 Wherever he may be, whether he is in the 
 world or gone to that bourne 
 
 Where books of travel are not bought, 
 And only novels sell, 
 
 may he have found congenial spirits who de- 
 light in listening to tiresome old stories and 
 in trying on fictive new clothes. 
 
 One evening the old gentleman came to 
 persuade us to appear in evening dress at a 
 reception he was to give to the American 
 minister, who had come down to spend Sun- 
 day in Seville. We excused ourselves on the 
 plea that we were strangers to the minister, 
 who had probably come to see Seville, not 
 us. Our friend would not take no tor an 
 answer, but continued to urge us with such 
 
 y 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 69 
 
 a hurt look that at last we consented, and he 
 bustled out with all his cheerful excitement 
 high once more. As it turned out, we would 
 not have missed forming part of the odd little 
 party, a small American colony of five peo- 
 ple, whom he led into the minister's sitting 
 room at the Fonda de Madrid, and intro- 
 duced with a voice full of emotion. There 
 was an uncle and his nephew who claimed 
 the birthright of Freedom, though they had 
 lived at Seville for many years. The uncle 
 was a stout, florid man of middle age, who 
 did not speak during the evening, but wore 
 an intense look, as if he had just done crying: 
 ''Hear! Hear!" to a fervid sentence like 
 '' Millions for defence, but not one cent for 
 tribute." I learned afterwards that he lacked 
 even enough English for the purpose of ap- 
 plause. He had entirely forgotten his mother 
 tongue— a fact that surprised us less when 
 we heard that he had emigrated from Massa- 
 chusetts to Andalusia in his second year. 
 The younger man, who had been sent back 
 to be educated in a school near Boston, was 
 a happier guest, but even he was not quite 
 up in the President's English. He spoke it 
 in a charming original fashion, which was 
 vastly more amusing than any foreigner's 
 broken attempt. Having forgotten, one-quar- 
 ter of his vocabulary, he coined words with- 
 
70 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 out hesitation, and gave to his inventions a 
 strong Boston accent. But for him the 
 audience would have gone off stiffly. The 
 lesser diplomat took the event of his career 
 in office too seriously, and the honorable min- 
 ister no doubt felt the reception of five stran- 
 gers without a pretext of business or pleasure 
 to be an irksome duty. But the national 
 ceremony of shaking hands had hardly been 
 gone through with before the young Ameri- 
 can-Spaniard threw a few happy remarks into 
 the pause which followed. He stated that he 
 had once travelled to Madrid, where he had 
 the honor to be presented to Senor Castelar, 
 " who is not taller than you are in standing 
 up, but I fancy taller in brain." 
 
 The agony of his sponsor at this ill-timed 
 tribute to the Spanish orator was painful to 
 witness, but it did not endure long. The 
 consular agent at once began to talk, and in 
 that delicious exercise he forgot his proteges. 
 They amused themselves by watching his 
 face and predicting, before he opened his 
 mouth, whether he would describe Paris 
 fashions, or tramp over again that famous 
 walking tour in Italy, or deliver a tirade 
 against the haughty Spaniards— his three 
 inexhaustible topics we had learned to antici- 
 pate. This time he disappointed us. As the 
 reception was an extraordinary occasion, it* 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 71 
 
 called for new matter, like the mission school 
 he had established in Triana. He spoke of 
 that school, related three times over the his- 
 tory of its inauguration, and invited the 
 minister to attend on the following day. 
 
 We went away in single file, as we had ar- 
 rived, and in the same order, except that the 
 oLd gentleman brought up the rear. Before 
 the procession reached the hotel court, he 
 overtook the foremost man, and insisted on 
 shaking hands all around. To each of us, as 
 he said good-night, he repeated emphatically, 
 '*It went off very well. Thank you, thank 
 you ! It went off remarkably well." 
 
 No one could resist the contagion of his 
 enthusiasm, and as we left him still smiling 
 and bowing, every man was convinced that 
 the reception — owing, of course, to his own 
 attendance — had gone off very well, indeed. 
 
 VI. 
 
 IT was still early, so when the young Ameri- 
 can-Spaniard invited us to accompany him 
 to the house of some friends who were giving 
 a musicale, we eagerly fell in with the proposal. 
 He took the lead, and we walked through the 
 black streets, here and there aglow with light 
 
72 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Streaming through an illuminated patio. Be- 
 fore one of these bright spots he stopped and 
 rang the bell. The g'ate swung back, and the 
 master of the house came in person, and met 
 us midway in the patio. He was a typical 
 Spaniard of the middle class, but offered us 
 hospitality like a grand seigneur. The house 
 was unlike the majority of Seville houses in 
 that the patio was not bounded by porticos, 
 but narrowed from the walls directly into a 
 small passageway that led to the parlors situ- 
 ated on the ground floor. These were two 
 large rooms thrown into one, scantily fur« 
 nished except as to rocking chairs. In the 
 rear room a table was spread with cakes and 
 sweetmeats, and in the front parlor overlook- 
 ing the street, stood a piano. The seiior pre- 
 sented us to his wife— a delicate, sweet-faced 
 woman— who was sitting in the connecting 
 doorway in the midst of her friends, and then 
 he carried us into the other room, where most 
 of the men sat about, the elders at small card 
 tables, and the younger men tilted against 
 the wall and staring across a broad river of 
 tobacco smoke— the Hellespont that sepa- 
 rated them from their Heros. We were not 
 early, but it seemed that these Leanders had 
 not yet dared to swim. 
 
 At the piano the daughter of the house and 
 the leader of the San Fernande orchestra 
 
 73 
 
 were playing duets. She rose when her 
 father called her — a young and very pretty 
 girl— so pretty, in fact, that in her behalf I 
 would like to translate the delicious Spanish 
 freedom of compliment. Like most Sevil- 
 lanas, she was rather under the middle size, 
 but her Paris gown may have given that 
 effect, for it was short, and displayed a lovely 
 little foot, of which she could not be too 
 proud. 
 
 This young girl's chief charm was her com- 
 plexion ; instead of the pallor that the Seville 
 ladies of the Delicias Gardens cultivate, her 
 cheeks were of a ripe, warm hue, a creamy 
 brown, through which a ruddy flood contin- 
 ually pulsed. Her features were dignified, 
 yet a bit coy ; but why enumerate the items 
 when the likeness escapes? Here are the 
 others, though : white teeth, well arched eye- 
 brows, eyes, full, black and glowing, such as 
 poets have taught us are only to be met with 
 in the mellow regions of Andalusia. She 
 crossed the room to her father with short, 
 quick, yet graceful steps, gazing upon the 
 strangers with calm and reserved eyes, but 
 kindling into smiles when she recognized her 
 acquaintance, the American-Spaniard. Lucky 
 fellow ! how we envied him that glance ! 
 
 Whenever she was not playing— for the 
 young orchestra leader evidentlv considered 
 
 ^0 
 
 
74 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 75 
 
 her a fine musician, and was ever hanging- 
 over her chair, beseeching her to begin again 
 to ''repent," as the Boston emigre called im- 
 provisation—she used the time to start con- 
 versation going between us and her com- 
 rades, who showed more modesty than we 
 thought becoming, and kept retreating be- 
 hind the line of veterans— the married ladies 
 in the doorway. Nor were the strangers of 
 the best material out of which a hostess 
 would like to form her guests. No man feels 
 perfectly easy when he suspects he is being 
 laughed at, even though the laugh is a good 
 natured one, and we were quite sure the 
 ladies laughed and wondered at us as half 
 barbarians, in whom the leaven of Seville 
 was but beginning to work. At last our mu- 
 tual coyness melted in the warmth of the 
 young hostess's wish to put her guests at 
 ease. We were soon chattering as merrily 
 as an imperfect knowledge of Spanish per- 
 mitted, and our example ought to have 
 shamed the Seville youth, who kept their 
 places about the walls, and glowered from 
 behind a rampart of smoke. 
 
 A little later our slow use of the language 
 kept us from joining in the games that were 
 played before we went away, involving as 
 they did catches and plays on words ; but it 
 took no polyglot to enter into their spirit. 
 
 
 With the Sevillanas we were delighted in 
 a degree worthy of those superlative crea- 
 tures who magnify everything, and deserve 
 to be viewed through a magnifying glass. 
 We were charmed with their expressive eyes, 
 pensive and ardent by turns, with their se- 
 ducing Andalusian accent, and with their 
 exaggerated speech. It was easy to believe 
 that they have but two routes of conversa- 
 tion : from the tiny to the tremendous, and 
 vice versa; and we went tradition one better 
 by concluding that the maidens of Seville are. 
 by nature strangers to commonplace. 
 
 Toward the close of the evening it was 
 proposed that three of the fair guests should 
 stand up and dance for us, and all the men 
 with one voice shouted in the slang of the 
 bull-ring for a boletin de sombra. The musician 
 several times played over the opening bars 
 of the dance, but it did not come off. But 
 we had the fun of preparation. " Thou shalt 
 dance as my majo, Martita." "Nay, the 
 senoritomust be thou who art taller." "Chi- 
 qui-ti-ti-ti-ta, come and take my place, I have 
 forgotten the step." 
 
 So it was laughter and silvery screams, 
 little pushes, pathetic implorings, peremp- 
 tory commands— all the accompaniment of 
 preparation and fiasco, that called to mind 
 similar beginnings we had seen at home. 
 
76 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 VII. • 
 
 THE shameless Cafe Chantant pretends to 
 mantle a blush for the Cafe Flamenca of 
 Seville, while the latter looks the other way 
 when her Parisian sister passes by. Into de- 
 grees of license I have no intention to enter 
 here, and I seek, by this comparison, only to 
 arrive at the reputation of the Cafe Flamenca. 
 It is very bad. It is even said to be danger- 
 ous. Your old Spanish traveler will ask you 
 if you went to a Flamenca, and when you 
 answer yes— as you love the truth-— he will 
 be amazed that you got back without a 
 wound. 
 
 It hurts my pride to admit that the Sevil- 
 lian chulo considered me beneath his navaja. 
 He never once flashed it before my eyes, and 
 I am compelled to write a description of the 
 Flamenca without putting in the high lights 
 of love and jealousy. There is nought more 
 charming in a Sevillian tale than to read how 
 a beautiful girl, smoking a cigarette on the 
 parapet of the bridge, accosted you with 
 mocking words, but in a rich contralto voice ; 
 how she permitted you to buy her sweet- 
 meats and promegranates, and to accompany 
 her in a long ramble through dark streets to 
 her poor home ; how finally she exchanged her 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 77 
 
 • 
 nonchalance and disdain for smiles and tender 
 
 words. In due course the adventure should 
 
 terminate by the unexpected arrival of the 
 
 chiilo — a brigand to whom you once granted 
 
 sanctuary — and his^udden recognition of you 
 
 in the midst of a struggle is the only thing 
 
 that saves your life — unless, indeed, he fails 
 
 to recognize you, and a more tragical climax 
 
 is attained. 
 
 This well preserved narrative of Spanish 
 adventure, slightly varied in details, always 
 passes current, and every traveler expects 
 something of the kind to happen to him when 
 he visits a Cafe Flamenca. It does not, 
 however, and he returns to his hotel without 
 other disability than a headache, the result of 
 the bad wine he has drunk. 
 
 The women frequenters of the Flamenca 
 are outwardly decorous enough. They will 
 not taunt you with mocking words, nor 
 tempt you with loving speeches; in fact, they 
 will not say anything whatever to you unless 
 you speak first. They make up in good be- 
 havior what they lack in beauty. 
 
 The hall where these revels are held is, in 
 general, a bare, low-ceiled room with rafters 
 and walls whitewashed. It is' usually to be 
 found in a street with an intensely religious 
 name. In Cordova we saw the flamenca 
 danced in a sequestrated parish church. The 
 
78 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 • 
 
 room is furnished with tables for the accom- 
 modation of drinkers, and a round platform 
 for the dancers stands at one end. The per- 
 formance, following the Spanish custom, be- 
 gins early, about 6:30 o'clock, and while the 
 hall is filling up, or before the tobacco smoke 
 grows dense, is the best time to examine the 
 sirens of the flamenca, both on and off the 
 stage. 
 
 The former are usually the ugliest and 
 coarsest of the lot. They sit in a half-circle 
 about a man who plays the guitar; the wo- 
 man next him on either side has castanets in 
 her hands, while the two or three women 
 • beyond each of them are the dancers. All 
 these women wear long, full-skirted gowns ; 
 shawls of china crepe over their shoulders,' 
 and bracelets of black velvet or gaudy rib- 
 bon on their arms. Their eyes are red be- 
 neath the heavy curls pasted down on their 
 foreheads, and they address curt remarks to 
 each other in raucous voices. 
 
 The women about the little tables are more 
 agreeable to look upon, but their speech also 
 is hoarse, and half of what they say remains 
 in their throats. Most of them are here with 
 men— short, broad chested fellows, with long 
 upper lips and crisp, bushy locks, black 
 almost to blueness. A few details relieve the 
 shadowy hall— the gleam of a round white 
 
 * 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 79 
 
 arm fit to serve as an artist's model, the flash 
 of dark eyes that shine with phosphorescent 
 light. One woman is strangely fascinating. 
 She sits by herself at a table in the darkest 
 corner, where her shadow merges impercep- 
 tibly with the purplish gray wall. She sits 
 motionless, seeing nothing, not even the 
 strangers, specimens of a rare species. She 
 is not pretty, but her figure, even in repose, 
 shows admirable flexibility, and her face is 
 one that will attract a second look when she 
 is happy. Now it displays the tension of 
 anxiety. It seems that to-night is to decide 
 something for her. Oh, Chula^ where is thy 
 Chulo f I am certain she has quarreled with 
 her lover, and expects to make it up with 
 him here. Will he come? 
 
 There is only one other woman unattended 
 in this hall. She is tall and youthful also, 
 bareheaded, with oily locks of abundant 
 black hair. Across her shoulders she has 
 folded a red and yellow scarf. It makes her 
 look like a handsome mulatto. Her eyes are 
 almond shaped and deep set, only half opened, 
 and yet disclosing a hard look. This woman 
 has no pity for weakness. She glances scorn- 
 fully at the other solitary one. She quarrels 
 and forgets — ^just as she loves and forgets. 
 What is there to remember? 'Presently she 
 Jooks at us with the same disdainful air, as 
 
8o 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 much as to say: ** What are you doing here? 
 Why do you come and neither drink nor 
 play?" 
 
 There is a lull in the conversation as the 
 guitar player (he has a head like a cynoce- 
 phalus) draws his fingers across the strings 
 and begins, in a deep croaking voice, to utter 
 exclamations like the prelude to a chant. 
 The women sit straighter in their chairs and 
 accompany him with murmurs ; the castanets 
 faintly clink. He continues to strike the 
 guitar and to shout louder and more con- 
 nected words, while the women carry the 
 treble notes continuously, and the music be- 
 comes a tune made up of two discordant 
 elements, a strain of very high pitch, accom- 
 panied by a growling bass. The middle reg- 
 ister is absolutely neglected, and this neglect 
 is painful to the ear. 
 
 Upon the women performers this music 
 works a curious change. Their cheeks red- 
 den a little, the eyes begin to sparkle, cruel 
 smiles play around their drawn lips, and with 
 the heels of their slippers they beat time upon 
 the floor as if involuntarily. 
 
 The guitar player continues his incantation. 
 He strikes over and over again the same 
 notes of his guitar. But now he shouts less 
 frequently ; it is not necessary, for he is by 
 this time, reinforced by all the men in the 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 8l 
 
 .t 
 
 f 
 
 cafe, who clap their hands softly and yell 
 hoarse cries like this : 
 
 " 0/e ! Ole ! Viva tu mare P' 
 
 These cries are intermittent, but the guitar 
 goes on always, entreating, seducing, and 
 gradually intoxicating the dancers with its 
 barbaric monotony. The musician leans 
 back on his stool, elevates his chin until his 
 face is invisible, and gives vent now and then 
 to a sort of enraged howl. The cries of the 
 spectators grow fiercer and louder— "6^/^./ 
 Ole I "—and they clap their hands and stamp 
 their feet with a measured noise like a stam- 
 pede of buffaloes. Meanwhile the eyes of the 
 dancers dilate and shine like furnaces — they 
 stamp their feet in unison, they breathe in 
 gasps, and they seem to grow young and 
 lovely as you continue to contemplate them. 
 
 Then one woman rises to her feet, extends 
 both arms horizontally, and with eyes half 
 closed, a strange smile on her lips, she ad- 
 vances slowly and gradually, all the time 
 swinging and balancing herself like a ham- 
 mock, into the centre of the circle. Her 
 gilded shoes mark time with the castanets; 
 her long skirt rises and falls ; her ankles, clad 
 in yellow silk, gleam in a rotatory motion 
 like the gold apples of Atalanta. She bends 
 forward and back, her limbs move languor- 
 ously, her heels only mark the time. From 
 
82 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 the slow movement she passes into the vitOy 
 and the lower part of her body undulates 
 with quick circles like the head of a serpent, 
 while from the waist up she seems column- 
 like, except for her swaying arms and her 
 head, which she shakes back and forth as if 
 to dislocate it. Throughout this rapid dance 
 she fixes on the spectators an unchanging 
 glance, half-invitation, half-menace. 
 
 ** Ole ! Ole ! " Stamps and hand-clappings 
 increase. Men and women breathe quickly 
 and deeply. The guitar player sprawls on 
 his stool, with his head thrown back in 
 ecstacy, while the guitar gives forth the same 
 sounds, only louder. Another dancer joins 
 the first, then a third, until all the women, 
 including those with the castanets, have fol- 
 lowed, seized by the same intoxication. 
 
 Now they dance the Zapateado; they 
 dance the same steps in concert, but each girl 
 crosses and recrosses the stage as the whim 
 seizes her, but never colliding with any 
 other. They raise their arms, touch them to 
 the floor, over their heads, behind their 
 backs, but there is no appearance of mere 
 acrobatic agility in these movements. At 
 last these women lose the aspect of human 
 beings, and become veritable creatures of 
 the barbaric music, personified notes of its 
 gamut, and their faces, under the magical 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 85 
 
 excitement of the dance, take an aspect of 
 beauty. It is not sublimated beauty. It is 
 beaute du diable. Their lovers will tremble 
 beneath the rage of their love, the fever of 
 their caresses. 
 
 In their turn these women — vulgar before 
 — exert a terrible influence on the spectators. 
 By the enchantment of their glowing eyes,, 
 their tight-shut lips, their heaving breasts, 
 the dancers transport the excitable Spaniards 
 into another realm. It is not a realm of joy 
 and peace. It is a realm of fire and sword — 
 streaked red and yellow like the Spanish 
 flag. 
 
 Would all this be common-place at home? 
 Perhaps ; but here we are carried out of our- 
 selves; we are affected like the Spaniards. 
 We balance our heads from shoulder to 
 shoulder; we abandon ourselves to the mo- 
 notonous and implacable music. We are in 
 the arena watching the toreador as he enters, 
 tightly cased in a jacket stiff with gold, a 
 bright scarlet silk waistcoat, a jaunty hat on 
 his head and in his hand the long sword that 
 weds the sunlight. We hear him sing to his 
 well-beloved this couplet of the Petenera: 
 
 Kisses one and the other 
 
 I can never forget are two, 
 The last I gave my mother, 
 
 The first I gave to you. 
 
84 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 85 
 
 Or we are on the enormous diligence, be- 
 hind the four pairs and their leader. We see 
 the Zagal as he goes among them inspecting 
 their gaudy trappings, while the Mayoral 
 stands bantering with the buxom maid of the 
 inn. 
 
 *' Coachman, do you know the town ? 
 
 It is easy to lose yourself there." 
 " You ask me if I know the town! 
 
 My father was born in its kennel, — 
 
 My mother before the Cathedral." 
 
 Then, as the Zagal announces that all is 
 ready, the gallant driver presses the maid's 
 waist in farewell, while she continues : 
 
 "If you seek me with a good motive, 
 Let us go quickly to the parish — 
 Let us be married in Latin." 
 
 At which the driver laughs loudly, swings 
 himself to his lofty perch, cracks his whip, 
 the Zagal shouts ''Arre^^' the bystanders ap- 
 plaud, the mules jingle their bells and leap 
 into a cloud of dust. 
 
 *' Ole ! Ole ! Viva tu mare ! " 
 
 But one girl is dancing now. Her com- 
 panions are sitting down, overpowered by 
 the excess of their excitement and the vio- 
 lence of their exercise. The guitar murmurs 
 in a lower tone and with frequefnt pauses. 
 Slower and slower she glides, her billowy 
 skirt subsides, and gradually, almost imper- 
 
 ceptibly, as a wave with the dying swell, she 
 sinks into her seat. 
 
 * * * * * ¥: * * 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ERRANTRY frequentlyled our feet to the 
 iron bridge that spans the Guadalquivir. 
 The situation is not to be despised ; in addi- 
 tion to the wide spreading view it commands, 
 it has a certain charm for the lover of his 
 kind. In the middle of the graceful span he 
 may take his position, and without a great 
 stretch of the imagination (none whatever if 
 he is a native), consider himself to stand in 
 the centre of the world's commerce. On 
 both sides rise forests of masts - of small 
 ships, it is true, sailing vessels, minor steam- 
 ers, tugs, and lighters — the undergrowth of 
 commerce, but imposing by their multitude. 
 These vessels seemed to be fixtures ; we never 
 saw them arriving or setting out. Their dis- 
 mantled masts resembled freshly set-out trees, 
 that would, in time, put on leaves. They 
 led by a natural transition to the thickly 
 clothed oaks and poplars of the Delicias 
 gardens on Seville's side, and on Triana's 
 they served to hedge out the sight of filthy 
 
 I: 
 
. 
 
 ^6 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 inns, sailors* lodging-houses, hovels of laborers 
 and gypsies that make up the ill-smelling sub 
 urb. A series of clean, broad docks adjoin 
 the river promenade of the city, of which 
 they are not a bad continuation, for work 
 goes on there with the same languor as play 
 proceeds in the aristocratic paseo. We 
 watched a vessel one morning loading with 
 hogsheads of sherry, and by breakfast time 
 scarce a dozen of the hooped sunlight had 
 been trundled into the hold. The navvies 
 looked half asleep, and the tars wholly so, as 
 if the sovereignty of the Guadalquivir was 
 not to be disputed, even at this busy port, 
 and by these rough seamen. 
 
 Suddenly, the yellow silence was broken. 
 A loud splash indicated that the river-god 
 was claiming a human sacrifice. The truck- 
 ers left their work and ran down to the edge. 
 The vessels that lay moored or anchored in 
 the stream leaped wide awake. Men ran up 
 the rigging ; heads popped out of port holes 
 and over sides; the banks were thronged, 
 and the bridge parapet beaded with eyes, all 
 staring at a spot in the flood, where they saw 
 what seemed to be an arm battling with the 
 current. For a few minutes the spectators 
 preserved a ghastly silence, but at the sight 
 cf a swaying head, topped with brown curls, 
 that emerged from the wave, they set up a 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 87 
 
 shout of encouragement, following it with 
 a confusion of orders, directions and prayers 
 for the safety of the buffeter. Owing to the 
 blinding reflection of the sun by the sand 
 colored river, no one could determine the 
 sex or age of the swimmer. One group held 
 that he was a boy ; another, a man ; while a 
 third group challenged these, pointed to the 
 long, curly hair now distinctl}^ visible, and 
 pronounced that the person in peril was a 
 woman. The swimmer's awkward move- 
 ment seemed to support this opinion, which 
 spread among the crowd, and powerfully 
 increased their anxiety. At length, the ob- 
 ject of so many shrieks, commands and 
 prayers gained the sloping wharf, and, climb- 
 ing up wearily, revealed itself to be a dog, a 
 long, gavint perro, which hastened to intrench 
 behind a fort of hogsheads and lick itself 
 dry. The spectators looked at each other 
 sheepishly -then laughed spontaneously, as 
 a Spanish crowd rarely laughs ; but this was 
 too much for their surly dignity, and they 
 all knocked off work for the day. 
 
 The lover of wide spreading views may be 
 repaid by an hour on this bridge. It affords 
 a good picture of Seville, with a panoramic 
 glimpse of the slightly undulating country 
 that stretches north for miles. But the sun 
 burns down upon it hot and cruel. Even 
 
88 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 the Guadalquivir, which is more like the 
 sun's creature than the moon's, at this point 
 seems to long to beat off his fierce kisses^ 
 and escape to the cool shadowy turns of its 
 channel, where the river winds throusrh the 
 Delicias. Most strangers will hasten with 
 like speed to follow the same course, leaving 
 the gas works, the bridge, the vessels of com- 
 merce — whatever lends justice to the claim 
 Seville sets up to be a modern city — to broad 
 daylight, while they seek antiquity under 
 the shade trees of the quay. They have not 
 far to go before coming to a tower, where 
 surely they may drop the burden of the 
 present, if the names of Caesar and Sertorius 
 open a well of time deep enough to drown it. 
 From this venerable Torre del Oro, that 
 throws a broken vermilion image on the 
 water, we used, like Parizade, to fill a vase 
 with the golden water of antiquity, and bear 
 it carefully through the labyrinthian streets. 
 Like the devoted sister in that Arabian tale, 
 we used, with pious hand, to sprinkle the 
 broken flag-stones and cracked portals until 
 they teemed again with the life of the thir- 
 teenth century. So we discovered the lofty 
 ancient house of the Ulloa's, and by means 
 of the magic drops re-opened the transverse 
 passage, where the offended governor lost 
 his life by Juan Tenorio's sword. We could 
 
 ^ 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 89 
 
 never transport a sufficient quantity of the 
 precious fluid to release the stones of a quar- 
 ter, or a street ; either the vase was too small 
 or we sprinkled unwisely, or an accident 
 dashed it from our hands. From one cause 
 or another we were continually dropping 
 back into our own century. Yet I think we 
 enjoyed this confusion of epochs more than 
 a complete success. Ours would have been 
 the contusion, if the threads of yesterday and 
 to-day had really been untangled. The 
 time worn and weather stained houses — loftv 
 and low, in picturesque propinquity — the 
 dark and mysterious wynds ; their names as 
 Guzman el Bueno : the infrequent passen- 
 gers hugging the shady side — what imper- 
 fectly formed and almost effaced images of 
 more than half forgotten names and deeds 
 kept crowding back from childhood's library 
 of tale and history, seduced out of the void 
 by these circumstances ! How many persons 
 we had dimly read of, how many events we 
 had never understood, now stirred in their 
 graves like friends we had lost, and advent- 
 ures we had gone through ! 
 
 This, I take to be the essence of an old 
 city's charm. 
 
 Progressing thus in the character of Pay- 
 nim, or Christian— it did not matter which, 
 so long as we remained a few thousand years 
 
 
^m 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 91 
 
 90 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 old — we hunted for and found, in the streets 
 of the Old Inquisition, the garden door ^ 
 through which beautiful Estrella was tohave 
 been abducted ; we loitered in the dusky 
 streets behind the Archbishop's palace, all 
 solemn as cathedral aisles ; we lingered long 
 in that quarter, which was distinguished by 
 its aristocratic and churchly discretion, and 
 besought iron gates and latticed windows to 
 yield their jealously guarded secrets. One 
 of the streets of this quarter grew half com- 
 municative and friendly. It never told us its 
 name, nor its precise situation, nor could we 
 find out these things for ourselves, when, 
 subsequently, we began to traverse it every 
 day. The most we could learn about it was 
 that it was neighbor to a street called the 
 Bottle of Water, lined with wine shops and 
 a thoroughfare for drunkards. At the ter- 
 minus of this street, that retained for months 
 its incognito, we stood one afternoon, and ran 
 our eyes carelessly over the abutting build- 
 ing. It resembled, in some degree, an Italian 
 palace, and seemed to wear an aspect of 
 injured dignity at being thus indifferently 
 surveyed. Inquiring the name of the house 
 from a passer, he told us it was the Casa 
 Carasa, 
 
 We had looked so many times in vain for 
 the Casa Carasa, that now the house had 
 
 come to us, as it were, we rang the bell at 
 once, and did not stop to think of the diffi- 
 culty of making ourselves known to stran- 
 gers, or to weigh the scruples of shyness, 
 which keep tourists out of interesting houses. 
 A stout, middle-aged priest unlocked the 
 iron reja, and admitted us with a gracious 
 air, before we had time to explain why we 
 had called. 
 
 Following him w^e went up a few steps 
 into a passage screened off by a second 
 ornamental door, and passing through, we 
 looked into the noble patio of the dwelling, 
 with its famous pillars and medallions. This 
 patio is very lofty, and without an awning, 
 and owing to the light and elegant pillars 
 which support three tiers of loggias, it seems 
 larger than it is. The first floor columns 
 have capitals of very delicate medallions 
 ^ copied closely from Italian work ; the second 
 floor shafts are said to resemble in detail and 
 general design the style of the Romanesque 
 architecture, while the upper gallery is more 
 closely wrought in engaged shafts carved to 
 
 the eaves. 
 
 The architect — his name is lost in the 
 limbo of mediaeval artists— has carried his 
 art beyond the court-yard to the loggias, and 
 made of the latter a continuation of out-of- 
 doors. By the combination of two styles, 
 
V • 
 
 92 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 93 
 
 which might seem irreconcilable, the simple 
 Gothic and the airy Mudejar, he has charmed 
 away any thought of a roof. In these loggias 
 the visitor receives the impression that he is 
 in a garden — a subdued priestly garden. The 
 rooms around the portico, of which he 
 catches glimpses through open doors, seem 
 to be deeper recesses, arbors of denser shade. 
 They were rooms, however, and we were 
 guided through them by the priest who ad- 
 mitted us, and who manifested great patience 
 while we examined everything curious. He 
 confessed, at the start, that he had no accu- 
 rate information concerning the house to im- 
 part ; but many rooms remained untouched 
 by the restorer, and they spoke for them- 
 selves and commanded our admiration. A 
 small room in particular, one of a suite which 
 had formed the first owner's oratory, library 
 and bed-chamber, was as beautiful as any 
 spot to be seen now in the Alhambra. It 
 was tiled half way up to the ceiling with 
 azulejo as dazzling as on the day it was laid. 
 The roof was of artesonado, in a fine and 
 delicate pattern, without pendentives, and 
 the floor was a charming specimen of Moorish 
 tile work. The priest told us this had the 
 name of being the last pure Morisco work in 
 Spain, having been finished jgst before the 
 exodus of those clever craftsmen. 
 
 i 
 
 The other rooms of this suite were larger 
 and obstructed with furniture, some of which 
 boasted fine carving of Scriptural scenes that 
 would suit a churchly taste. We inspected 
 them, and were then invited to return down 
 the portico and visit a corresponding suite 
 on the opposite side of the entrance way. 
 It suited us better, however, to sit outside 
 and study the court-yard and loggia from 
 this new point of view. In fact, the mere 
 act of looking at a beautiful building, of 
 which we had read little or nothing, was 
 very refreshing. 
 
 One member of our party sighed and 
 remarked, that if he had his way, he would 
 choose this house for his residence in Seville, 
 with the portico for a lounging place, and 
 the rich, dusky room we had visited for a 
 sleeping chamber. The priest immediately 
 responded that he might do so if he were 
 serious, for the Carasa was a casa de hiiespedes, 
 and he was himself a boarder. To prove his 
 assertion, he carried us off to the comedor, 
 where a motherly Senora was superintend- 
 ing the laying of the cloth for dinner, and 
 she explained politely, but with characteristic 
 Spanish indifference, her willingness to enter- 
 tain us. Returning with speed to the calle 
 O'Donnell, w^e held our second interview 
 with Mariana, who came down dressed in 
 
 I M 
 
 r 
 
 ■ i 
 
94 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 the same pink calico gown she had worn 
 when we saw her before. Emilio packed up 
 our belongings. Margarita was not visibly 
 affected by our departure, but responded 
 " Con Dios ? " as calmly as if we were merely 
 crossing the street. Then, like belated birds, 
 we flew from the wintry pickings of Mariana's 
 puchcro to the bountiful spring of the Casa 
 Carasa. 
 
 That is equivalent to saying we had plenty 
 to eat there, and gross as the acknowledg- 
 ment mav read, it is true that we remember 
 the Carasa more kindly for the excellent 
 table it provided than for its poetic archi- 
 tecture. Man cannot live on stones, even 
 though they enclose shadowy porticoes and 
 Moorish chambers. But we continued to 
 delight in them, because the panecillo and 
 higada never lost their excellence. Oh, the 
 gladness of the Spanish breakfast ! We never 
 realized it until we came to the Casa Carasa. 
 The thick, warm chocolate and delicious 
 small rolls that the fat cook. Dona Julita, 
 brought up with her own hand. She was 
 fifty years old, but she had the youngest 
 vocabulary. She called us her sons, and she 
 woke us up by patting the pillow with one 
 hand, while with the other she held out the 
 rich cup, coaxing us with soothing words to 
 drink. Dona Julita came and went with the 
 
 I 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 95 
 
 rosy flush of dawn, so far as we were con- 
 cerned, but the plenty of the dinner-table 
 proved that her labors did not end there. 
 When the hour approached for the principal 
 meal we did not strain to be down early, as 
 w^had done at Mariana's. The boarders of 
 the Carasa were not cadets and medical 
 students, and dinner went forward there in 
 a stately archiepiscopal fashion. There was 
 another reason besides Julita for these pleasant 
 conditions. We were breathing a churchly 
 atmosphere; for, as befitted the memory of 
 Canon Pinero, priests were in the majority 
 at what had once been his board. The cura, 
 a licentiate who had read Corderius, a choir 
 chaplain, and two theological students- 
 brothers— represented the Church in this 
 little huespedes. The laity had but three 
 examples— a banker, who had his counting- 
 room in the neighborhood, and the two 
 Americans. The curate sat at the chief 
 place of the table, and directed the con- 
 versation. He had read much, both in old 
 and modern books, and his pure Castilian 
 accent gave to his talk a style that we found 
 a little lofty at times, but generally pleasant. 
 Of the other ecclesiastics, the chaplain was a 
 handsome man of thirty, who dispensed in 
 ^ dress, as far as he dared, with the badges of 
 his office, and in speech showed an equal 
 
96 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 desire to talk like a man of the world. The 
 licentiate, on the contrary, in gravity of con- 
 versation and deportment, was a model 
 churchman. He was good and dry, and 
 should have lived in the days when religion 
 was religion. He was a foil for the other 
 two, who seemed to have made a close study 
 of the arts of rendering themselves agree- 
 able. They spoke with those Andaluzas 
 voices, which are the richest and most poet- 
 ical voices in the world, and are the only tones 
 that sound more musical in masculine than 
 in feminine throats. Had other things been 
 unequal, I think we would have remained 
 at the Carasa, in order to enjoy as long as 
 possible the melodious tones of the priests. 
 Sharing this cloistral pension with these 
 skirted companions, we scarce expected to 
 listen to tales of love. The cadet and his 
 comrades remained outside, and the little 
 god surely had enough to do to attend to 
 their flirtations, without troubling the hearts 
 which beat under the habit of religion. But 
 we had not been domiciled long at the Carasa 
 before the younger of the two theological 
 students, who had quickly put himself en 
 rapport with the traveled Americans, con- 
 vinced us by his tale that Cupid does, in 
 truth, wing a closer flight to Seville than to ' 
 other cities of the world. He was in love, 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 97 
 
 ? 
 
 I. 
 
 i 
 
 and begged us to advise him how to throw 
 off soutane and bands before he had fairly 
 put them on. 
 
 But let me begin at the beginning. The 
 brothers were the only children of a wealthy 
 candle manufacturer of Madrid, whose heart 
 had been lighted to religion perhaps by his 
 own tapers. At any rate, he was devout, 
 and wished to give both sons to the Church. 
 Therefore, he placed them in a monastic 
 seminary near Seville, in order to remove 
 them from chance encounters with worldly 
 Madrid friends. In the monastery the 
 younger brother had proved the more ex- 
 emplary ; he was quite happy for the space 
 of a year, reciting, or reading in turns with 
 his comrades, the Offices and the Breviary. 
 In the beginning of their second year the 
 elder brother was convicted in one of the 
 petty sins that the seminary scholars were 
 fond of committing, which was reported to 
 his father. He came and carried his sons to 
 the curate, a personal friend, and left them in 
 his charge at the Casa Carasa, to remain until 
 the priest thought it wise to restore them to 
 the seminary. 
 
 The change proved beneficial to the elder 
 brother. Whether he really began to love 
 the Church for its own sake, or in the ponij)- 
 ous society of the lords of the Church saw 
 
98 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 afar off a mitre and a crozier, the result was 
 the same, and he devoted himself assiduously 
 to Thomas a Kempis. 
 
 The effect on Cesario, the younger son, 
 hitherto so good and pious, was vastly differ- 
 ent. On a certain High Mass, which all 
 Sevillians attend in the national costume,, 
 while he sat in the coro, occasionally lending 
 his voice to the service, a girl came in and 
 knelt down quite near him. He might have 
 put his hand through the wide interstices of 
 the carvings and touched her on the shoulder. 
 
 At first he only noticed how well the black 
 silk basquina and the mantilla of black lace 
 became her. Then he perceived that her 
 hair was of beautiful reddish-brown color, 
 and that her eyes, which sometimes she 
 raised, feeling his upon her, were brown, 
 and large, and speaking. He had not turned 
 many times from contemplating those brown 
 eyes back to the missal before the letters were 
 blurred, and the book trembled in his grasp. 
 Realizing that he had lost the worshipping 
 spirit, he laid aside the book and boldly con- 
 tinued to gaze. 
 
 When the young priest saw her again she 
 did not wear the dress of the country, but 
 was attired in the last fashion from Paris. 
 Nevertheless, he recognized her, and because 
 the bitter tears he had shed in the interval 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 , 
 
 9^ 
 
 had not washed out a line of her image from 
 his heart, he manfully determined to weep no 
 more, but to love her in secret until he could 
 love her openly and without reproach. That 
 would be when he was no longer pretending 
 to study for the priesthood ; but he told us 
 that before making up his mind to disappoint 
 his father he had suffered greatly, not that 
 he feared his father's anger, but he dreaded 
 the anger of God. 
 
 We assured him — somewhat irreligiously 
 1 am afraid — that he need not suffer on that 
 score, and we counseled him to make a clean 
 breast of it to the curate. He promised to 
 act on this advice. For two days he avoided 
 us, and appeared to be in mental torture ;. 
 but, on the third, he rose from his bed 
 in the middle of the night to knock at the 
 curate's door. He confessed eveiry^thing to 
 him with sobs, but with a determination to- 
 stand by his purpose that no argument could 
 shake. He related the points of the conver- 
 sation to us next morning. Soon afterwards 
 his father arrived and took him home to 
 Madrid. I do not know if the sequel was 
 that happy ending most people like to their 
 romances ; but even if he found the girl with 
 the red-brown hair engaged, or unable to love 
 him, I am sure Casario found another. He 
 was of the stuff to find another. To the last 
 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 100 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 I repeated my inquiries to the curate, who 
 always suavely replied that his young friend 
 was assisting in the father's business — candle- 
 making — and reported to be happy in the 
 choice he had made. 
 
 IX. 
 
 BOTH curate and chaplain, who led the 
 talk at our dinner table, were not so 
 liberal in deed as in word. When the day of 
 Saint Anthony fell, they refused to keep the 
 festival with us, and they spoke v^ith con- 
 siderable disdain of the preparations made 
 by the common people of Seville for cele- 
 brating it, telling us that we should see on 
 this occa^on nothing but *' tonterias Espafio- 
 las" — Spanish follies. In fact, in becoming 
 the darling " San Anton " of the people, 
 Saint Anthony lost much of his dignity. 
 Reading his life by Athanasius, and listening 
 to the legends told of him by a Spanish 
 peasant, it is difficult to understand that 
 both refer to the same person. The church 
 biographer represents him as the oracle of the 
 Nile, whose relics worked many miraculous 
 cures in victims suffering with " a pestilen- 
 tial erysipelatous distemper called the sacred 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 lOI 
 
 lire," and as a holy man, who, in his lifetime* 
 wore only a coarse shift of hair and never 
 washed his body. Athanasius tells a great 
 deal more, but the common imagination has 
 seized upon the last point, and rejected the 
 rest. He never washed his body, conse- 
 quently Anthony is a saint after their own 
 hearts. 
 
 The Sevillians do not doubt that Anthony 
 is now in heaven, but because he possessed 
 no gold or silver on earth they suppose that 
 he remains poor above, and wears there a 
 second rate, a tarnished halo. On that ac- 
 count the people love him familiarly, and no 
 one is too poor and common to creep under 
 the mantle of this humble patron. It is even 
 spread wide enough to include the brute 
 creation, and, for upwards of a century, the 
 festival of "San Anton" has been devoted 
 to blessing the animals : horses, cows, mules 
 and asses, and to the sale of charms for their 
 preservation from disease. 
 
 We were told if we did not choose to walk 
 to the convent church in the suburb, where 
 the function referred to is performed for 
 convenience of farmers and muleteers, we 
 could still see many curious sights by going 
 to the church of Santa Catalina, in the north- 
 ern part of the city. Our way there was 
 made difficult by the throng pushing in the 
 
 h 
 
 ! t| 
 
 i 
 
102 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 same direction, or battling to chaffer with 
 itinerant venders who had deserted their 
 customary stands and taken to the streets 
 by which the crowd must pass. Every variety 
 of cripple was propelling himself, as rapidly 
 as his abbreviations would permit, to the 
 church door, in order to be in time for the 
 procession of animals. Their rags, and the 
 motley costumes of the crowd made a true 
 picture ; as loud to the eyes as to the ear 
 were the barking of dogs, the clatter of 
 tongues, the squalling of children. 
 
 Reaching the plaza Ponce de Leon, there 
 seemed to be not even crowding room for 
 the new comers, and a dozen soldiers stationed 
 to preserve an open space around an oriental 
 fountain near the church door, were having 
 a hard time of it. We were pushed forward 
 by people who came after us, until we were 
 drawn into the current of devotees, and 
 entered the church through a low, sombre 
 portal, obstructed by the bodies and crutches 
 of the mendicants who lined the walls. 
 
 The majority of the worshippers in the 
 church were women, and while many were 
 kneeling before a table at which presided 
 a priest muttering an ave, and crossing them 
 with a bone of St. Anthony, more were pros- 
 trate against the boxes of the confessional, 
 placed in the vicinity of chapels and in 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 103 
 
 angles of the wall. Another large group of 
 women knelt on the floor before the Capilla 
 Major — a Moorish-looking high altar — with 
 their arms stretched out as in wild entreaty, 
 an attitude they held for a long time together. 
 
 Meanwhile there was a procession of tapers 
 all round the church, chanting from chapel 
 to chapel, and pausing before each for pray- 
 ers. As the priests and acolytes lingered in 
 the dark recess of an altar with the tapers, 
 reflected like flaming hearts by the metal 
 railings, or marched slowly across the church, 
 where the tapers twinkled like stars under 
 the noble roof of the nave, the effect was 
 solemn — solemn enough to overcome the 
 repugnance excited by the friar mumbling 
 his spells at the door. 
 
 There was no solemnity in the ceremony 
 as it went forward out of doors. At the 
 mouth of the street that turned into the 
 plaza, as many as fifty cabs were drawn up, 
 and the drivers, with interjections and ob- 
 jurgations, were unharnessing their animals 
 and leading them through the people up to 
 the fountain. There a number of muleteers 
 and asses had stood for two hours in the 
 broiling sun waiting for the signal. Some 
 lackevs came up at the last moment, leading 
 with difficulty the beautiful English horses 
 of Sevillian noblemen through the line of 
 
 5=-« 
 

 / 
 
 104 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 spectators, who swayed forward and back, 
 and uttered admiring exclamations, to the 
 great terror of the animals. The lackeys 
 were swearing like pirates ; the cab drivers 
 and muleteers shouted out unfavorable com- 
 parisons between their own tranquil beasts- 
 some lying down, others standing motion- 
 less—and the handsome, frisky horses of the 
 aristocrats. 
 
 At precisely noon the procession began to 
 move forward from the fountain to a window 
 in the church, which an old padre, with a 
 very red face, had thrown open. As the 
 animals passed under him he sprinkled holy 
 water upon them. The horses and mules 
 started back in astonishment and displeas- 
 ure, the nervous beasts of the region giving 
 the lackeys great trouble to keep them from 
 dashing through the ranks of sightseers. The 
 asses only manifested themselves to be good 
 Catholics, and received the holy drops with 
 brays of refreshment. 
 
 In addition to the blessing of hi^ animal, 
 each muleteer brought a sack of grain to be 
 consecrated by the father. This he did by 
 moistening it with holy water and stirring it 
 with a relic of St. Anthony. He then returned 
 it, and received for his pains a peseta— twenty 
 cents— not dear for a bag of grain warranted 
 to cure any disease beast-flesh is heir to. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 105 
 
 We did not linger long to watch this 
 spectacle, which is more amusing than edify- 
 ing, but turned to go, and began to battle 
 with the human waves which had poured 
 into the plaza in an incessant turbid stream 
 since an early hour, and were still pouring 
 in. The late comers were the near relatives 
 of the unwashed and ragged people we had 
 seen in the morning, and the whole assem- 
 blage, as we passed through it, presented but 
 a confusion of grime and tatters. Infecting 
 all like a poisonous gas generated by refuse, 
 rose the evil odor which one never escapes 
 in Spain — the breath of the Iberian peasant,, 
 a mouldy breath compounded of garlic, vile 
 tobacco, and decayed teeth, and here exhaled 
 by the multitude with deadly power. Till 
 we had fled from this effluvium to the purer 
 atmosphere of a balcony overlooking the 
 square, we could not distinguish in the 
 unclean crowd its characteristic and pictur^ 
 esque features, so real is the relation, in 
 regard to pleasure, which exists between the 
 eye and the nose. 
 
 Up there the people recovered pictur- 
 esqueness. The dirt returned to simple 
 dirt again, and no longer seemed unsavory 
 squalor, nameless uncleanness representing 
 moral viieness. From that vantage point we 
 could admire them, and we would not — if 
 
 I I 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
io6 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 107 
 
 ?! 
 It 
 
 M 
 
 we had dared to take such a liberty with the 
 noble Spaniards below — have washed a single 
 grimy check, patched up a solitary colored 
 rag, or mended a decomposing zapato. The 
 missionary spirit which had dawned in our 
 breasts faded out again, and left us simple 
 travelers, wishing to keep the people in their 
 filth and ignorance for a spectacle. What 
 crimes committed against civilization must 
 tourists answer for ! 
 
 Now that the crowd had reached its desti- 
 nation it was not so noisy as when traversing 
 the calle del Sol and other streets leading 
 thither. Though inclined to mock while 
 a muleteer passed them on the way to the 
 priest with his animal, they preserved, for 
 the most part, a heavy silence entirely strange 
 to a festival. There was no jostling, no con- 
 certed shouting ; however closely packed 
 among his fellows the individual may have 
 been, he preserved his individuality, and 
 waited for a moment of silence before utter- 
 ing his comment, to ensure its being heard. 
 Some men beneath our balcony looked up 
 and saluted the '' impertinente curiosos," as 
 if they had divined the motive which took us 
 out of nose-shot. 1 wondered why these 
 people had gathered to witness the cere- 
 mony, and why they observed the feast, 
 which is a voluntary one, when they seemed 
 
 I 
 
 to be unable to derive pleasure from it. 
 There surely is no crowd at once so surly 
 and quiet as a Spanish crowd, and I imagine 
 their capacity for being ill-tempered and sub- 
 missive at the same time is what has made 
 them, despite fierce intermittent revolutions, 
 the most docile puppets of despotism history 
 shows. 
 
 In the evening we went to the Alameda 
 del Hercule, where we were told we should 
 see the best of the fun. This Alameda is sit- 
 uated in a poor quarter of Seville, composed 
 almost wholly of laboring men and mechanics. 
 The streets which end in the broken pave 
 ment of the plaza have ugly and slatternly 
 doorways, and every sixth house is a filthy 
 ** public." The great quadrilateral plaza 
 appears extremely poverty stricken, and in 
 the day-time it shows an appalling degree of 
 dirt and squalor, besides being pervaded by 
 a horrible smell. In the centre of the Alameda 
 is a battered Moorish well-curb, and in lines 
 down two sides of the place stand stone 
 pedestals and columns, supporting statues 
 that could give enigmatical points to the 
 Sphynx of the desert, so broken, so chipped, 
 so indistinguishable as to sex are they. The 
 houses fronting on the Hercule consist of 
 but one poor story, but they have flower-pots 
 in the balconies and against the walls. 
 
 
io8 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 I = 
 
 H 
 
 ^1 
 
 Previous visits to this gaunt and hippocratic 
 Alameda had not possessed us in favor of it 
 as a theatre of diversion. Night, however, 
 served as a charitable mantle to cover up the 
 painful decay of the place, and numerous 
 bonfires, built on the ragged pavement, for 
 the time exorcised its unfragrant demon. 
 
 These bonfires are the marks of the festi- 
 val, though their relation to the popular 
 **San Anton" is vague, and the people that 
 light them here every year have forgotten, 
 if they ever knew it, the origin of the custom. 
 It has come down, perhaps, from the Egyp- 
 tian St. Anthony's victory over the ''sacred 
 fire." Formerly every family in the barrio 
 had the ambition to light a fire of its own, 
 but latterly the custom has died out, so far 
 as families are concerned, unless the groups 
 of hoydenish girls and surly men who keep 
 up the practice are to be considered as fam- 
 ilies in embryo. 
 
 It was dark as pitch in the narrow street 
 we took to the Alameda, but as we drew near 
 we heard a great humming aud buzzing, like 
 innumerable bees, and waves of light from 
 the torches swept down the street at intervals, 
 illuminating the portals, and going out sud- 
 denly, like a conflagration half under control. 
 A heavy asphyxiating atmosphere accompa- 
 nied these flashes, burying the damp freshness 
 
 ^■ 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 109 
 
 of night under odors of smoke, cooked food 
 and dying flowers. When we emerged on 
 a little eminence, and surveyed the plaza, it 
 presented a kaleidoscopic jumble of colors 
 and forms, now like a dark mass, again bril- 
 liantly lighted ; people jostling each other, 
 constantly moving, and apparently inextri- 
 cably entangled. Crowds of faces upturned 
 with broad grins, arms that waved above 
 them, a great noise of talking, laughing and 
 stamping, formed the first impression of a 
 mob it would be wisdom to keep out of. But, 
 when we mingled with them, we found less 
 confusion than we had expected. A certain 
 order was maintained, and, instead of being 
 locked together motionless, the crowd moved 
 in two processions between the lines of bon- 
 fires, one going up and the other going down 
 the plaza. 
 
 Beside the glowing heaps old women sold 
 brands, calling out the price in hoarse, .alco- 
 holic, disagreeable voices, with a lugubrious 
 intonation. These the chulos bought for 
 their girls — the chulas— whom they drew 
 out of the ranks for a moment to throw a 
 brand on the fire for good luck. From group 
 to group light words, free gestures, a cross 
 fire of badinage, passed between men and 
 women. Most of the latter were girls of the 
 people, and wore calico dresses, Manilla 
 
 I ', 
 
no 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I 
 
 iii 
 
 1^ 
 
 ( 
 
 shawls, and flowers in their hair. The men, 
 also, conformed to one style of dress, which 
 consisted ot tight trousers, short jackets, and 
 the soft hats of the mushroom shape, called 
 hongo. Not all of these men were of the 
 lower classes. Many had soft, delicate hands, 
 covered with valuable rings, and our eyes 
 testified to the truth of what we had heard, 
 that Seville gentlemen liked to amuse them- 
 selves at the festival of "San Anton." 
 
 By the light of the bonfires, and of torches, 
 fixed to the ghostly Roman marbles, little 
 tables set on stakes, offered refreshments of 
 fish and salted meats, smelts fried in oil, 
 anchovies, and a mixture of eggs and codfish, 
 called Soldados de Pavia. Wine was sold in 
 abundance to quench the thirst this kind of 
 food excited, and the roisterers drank it 
 freely. Early in the night they exhibited 
 signs of intoxication. They fired olives at 
 each other, seized the women's fans, and 
 broke them over their neighbor's head ; while 
 extravagant shouts, the crashing of glasses 
 and shrieks of coarse laughter indicated that 
 the patrons of these tables were principally 
 of the '* Merry Gentry." 
 
 Leaving their vicinity, and joining the 
 moving throng, we found that little booths 
 had been erected all around the plaza, some 
 of them theatrical, in front of which dingy 
 
 
 persons of either sex, men dressed as women 
 and women as men, bawled out the title of 
 the sainete or tonadilla (farce or musical com- 
 edy) which would be played inside, as well 
 as the names of the distinguished actors who 
 would take part in them. Hucksters at the 
 doors of other booths cried out the fabulous 
 bargains in tinware, shoes, gloves, and every 
 sort of wearing apparel, without exhibiting 
 any, offered within. A booth, better patron- 
 ized than those supplying ordinary wants, 
 was presided over by a villainous looking 
 man, surrounded by his court of barateros 
 and gamesters. He did nothing to attract 
 customers, except to shuffle from one hand to 
 the other an ancient pack of cards. This man*s 
 face touched the very bottom of the abyss. 
 To look at him was to remember all the 
 deeds of blood one had ever read about. 
 It was a dreadful face, set, seamed and almost 
 grotesquely wicked. But his eyes prevented 
 it from being grotesque. They iilone moved 
 and gleamed on individual after individual 
 in the passing group', with a green light like 
 a cat's in the dark. 
 
 Next to him the King of the Gypsies, from 
 the suburb of Los Humeros, was not above' 
 turning a dishonest penny, to the disgust of 
 the professional guitaristas, who were present 
 in force, by getting up a dance on a piece of 
 
 i I 
 
T J2 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 "3 
 
 H 
 
 i 
 
 i\ 
 
 carpet spread down on the pavement. Much 
 as they would have liked to protest, the 
 guitar players scarcely grumbled under their 
 breath ; they feared the intensity of the 
 swarthy king's evil eye. His zingali hung 
 on the skirts of every couple, assuring the 
 *' caballero " that he would be rich, and the 
 " senorita " that she would get a kind hus- 
 band. Early in the evening, or before the 
 dances had fairly begun, these brown fates 
 reaped a rich harvest from the credulity of 
 maid and man. Not that I think these Dulci- 
 neas consider kindness as an essential attrib- 
 ute to a husband; they seemed to belong to 
 the class wnich can endure a good deal of 
 hard usage and enjoy an occasional domestic 
 scrimmage. If any illusion of virginal Do- 
 lores, ''Amagita mia," and modest Spanish 
 peasant girls, had lasted so long, St. An- 
 thony's festival would have brushed it away 
 like a cobweb. In the corners of the plaza 
 we frequently saw an Andalusian lover give 
 the punishment of blows to his sweetheart, 
 who received them with cries, of course, but 
 equally, of course, as a necessary sequel to . 
 her indiscriminate ogling. A few minutes 
 afterwards she would be sitting with him at 
 a table, wiping her eyes with her hand- 
 kerchief, but tranquilly sipping wine. A 
 good many young girls, in sets of six or 
 
 I 
 
 B 
 
 7 
 
 «ight, all wearing wide hooped dresses of 
 manifold colors, all with flowers in their hair 
 and in their bosom, passed us in the opposite 
 procession, and tried to attract our attention 
 by look or word. If one of them thought 
 she had succeded she would instantly turn 
 her large, impertinent, black eyes, with a 
 mocking glance, upon her companions, and, 
 commiseratingly, bid them *' adios ! " But 
 there was more mischievous audacity in this 
 than real boldness. Approach one and she 
 would dart away and hide behind the skirts 
 of her friends. Their dances, too, which they 
 engaged in without masculine partners, were 
 modest as well as pretty. All these girls, 
 who never heard of the waltz or the polka, 
 are perfectly acquainted with the intricate 
 dances of the country. They love them pas- 
 sionately, and they cannot pause within sound 
 of a guitar without suffering St. Vitus of the 
 feet. 
 
 Withdrawn somewhat from the crowd, 
 leaning against Hercules himself, stands an 
 old fellow idly thrumming his guitar. His 
 tight trousers are belted in by a bright red 
 girdle. He wears a plaited shirt and no 
 cravat. Under the hongo hat his white hair 
 is combed down almost into his little, twink- 
 ling black eyes. An old man, dried and 
 wrinkled, is this guitarista, but he handles 
 
 § 
 
114 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 his instrument lovingly, and with no decrease 
 from the dexterity of his youth. 
 
 '' A dance, girls ! " 
 
 Quickly they make up the requisite purse 
 to pay for their amusement. The old musi- 
 cian thanks them with a deep, grave voice 
 peculiar to the aged poor of Andalusia, 
 assures them they have done well to come 
 to him who can '' make tables dance," changes 
 his position so as to give his head a chance 
 to fall back, and coughs. Eight girls form 
 in two lines, each one with castanets in her 
 hands, somebody shouts *' Honra ! ' * and some- 
 I body else in a sharp, nasal voice, the voice of 
 the Andalusian peasant woman, sings a 
 seguidilla, the guitar tinkles, the castanets 
 clack, and the dance begins. A vibrant, 
 delicious dance it is— a dance Greek girls 
 might have woven in a field near Syracuse. 
 The dancers lifted their arms and approached 
 each other, only to retreat again; raised first 
 one foot and then the other, and displayed 
 the most poetic and flexible attitudes. The 
 guitar and castanets continued to incite them 
 joyously ; the opposing waves rose and fell, 
 bent first to one side and then to the other, 
 with many diverse bewitching motions of 
 heads and arms. Ah, to sec these Andalu- 
 sian witcheries performed aright one must 
 see the girls of the people dance them ! They 
 
 ' 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 "5 
 
 are not like the dancers of the sa/a^ who are 
 satisfied to mark the movements and keep 
 time. They accent every posture, and they 
 delight to tire themselves to the utmost limit 
 of agility and grace. They form a circle 
 about an imaginary hat that has fallen in 
 their midst, and, advancing toward it, each 
 girl makes a feint of picking it up, caressing 
 it, holding it off at length ; now taking it off, 
 now putting it on her head again. At the 
 conclusion of each figure they join hands 
 in a circle, turn half round, trembling and 
 looking at each other with humid, ecstatic 
 eyes. 
 
 ** Ole ! Ole ! " A crowd has collected about 
 them, and utter exclamations like " Jump, 
 my pigeon, jump !" or " Long life to your 
 mothers ! ** But the girls hardly hear this 
 accompaniment to their movements. They 
 are in a tremor from head to foot ; they 
 would like the dance to last forever. 
 
 But the guitarista knows when he has 
 earned his money. He stops playing in the 
 very middle of a figure. Cunning fellow 1 
 He expects somebody will fill the hat again 
 in order to see the rest. He miscalculates, 
 for the girls catch hold of each other and run 
 away, laughing and shrieking, half-vexed, 
 half-delighted, at having danced for " San 
 Anton.** 
 
 m 
 
 I* 
 
 /: 
 
ii6 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 117 
 
 And at that instant a boy on the other side 
 began to scream Maleguenas, with a voice 
 that was changing from treble to bass. 
 Thither the crowd surged, ready to call down 
 blessings on his mother if the song pleased 
 them. 
 
 Sometimes, we are told, the festival breaks 
 up in a general dance, every one joining in, 
 girls of eighteen and women of eighty,' and 
 then the old Alameda offers its gayest aspect 
 —gayest and most innocent. The dance we 
 had seen converted us, and we hastened to 
 temper a judgment we had made earlier. Is it 
 not perilous to offer a statement about the 
 morals of a people on the unsure ground of 
 observation? To judge by the rough talk 
 and behavior of these chulas and majos I 
 might have been led to write that the Spain 
 of to-day is the loose Spain of Guzman de 
 Alfarache, but I waited a little. When we 
 went away finally we felt that a tough strand 
 of modern decency binds up these customs, 
 at once simple and rough, of old world 
 revelry. Had it been otherwise, we would 
 have joined the group of reformers at Mad- 
 rid, who esteem the feast a childish fashion, 
 worn to the point of suppression. I think by 
 calling it a childish fashion the reformers 
 unwittingly defend it. Already too many 
 innocent pastimes have been abolished, as 
 
 the world knows by the added dullness. But 
 there is really no need to defend the festival. 
 It will endure as long as Andalusia, for to 
 such shreds as are left of their earlier en- 
 chantments — among which must be classed 
 the sports of " San Anton " — the Spaniards 
 cling with peculiar and praiseworthy stead- 
 fastness. 
 
 X. 
 
 HOW subtile and fleeting are the charms 
 of those abstract things, a square and a 
 street, when you come to write about them ! 
 1 cannot attribute the quality of bad taste to 
 the numerous travelers who call Seville an 
 uninteresting desert ; the city is a quiet plain, 
 with a wonderful cathedral and a lofty tower 
 to accentuate its general flatness. It makes 
 no more lasting impression on the brain of a 
 rapid traveler than does the landscape on 
 the headlight of a locomotive. To us, how- 
 ever, who lingered away the winter in Seville, 
 her cathedral and Giralda soon lost their 
 prominence, while corners and triangles of 
 streets, quaint unpretentious dwellings, little 
 squares, frowned upon by monotonous walls, 
 grew dear to our hearts almost like features 
 of home, and became our Seville. 
 
 11 
 
 / 
 
ii8 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Of the squares, a plaza behind the cathe- 
 dral, shut in by the Alcazar and the arch- 
 bishop's palace, made a delightful lounging 
 place on warm mornings. It had no attrac- 
 tions in itself ; a three-cornered piece of sandy 
 grass, under fortress walls, with trees set in 
 regular rows, that grew feebly, like Protest- 
 ants in a Roman Catholic country. Hard 
 benches without backs foi:med a sort of fence 
 on the three sides of the plaza that was gen- 
 erally destitute of human figures. But it 
 counted one constant friend, an old fruit 
 woman, who kept her stall there, and it could 
 confidently expect to see, some time during 
 the day, a priest in rusty soutane and wide 
 three-cornered hat, who took his exercise 
 within its boundaries. Beggars and guitar 
 players never came to this plaza, but on 
 Sundays and feast days a modest movable 
 stall was set up directly beneath the flying 
 buttress of the cathedral. A thin, old man, 
 who ought to h^ve been a hermit, kept it, 
 and sold his wares, or offered them for sale, 
 to the worshippers who strayed from the 
 grand portal and the orange garden. These 
 wares were waxen images and tapers, pict- 
 ures of saints, rosaries, crucifixes ; all the 
 religious objects used for funeral ceremonies, 
 as well as waxen arms, legs, eyes, ears, and 
 babies, for offerings at the shrine of a popular 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 119 
 
 ^aint for the recovery of a person or an 
 afflicted member of the body. A friendly 
 understanding existed between_this old man 
 and the fruit aunty. When business was 
 more than commonly dull he went over to 
 her stall and grumbled at the malevolence of 
 his rivals in trade, the old woman at the 
 church doors who had driven him away from 
 that coveted stand, and, when his breath 
 gave out, she would begin to vituperate in 
 
 her turn. 
 
 On ordinary days, as I have said, the old 
 woman alone shared the plaza with us. She 
 was always there in the daytime, and I think 
 she slept under her bit of awning. It must 
 have been the charm of the place that held 
 her there, and not the love of gain, for if she 
 sells oranges and mixes sugary drinks in that 
 plaza to the end of time (and I suppose she 
 will do so to the end of her time) the profit 
 can hardly keep her out of the almshouse. 
 In the season, that is, in April and May, she 
 makes considerable hay while the sun of 
 English tourists shines. The thirsty Inglesas, 
 she told us with a chuckle, run out of the 
 Alcazar straight into her arms. 
 
 The Alcazar made no such dry impression 
 on us, though we visited it on days warmer 
 than the New England June. The halls of 
 the old Moorish palace offered a better imita- 
 
 
 if 
 
•***"''(*■ i 
 
 I20 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 121 
 
 tion of winter than all the rest of Seville^s 
 buildings combined, and its vaults, which 
 some one has called the pantheon of Maria 
 Padilla, were unpleasantly moist and cold. 
 The gardeners in attendance never seemed 
 to remember that we had been there before, 
 and when we returned from a ramble in the 
 formally lovely gardens, they were sure to 
 sprinkle us with water by means of an in- 
 fernal contrivance beneath the pavement, that 
 has played its practical joke on royal' and 
 other famous shoes. Then they met us at 
 the exit, hat off and Spanish grin on, in ex- 
 pectation of a peseta. So we always came 
 back to the plaza out of humor with oranges 
 and sugared water, or any sort of liquid 
 refreshment. 
 
 This tiny plaza occupies the cardiac situa- 
 tion, with reference to the other members of 
 Seville's corporation, being encompassed by 
 the Lonja, her belly of trade ; the cathedral, 
 her brain; the Giralda, her right arm, and 
 the two streets which join here— one march- 
 ing north through the city and the other 
 across the Guadalquivir to the suburbs— her 
 legs. Like a- heart, it pumps the flood of 
 life over the city, and recovers the waste 
 again from these members, and no less like a 
 heart that it beats silently. The calm brood- 
 ing over this neighborhood is not the still- 
 
 ness of death. The portal of the archbishop's 
 palace is sometimes quick with dispersing 
 priests. The Alcazar walls lose on familiar- 
 ity their first resemblance to those of Bal- 
 clutha, and the counting room of the Lonja 
 seems but to be sleeping an enchanted sleep, 
 from which it will wake up to be the centre 
 of busy interests, and to throb again with the 
 ''quick pulse of gain." I know not how this 
 impression of suspended vitality was con- 
 veyed by the dormant plaza, unless the 
 extravagant tales related of its teeming life 
 in the Holy Week had something to do with 
 it. A part of the charm lay there ; if it had 
 been dead past waking we would have 
 shunned the place. But we gazed upon the 
 plaza as on the face of a sleeping child, con-^ 
 tent to imagine how it would look with its 
 eyes open, and we let it sleep on. 
 
 To the charm of the purlieus of the cathe- 
 dral that my pen has no power to describe, 
 a great delight was added by the color which 
 washed the whole, rich, old yellow ; painful 
 to the eyes in the sun, but deliciouslv sooth- 
 ing in the shade. Above this tapestry border 
 the cathedral towered, a mass of heavy walls 
 springing to parapets, castellated towers, 
 pinnacles, and spires, all moulded, as it were, 
 out of a Gargantuan cake of chocolate. To 
 the amateur's kindling eye, this jumble of 
 
122 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 confusing forms, this jaundiced construction 
 of incongruous details, which are nearly' the 
 words which architects use to damn Seville 
 with, stands a wonderful, mysterious drama 
 in stone which Time has taken in hand and 
 collaborated with the builder to preserve the 
 unities. This lovely brown casket conspired, 
 with the sun, to keep us outside in idle ad- 
 miration, as if both feared that the gem 
 inside, by its superior richness, would shut 
 our eyes to the exterior picture and quench 
 our shadows forever in its eternal shade. 
 
 And, in truth, a spell more potent urged 
 us when we finally broke the other and 
 entered the cathedral, a spell that works 
 across leagues of land and water, and would 
 make one write an incoherent and hysterical 
 description. The cathedrals we had already 
 seen failed to prepare us for Seville. To 
 name one Gothic cathedral of Europe sets 
 the names of the others echoing, and I can- 
 not call up one without being lost in a pro- 
 cession. But the cathedral of Seville is not 
 included. It stands alone. It shoots higher 
 than its mediaeval fellows ; it covers a wider, 
 a deeper, and an isolated area of memory. 
 
 The thought of its isolation was present 
 while yet we were walking in Seville's aisles. 
 The cathedrals of Milan and Toledo lost, 
 with every visit, some of the atmosphere of 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 123 
 
 awe which at first enveloped them. Although 
 painfully conscious that nine parts of their 
 meaning were Greek to us, we yet came to 
 speak of them familiarly, and to appraise 
 their value in the horribly earthly spirit of 
 comparison. Like partisans, we took sides 
 in front of their very altars, and defended 
 with heat whatever belonged particularly to 
 each. Familiarity with them had made of 
 us priests to whom there remained no mys- 
 teries. Within the walls of Seville we felt like 
 humble worshippers. Those other churches 
 we felt we had bought with the fees to the 
 sacristan, and we walked carelessly, even a 
 little irreverently, about our own. The dim, 
 rich vastness of Seville, from the curtain at 
 the door to the recess of the high altar, was 
 all a Holy of Holies. 
 
 The spell was not broken when we began 
 to walk about, examining by parts, because, 
 owing to oversight or laziness on the part of 
 the vergers, we were left alone to discover 
 for ourselves the genius of the place. To 
 gaze along the middle aisle, that infinitely 
 receded; to gaze aloft into the octagonal 
 dome, that hung nearer heaven than earth : 
 to take the lateral aisles, chapel by chapel, • 
 and linger in each as long as one wished, 
 without being advised of something better 
 worth looking at farther on ; to pore over 
 
 
 ¥: 
 
124 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 125 
 
 the rich marbles of the choir and the carvings 
 of the throne, just as one might look over an 
 illuminated missal ; to look at the pictures in 
 the same spirit, without saying that one was 
 good and the other bad : in brief, to see 
 without criticising, to enjoy without judging 
 — how delightful all this was ! 
 
 But it was one of the pictures that brought 
 down my soaring spirit. I had been looking 
 at them with simple wonder, like a child who 
 believed that they were portraits of saints, 
 and not of models more or less spiritualized 
 by poor diet. I had given a child's credence 
 to the stories told of '' The Descent from the 
 Cross," a picture by Campana in the vestry 
 of the sacristy ; that it had frightened 
 Pacheco in the dusk, and that Murillo had 
 often stood before it, waiting until Joseph 
 and his companions should finish taking 
 down the Saviour. I believed every word 
 of these tales just as 1 believe the modern 
 history of the destruction of the picture by 
 Soult's soldiers and its restoration. But I 
 came out of wonderland when we went to 
 see Murillo's " San Antonio," which has had 
 a history almost as eventful. The figure of 
 the saint was cut out, carried to New York, 
 and offered for sale in the year 1874. The 
 gashes of the thief's knife, though jomed by 
 skillful stitches, are still visible. As I looked 
 
 at them, I reqiembered that ours is an age 
 where child-like simplicity stands a very 
 poor show. 
 
 In the centre aisle, directly opposite the 
 chapel where this Murillo hangs, stands the 
 memorial stone of Ferdinand Columbus, the 
 great son of a greater father, and, as a sort 
 of compatriot, deserving of more melancholy 
 emotion than we were able to accord him. 
 Try as we might, we could not forget that 
 he had been dead a number of centuries, and 
 our grief was less than lukewarm. For the 
 others, who have tombs, mortuary chapels, 
 statues, or slabs, we could not affect a decent 
 degree of interest ; the people commemorated 
 by these symbols being principally arch- 
 bishops and their auxiliaries, who had ruled 
 the chapter, and had ruled it well, according 
 to their epitaphs. We passed on, paraphras- 
 ing the question Charles Lamb asked when 
 a boy, rambling through a churchyard, 
 ** Where lie the dignitaries who ruled it ill ? " 
 More time would undoubtedly be spent in 
 spelling out their forgotten names, if it were 
 not for the chapel behind the high altar, 
 which concentrates the mortuary interest of 
 the cathedral. This sepulchral chapel, almost 
 a church by itself, is a fifteenth century addi- 
 tion to the pile, and most of the royalties 
 who had in their hves any good or evil to do 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
126 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 to Seville are buried or have memorials here. 
 Yet have the chapel gates opened to receive 
 the bodies of some not royal, among whom 
 is Maria de Padilla, the gentle and lovely, or 
 vindictive and blood-thirsty, according as 
 one is for or against that unhappy lady, 
 doomed to extend her enemies and lovers 
 beyond the grave. More solemn than any 
 cemetery lying open to the sun is this vast 
 charnel house, where the dead— many in 
 open coffins -seem actually to have burst 
 their cerements, and come forth to mop and 
 mow in each other's faces, to carry on quar- 
 rels that have arisen over which shall take 
 precedence at the table of Death. A dim, 
 foreboding gloom, not so much darkness as 
 privation of light, creeps from the church 
 over the pinnacles of the high altar, and 
 gives birth to these grotesque ideas. No 
 doubt St. Ferdinand lies perfectly quiet, as 
 he is said to lie perfectly preserved in 'his 
 silver coffin ; no doubt his son Alonzo has 
 lost interest in metaphysics ; no doubt Blanca 
 has given over his glib sophistry ; Padilla 
 her tears, and all the company resigned 
 themselves to their situation and to each 
 other. No doubt— but when, as we stood 
 by the railing to depart, a spent ray struck 
 the spun gold hair of the Virgin de los Reyes, 
 endowing it with the appearance of life, we 
 
 127 
 
 " 
 
 hurried away, without looking back, for fear 
 we should see the kings beneath the recum- 
 bent marbles, in the exposed coffins, rise and 
 exert a horrid ability to return to earth. 
 
 XI. 
 
 WE had never been windfalls in the pre- 
 carious fortunes of the guides of 
 Seville. We did not need them to direct 
 our trips that had no particular destination, 
 but always landed us in some interesting 
 quarter. In fact, it seemed that we took 
 more pleasure in losing ourselves than we 
 would have gained from well designed ex- 
 cursions. Our pride at getting around with- 
 out them went before a fall one day, when 
 such a catastrophe seemed less than ever 
 probable. On this day we had gone to cast 
 a final distinction between the beautiful pict- 
 ures by Murillo, and the ugly, suppressed 
 convent in which they are so badly housed. 
 When we came out, the Plaza del Museo, 
 with Murillo's statue in the center, lay before 
 us, as we expected, but the Calle de las 
 Armas, which leads in a straight line to the 
 great thoroughfare of Seville, seemed to 
 have sunk into the earth. Where was it? 
 
 Y. 
 
128 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Where it ought to have opened we could 
 find only a narrow lane between high white 
 walls, that was blocked by another wall, after 
 it had run a few yards in the direction of the 
 city. Returning to the Plaza, we said it was 
 beneath our dignity to ask the way, and we 
 plunged at random into a street on the 
 opposite side. That little street branched 
 and subdivided into a net-work of alleys and 
 passages, among which we wandered for 
 hours, never, apparently, getting nearer to 
 the city proper, but catching glimpses of a 
 people and a mode of life that were compara- 
 tively new to our Sevillian observation. 
 
 Heaven knows we had no need to explore 
 this quarter to appreciate Sevillian poverty. 
 /The poor are all over Seville, and their 
 wretchedness is in the very air. Yet the 
 vhot, dry sun makes picturesque objects of 
 the loathsomest cripple and the filthiest beg- 
 gar, and the visitor comes to regard them as 
 the shadows of the oicture necessary to set 
 off its high lights. An artistic crust forms 
 over his sympathy ; he admires them as an 
 artist might, and forgets to put his hand in 
 his pocket. In the rich architectural dis- 
 tricts, the church portals and public squares, 
 the beggars, abetted by their surroundings, 
 seem like models, to whom the traveler gives 
 not alms, but a fee. Most of these beggars 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 129 
 
 
 gain a fictitious cheerfulness from the environ- 
 ment. Some have an imp of wit that hunger 
 cannot entirely dispel, and few of them can 
 divest themselves of the national dignity, so 
 absurdly out of keeping with dirt and rags. 
 In the stifled quarter where we now found 
 •ourselves it was sadly different. There, 
 poverty had no mock dignity, no bitter jest, 
 only frowns and curses. There, want, with- 
 out a smile, surrendered itself to starvation. 
 It had been warm and sunny in the Plaza, 
 but in these avenues of adversity, though 
 there was heat, indeed, it w^as the heat of 
 fever, and the chill of pinching need con- 
 tended with it. 
 
 The streets we were traversing wxre very 
 narrow, so that the houses though no higher 
 than barracks, were yet high enough to cast 
 intermingling shadows, and keep the broken 
 pavement always in the dark. For the same 
 reason, filth and offal piled up in heaps before 
 the grimy doorways, lingered damp and 
 €vil, never being exposed to the direct rays 
 of the sun. The windows of the houses, 
 mere square holes cut in the walls, likewise 
 held each its rotting burden of old rags, 
 decaying vegetables, broken pots and ves- 
 sels. From this mass a greasy distillation 
 oozed down the whitewashed wall, which 
 absorbed it before it reached the ground. 
 
 I: 
 
13© 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 The first floor of these grimy huts appeared 
 to be divided into two cells, one of inner 
 darkness which the eye could not penetrate, 
 and the other, dimly lighted, that seemed^ 
 in every instance, to be used as a workshop. 
 The bench and tools were there, but rarely 
 a workman. Shops of every kind were 
 represented in these streets, squalid copies 
 of those of the Sierpes; linen drapers, indi- 
 cated by scarfs of vulgar hue, dangling in 
 the wind, and dingy fringed towels hung up 
 in the casement. There were fuel shops that 
 sold small paper bags of carbon, and bun- 
 dles of wood, three inches in diameter, and 
 scarcely an inch thick ; provision shops, with 
 dirty windows, displaying cheese, fish cooked 
 in oil, a measure of Spanish beans, and a 
 handful of eggs, that ought long ago to have 
 been chickens. There was — it seems incredi- 
 ble — a jeweler's establishment, and on one 
 corner a cafe boasted green doorposts and 
 three windows. Humbler places of refresh- 
 ment were frequent. Except these, where 
 men and women w^ere lounging in sullen 
 companionship in and out of the doors, none 
 of the shops seemed to have customers. The 
 few purchasers we saw were haggling with 
 the hucksters of the paving stones. All 
 down the street women had spread mats to 
 hold beans, oranges, loaves of bread, shaped 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 131 
 
 like Roman lamps, and tiny squares of choco- 
 late, and the pedestrian was forced to pay 
 close attention to his feet for fear of treading^ 
 upon something edible. 
 
 By the multitude of these trafficking women 
 the houses might be supposed to have emp- 
 tied their inhabitants in the street, had not 
 the windows, almost without exception, dis- 
 played an animate bundle of rags above that 
 inanimate heap before remarked. These 
 were women who peered down at the strang- 
 ers through suspicious black eyes, and inter- 
 changed uncomplimentary remarks about 
 them with their business sisters. The women 
 at the windows seemed to be the aristocrats 
 of this quarter ; their grade being denoted 
 by their finding time to do something for 
 themselves. The nature of the work did not 
 invariably exile them to their own interiors ; 
 they could prepare a simple puchero against 
 their husband's return, or carry the invading 
 comb into the tangled tresses of their chil- 
 dren, in the full glare of publicity. Especially 
 when she was occupied in the latter duty, 
 did the female aristocrat draw around her 
 quite a little court of women. Children col- 
 lected also, but they rame to enjoy the 
 screams and wrv faces of the victim. From, 
 these employnfients the strangers were an 
 attraction powerful enough to call away the 
 
 > 
 
 1. 
 
132 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 women, and to draw off the children. They 
 gazed after us with sharp eyes and open 
 mouths, and on our venturing to stop and 
 put a question about the way, or making as 
 if to enter a hovel, they drove us onward 
 with prodigious vituperation. The men, on 
 the other hand, displayed a certain surly 
 politeness, so that when we grew tired of 
 wandering up and down this miserable quar- 
 ter, we applied for a guide among the male 
 inhabitants to conduct us back to the light. 
 Our choice, though made at random from a 
 knot of idlers in front of a wine-shop, turned 
 out to be a happy one; Christiano, or 
 Christianito, as he said he preferred to be 
 called, making good his promise to t^ke us 
 algima parte, anywhere, and entertain us on 
 the way with a full recital of his family 
 history. 
 
 Christianito was a man of about forty, tall 
 and thin, with a dryly humorous face of a 
 dark and unnatural color. He wore on his 
 head the gorro grande, large cap, which he 
 removed at every street corner to gesticulate 
 with, and lend vivacity to his explanation, 
 that if we would take the trouble to go a 
 very little way in this direction, and then 
 give a vueltacita, a very little turn, we would 
 have evidence ol his surpassing ability as a 
 guide. He said, and he evidently believed. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 ^11 
 
 that we had been providentially led to him 
 that afternoon, for having started out in the 
 morning with money entrusted to him for a 
 certain purpose by his wife, he had the mis- 
 fortune to lose it, and at the very moment 
 we accosted him he was racking his brains 
 for some means to replace it, or, failing in 
 that, to offer his Catujita (his little Kate) an 
 acceptable excuse. When we asked Chris- 
 tianito what he did for a living, he replied 
 that his wife took in sewing in which he 
 sometimes assisted her ; but he frankly con- 
 fessed that he could not bear to work in a 
 fashion so unbecoming a man. But as he 
 had not been brought up to any profession, 
 and not h^in^jorobado (hunchbacked), could 
 not beg, he was forced to stifle his ambition. 
 In response to a delicate question, Chris- 
 tianito told us that his Kate was a master- 
 piece of nature, well shaped, neither too tall 
 nor too short, and well stocked with wit. 
 She was a great comfort to him, and he had 
 never regretted his choice ; yet he found in 
 Catujita one great defect. What is that 
 defect? "Jealousy," replied Christianito, 
 gravely, ** it goes on worse and worse. 
 Twice in the last month she turned me out 
 of doors {en la calk),'' 
 
 The walk home occupied the best part of 
 an hour, and we suspected that our guide. 
 
 r 
 
«M 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 calculating that the fee would increase in 
 proportion to the length and the difficulty of 
 the way, took us by a circuitous route. But 
 he diverted suspicion by his conversation. 
 Christianito was an admirable talker — an 
 accomplishment rarely found in Spaniards 
 of his, or, indeed, of any class — quick, piquant, 
 entertaining, often witty, and exposing can- 
 didly all of an illiterate man's various and 
 changeable views and impressions. He was 
 very curious to know what had brought us 
 to Seville from that far distant part of Spain, 
 America, and our pronunciation of the Span- 
 ish language, which he took to be the dialect 
 of that remote province, amused him very 
 much. In return for answering his ques- 
 tions we asked him many with reference to 
 life in the unclean quarter where we dis- 
 covered him. But on this point Christianito 
 was non-committal. He shrugged his should- 
 ers. Perhaps the quarter was unhealthy, 
 and the inhabitants not so rich as an arch- 
 bishop ; but what would you have ? People are 
 born into the world with a certain lot, riches 
 or poverty, and the best course they can 
 adopt is to accept it patiently. Grumbling 
 mends no bones. 
 
 Thus, our guide was a philosopher and not 
 a reformer. We were glad to take him as he 
 was, his cheerful conversation acting like a 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 135 
 
 tonic on our spirits depressed by the grim 
 region we had quitted. Turning into a 
 familiar street we reluctantly dismissed 
 Christianito. He had been a merry quip at 
 the end of a miserable chapter. 
 
 Like most tonics, Christianito was suc- 
 ceeded by a deeper fit of depression than the 
 one he had banished. The cemetery of 
 Seville helped us to get rid of it. After that 
 hurried walk in the cemetery of the living, a 
 stroll in the cemetery of the dead seemed 
 less awful. It even comforted us a little. 
 Yet the cemetery of San Sebastian, spread 
 on the plain to the north of the city, may not 
 be said, except by comparison, to awaken 
 any but sad and sombre thoughts. It is a 
 dismal place, without the natural beauty of 
 Greenwood, or the studied sentiment of Pere 
 la Chaise. Neither nature nor art take the 
 time to beautify this necropolis, which re- 
 sembles a city deserted by its builders im- 
 mediately after they had laid the foundations 
 of their dwellings. Plague, pestilence, or 
 some other evil thing, seemed to have fright- 
 ened men from raising a superstructure. It 
 is an artificial Pompeii, only the cinders are 
 carefully and reverently brought there, in- 
 stead of being carted away. The dead are 
 laid above ground, in niches cut out of these 
 foundations, in rows, one above the other, to 
 
 
 K 
 
136 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 137 
 
 I 
 
 the height of six recumbent men. This 
 method brings down with crushing weight 
 on the head of the solitary visitor the sense 
 of his own mortality. He cannot conceal 
 from himself that his case is desperate. It 
 is six to one. 
 
 We walked deep among the dead for a 
 half hour, reading the inscriptions over the 
 niches, that in each case sets forth the piety 
 of the enclosed, accompanied by a sentiment 
 concerning death, drawn from some Spanish 
 writer, and confirming our first impression, 
 that Seville possesses no more originality in 
 epitaphs than other cities. These inscrip. 
 tions are at the same time permanent and 
 temporary. The sentiment, as it is imper- 
 sonal, is engraved on the stone itself, but the 
 name of the dead man, with the exposition of 
 his virtues, is printed on a detachable plate- 
 Death's door-plate— which can be removed 
 when his lease expires, or sooner, if he fails 
 to pay the rent. 
 
 Just within the gate are the offices of the 
 cemetery. These had that heartless, cold 
 air, peculiar to places as well as to people, 
 which see too much grief to be touched by 
 it. Near by is the chamber where the dead 
 person, in a coffin closed with hasps like a 
 fiddle case, passes his first twenty-four hours 
 as a cemetery citizen— that 'being the time 
 
 required by Spanish law to be certain he is 
 dead. The same time serves for the work- 
 men to empty a niche of the bones of his pred- 
 ecessor, and prepare it for his reception. By 
 the gate, also, stands a chapel, in which a 
 little wax figure of a man, with flames around 
 him, the effigy of a soul in purgatory, begs a 
 contribution for its relief. All these build- 
 ings are against the wall of the cemetery, and 
 between them and the first block of niches 
 runs a paseo, broad and sandy, with a narrow 
 strip of grass and a row of discouraged trees 
 on either side. Here on Sundays, especially 
 in winter, when there are no bull fights, come 
 hundreds of Sevillians of both sexes, ostensi- 
 bly to pay their respects to deceased 
 relatives, but really to gossip and quarrel 
 with friends and relatives who are living. 
 
 After seeing that cemetery, I think most 
 people will be content with life, however 
 irremediable its evils seem to them, and there 
 can be no doubt they will cheerfully endure 
 it for a period long enough to ensure them 
 against burial there. We departed from 
 San Sebastian with hearts so full of gratitude 
 as to have enriched all the beggars of Seville, 
 if we could have carried it back without 
 spilling. But in the walk across the plain, 
 we came to what we took for the site of the 
 Quemadcro, the platform on which Valdez 
 
 i i 
 
 . 1 
 
 
 £ 
 
i 
 
 138 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 piled his fagots, and there we paused and 
 poured out the precious ointment of our joy 
 in living on a thing quite as abstract— the 
 century in which we lived. We felt pro- 
 foundly thankful that human bonfires are not 
 a fashion of our day. 
 
 It was not easy to call up the scenes, 
 painted in black and red, that this platform — 
 if it were the platform of the Quemadero— 
 witnessed in that fiery epoch. It was not 
 easy to fill the empty plain with the multi- 
 tude, and the platform with the great per- 
 sonages of the Church and Seville, but we 
 did our best under the circumstances, and 
 later on we made up the deficiency of apt 
 reflection we deplored in the morning by 
 reading Murray's Hand-book. 
 
 Far easier had I found it at home, where 
 that hand-book was a nausea, to imagine the 
 mito-da-fe, than on the spot where the flame 
 lighted up the Inquisitor's horrid smile. 
 
 I do not know how far the reader cares to 
 go in execrating Valdez, Archbishop of 
 Seville, and it may be enough to say, that to 
 this day the people of the city, who are 
 modern otherwise in their choice of syn- 
 onyms, use for the symbol of cruelty the 
 name of that remorseless priest. As Inquisi- 
 tor-general he compelled even cardinals to 
 bend their haughty crests in suit for mercy, 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 139 
 
 and the people of Seville, indeed, all Spain, 
 were like one neck beneath the axe which 
 he wielded by the vast irresponsible and ill- 
 defined powers vested in him as the head of 
 the Holy Office. In a single year after 
 Valdez had grasped the banner of the 
 tribunal, he had so crowded the prisons of 
 the country, from Valladolid to Seville, that 
 in order to make room for the victims daily 
 caught by his familiars, he was forced to set 
 fire to the fagots in the northern and south- 
 ern capitals. 
 
 Then it was that the Sevillians had pro- 
 vided for them an entertainment that dwarfed 
 the fights of the bull-ring into mere pin-prick- 
 ing. The populace abandoned to solitude 
 the Plaza de Toros, and streamed out of the 
 northern gate to the plain of San Sebastian. 
 Princes, dukes and grand families rode forth 
 with their children, and took their places on 
 canopied balconies erected around the plat- 
 form of fire. When all was ready, and the 
 Inquisitor had taken his place, the prisoners 
 began their march through the lists, buffeted 
 and jeered by the spectators, not from hate, 
 but because they dreaded the tyrant's suspi- 
 cious eye. First came the penitents, who 
 were to be reprimanded and set free, as the 
 black gowns they wore denoted. Next, the 
 victims who were to suffer fine and imprison- 
 
 » ii 
 
 i ^ 
 
1^ 
 
 I 
 
 140 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 ment ; their garments were painted with 
 downward pointing flames. In gowns paint- 
 ed with flames darting upward, walked, with 
 feeble steps, the poor creatures whose bodies 
 were to be burned for the salvation of their 
 souls. These halted in front of the plat- 
 form, beneath the Inquisitor, while the oth- 
 ers stood on either side. A sermon was then 
 delivered by one of the archbishop's clergy, 
 and at its conclusion a crier called over the 
 names and crimes of the accused, following 
 each man's name with the sentence which 
 had been passed upon him. The sentences 
 of death were straightway carried into exe- 
 cution. One by one, strong men, who defied 
 the tyrant to the last; delicate women, who 
 shrieked as the inquisitors laid hold of them ; 
 all were taken up and bound in the midst of 
 a pile of fagots, the torch was applied, the 
 fire crept up, and — 
 
 And — but what is the sequence to the 
 account of these unintelligible horrors ? I can 
 think of but one, and that a non seqiiitur. It 
 is pleasant to reflect that a priest in Spain to- 
 day exerts but a personal influence. Like 
 other men, he stands or falls according as he 
 is possessed of human virtues or failings. 
 
 m 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 141 
 
 XII. 
 
 SPRING was coming. Signs were abroad 
 which even northern eyes could read. 
 The orange trees were beginning to look 
 more yellow than green as the fruit out- 
 numbered the leaves ; the fronds of the palms 
 waved with more queenly grace as they ap- 
 proached in size the fan of Cleopatra. There 
 were days of rain when the air struck cold 
 and damp to the bones, alternated with clear 
 days when the sun shone as if it were already 
 June. On these days the sky no longer 
 wore, as it had done in the past months, the 
 look of a China blue eye, but gazed down 
 upon us through orbs of a milder, yet deeper, 
 a lovelier blue. It was time to show our 
 ingratitude to Seville, the city that had 
 sheltered us so well, to escape from it as 
 from a prison, taking the key of the fields. 
 
 The unrest peculiar to spring spread to 
 our fellow-boarders— the priests— manifest- 
 ing itself by certain twitchings of their robes 
 to which there is no season, neither summer 
 nor winter, by a minute but appreciable 
 change in the angle of their tri-corners, and 
 they weVe not unwilling to make a visit to 
 the old convent of San Isidoro at Italica, 
 
 ,/ 
 
Ii 
 
 142 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 their excuse for joining us in a dia de campo, 
 a day in the country. 
 
 Early one morning we set forth mounted 
 on asses, crossed the iron bridge and clat- 
 tered through Triana, greeted by as many of 
 the inhabitants as were sober and stirring, 
 with more respect, owing to the priestly 
 convoy, than we were accustomed to from 
 the surly natives, and with less mockery in 
 the customary salutation of which they used 
 the longer form; Que no haya novedad f. Voya 
 tistedcs con Dios / And turning to the right 
 along an excellent road we soon had a 
 distant view of the sequestrated convent 
 Cartuja. 
 
 At the donkey rate of travel some time 
 
 must elapse before we reached the convent, 
 
 but we did not wish to hurry. The morning 
 
 was lovely ; the broken hedges on either side 
 
 of the road exhibited the cactus in every 
 
 stage of growth and in ^^^^ry variety of the 
 
 green color; the young olive orchards 
 
 sparkled with dew ; and, moreover, we were 
 
 forever turning back to catch Seville's white 
 
 houses in the act, as it seemed, of hastening 
 
 towards the cathedral, where the town is 
 
 densest, to say matins. We passed now and 
 
 then the high white wall of a farm house or 
 
 country estate, and here and there we looked 
 
 in through the open door at the squalor of a 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 143 
 
 cottage or posada, but we met few travelers 
 either on foot or mule-back, and this environ 
 of Seville seemed to be thinly settled. 
 
 It was the more startling, therefore, during 
 this silent ride, to turn a bend in the road 
 and fall suddenly upon a manufactory in full 
 blast ; the whirring of potters' wheels drown- 
 ing the songs of the birds, for the convent 
 dedicated to Our Lady of Las Cuevas is now 
 used for turning out ceramics. It is in the 
 hands of English capitalists who copy the 
 patterns of antique Hispano-Moresque lustre 
 to decorate modern money-breeding wares. 
 The noble church is used for the workshop, 
 and only the chapel remains intact. We 
 lingered an agreeable hour there, examining 
 the sculptures in niches and the carvings of 
 the coro, but the robed portion of our party 
 manifested entire indifference to these things, 
 while they studied with almost childish 
 curiosity the wheels, tools, truss, and every 
 thing in the church workshop. When we 
 had mounted once more, and were following 
 up the Guadalquivir towards Italica, a secu- 
 lar member of the party inquired of a grave 
 father if the sight of the convent so misused 
 was not distressing. His reply seemed curi- 
 ous : ** Why should it distress any one? " he 
 returned. '"It is answering a need of the 
 times. Had they shut it up and left it to 
 
 f 
 
 1^ 
 
144 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 decay one might reasonably grieve ; silence 
 can never take the place of truth, but honest 
 labor partly may." 
 
 The village of Santi Ponce, which is the 
 modern name of old Italica, lay about four 
 miles further on, and the road thither, as 
 well as the country on both banks of the 
 Guadalquivir was uninteresting, or would 
 have seemed so any other day but this — our 
 first without the walls. At the convent of 
 San Isidoro we dismounted, and the priests 
 remained in the church while we went on 
 foot to the village. Santi Ponce, built on 
 the site of Italica, is a miserable collection of 
 hovels whitewashed to the foundation, where 
 there is a strong unpleasant juxtaposition of 
 colors, the white wall and the black unpaved 
 street. There were few inhabitants in siorht, 
 an old woman or two leaning over the lower 
 half of a door cut in the Flemish fashion, and 
 near the Casino a group of men loutish and 
 ill-favored. We saw no children, but in 
 traversing the hamlet we heard several, and 
 were relieved of the fear of the extinction of 
 this place, lowest in the order of villages. 
 Santi Ponce occupies but one of the seven 
 small hills — the other six have gone to loam 
 and garbage — upon which, like Rome, once 
 stood Italica, a city of wealth and culture 
 under the Roman domination. Scipio Afri- 
 
 J 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 145 
 
 canus founded this town as a retreat for his 
 veterans, and its rapid growth must have 
 surprised him, while it filled his pockets, if, 
 as in modern times, the founder reserved all 
 the corner lots. Italica gave birth to three 
 Roman emperors: Trajan, Hadrian and The- 
 odosius. Under Hadrian it became a Roman 
 subject, and some of the overplus of deco- 
 ration with which he crowded Rome he 
 permitted to remain here to awaken in the 
 savage minds of the Iberians respect for his 
 authority and veneration for his self-asserted 
 divinity. For a time Seville was left far 
 behind in wealth and population, but the 
 pride of Italica went before a drouth. Its 
 ruin dates from the change in the course of 
 the Guadalquivir, which now finds its way 
 many miles to the left, though' formerly it 
 bathed the walls of Italica. The ancient bed 
 of the river is still discernible, and booths 
 are erected there during the annual flicker 
 of animation in Italica's ashes, the Fair of 
 Santi Ponce. 
 
 Italica's period of greatest prosperity was 
 under the rule of the Moors, who named the 
 city Ishbil the Old, in distinction from Se- 
 ville, but after the river had spoiled the land, 
 they quickly surrendered it to desolation, a 
 more faithful master that has relinquished 
 nothing except the stones of the amphithea- 
 
 M 
 
 A 
 
 ]('■ 
 
*''«»^S!»S1«5B«»f4'^:s^&. - 
 
 146 
 
 IN SEVILLE.. 
 
 tre, and even those had to be taken by force. 
 Some still remain in its grasp, and the circu- 
 lar sweep is still to be distinctly traced be- 
 tween two hills. Different accounts are 
 given of the disposition of the stone of the 
 benches, and the facings of hewn stone of 
 which this Spanish coliseum was constructed, 
 and it is probable that each account is true. 
 Guzman the Good quarried some to build 
 the convent of San Isidoro, where he chose 
 to be buried, and the corporation of Seville,, 
 on two occasions, supplied themselves with 
 the antique seats ; once for river dykes, and 
 again, in 1774, to make a road to Badajos. 
 A few stones still turn an edge to the sun- 
 light, expectant of excavation, but more are 
 entirely buried, and their mounds and the 
 chasms whence their fellows were drawn, 
 the whole overgrown with brush and weeds,, 
 trace out the amphitheatre together. This 
 arena of Italica is as disappointing as most of 
 its contemporaries in variouspartsof the clas- 
 sical world, none of them lending any assist- 
 ance to the imagination when it seeks to call 
 up the exciting scenes we know each has 
 witnessed. 
 
 To us, wandering hap-hazard over the 
 mounds, came a young priest to announce 
 breakfast, and we accompanied him very 
 willingly to the convent, where, or rather in 
 
 1 'I 
 
 ^ 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 147 
 
 a bare little room off the chapel, a sort of 
 secular sacristy, a table had been laid. It 
 was spread with those wonderful dishes of 
 oil, tomatoes and eggs, with more than a 
 sprinkling of red pepper— such as the Span^ 
 ish love, of which the village padre had the 
 true receipt. Foreseeing our heretical taste,, 
 our priests helped out the repast by cold 
 chicken and a goodly provision of sausage,^ 
 they had seen packed before leaving the 
 Casa Carasa. We ate with appetites as 
 lusty as those of the gladiators who used to 
 refresh themselves near this very spot, after 
 they had returned from a bloody bout in the 
 arena. When these matters of life had been 
 attended to, we could think of those of death, 
 some notable names of people who are buried 
 in San Isidoro hurrying us in mind from 
 the first to the other dread extreme. Among 
 them lie Guzman and his wife, and that 
 beautiful martyr Dona Urraca Ozorio, burned 
 by Pedro the Cruel. Ferdinand Cortez first 
 found rest in peaceful San Isidoro, after his 
 troubled and glorious career had closed at 
 Castileja. His bones have been removed to 
 Mexico, but the spirit of the conqueror still 
 haunts the convent, where he was merely,, 
 so to speak, a casual guest, or a fieeting 
 tenant. 
 
 Returning to Seville by a different route,. 
 
 II 
 
 /> 
 
 '{ 
 
148 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 we were able to visit Castileja de la Cuesta, 
 where Cortez died, poor and unhonored. 
 Nothing impressed us there with the sense 
 that the shade of the mighty adventurer 
 revisits the spot where he spent his misera- 
 ble last years ; nothing spoke of his living 
 presence there ; no villager could point out 
 to us any of his haunts, nor the house in 
 which he died. Perhaps the dead enjoy in 
 a greater degree than the living the faculty 
 of forgetting the miseries they once endured, 
 and hover over only the places and people 
 that gave them pleasure in Ufe. I cannot 
 imagine any spirit getting pleasure out of 
 Castileja, or wishing to return there. Yet 
 from the little plaza on the summit of the 
 hill, the view one obtains of Seville, her 
 plains, and the Sierra Morena beyond, is 
 worth all the squalor and wretchedness one 
 must pass through, to get it. Paradise no 
 longer seems so beautiful since a belief in 
 Purgatory was pronounced to be superstition. 
 We did not linger there all the afternoon, 
 however, for the canon promised us a much 
 finer view farther on ; so, strongly opposed 
 by our donkeys, we mounted again, and 
 skirted Seville to the southwest, until we 
 came to a bluff, on the edge of which is situ- 
 ated the village of San Juan de Alfarache— 
 where a long line of ruinous wall and a 
 
 { ^ 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 149 
 
 shattered tower are all that remain of what 
 was once the Moorish river key of Seville. 
 At a quay at the foot of the hill, one can take 
 a boat back to the city, and as we started to 
 climb to the monastery for the view of San 
 Juan, a gay water party were just disem- 
 barking. We reached the church without 
 much effort. It is built on the brow of the 
 hill, and from the terrace in front the canon 
 pointed to the beautiful landscape open helow 
 us, with a pardonable expression of " I told 
 you so." 
 
 Really he had told us we should see the 
 most beautiful natural picture in all the 
 world, and he had not to be a Spaniard to 
 say so. There lay Seville spread in the 
 plain, like a lazy Sultana in her bath. All 
 white she seemed at first in the ardent rays 
 of the afternoon sun — but after a little, colors 
 grew out of the colorless scintillations. The 
 Moorish turrets sparkled like emeralds and 
 turquoises, and the high pink Giralda lifted 
 itself over all, like the massive, polished arm 
 of a beautiful Goth. The green and gold 
 plain extended behind the city to the horizon, 
 where it rose with a slight undulation like a 
 wave to touch the sky. Groves and planta- 
 tions, distant as well as near, were so clear 
 and distinct that we could almost count the 
 trees, and yet we could not make out the 
 
 /^ 
 
m 
 
 If I 
 
 ISO 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 city of Carmona where it was designated for 
 us, owing to that same African whiteness 
 which blends so well with the sun. 
 
 We crossed the village to descend,* and 
 were surprised to find what a povertystricken 
 place it was. Often in looking at it from 
 Seville we had admired that little group of 
 houses, hanging like a seagull on the edge of 
 the river. We had not the same misgiving 
 in regard to its perpetuity which we had felt 
 for Santi Ponce. There are swarms of chil- 
 dren in San Juan — swarthv, almost black 
 young ones, thin and nearly naked, that 
 remind one of a crowded nest of robins. Poor 
 as the people are they live in what looks like 
 a luxuriant paradise. The orange and olive 
 gardens which surround the village looked 
 more productive and abundant than those 
 we had passed in the morning. 
 
 The way back lay through an intervale 
 among lovely little hills. On both sides, and 
 extending to the summits, were line country 
 places, some with handsome summer houses, 
 the blinds of which were tightly drawn, in- 
 dicating that the time of migration from the 
 heat of Seville had not yet come. Many of 
 these places had ornamental gardens in front 
 of the houses, and avenues of palm trees 
 which led up from the gate-way. Mentally 
 resolving to obtain permission to visit one of 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 iSi 
 
 these deserted places, we crossed an immense 
 orange grove that stretched almost down to 
 the tide, and for the rest of the way back 
 to Triana we rarely lost sight of the swirling 
 torrent. 
 
 The sun had just set when we reached the 
 Triana bridge, and turned over our beasts to 
 the muleteers waiting there. While the rest 
 of the party hurried home we remained to 
 watch the passers-by. Two streams of peo- 
 ple meet here at this hour, the working men 
 and women of Triana, who earn their bread 
 in Seville, and the laborers pf that city who 
 work in the manufactories of Triana. Among 
 them were many beautiful women, with won- 
 derful eyes that flashed opalescent, and their 
 brilliant dresses and uncovered heads, each 
 with a carnation or rose, made a lively, 
 phantasmagoric procession. It was soon past, 
 and the warm, human darkness of southern 
 latitudes had fallen. 
 
 Shadows crouched blackest where the 
 houses of the Barrio of Triana came down to 
 the very edge of the river ; on the other bank, 
 white poplars behind a row of osiers swayed 
 in the gentle breeze like kindly ghosts, whose 
 pale silvery shrouds looked purple in the ob- 
 scurity. The green wall of verdure made 
 by the gardens of Las Delicias had grown 
 into a black, impenetrable mass, and only the 
 
 ./^ 
 
152 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 Great River, as it swept on its majestic 
 course, seemed, by the lights that gleamed 
 and died on its trembling surface like the 
 starts and exclamations of a troubled sleeper, 
 to remember there was such a thing as day. 
 Alarming but delicious was this sudden 
 change from turmoil to quiet. We heard 
 with regret the foot-fall of returning pedes- 
 trians, and the rattling of chains of a boat 
 about to leave the roadstead The boat 
 drifted away, the people glided past, and a 
 silence clear and deep, like that of the stars, 
 descended again. Now a dark shape — the 
 boating party— makes its way up stream. 
 The guitars, touched softly, give breath to 
 the quaint, Moorish sequidilla. The song 
 floats low like a perfume, and mingles frater- 
 nally with the perfume from the banks — 
 compounded of flowers, of fruits and the 
 spring-scent of the earth. It is the good- 
 night kiss of sleepy nature. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 153 
 
 XIII. 
 
 BY to-morrow the Duke of Montpensier 
 will have returned from Madrid and 
 closed the gates of his San Telmo garden 
 upon us. To-morrow those palms and oran- 
 ges, those walks and avenues will fade into 
 memories, dimly seen like the smile of a 
 woman at a bal-masque, behind the purple 
 silk of her domino. 
 
 To-morrow ! Ah, let us visit them again 
 to-day. 
 
 Never did that glorious garden of San 
 Telmo seem as luxuriantly beautiful as it did 
 when we went there for the last time, know- 
 ing that it was the last. When we entered 
 the garden, after passing through the large, 
 light and common-place suits of the palace (a 
 brick edifice in the Italian style, where the 
 emptyings of galleries are hung, and Ary 
 SchefTer is king) we received a sullen wel- 
 come. The walks, which conducted to the 
 avenue of the park, had scarcely left the trim 
 lawn under the palace windows, before wild 
 grass and creeping plants took them prison- 
 ers ; the trees were swathed with parasitic 
 vines up to their lowest branches, and the 
 avenue itself appeared to extend but a short 
 
 (I 
 
 /' 
 
 \( 
 
154 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 distance, and then to end in an inextricable 
 jungle. Nature had hung up a sign to warn 
 off trespassers. Nevertheless, we disobeyed 
 her. We climbed the rise of ground which 
 obstructs the avenue, and which, covered by 
 a bed of viscid leaves, gave the effect of a 
 solid wall of verdure, and we had our reward. 
 Beyond lay the garden, and we saw a land- 
 scape where art is natural and where nature 
 is artistic; where art has followed original 
 instincts, where nature is tended, and where 
 both have formed a garden that might be 
 likened to a room which is neat but not too 
 well kept. But that is a disproportionate 
 comparison, for in this oasis there is an intoxi- 
 cating mystery — a mystery that draws us on 
 like desire. 
 
 I do not know how many acres this garden 
 of San Telmo contains within .its walls. 
 They cannot be many, and with that vague 
 statement I am content. In truth, I should 
 be sorry to read an intelligent explanation 
 which would clear up the artifices of the 
 gardener; which would thread the labyrinth 
 of its walks and allees. Perhaps the wish to 
 keep San Telmo for a delightful torment be- 
 longs to the family of wire-drawn sentiments, 
 but I think otherwise. There is a reason for 
 it which love accepts if curiosity does not — 
 and to know who suffers from a conflict be- 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 155 
 
 tween love and curiosity, one has only to 
 read the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Who is 
 so impious as to question why the Creator of 
 the world set a stream to meander through a 
 particular valley ? Who thinks of Eden save 
 as a mysterious beauty ? 
 
 I hesitate to compare San Telmo to Eden, 
 where some serious, some worshipful influ- 
 ences surely breathed in the air. San Telmb 
 is not a serious garden, and from it, as from 
 Saracenic architecture, all solemnity and 
 aspiration are banished. Here Adam might 
 have been able to conquer his inclination to 
 prose, and Eve would have thought only of 
 putting flowers in her hair. 
 
 See yonder tall elm, trained to bend like a 
 poised scimitar over the path ; see that 
 knoll, composed of masses of intertwined blue 
 and yellow flowers. San Telmo is a Moorish 
 garden, and no race but the Moors would 
 have indulged such dainty feminine fancies. 
 
 It seemed to me— but that may have been 
 mere lack of observation— there were few 
 birds or winged insects, and little animal life 
 of any kind in this park, as if the Arabian 
 gardeners had wrested the precinct from 
 wildness to bend it to their Koran-ordained 
 ornamentation. The trees are not allowed 
 to grow naturally, except in the second rank 
 and in the thickets. Those bordering the 
 
 II 
 
 }t 
 
 j i 
 
 m 
 
 A 
 
156 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 walks possess no wild or common traits. 
 They follow, in the outspread of their bran- 
 ches, the decorous lines of stuccoed walls ; 
 elms join their highest hands in the arch ; 
 palms tower in the midst of flowering shrubs 
 like minarets over villages ; the low walls of 
 the bitter oranges, with their gleaming yel- 
 low fruit, constitute a broad base to sustain 
 the slender pillars and the acute angles of 
 the pines, laden with stalactites. Here we 
 walk through an enormous Hall of Ambassa- 
 dors, done in green and purple and picked 
 out in gold. 
 
 Is a conventional picture called up by these 
 words? San Telmo is not a conventional 
 garden. It may once have presented a close 
 copy of a gaily tinted interior. Happily, 
 nature has interfered and blended colors and 
 softened outlines until the original plan has 
 faded into a vague impression. The Alham- 
 bra, as we see it, is doubtless more beautiful 
 than in Boabdil's time, when the colors were 
 fresh. And I prefer San Telmo in its present 
 period of transition. One may be glad that 
 once it was pruned and trimmed into an ab- 
 normal, fantustic, open-air in-doors, but one 
 is more apt to be glad that the knife operated 
 years ago. Farther within, where the walks 
 grow narrower, the impression of a set design 
 entirely vanished. The sunlight flickering 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IS7 
 
 through rifts in the leafy roof, gave 
 shades to innumerable colors of green. The 
 breeze brought us whiffs of spicy odors, the 
 breath of oleanders and Linderaxa's roses. 
 We seemed to be drawing near some temple 
 where a heathen rite, the incense of which 
 already intoxicated us, was celebrating, as we 
 entered those cool, silent depths of dark 
 verdure where the* light faded. Nevertheless 
 it was always morning in that enchanted 
 park. It had a morning breath like an in- 
 fant's, sweet, odorous, moistly warm. The 
 sky and the leaves, even at midday, blended 
 into a beautiful color which was neither blue 
 nor green. And from those mysterious vis- 
 ions of cypress glades that we saw far, far 
 down behind countless layers of leaves there 
 arose thin bluish vapors like ghosts. An- 
 other sign peculiar to morning. 
 
 Seek out in this sensual forest, an arbor 
 covering a hillside where the roots of the 
 cypress trees have returned on themselves 
 and made a tent in the air — a crusader's tent 
 guarded by a gigantic tree, the Templar of 
 the garden. No melancholy funereal tree is 
 this majestic cypress which would dwarf the 
 grave of any but a god. It is old, and with 
 the passing of the centuries, it has grown 
 more firm and more colossal, showing its age 
 only by the increased grayness of its bark. 
 
 f 
 
 A 
 
158 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 by the division of its trunk into sections, a 
 glorious assemblage of white and furrowed 
 trunks, like the columns that support the 
 roof of a Gothic cathedral, and by an added 
 depth of blackness to its sombre and massive 
 verdure. After having seen this tree, I be- 
 lieve in the centuries of Methusaleh. 
 
 Might all I have said about San Telmo be 
 written of other gardens? If so, it is false. 
 Other gardens have in them something spirit- 
 ual ; San Telmo is sensual. Its sward is softer, 
 its mossy cushions deeper, its shade gayer 
 than any place save Irem. The sunshine falls 
 there like flecks of light on dazzling tiles, the 
 shades are only purple iridescenses. And 
 they are not for thought. A book would be 
 out of place in San Telmo. Abdoolah of 
 Khorassan might have received his first 
 disgust of literature while walking in these 
 adorable avenues. 
 
 Nature here is a coquettish nymph, trip- 
 ping ever ahead and ever looking back over 
 her shoulder with an inviting smile on her lips. 
 Follow, but do not chase her, do not make 
 the mistake of pursuing her in earnest. San 
 Telmo has nothing to offer to serious people, 
 to fanatics or lovers. Copy the smile on her 
 lip, call to her with gay words, and if she 
 still advances, seat yourself upon some 
 mound, or in an arbor, or against a mossy 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 159 
 
 bank, and wait till she steals slowly behind 
 you, stifling her laughter (the gush of a 
 brook) and lays her white hand on your 
 shoulder— soft as the caress of rustling leaves 
 — and whispers in your ear vague promises 
 like the murmur of the breeze through the 
 young grass. The nymph of this garden will 
 never disturb you by perplexing and 
 unanswerable questions. She is no Egeria to 
 give advice. But she will make you her 
 sultan, and with soft accents, with tender 
 caresses, that heat and calm at the same in- 
 stant, she will wrap your soul into a bliss that 
 to be conserved must not be solved. Gradual, 
 but irresistible, is the working of her charm. 
 With her flickering and fascinating wand she 
 metamorphoses man — before a discord in the 
 harmony of these gentle surroundings — into 
 her creature, while her soft breath fans his 
 very soul, and steals him away from the 
 world. Where is the world? What is it? 
 We are not of it. By her magic she quickens 
 qualities we did not know we possessed, or 
 which we thought life had crushed. She re- 
 stores almost a feminine delicacy to our ears, 
 to our eyes, to our brains ; we give ourselves 
 up to a momentary innocence ; we live as 
 plants live, as charming young domestic ani- 
 mals live, without fear, and without envy. 
 
 
 il 
 
i6o 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 We do not think, we do not moralize, and we 
 do not wish to act. 
 
 At our feet the tiny mosses, the grotesque 
 fungi, the ferns, inspire us with the feeling of 
 relationship. Are they only plants, or are 
 they children of strange shapes, radiantly 
 playing in their eternal youth ? And above 
 our heads the trees take many human forms, 
 but all caressing ; the paternal cypress, the 
 virginal poplar, the pensive beech, the weep- 
 ing willow— by some such attributes the 
 Faun must once have designated them. 
 
 And all the time the garden lengthened 
 and widened into a continent, and we saw 
 through the impenetrable roof to the sky— 
 bright, but soft as a baby's fingers, that 
 reached down and grasped the topmost 
 leaves. Ah, we were young, we were happy 
 —we dreamed ! w^e dreamed ! 
 
 Somewhere within this garden, but I could 
 not tell the seeker how to find it, there is a 
 pond of bituminous water, with a green knoll 
 on one bank, where the dryade of San Telmo 
 has made herself a garden of gay colored 
 flowers. The enchanting spot is surrounded 
 by proud elms and birches, whose tops bend 
 over and make a vast canopy, beneath which 
 sleeps the nymph. The pond is full of water, 
 still and black, and Egyptian lilies fringe its 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 l6l 
 
 edge where the vulgar bulrushes have left 
 them space to swim. 
 
 On the other bank rises a singular aggre- 
 gation of tree trunks, like a tower. The 
 branches form almost the angles of architect- 
 ure, and the square mass of foliage above 
 constitutes a verdant mirador. The trunks 
 of the trees are swathed with lichen, in fes- 
 toons, and from every fork of the branches 
 droop mistletoe and ivy in wild arabesques. 
 
 With her finger on her lip, the dryade 
 pointed out to me that mirador where, behind 
 the lattice of vine and leaf, near the cool 
 water, the jealous Arab-Sultan of this wood 
 shuts up his princess. Reclining by day on 
 the knoll I fancied I heard agitating sounds 
 proceeding from that tower, which is a dun- 
 g^eon; laughter like the gush of a fountain; 
 tinkling of bracelets and girdles of precious 
 metals ; sighs ; and once I saw, as if a w^hite 
 finger had brushed aside a leaf, the flash of 
 an eye on the water, like a shooting star trail- 
 ing its fiery wake. 
 
 If I could have contrived to watch a moon- 
 light hour on that knoll, who doubts— I do 
 not — but that I would have seen Zorayda 
 come down to the water's edge, mirroring 
 the crescent in her full eyes— breathing 
 on the night a perfume as of flowers ? 
 
 » . t 
 
 Mi 
 
 M 
 
l62 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE brilliant spring sun put torpor in our 
 blood, and notwithstanding the presenti- 
 ment we had of future regret for time wasted^ 
 we lay all our waking hours staring at the 
 sky. About this simple act which might 
 have seemed impertinent as well as lazy at 
 home, there appertained in Seville a certain 
 sort of power. For, though we were always 
 vanquished in the end by the implacable in- 
 tensity of the light, yet so long as we could 
 look the sky seemed to retreat and its azure 
 grew deeper, like the hue on the cheek of a 
 self-conscious beauty. This unequal and hu- 
 miliating contest was carried on of mornings 
 in the patio of the Carasa, over which had 
 not yet been drawn the velarium or awning 
 roof, and we varied it by withdrawing to our 
 oratory rooms, ostensibly for a siesta, but 
 really to stare out of the narrow window at 
 the narrow street, which baked and burned 
 and seemed to try to escape from the fiery 
 sun shower by crowding as closely as possi- 
 ble up to the stuccoed houses. The donkeys 
 followed this example and edged leisurely 
 along the walls, leaving only a narrow path 
 in the full glare for the unhappy pedestrian. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 165 
 
 
 And as he mopped his dripping brow we 
 drained an unglazed jug of cold water and 
 laughed, so hard our hearts had been baked 
 in this oven of Seville. 
 
 We were thrown upon our own resources 
 in these eventless days. The cadets remained 
 indoors, pretending to prepare for the alge- 
 bra examination, and the priests slept all 
 night and most of the day, in order to lay up 
 a store of strength for the arduous labors of 
 Holy Week, which was near at hand. Clearly 
 there was nothing left for us but to dream 
 away the hours in the Carasa' s portico, but 
 we foresaw the day of repentance and some- 
 times forcibly broke the drowsy spell. 
 
 It was in one of those spasms of reform 
 that at noon of the hottest day we had ex- 
 perienced, we stumbled upon a square to the 
 south of the Nueva, a tiny square white as 
 lime could make it, bounded by two-story 
 white houses and looking as if it had been 
 scooped out of a sugar-loaf to serve as a bowl 
 for a cover of lapis-lazuli sky. There were no 
 trees in the square, and there were no green 
 blinds to the houses, and yet its color was so 
 splendid as to remind us of Seville's African 
 descent. It was a market d?,y, and fruits and 
 vegetables in many varieties were exposed 
 for sale there, which were of colors gorgeous 
 enough to complete the intoxication of an 
 
 . / 
 
 Jf/# 
 
164 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 already drunken impressionist. Olives — 
 large, lovely olives that had by good luck 
 escaped the oil mill, and deep green melons 
 formed an enchanting bed, on which had 
 been thrown in confusion and carelessly, but I 
 think with an eye to effect, clusters of clear, 
 yellow grapes, like amber beads ; tangerine 
 oranges with coats of red-gold reminding one 
 of the flavor within, and pomegranates that 
 had burst their rinds in falling and spilled 
 some rubies for the first marauding hand. 
 Near the centre of the square the vege- 
 tables were heaped, and mats piled high 
 with chick-peas, like a pale- gold rampart, 
 by accident or design, separated the 
 vulgar from the aristocratic classes of this 
 gorgeous kingdom. Yet there were inter- 
 lopers, as there always are, even in the creme 
 de la cremey and these were the fiery red pep- 
 pers which swung down in garlands and 
 touched with the least movement the foot of 
 Monsieur Melon, or grazed the face of 
 Mademoiselle Pomegranate. Moreover the 
 grapes — for there are always aristocrats who 
 lean toward the people — scaled the rampart 
 and hung in heavy clusters of a bluish color, 
 or in bunches which were of an amethystine 
 hue, almost within reach of the flaunting cab- 
 bage and the vulgar onion. At the first glance 
 it all looked like the contents of an enormous 
 
 165 
 
 basket emptied in the square. But a second 
 look showed that the pile was divided into 
 many heaps, beside which proudly sat the 
 fruit sellers, some of them as gayly attired as 
 their vegetables, protected from the sun only 
 by their paper fans held against the cheek. 
 They had been sitting there the whole morn- 
 ing and not a woman had been sun-struck 
 yet. As the sun climbed they advanced the 
 little fan against him, and continued chatter- 
 ing with that Andalusian volubility which is 
 .graceful even in the market women. 
 
 The same gayety and animation was visi- 
 ble everywhere throughout the city at the 
 approach of summer. A great many of the 
 ordinary occupations of housekeepers were 
 carried on in the balconies, in full view of 
 the passers-by, and our eyes found nothing 
 to hinder them from looking through the 
 large grated windows and glass doors into 
 the interior of the houses. As we paused to 
 look into a patio with marble columns, which 
 was crowded with flowers, the skins of 
 tomatoes, which some one in a balcony was 
 peeling for dinner, would fall at our feet, or, 
 by bad luck, on our heads, but as this was 
 equally apt to befall the oldest and gravest 
 citizens, we concluded it was not meant as a 
 gentle hint for the strangers to move on. 
 Every body looked in the windows at girls 
 
i66 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 sewing or playing the piano or the guitar ; 
 but nobody seemed to regard this as intru- 
 sive ; on the contrary, all continued their 
 work without self-consciousness and without 
 annoyance. 
 
 Pinks in the balconies, and myrtle, pome- 
 granates, and oleanders grouped about a 
 marble basin in the centre of the patios, 
 where a slender thread of water rose and 
 fell, worked a wonderful transformation in 
 these old streets of Seville. It was difficult 
 to believe they were the same streets which 
 had looked so tortuous and dark in the 
 winter. But the ancient buildings had a 
 character too marked for us to ever mistake, 
 having once seen them. Our confusion arose 
 from perceiving what a gay interior the 
 rough walls, with coarse carvings near the 
 roof and over doors and windows, frequently 
 enclosed. The night time, however, was the 
 real festival of the patios. Then walking 
 about the streets was like a promenade 
 through a succession of drawing-rooms. At 
 this season the family bring down sofas and 
 chairs, upholstered in horse hair, and set 
 them, along with the piano, in the arcades, 
 while cane-seated chairs and the beloved 
 rockers are scattered about among the palms 
 and oleanders. Bird cages hang from the 
 shrubbery, and quinques on the piano, candles 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 167 
 
 everywhere, and the great lantern suspended 
 near the centre, light up a true Andalusian 
 scene. With the linen awning striped with 
 gay colors, calle'd in Spanish a toldo, the 
 floor tiled with bright contrasting marbles, 
 the numberless flowers and the thick leaves 
 of hortensia and orange, and with— ah, with 
 the beautiful Sevillian ladies in summer 
 gowns of high colors, flitting about like 
 human flowers, these patios are enchanting 
 as Irem ! Guitars suspended on the walls 
 cast brilliant reflections out of the shadow as 
 the light glinted on their varnished surfaces, 
 and beside them hung the brown disks of tam- 
 bourines. Everything betokened the love of 
 life ; everything invited to the song. or to the 
 dance, and we were often unbidden, but none 
 the less welcomed spectators of the gay 
 measure and listeners to the sentimental carol. 
 I say " we," but really these guests at the 
 gate included all chance pedestrians, who 
 were at liberty to stop to listen to the music 
 without giving offence, and when it ceased 
 go on their way. 
 
 As April grew older the fierce Andalusian 
 sun waxed more terrible. With every turn 
 he seemed to crack a whip-lash of fire that 
 drove us with tingling faces into the refuge 
 of the shadowy Carasa. The Cura laughed 
 at me when I complained of the heat, and 
 
 A 
 
i68 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 bade me remain until the true summer came 
 if I wished to comprehend the might of the 
 sky monarch. " Wait," he said, '* until it is 
 so hot they are obliged to cover the Sierpes 
 with an awning." 
 
 At night it grew decidedly cooler, and 
 when we were not making a tour of the 
 patios, we used to go down to the river bank 
 where crowds fiocked to breathe the refresh- 
 ing breeze. This was a most romantic prom- 
 enade of moonlight nights, when the provi- 
 dent alcalde puts out the lamps. On the stone 
 benches along the wall that separates the 
 walk from the quay, many women were sit- 
 ting, that seen in the dim light under the 
 trees and in a moment of silence, resembled 
 pretty reclining statues by a modern sculptor. 
 There were not many moments of silence^ 
 and the pretty uncovered or lace veiled 
 heads were commonly nodding in rapid 
 movements like a humming-bird's, and black 
 eyes flashed and white teeth glistened in the 
 checkered moonlight, while silvery voices 
 and repressed outbursts of laughter echoed 
 along the line. 
 
 One night we walked here with Don 
 Ceferino, the cadet, and we knew not whether 
 to be ashamed or diverted by his behavior. 
 At his caprice he would stop before any 
 woman and give her an expressive glance ; 
 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 169 
 
 when she did not look up he would attract 
 her attention by rapping his cane on the 
 pavement. No one seemed to feel insulted, 
 but all either smiled pleasantly in return for 
 the implied flattery or laughed outright,while 
 a few more forward answered his grotesque 
 gesture of admiration with absurd grimaces, 
 which mightily pleased their neighbors and 
 sent our military friend off into a roar of 
 laughter. So frank and mischievous seemed 
 to be both parties to this childish game, that 
 it would require a stern pessimist to discover 
 any harm in it. But in my opinion there are 
 no pessimists in Seville, especially in spring; 
 the air is fatal to them. 
 
 Early in the evening we followed every- 
 body to the promenade of Las Delicias. 
 Those gardens which we had always loved 
 were a thousand times more attractive now 
 in their spring garb that had come no man 
 knew when. Roses and carnations were 
 blooming everywhere, in the plants and in 
 the cheeks of the Sevillians, who had washed 
 off the protective coats of cristilla they had 
 worn in the winter. Many ladies whom we 
 had often seen driving in their carriages in 
 the afternoon now came on foot with their 
 children. The younger beauties also became 
 pedestrians, coming to the paseo in parties 
 of two or more under the escort of an old 
 
lyo 
 
 IX SEVILLE. 
 
 aunt or mother. Behind these parties hovered 
 the youths waiting, for a sign of encourage- 
 ment to come forward and join the group. 
 Other ladies who had arrived at the age of 
 disinterested gossip take their seats in chairs 
 arranged in circles, and hold their tertulias 
 under the trees. 
 
 For a time the scene is a very animated 
 and changing one. There is much walking 
 about and shifting of places, but at length 
 the tertulias are filled; Casilda has summoned 
 the right young man ; her old parent has 
 secured a seat to her taste, and the multitude 
 have settled themselves for two or three 
 hours' placid enjoyment. Nobody moves 
 anything but his tongue for that space of 
 time, except the boys who carry about lighted 
 matches for the smokers' accommodation ; or 
 the old women running up and down, prais- 
 ing their fruits and dulces; or the waiters of 
 a neighboring cafe bringing ices and sherbets 
 to their patrons. It is entertaining to follow 
 these waiters on their rounds and hear the 
 orders they take for different drinks, all 
 harmless as water, but none of them water- 
 pshaw ! The Spaniard is sober, but he has a 
 mortal aversion to drinking water clear— he 
 always puts something in it, the favorite 
 thing being sugar-curls, which each individ- 
 ual seems to call by a different name— azu- 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 i;i 
 
 carillos, espenjados, doledos, are some of 
 them — but there are many other designa- 
 tions, and all of them mean nearly the same 
 thing. 
 
 But what have we to do with the com- 
 monplaceness of drink? The Spanish moon 
 is up and throwing her spell on the people. 
 In every group a guitar softly tinkles ; in the 
 mysterious walks promenaders show their 
 gliding shadows; tender couples, in tune to 
 the music, are cooing on chairs and benches, 
 and the scene has all the luxuriance of ro- 
 mance which poets have taught us to look for 
 in Spain, and which we would weep not to 
 see. 
 ***** ^ * 
 
 So we staid on— lingering irresolute, with 
 trunks half-packed, meaning to go each day, 
 to escape the heat and the crowd, and 
 charmed into remaining yet another day, by 
 the moon as it came to rise. The days were 
 full of regret for wasted time; the nights 
 were full of moonlight. 
 
 Meantime, portents of summer thickened. 
 Tourists were upon us— tourists with bulky 
 note books, a glance askance at which re- 
 minded us that we could not add a foot to 
 the stature of La Giralda nor a color to the 
 Alcazar without being found out. A party 
 of German travelers were at the Madrid, and 
 
 I I 
 
 t 
 
 
 r:-\ 
 
172 
 
 IN SEVILLE. 
 
 at Mariana's — so our old friend, the cadet, 
 stopped on the street to tell us — two young 
 Englishmen, in knickerbockers, had engaged 
 board. Lastly, a sacristan's assistant, a pal- 
 try fellow who had seen us scores of times 
 hand-in-glove with the archbishop, came for- 
 ward one day when we chanced to stray into 
 the cathedral and inquired if the Inglesas cared 
 to step into the sacristy to see the Pacheco ? 
 That decided us, and doubt disappeared. 
 The choice was ours no longer. Adios, Sevilla, 
 we said, and added, with full hearts hasta la 
 otra vista! But, ah ! we said this in English, 
 for people say what they mean, in their native 
 tongue — " Good-by, Seville, and may we see 
 you soon again ! *' 
 
 
 i I 
 
 \ 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 I. 
 
 WE went to Toledo in the winter when vis- 
 itors are advised to stay away. The 
 weather treated us very considerately, how- 
 ever, and we have no complaint to make of 
 it. The citizens of the capital of the Visi- 
 goths are much sharper and colder than the 
 weather. It is hardly an exaggeration to say 
 that the Fonda de Lino — the barrack which 
 outrages the name of hotel — is a den of 
 thieves. It gave us animated beds, it sup- 
 plied nine meals of beans which we must eat 
 or starve, and it charged Paris prices for 
 both. But — chiefest indignity — it introduced 
 us to Alexis Amaudry. 
 
 Alexis Amaudrv was an " illustrious Gaudis- 
 sart ;" he sold a premiere qualite of sparkling 
 sillery, and came twice a )^ear to Toledo. He 
 was so polite as to offer his services as guide, 
 and for that reason, and because he was the 
 essence of good nature and full of poetr}^ we 
 tried to be grateful to him. Nevertheless 
 Alexis Amaudry w^as an unmitigated bore. 
 
176 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 He never talked of wine, but constantly of the 
 picturesque, of which, as well as chocolate, 
 he was passionately fond. Through him we 
 made the acquaintance of all the chocola- 
 terias of Toledo. 
 
 That first afternoon Alexis carried us to the 
 sword manufactory, although we longed to 
 pay a preliminary visit to the cathedral. On 
 the way we passed under the Gate of the 
 Sun, but we were not yet prepared to admire 
 its simple yet massive proportions. The gate 
 stands half way between the steep ascentto the 
 Alcazar and the steep descent to the bridge 
 of Alcantara, and our untutored minds reck- 
 oned it a rude construction of brick which 
 we could not place, neither with the dainty 
 monuments left by the Moors, nor with the 
 rugged but noble ruins that are Gothic. 
 
 We did not cross the river, but held along 
 the sloping highway to the Cambron Gate, 
 whence we emerged from the city and 
 scrambled down, accompanied by dislodged 
 pebbles and showers of dust, to a road that 
 winds in the fertile vega between the walls of 
 the city and the Tagus. This wide and well- 
 kept road follows around the upper half of a 
 circle marked out by grass-grown hummocks, 
 but so dimly that scarcely any idea is pre- 
 sented to the mind of him who hears that this 
 was the Roman circus in Marcus Fulvius' time 
 
 ] 
 
 f 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 177 
 
 / 
 
 when Toledo was Toletum. The circus is 
 like Toledo ; so old and so far gone in decay 
 that it deadens rather than quickens the im- 
 agination striving to resurrect its past. The 
 Primate City chokes the mind with a thick 
 dust of concentrated antiquity. If I had been 
 told that its hill was Ararat and the town 
 upon it the dust heap of the Ark, 1 would 
 have accepted the statement with stolid 
 credulity. 
 
 Such a state of mind has its drawbacks. It 
 renders disappointing every thing not of 
 the oldest. Where so much was too antique 
 to longer count among things of account, I 
 got the impression that the Fabrica de Armas 
 was a contemporary of the circus, and used 
 to furnish weapons to its gladiators. I felt, 
 not a surprise merely, but a bitter pang, 
 when I saw that the Fabrica is still above 
 ground, an ugly modern building that might 
 stand in Connecticut without exciting remark, 
 and engage in supplying the wants, in the 
 knife and fork line, of the people of this gener- 
 ation. How can one keep in mind the romance, 
 brave deed, noble life that a Toledo blade sug- 
 gests, after one visits the prosaic surroundings 
 where the sword was forged and tempered ? 
 If I tried, I might succeed in describing the 
 various departments of the factory ; (Alexis 
 dragged us through them all) I might say 
 
 ■ 
 
 » 
 
 1 
 
178 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 that the smiths have their forges on the 
 ground floor and the pattern makers and 
 workers in aqua fortis have theirs on the 
 second floor. 1 might tell how many men 
 are employed, but the result I would obtain 
 from these statistics is one I wished to forget 
 — that I had visited a poor second rate manu- 
 factory whose past glory is tarnished by a 
 modern struggle for existence. Such vague 
 ideas as I gathered of the workmen and their 
 methods I made haste to forget upon regain- 
 ing the plain, and I eagerly relaid the stones 
 of my imagined workshop fit to give swords 
 to the Cid, to Alonzoof Cordova and Medina 
 Sidonia. 
 
 We did not return to the city as we had 
 gone out, by the Cambron, but turned to the 
 right and scaled a steep embankment under 
 the frown of a lofty black fagade. This was 
 St. John of the Kings, built by Ferdinand and 
 Isabella as their sepulchral chapel, but in 
 which they are not buried. We walked the 
 length of the ugly, blind, west wall of the 
 building, and vigorously pounded the knock- 
 er of a heavy but half decayed door. In 
 response, a woman leaned out of a window 
 over the gate, and, without speaking, threw 
 down a great iron key. Alexis instantly fitted 
 it into its ward, we stepped within, and the 
 woman pulled to the door, leaving us to feel 
 
 ^ 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 179 
 
 our way down a short flight of steps in almost 
 total darkness. When our eyes had suited 
 themselves to the faint light, we found that 
 we were in the museum, or curiosity shop, 
 of the old Franciscan convent. Broken tiles, 
 smashed columns, fragments of Moorish well- 
 curbs and bits of carving littered the floor, 
 and a rude bench was next to the wall. Under 
 an arch at the farther end a subdued light 
 entered. It was a pointed Gothic arch, and, 
 passing through, we obtained a vista of many 
 Gothic arches — the cloister of the convent, 
 a gem of Isabella's building. 
 
 The part surprise has to do with our pleas- 
 ure can hardly be overestimated, and, I think, 
 we needed just such an ugly husk as the out- 
 side of this cloister in order to appreciate its 
 jewel-like beauty. Much to the relief of 
 Alexis, who had been, in a measure, cast 
 down by our indifference in the sword works, 
 we did not repress the exclamations of delight 
 that rose to our lips at sigbt of these exquisite 
 marble corridors. The cloister is Gothic, but 
 Gothic in little. No awful solemnity reigns 
 in these arches, but the builder displays a 
 human, even a tricky, Spirit ; he seems to 
 have played a little with his art, but without 
 vulgarizing it. The walls are low, the arches 
 loving, the columns slender to fragility, and 
 the man who built here could have had no 
 
t8o 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 sympathy with the haughty Ximenez. Luck- 
 ily, the cardinal did not see this cloister until 
 after it was completed and had received the 
 sanction of Isabella's approval. Nowhere 
 else in Gothic art can one find such a grace- 
 ful bending of Its stateliness, without loss of 
 caste, to the small, the modest, the light. 
 This Franciscan cloister is the child — the only 
 child — of Gothic architecture. All other 
 forms of it are austerely grown up. 
 
 The restorers have been called into these 
 cloisters, but they have done their work 
 admirably, and there is not, as there would 
 be in a damp climate, a painful contrast be- 
 tween the fresh marble and the old, that has 
 changed but to a deep yellow in four centuries. 
 Besides, the copyist finds his work easy here, 
 the prevailing character of the carving being 
 susceptible of modern imitation. There is 
 such diversity of ornament between every 
 pair of arches that if the sculptor lets his 
 chisel work out any tracery of leaves, or fruit, 
 or twining vines, or grotesque forms of men 
 and animals, he can hardly go wrong. 
 
 We entered the chapel not by the door, 
 but by means of a narrow, dusty and dusky 
 staircase, and a veritable hole in the wall, 
 through which we crawled and then stood 
 on a hanging marble gallery overlooking the 
 great nave. The church, notwithstanding 
 
 I 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 l8l 
 
 much carving of badges, shields and inscrip- 
 tions, is pitifully bare. It has but one altar, 
 which stands at the western end, adorned 
 with a handful of artificial flowers in common 
 vases. 
 
 San Juan, however, is not responsible for 
 its poverty in monuments. At one time as 
 rich as Westminster, it has, more than any 
 other Spanish church, suffered outrage and 
 spoliation in times of war. Itself the outcome 
 of a victory, it has sown the wind to reap the 
 whirlwind. La Houssaye was its last and 
 worst despoiler, although he is said by some 
 to have made an effort to save the chapel by 
 giving over the cloister to the torch and 
 sword of his soldiers. The Spaniards do not 
 say this. With them he is in such bad odor 
 that they do not hesitate to affirm he caused 
 step ladders to be brought into the church in 
 order to reach and demolish a dado of angels* 
 heads carved round the walls, and swore 
 like a fiend, because they were too short. 
 These children's faces, encircling capitals 
 and pillars, still smile at you with lovely lips 
 and eyes, and it is for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing a good view of this unique decoration, 
 the visitor is brought to inspect the chapel 
 from the gallery. * 
 
 Leaving the convent we went along a street 
 that is more alley than street, and more like 
 
l82 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 the rear of an Irishman's cabin than either. 
 It afforded difficult footing except where 
 garbage and cinder heaps raised the declina- 
 tion of the hill to the level of the cottages. 
 This way followed at a safe elevation the 
 windings of the roaring Tagus, and conducted 
 to the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, once 
 a synagogue, standing in what was anciently 
 the Jews' quarters. In front of their doors 
 sat dark-hued women looking with a sad ex- 
 pression at their hair. At first we took them 
 for daughters of Israel mourning by the 
 waters of Babylon. A second look told us 
 they were not Jewesses, and their hair-tear- 
 ing was a penance ordered by necessity 
 rather than sentiment. 
 
 Santa Maria is a poor ghost, an attenuated 
 spirit of dismal whiteness projected against 
 a black cave. The roof is blind, and light 
 enters through the portal like a nervous 
 girl ready to fly at the first word of love. 
 Five octagonal piers lift up horseshoe arches, 
 and piers and arches are thickly whitewashed. 
 A conch-shaped recess behind the high altar 
 alone preserves the dazzling effects of color 
 and fascinating elegancies of detail, which 
 were the enthusiasm of the Morisco twelfth 
 century. 
 
 The other synagogue, Nuestra Senora del 
 Transito, where we went next, is better pre- 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 183 
 
 served. It is not so old and must always 
 have been finer, though not so distinctly 
 Arabic in style. Light is admitted in an 
 agreeable manner by openings around the 
 walls just beneath the splendid Artisonado 
 roof— the latter being the crowning beauty 
 of this temple. The roof was undergoing 
 repairs, and we brought away a clearer vis- 
 ion of scaffolding, piles of tie-beams, barrels 
 of plaster, than of the product of the Moorish 
 artisans. Not that the Spanish carpenters 
 were at work, they were not even pretend- 
 ing, but they were about the premises and 
 made themselves so prominent as to drive 
 out of imagination, as their ancestors had 
 done out of Spain, the turbaned craftsmen. 
 
 Speaking as the crow flies, ruins of a palace 
 built by Pedro the Cruel lie near by the Paseo 
 del Transito, and we thought to improve the 
 time by going alone to see them, that is to 
 say, unaccompanied by the obliging Alexis, 
 who began to be too obliging for mere human 
 nature. His untiring and exuberant enthu- 
 siasm that went along rolling up adjectives 
 and exclamations like a snow ball, with every 
 step of our progress, at last worried us so 
 that we would have liked to give it a push 
 down the slope into the Tagus and so be quit 
 of it, Alexis had a formula that he used to 
 point out the view, to direct to a carved door, 
 
 :¥^ 
 
/ 
 
 1 84 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 to lay before a shrine. This was " plus ma- 
 gnifique ! plus pittoresque ! plus drole !" In 
 despair we wondered for which of our sins 
 Alexis was the punishment. 
 
 In a very small and dirty cafe of the Paseo 
 we seated Alexis, and went out ostensibly to 
 wait for him, but really to lose him. The 
 result was that we lost ourselves, as a cold 
 gleam in Alexis* eye had predicted. The 
 route to Pedro's nalace was plain enough on 
 the map ; we had but to follow the street 
 called Taller del Moro, after a house reputed 
 to be the most beautiful Moorish building in 
 the city, until we reached the street called 
 Santa Ursula. After that, a blind man could 
 discover the ruined palace. So we said, 
 while traversing the Ursula, with our eyes 
 fixed on a large building at the end. Was 
 this the ruin ? No, our map marked it plainly 
 as the convent of Saint Bartholomew. The 
 same invaluable paper informed us that the 
 walls behind the Bartholomew enclosed 
 another convent, the Santa Isabel, behind 
 which, in turn, stood the remains of Don 
 Pedro's palace. Forward, then, to cut through 
 these sanctuaries of the Middle Ages, which 
 still preserve a feeble life, to the barbarism 
 they ameliorated, which is dead. 
 
 But the invaluable map did not picture 
 how another street mysteriously joined the 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 i8S 
 
 Ursula, and formed almost a complete circle. 
 We made the discoverv unaided, and wan- 
 dered on, climbed steep acclivities, descended 
 into black lanes— meeting now and then a 
 shadowy figure that was swallowed up by 
 the deeper gloom of a portal before we could 
 interrogate it — and twice returned upon our 
 steps, and twice stood before the thick wall 
 of the convent of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 We rang the convent bell three times, but 
 nobody came, and again we dragged ourselves 
 — hankering in secret for Alexis — along the 
 unknown wynd, which continues the Ursula. 
 But this time we observed an arch-way, and 
 taking our lives in our hand we plunged be- 
 neath it. A steep, narrow lane precipitated us 
 on to the Paseo del Transito. Sidling across, 
 with an eye to Alexis in the cafe, and clam- 
 bering down the precipice, we rested on the 
 grass-grown foundation of a bridge that has 
 been washed away, and stared into the Tagus 
 flowing beneath. 
 
 It was late afternoon. The sun, setting on 
 the other side of the cit3% threw slanting, red 
 reflections on the hills, that rose, like cannon 
 balls one above the other, and left the river a 
 sombre, inky stain. The first stars faintly 
 twinkled in the sky. It was still. No sounds 
 came from the city, and the Tagus at this point 
 hushes its angry murmur. We were alone^ 
 
1 86 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 yet we were surrounded as we had not been be- 
 fore that day. Goth, Roman, Arab and Chris- 
 tian came down the bank and clamored in our 
 ears the tale of how Toledo had fared at the 
 hand of each. Recollections that the desolate 
 streets could not evoke, now flooded the spot 
 that had seen all these conquerors but yielded 
 to none, that had preserved inviolate its 
 loyalty to nature. The city had kept a sullen 
 silence when we asked it for memories. The 
 barren rock, which had cast off the shackle of 
 a bridge, teemed unsolicited with innumer- 
 able voices. 
 
 As we listened, another voice sounded in 
 •our ears — the voice of Alexis. He stood by 
 us, but we had not heard him descend. He 
 -assumed a taller stature. He threw back his 
 head and waved his hand toward the further 
 shore. ** Ah !" he exclaimed, ** I felt that we 
 are affined. Tell me — without compliment — 
 if we are not affined I La campagne ! La 
 riviere ! La niiit ! We love them alike. 
 -Come, it is necessary that we go to dine." 
 
 Night hugged close the narrow ways 
 through which we followed our guide, but 
 the sky, when w^e caught a glimpse of it be- 
 tween the sombre walls, was still roseate. 
 More than ever the city seemed" frozen, 
 like that enchanted Eastern capital peopled 
 by stone inhabitants. Sometimes turning a 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 187 
 
 1 
 
 corner we would see the roof-line of a loftv 
 palace, painted by the sun, but this only 
 increased the superstitious shiver of the 
 lower darkness. At length, when totally 
 desorienteydiS Alexis expressed it, we came out 
 on an open place and stopped in astonish- 
 ment. Here it was still twilight — daylight 
 even — and the cathedral, which w^e were 
 looking at, was a conflagration ignited down 
 to the portals. What surprised us, however, 
 was not so much the unexpected illumination, 
 as the modern appearance of the fagade. 
 Square, heavy, and not particularly beautiful, 
 the church might have been a fabric of our 
 own century set down amid the undated 
 buildings of Time. What could we think, 
 we who had been wandering in the caves of 
 Eblis, to come upon something not unknown, 
 the like of which we had seen before ? 
 
 Yet, as we continued gazing, the light 
 ascended, fading as it went, until the triple 
 crown on the northwest tower flickered like 
 expiring sparks. The mirage of contempo- 
 raneousness vanished, and the cathedral fell 
 back into harmony with the surrounding 
 tombs. 
 
 / 
 i 
 
 \ 4 
 
1 88 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 II. 
 
 TOLEDO cathedral by daylight strikes the 
 same modern note. It hides its huge 
 proportions ingenuously, like a genius stoop- 
 ing to converse with common men. It is not 
 tricky. It does not rear its enormous crest 
 and vast bulk suddenly. Such a -coup de 
 theatre is beneath Toledo. Like a mountain, 
 it waits complacently for you to grow into a 
 conception of its immensity. 
 
 The first circle of your growth is an en- 
 dorsement of the accepted opinion, that 
 it is not the exterior, but the interior of 
 this famous church that is so magnificent. 
 What we fancied during our twilight visit 
 is true in daylight and in fact. The 
 architects of the last three centuries have 
 worked their destructive will on the lower 
 part of the west fagade, leaving untouched 
 nothing characteristic or beautiful. This 
 sweeping statement does not include every 
 later addition. The northwest tower is fine, 
 although it was repaired in 1660, after a fire. 
 The steeple would be imposing on a less 
 grand building. It rises, a simple square 
 tower, from the base to about 170 feet in the 
 
 \ 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 189 
 
 air, changes to an octagon with turrets and 
 pinnacles, and dwindles to a low spire. The 
 companion tower was left unfinished up to 
 the last century, when an Italian dome, too 
 low, and utterly out of keeping, terminated it. 
 
 The sculptures of the circular west window, 
 and the great doorway, were carried out 
 about a century earlier than the northwest 
 tower. Not so glorious as the doorway of 
 St. Catherine, which opens from the cloister, 
 the sculptures of the west doorway neverthe- 
 less detach themselves from the gloom cast 
 by the heavy bronze doors, with peculiar 
 effect. The subject. is the Last Supper, and 
 our Lord and the twelve apostles sit in deep 
 niches, which are carried up all around the 
 arch. The other great doorways are almost 
 all modernized, and even this one hardly 
 offers a proper vestibule to the interior. 
 That is found in the dusky richness of the 
 recessed Catalina door. 
 
 Before this portal and in the cloisters we 
 lingered, almost afraid to go in, lest we should 
 not have our expectations realized. Entering, 
 we stood at the end of the north transept. 
 The view from there is like a glimpse of Par- 
 adise. It is the great view of the church; a 
 long sweep into the double aisles about the 
 choir, across the high altar and down the side 
 aisles of the nave. It is a view of grand ex- 
 
 ^ 
 
 r 
 
IQO 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 panse, remote height, and atmosphere enough 
 for one day of the world. If we could only 
 have been satisfied to stand there for a long, 
 long time, and then gone away ! 
 
 For the view across the north transept is 
 not merely the pre-eminent view of Toledo ; 
 it is the only one. When you abandon it and 
 pass within the nave, or cross to the outer 
 aisle, you lose proportion and perspective, and 
 seem to wander in a big echoing hall. The 
 primate church of Spain is too big and too 
 / white ; it is St. Peter's, covered with a coat 
 of whitewash. All the rich colors of the 
 profuse painted glass cannot mitigate the 
 gruesome whiteness of the walls, nor trans- 
 form the church into a sanctuary of a cheer- 
 ful religion ; all its carving, tracery and 
 gilding— in which it is richer than any other 
 Spanish church— leave it gaunt, stern and 
 unlovely. The gloom of Toledo is the tem- 
 porary absence of light, not the Gothic dusk 
 that the imagination fondly peoples with the 
 rush of wings, or warms with the smile of 
 serene faces. It is not that strange shadowy 
 twilight, where a wraith of sound haunts the 
 silence like a whispered chant; or where we 
 see, phantom-like in the obscure depths, the 
 priest, the nuns, the kneeling devotee, the 
 distant aisles, the slender cross, the haloed 
 saints in their niches, the glimmering robes 
 
 V' 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 19T 
 
 of the Virgin, and the long dim reach of 
 sculptured tombs. It is not that profound 
 quiet and brooding gloom, where all the 
 agony and sorrow of the worshippers for four 
 hundred years — their sighs, their tears, their 
 prayers — lie hushed in the peace that pass- 
 eth understanding. For Toledo does not, 
 as other churches, impress one that here the 
 troubled and despairing cry of the heart, the 
 pent-up flood of grief , that man in his helpless 
 and fleeting life pours out before his Maker, 
 will be stilled forever in the supreme bosom 
 of the church. There is nowhere in its 
 atmosphere that sublime calm which one 
 feels, a calm that passes across the soul like a 
 transfiguration — as the spirit in the Bible 
 passed across the face of the waters. 
 
 The truth seems to be that Toledo, to be 
 viewed aright, should be seen in gala. I like 
 to imagine it as it must have looked on a day 
 of civic or religious ceremony ; its pavement 
 carpeted with velvets from the looms of 
 Flanders ; its walls hung with banners and 
 tapestry ; its altars decked with the pomp of 
 drapery and plate ; its aisles and choir 
 crowded with courtiers and ecclesiastical 
 grandees, magnificent in vestments of silk 
 and brocade, sparkling with jewels and gold 
 and silver laces. For such a brilliant throng, 
 the stately fabric offers a fitting setting. 
 
 i 
 
192 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 But when the lights are out, the banners 
 down, the precious vessels locked up in the 
 chapter-house, like all fabrics erected for 
 magnificent ceremonies, Toledo is not in a 
 state to receive critical visitors. They go 
 about, longing for the hidden things, and look- 
 ing ill-humoredly at what is left. Yet some of 
 the fixtures are almost unmixed delights. Par- 
 ticularly beautiful is the choir screen, the 
 most gorgeous in Spain, and the feature of 
 the greatest interest in the cathedral. It en- 
 closes the whole of the eastern bay of the 
 nave, and is supposed to have crossed the 
 transepts and completely shut them out from 
 the choir. To-day the work of the old sculp- 
 tors extends but to the transept column, 
 where it joins, at right angles, new carvings 
 in designs of lions and castles. Behind the 
 altar, also, the old screen work has been 
 mutilated to admit that sickening execution 
 in marble, of angels, clouds and rays of light, 
 knovv^n as El Transparente. 
 
 The design of the screen that crosses the 
 nave is an arcade raised upon marble shafts, 
 terminated by pointed arches benefath each 
 of which is a niche containing a subject sculpt- 
 ured in high relief. A delicate balustrade 
 connects the canopies over these sculptures, 
 and along it perch strange figures of humans 
 and beasts commixed, so characteristic of the 
 
 # 
 
 I 
 
 ( 
 
 > 
 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 193 
 
 mediaeval sculptors wuth whom the spirit of 
 life was the spirit of naivete. 
 
 I did not, however, experience as much 
 pleasure in dissecting the sculptures and fol- 
 lowing up the story told by each one, as in 
 standing off at a little distance and contem- 
 plating the screen as a whole, when its effect 
 was like an inspiration. I think I could not 
 listen to one criticising it without loss of 
 temper. I mean, of course, if the criticism 
 were to be directed against the screen as a 
 creation of art, and not against its use here 
 for which there is no defense. It has no right 
 in the cathedral where its vista-breaking 
 presence is almost a crime. Nay, it zuas a 
 crime to erect in this church, which in plan 
 belongs to the French school, a choir and 
 screen so essentially Spanish. 
 
 But, inside the choir, we no longer make 
 distinctions of nationality, for it belongs to 
 Magnificence, a country of which we are all 
 citizens, at least, in dreams. It is a church in 
 itself ; a church of carved wood, ornamental 
 marble, and shining bronze and brass. There 
 are two rows of stalls, the upper by Berruguete 
 and Felipe de Burgona, and the lower range 
 were carved by Maestro Rodrigo, in 1493. 
 They are pleasing in shape, tall and massive 
 and enriched with tracery, panels and figures 
 of monkeys and other grotesque animals 
 
194 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 doing all sorts of acrobatic feats with their 
 tails. 
 
 i We went to the chapels — San Ildefonzo- 
 which enshrines the slab where the Virgin's 
 feet alighted, when she came down to 
 earth to inspire the inception, of this cathe- 
 dral ; the Santiago where Don Alvaro de 
 Luna and his wife are buried, and the Santa 
 Lucia, where there is an extremely rich 
 Moorish arch w^ithout a bit of connection,, 
 except that of gem to casket, to the fine 
 Gothic pointed chapel. We visited others 
 as beautiful and as interesting, but after 
 awhile, human nature wearied of their mar- 
 bles and gilding and iron work. We thought 
 to rest our eyes upon the more perishable 
 riches of Toledo, the world famous precio- 
 diades of this sacred see ; the pearl mantle of 
 the silver Virgin, her rings, necklaces and 
 bracelets. 
 
 That we did not behold these things was 
 not our fault, but the old sacristan's. Why 
 he suspected us, I cannot say, but he is old, 
 he has lived a long time and acquired a vast 
 experience. We forgave him because he gave 
 us the key to the bell-tower, but he knew we 
 could not steal the bells. This sacristan was 
 an old, old man, with contempt for the human 
 race that sounded a fathom deep for every 
 one of his years. He had a pointed, wizened 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 195 
 
 .1 
 
 1 
 
 brown face, set with little twinkling black 
 eyes— a very mole in appearance, and quite 
 as averse to sunlight. He was shifty and 
 double in his dealings with us, and while ac- 
 cepting fees, never allowed them to soften 
 him. He seemed to have outlived the value 
 but not the greed of money, and he cherished 
 the treasures of the cathedral in the same 
 miserly way, loving them as long as he could 
 hide them. He made a number of appoint- 
 ments for us to visit the wardrobe of the 
 Great Queen, but he broke them all. After 
 we had succeeded in wrenching the bell 
 tower key off his girdle, it was useless to beg^ 
 or bribe him for anything beside. 
 
 The journey to the upper regions of Toledo 
 is exceptional. You ascend by a staircase in 
 the archbishop's palace to a gallery thrown 
 over the roof,* connecting the houses of the 
 clergy and the servants of the church. This 
 gallery entirely surrounds the upper cloister, 
 and a black stairway leads thence to the 
 tower of the bells. The ascent is repaid by 
 making the acquaintance of San Eugenio, the 
 famous bell that has rung through the length 
 and breadth of Spain, and that determines 
 the rank as a singer of every other Spanish 
 bell. While we stood there the wheel of bells 
 began to move. It was four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, and we hastened down to hear the 
 
 .1 
 
196 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 singing of the lauds. Blasts of sound, like the 
 / growls of a giant losing his prey, pursued our 
 descending steps, jarring heavier and growing 
 more and more like the rumble of Polyphemus 
 as we neared the ground. In the gallery the 
 bells suddenly changed their tune and rang 
 out light and airy notes like a soprano chorus, 
 a delightful harmony, which it was difficult 
 , to believe came from the same throats that 
 had jangled and threatened in the tower. 
 
 Re-entering the cathedral we found it full 
 of sound. A little group of worshippers knelt 
 before the screen of the coro listening to the 
 organ and the chanting of the choir. We 
 drew near, but soon retreated in order to 
 discover the cause of a puzzling echo. The 
 pauses of the service and the silences of the 
 organ were full of voices and instrumental 
 peals. It seemed impossible they could be 
 reverberations from the rafters, and, indeed, 
 the sounds came from the western aisle. We 
 walked thither and solved the mystery. A 
 service in the Mozarabic chapel, with an 
 organ and a choir equal to those of the main 
 church, was going on at the same time. The 
 Mozarabic ritual differs in quantity and not 
 in kind from the Roman. It is still performed 
 daily at the chapel, and is a stronger instance 
 of the durability of the established than even 
 Toledo itself. 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 197 
 
 r 
 
 . 
 
 We lingered in this chapel to study the 
 fresco on the west wall. It represents the 
 siege of Oran, that Cardinal Ximenez spared 
 neither money nor pains to swell into a tre- 
 mendous victory, and is in a very bad state 
 of preservation. In its best days, however^ 
 it could have had no artistic value, and to 
 say truth, I think the present are its best days. 
 It strikes the eye now like an oasis in the 
 whife desert of Toledo. What improvement 
 a few frescoes — even bad ones, would bring 
 to this cathedral ! Toledo is grim, unbend- 
 ing, and intolerant. Her attitude is a cold 
 holding up of herself to the staring light 
 of day. She makes hard terms with every- 
 thing within her gates, beauties as well 
 as defects, and, like a Puritan, neither 
 forces the former on your notice nor with- 
 draws the latter into the graceful evasion of 
 a shadow. 
 
 If you desert the main church for certain 
 bye-places, you will find plenty of color. 
 One of these warming pans, as we irreve- 
 rently called the chapels with pictures, is the 
 Capilla de San Bias, which leads to the sum- 
 mer Chapter House. When we stood on the 
 threshold and looked across the dim-painted 
 chapel into the dimmer-painted Chapter 
 House, it was like looking into the rich heart 
 of a pomegranajte. For there are some old 
 
 / 
 
198 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 frescoes which have long since gone to red, 
 inside the dusky upper arches of San Bias. 
 
 Tfie charm of San Bias, it must be admitted, 
 is stolen from the cathedral. We came here 
 again and again, worn out with the Pallas-like 
 sternness of the interior, to relax our minds 
 in things imbued with a restful shabbiness. 
 Furniture and drapery that have grown too 
 threadbare for use at those altars constantly 
 on parade, are relegated here where the 
 shadows are tender to their rents and dis- 
 abilities. Things that would be hideous in 
 the clean-swept church show delightful in 
 San Bias, like the rags and stains of a capt- 
 ured banner. Altar cloths, vestments, pallia 
 —rejected by vestiary and priest— are brought 
 here, and drip from tables and walls in 
 charming intimacy with dust and moth. 
 Squares of tapestry with the Virgin's head 
 gone to a smudge, and the golden crown to 
 base metal, napkins with dirty fringes, dingy 
 chasubles — how contented they look to be 
 relieved from smart brushings and decorous 
 foldings ! 
 
 And because this chapel is dusky, and its 
 roof glows like smouldering lire, and in everv 
 corner a lively skirmish goes on daily be- 
 tween yellow light and chestnut shade— 
 because, in short, decay is natural and cleanli- 
 ness is artificial, these miserable rags, instead 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 199 
 
 of suggesting a fire, attract the eye by mel- 
 odious hints of color and teach us how Time's 
 gradual touch may moulder into beauty even 
 unimportant things. 
 
 What it is that stops this study of Time in 
 the cathedral is difficult to put in words, or to 
 explain in any way. A day spent there is 
 more than enough to impress you with its 
 massive symmetry and its simple nobleness. 
 Two days, three, or a week, are not enough 
 to make you love it. In fact, by as many 
 hours as you pass under its lofty roof, ^he 
 feeling grows that something is wanting. 
 You wander everywhere, absorbing always 
 something of its coldness; you wander, look- 
 ing for a word which the centuries have writ- 
 ten, the word finis. It is not there. You 
 carry away with you the impression of a 
 cathedral unfinished and unfurnished, which, 
 for that reason, the ghosts of four centuries 
 will not deign to inhabit; a cathedral on 
 which the builder's hand faltered before 
 he could bequeath his plan to a worthy 
 descendant, and which, ever after, men 
 have foolishly hidden away from the com- 
 pleting tools of nature. Like an unfinished 
 manuscript of a great author, Spain's 
 primate church appeals to the curiosity 
 of the brain rather than to the affection of 
 the heart. 
 
2CO 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 THRKE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 2C1 
 
 III. 
 
 AT last, as at first, one is forced to admit 
 there is no writing intelligibly about 
 Toledo. To say that it is a shell with a rim 
 of crustacean inhabitants is not description, 
 but generalization. Nothing is easier than 
 to generalize over the city of the Visigoths. 
 Perhaps, after staying there only three days 
 I am audacious in writing anything, but for 
 the impertinence I have two excuses, one 
 being that few people stay so long, and the 
 other that the actual Toledo utterly failed to 
 dislodge the mental Toledo. Before I went 
 there it existed as a city of terraces, of 
 houses whose roofs made hanging galleries 
 from which dark-eyed ladies looked down on 
 the lists in the Vega. The women I saw in 
 Toledo may have had black eyes, but they 
 were neither beautiful nor ladies, and yet 
 there gleams again for me on the cliff walls 
 of Toledo the silken splendor of Aldegonde's 
 pavilion. 
 
 The actual city has neither wisdom nor 
 romance to disclose, and not much of what is 
 commonly called interest. It serves but as 
 a resting-place for the overworked imagina- 
 
 
 tion. Somewhere between presentiment and 
 emotion, Toledo lies— the Toledo, that is, of 
 the mind, and the time spent within the gates 
 of the hoary capital is but an hiatus between 
 periods given over to visions. 
 
 Which shall I write about, asks one, w^ish- 
 ing to tell the truth, the dream city or the 
 real? And how can one decide when there 
 is no real, when the description of Toledo as 
 it exists is the description of a stone three- 
 quarters in shadow ? 
 
 One easy method of describing Toledo is 
 to tell what is not there. It is certain that 
 we saw no lists in the Vega, no silken dra- 
 peries, no beautiful women. The inhabitants 
 made no effort to amuse us, but left us free 
 to reconstruct the place with reverie, and 
 destroy it again with ennui. For two days 
 we built and tore down, and on the third 
 found ourselves reduced to accept the ancient 
 city for what it was, and instead of going 
 about dreaming, we went looking. Matters 
 had adjusted themselves, and we might have 
 stayed on indefinitely, leading tranquil lives, 
 and dreaming of Toledo, as of any other 
 dim tract of No Man's Land, that we never 
 expected to behold except in dreams. 
 
 Meanwhile our eyes saw whatever life was 
 to be seen in Toledo. The blood flowed with 
 comparative rapidity in a smart little street 
 
202 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 not far from the Fonda de Lino. We went 
 there to buy a pistol, and the shop where 
 such a modern invention could be found, was 
 of all places, an antiquary shop. But we 
 remained to turn over what seemed to be 
 treasures, and I have no doubt that all we 
 did not buy were treasures. The rubbish we 
 selected was not forced on us by the cheerful 
 merchant whom I wish to commend as the 
 only civil shop-keeper out of Madrid. He 
 had the true American salesman's sympathy 
 for the purchaser, and instead of scowling at 
 us over his brasero, after the almost univer- 
 sal Spanish custom, he felt glad to show us 
 his goods. His little shop— dark and dirty 
 a« a self-respecting antiquity shop ought to 
 be -was a veritable museum of curiosities. 
 It was particularly rich in curios of the six- 
 teenth century—embroideries, carvings, 
 tapestries— and encouraged by our exclama- 
 tions at the first articles exhibited, he brought 
 out of cabinets, drawers, and pigeon holes, 
 an almost limitless treasury. Rembrandt 
 would have found in this shop abundant ma- 
 terial for enriching his studio. From a 
 back room no larger than a closet, the mer- 
 chant brought forth a pile of coverlets of 
 velvets, silk, and stuff stiff with gold and 
 silver, that reached to his shoulder. It 
 seemed as if this merchant had robbed all the 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 203 
 
 beds of the sixteenth century, and heaped 
 their riches and luxuries in the narrow com- 
 pass of his shop. Antique arms, coats of mail, 
 shields that preserve traces of the golden 
 cross, Moorish scimitars and poniards, with 
 chased silver scabbards, or sheaths of velvet 
 or leather, chaplets of cedar of Lebanon, 
 gold and silver images of curious taste, and 
 innumerable other articles of ancient fashion, 
 and almost unknown uses — all these things 
 has this poverty-stricken merchant in his 
 costly and singular collection, and he allows 
 you to turn and tumble over every article to 
 your heart's content. 
 
 Upon the walls were hung trophies wrested 
 from the Moors, and a banner captured by 
 Don John at Lepanto. As to the latter, 
 knowing how jealously Spain has ever guarded 
 the spoils of her natural son, we kept an in- 
 credulous silence. Our enthusiasm,otherwise, 
 was quite satisfactory to the merchant, and 
 he fed it lavishly. From a tiny tahatiere of 
 some strange-smelling wood, he extracted a 
 bracelet woven from the hair of Don Pedro 
 and Maria Padilla. . He followed this with 
 another, a snuff-box in silver, which he shook 
 in his hand eliciting a sound like a dry pea in 
 its pod. This he was about to open after 
 smilingly asserting it contained the preserved 
 heart of Mendoza, but we looked him sternly 
 
204 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 m the face, all our admiration turned to sad- 
 ness, quickly paid him for the pistol and other 
 purchases, and departed. I have regretted 
 since that I took offense so quickly. It could 
 have done me no harm to look at the withered 
 membrane-of course it was not the heart 
 of Mendoza, but it could have done no harm 
 to look. 
 
 The other shops in the Place of the Mer- 
 chants sold more modern rags than the one 
 we patronized. Half of them sported in the 
 ivmdows and before the door§, a motley col- 
 lection of cotton scarfs, stockings and shirts 
 while the other half exhibited an equally 
 gaudy show of vegetables of which the staple 
 were beans and garlic. It was not easy to 
 pick out of the knot of people clustered about 
 each shop door, the merchant and the cus- 
 tomer, for in Spain both are plural. No one 
 in Toledo goes alone to the market-place • 
 every citizen is accompanied by his entire 
 household, and to meet this concerted action, 
 as a measure of self protection, the pro' 
 prietor surrounds himself with his partisans 
 Accordingly, when the .two armies join battle 
 oyer a pint of beans or a yard of calico, the 
 Flace of the Merchants becomes a very livelv 
 spot. -^ ^ 
 
 In comparison, the Zocodover, now called 
 the Piaza de la Constitucion, is dead, although 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 205 
 
 it is the popular promenade of the citizens. 
 There the Toledan, not being animated by the 
 desire to get a real advantage of his neigh- 
 bor, manifests his absolute indifference to 
 everything and everybody. It is colder in 
 the Zocodover than in other parts of Toledo 
 which is natural, for it is open, while the nar- 
 i»w and winding streets were so built by the 
 Moors to protect them against the sun and 
 wind. But the cold seems caused by the 
 frown of the Alcazar that crowns, stiff and 
 severe, the crest on the right. We never saw 
 many people in the plaza, sometimes a party 
 of very poor peasants chatting together in 
 mournful monotonous voices, and always 
 three or four officers who flung their white 
 braided blue capes over their shoulders, rolled 
 and smoked cigarettes and, at regular inter- 
 vals, solemnly saluted themselves. The shops 
 about the place might as well have been closed 
 for^ all the custom they attracted, but the 
 cafes, especially that of the Constitucion, en- 
 joyed a rushing trade. We used to drop in 
 to shiver on a bench as hard as those of the 
 Zocodover and listen to the conversation. 
 This listening could not be called eaves- 
 dropping, for every speaker roared out his 
 sentiments so as to be heard in all parts of the 
 room. The favorite and constantly recurring 
 word of these chocolate and coffee-drinkers 
 
 
2o6 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS, 
 
 was *'abajo." Every body seemed to be de- 
 sirous to put something or somebody down. 
 No, not every body, for the officers and the 
 cadets from the Alcazar military school spoke 
 of institutions they were willing to leave 
 standing, but these were mostly in Madrid, 
 where the officers had been and the cadets 
 laid eager plans to go. ^ 
 
 These bored officers and callow cadets 
 formed our last link with the modern world. 
 We clutched at it, this final day, in order to 
 resist the deadly fascination of ruin and went 
 to see how and where they live. We went 
 first to the college of Santa Cruz, where the 
 sons of officers are lodged during the three 
 years course of the military instruction en« 
 joined by the State. There were less than a 
 hundred of these youths, who pay $i.oo a 
 day for their board ; the remaining five hun- 
 dred cadets being lodged and boarded in the 
 Alcazar for half that sum. 
 
 The college of Santa Cruz — formerly a hos- 
 pital, fdon^ed by Cardinal Mendoza, is one of 
 the loveliest early sixteenth century build- 
 ings of Spain— an era when the florid Gothic 
 was merging into the Renaissance. In this 
 monument the transition is accomplished 
 without any of the incongruities so frequent- 
 ly met with in plateresque examples. Surely 
 Enrique de Egas, when he placed the match- 
 
 THRKE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 207 
 
 less group of the invention of the Cross over 
 the portal, wrought with the inspired chisel 
 of Alonzo Cano. The patio fulfills the gate's 
 promise. It is surrounded by two stories of 
 light arcades supported by slender white 
 columns, and it contains a staircase the like 
 of which can;iot be seen elsewhere in Spain. 
 Upon it have been lavished all the resources 
 of artists trained in two fruitful schools, the 
 Renaissance and the Mudejar. 
 
 But we hasten to visit the home of the 
 other five hundred cadets; we feel more in- 
 terested in them than in these pampered 
 young aides-de-camp, and, besides, nobody 
 asks us to see any other part of Santa Cruz 
 but the patio. Presently we are climbing the 
 highest hill of Toledo in the shadow of the 
 Royal Alcazar. We stand for a moment in 
 the plaza beneath its frowning facade and en- 
 joy a magnificent view of Toledo, its descend- 
 ing streets just distinguishable among sloping 
 roofs, its ascending spires that still are min- 
 arets, its broad road to the bridge of Alcan- 
 tara, the green-blue Tagus, the granite hill 
 opposite crowned by the ruined castle of San 
 Cervantes. All the details of this view look 
 like a work of Nature in which man had no 
 part. 
 
 The Alcazar, too. looks like a part of the 
 rock on which it stands. Its indestructible 
 
2C8 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 walls have had nine centuries in which to 
 amalgamate with their foundations. And yet 
 this palace has seen terrible convulsions. 
 The Portuguese burned it in the war of suc- 
 cession, and Cardinal Lorenzana restored it for 
 Charles III. just in time for Soulf s soldiers 
 to occupy it as a barrack. The same troops 
 burned it again when evacuating the half- 
 ruined city. It was left to itself for half a 
 century, Isabella having bestow^ed her love 
 and money elsewhere, and then the short 
 lived republic began to restore it for a mili- 
 tary school. Alphonso completed the work 
 and carried out the intention. Now, the vast 
 quadrangle echoes to the spurred-heels of 
 lively school- boys, their names are scribbled 
 on the fine staircase and their mischievous 
 eyes peer down from the upper galleries on 
 the sauntering strangers. They are under 
 the charge of an Inspector-General and a 
 numerous staff of teachers. They pay a nom- 
 inal price for their board, but the instruction, 
 which comprehends a curriculum almost 
 identical with that of West Point, is gratui- 
 tous. A very relaxed discipline, compared 
 to our Hudson river academy, prevails in the 
 Alcazar. 
 
 On the low parapet, in front of the palace, 
 I lingered for awhile. The roofs below me 
 lay plunged in dark blue shadows. The end 
 
 THREE TOLEDAN DAYS. 
 
 209 
 
 of the afternoon and our stay approached. 
 Three days had elapsed since we reached 
 Toledo, and we knew as much of its physi- 
 ognomy as we could ever learn. We had 
 seen its churches and chapels, its palaces of 
 king and monk. These ghosts had filled me 
 with an impatient longing to be gone. 
 
 We ran back to the Fonda de Lino and, 
 for the last time, entered the omnibus to go 
 to the station. With some confusion, for we 
 had cut him remorselessly, we recognized 
 Alexis Amaudry in a fellow-passenger. He 
 had put on a broad-brimmed sombrero in 
 place of his usual silk hat, and, with the ex- 
 change, he seemed to have taken on another 
 character. He had nothing to say, but 
 waved his hand, and continued to read a 
 little note book. 
 
 The train started, bearing us southward, 
 and, as we took our last look at the city dis- 
 appearing behind its granite hills, we tried 
 to answer a question, unanswerable then and 
 which has remained unsolved, Were we glad 
 or were we sorry that we had seen Toledo ? 
 
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