What a royal celebration at the home of the Señores of ---- to-night!
The house is filled with the thunder of drums. Children cannot be
made to understand that they might enjoy things a great deal more
if they only omitted the infernal noise of the warlike instrument.
But this is not all. In order that no human tympanum may be left in
condition to perform its natural functions the next day, they have
added to the drum the thumping of the _zambomba_,--that hellish
contrivance whose sounds were intended to reproduce the growls of
Satan. The symphony is completed by the tambourine, which, like the
rattling of old tin pans, would irritate the most placid nerves;
and still this discordant hubbub without rhythm or melody, more
primitive than the music of savages, is inspiriting and cheerful on
this particular night, and bears something of a distant likeness to a
celestial choir.
The Bethlehem manger is not a work of art to the adults; but to
the children the figures are so beautiful, there is such a mystic
expression on their countenances and so much propriety in their
costumes, that they scarcely believe them to be the work of human
hands, and are inclined to lay it all to the industry of a certain
class of angels who make a living by working in clay. The entrance
of the stable, carved out of cork, and imitating a partly ruined
Roman arch, is a dream of beauty; and the little river made of
looking-glass, with its green spots representing aquatic growths
and the moss of its banks, seems really to be rippling along the
table with a soft murmur. The bridge over which the shepherds are
coming is a masterpiece. Never before was pasteboard known to look
so exactly like stone,--a striking contrast this to the works of our
modern engineers, who build bridges of stone, that look exactly like
pasteboard. The mountain that rises in the centre of the landscape
might be taken for a scrap of the Pyrenees; and its exquisite
cottages, a trifle smaller than the figures, and its mimic trees with
little limbs of real foliage are far more real than Nature.
But the most attractive, the most characteristic figures are those
on the plain,--the washerwomen washing clothes at the stream; the
chicken and turkey tenders driving their flocks before them; then an
officer of the civil guards taking two scamps off to jail; gentlemen
riding in luxurious carriages, brushing past the camel of the Magi;
and Perico, the blind man, playing on the guitar to a little group of
people through which the shepherds have elbowed their way on their
return from their worship at the manger. A tram-car runs along from
one extremity of the landscape to the other, just exactly as it does
in the Salamanca quarter; and as it has wheels and real tracks, it is
kept going from east to west, much to the surprise of the black Magi,
who cannot make out what sort of a machine it can possibly be.
The arch opens upon a beautiful square, in the centre of which stands
a little glass aquarium. A short distance away a newsboy is selling
papers, and two Majos are dancing prettily. The capital pieces
of this marvellous people of clay, those upon which all eyes are
centred, are the fritter-vender and the old woman selling chestnuts
on the street corner; and the children fairly split their sides at
the sight of the small ragamuffin, who holds out a lottery ticket to
the old chestnut woman, while with the other hand he quietly pilfers
her nuts.
In a word, there is no Bethlehem manger in all Madrid that can be
compared to this one; for this is one of the great homes of the
capital, and the parlors are crowded with the best-bred and most
beautiful children to be found within a radius of twenty streets.