late majesty,--a brilliant creation of yellow satin and profuse gilding,
a bovidoir on wheels,--not too full of a distinguished company. Some of
the leading men of New Spain, one or two ministers, were there, and we
passed a pleasant two hours on the road in that most seductive of all
human occupations,--talking politics.
It is remarkable that whenever a nation is remodelling its internal
structure, the subject most generally discussed is the constitutional
system of the United States. The republicans usually adopt it solid. The
monarchists study it with a jealous interest. I fell into conversation
with Senor------, one of the best minds in Spain, an enlightened though
conservative statesman. He said: "It is hard for Europe to adopt a
settled belief about you. America is a land of wonders, of
contradictions. One party calls your system freedom, another anarchy. In
all legislative assemblies of Europe, republicans and absolutists alike
draw arguments from America. But what cannot be denied are the effects,
the results. These are evident, something vast and grandiose, a life and
movement to which the Old World is stranger." He afterwards referred
with great interest to the imaginary imperialist movement in America,
and raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity when I assured him there
was as much danger of Spain becoming Mohammedan as of America becoming
imperialist.
We stopped at the little station of Villalba, in the midst of the wide
brown table-land that stretches from Madrid to the Escorial. At Villalba
we found the inevitable swarm of beggars, who always know by the sure
instinct of wretchedness where a harvest of cuartos is to be achieved. I
have often passed Villalba and have seen nothing but the station-master
and the water-vender. But to-day, because there were a half dozen
excellencies on the train, the entire mendicant force of the district
was on parade. They could not have known these gentlemen were coming;
they must have scented pennies in the air.
Awaiting us at the rear of the station were three enormous lumbering
diligences, each furnished with nine superb mules,--four pairs and a
leader. They were loaded with gaudy trappings, and their shiny coats,
and backs shorn into graceful arabesques, showed that they did not
belong to the working-classes, but enjoyed the gentlemanly leisure of
official station. The drivers wore a smart postilion uniform and the
royal crown on their caps.
We threw some handfuls of copper and bronze among the picturesque
mendicants. They gathered them up with grave Castilian decorum, and
said, "God will repay your graces." The postilions cracked their whips,
the mules shook their bells gayly, the heavy wagons started off at a
full gallop, and the beggars said, "May your graces go with God!"
It was the end of July, and the sky was blue and cloudless. The fine,
soft light of the afternoon was falling on the tawny slopes and the
close-reaped fields. The harvest was over. In the fields on either side
they were threshing their grain, not as in the outside world, with the
whirring of loud and swift machinery, nor even with the active and
lively swinging of flails; but in the open air, under the warm sky, the
cattle were lazily treading out the corn on the bare ground, to be
winnowed by the wandering wind. No change from the time of Solomon.
Through an infinity of ages, ever since corn and cattle were, the
Iberian farmer in this very spot had driven his beasts over his crop,
and never dreamed of a better way of doing the work.
Not only does the Spaniard not seek for improvements, he utterly
despises and rejects them. The poorer classes especially, who would
find an enormous advantage in increased production, lightening their
hard lot by a greater plenty of the means of life, regard every
introduction of improved machinery as a blow at the rights of labor.
When many years ago a Dutch vintner went to Valdepenas and so greatly
improved the manufacture of that excellent but ill-made wine that its
price immediately rose in the Madrid market, he was mobbed and plundered
by his ignorant neighbors, because, as they said, he was laboring to
make wine dearer. In every attempt which has been made to manufacture
improved machinery in Spain, the greatest care has to be taken to
prevent the workmen from maliciously damaging the works, which they
imagine are to take the bread from the mouths of their children.
So strong is this feeling in every department of national life, that the
mayoral who drove our spanking nine-in-hand received with very ill humor
our suggestion that the time could be greatly shortened by a Fell
railroad over the hills to La Granja. "What would become of nosotros?"
he asked. And it really would seem a pity to annihilate so much
picturesqueness and color at the bidding of mere utility. A gayly
embroidered Andalusian jacket, bright scarlet silk waistcoat,--a rich
wide belt, into which his long knife, the navaja, was jauntily
thrust,--buckskin breeches, with Valentian stockings, which, as they are
open at the bottom, have been aptly likened to a Spaniard's purse,--and
shoes made of Murcian matting, composed his natty outfit. By his side on
the box sat the zagal, his assistant, whose especial function seemed to
be to swear at the cattle. I have heard some eloquent imprecation in my
day. "Our army swore terribly" at Hilton Head. The objuration of the
boatmen of the Mississippi is very vigorous and racy. But I have never
assisted at a session of profanity so loud, so energetic, so original as
that with which this Castilian postilion regaled us. The wonderful
consistency and perseverance with which the role was sustained was
worthy of a much better cause.
He began by yelling in a coarse, strident voice, "Arre! arre!" (Get up!)
with a vicious emphasis on the final syllable. This is one of the
Moorish words that have remained fixed like fossils in the language of
the conquerors. Its constant use in the mouths of muleteers has given
them the name of arrieros. This general admonition being addressed to
the team at large, the zagal descended to details, and proceeded to
vilipend the galloping beasts separately, beginning with the leader. He
informed him, still in this wild, jerking scream, that he was a dog,
that his mother's character was far from that of Caesar's wife, and that
if more speed was not exhibited on this down grade, he would be forced
to resort to extreme measures. At the mention of a whip, the tall male
mule who led the team dashed gallantly off, and the diligence was soon
enveloped in a cloud of dust. This seemed to excite our gay charioteer
to the highest degree. He screamed lustily at his mules, addressing each
personally by its name. "Andaluza, arre! Thou of Arragon, go! Beware the
scourge, Manchega!" and every animal acknowledged the special attention
by shaking its ears and bells and whisking its shaven tail, as the
diligence rolled furiously over the dull drab plain.
For three hours the iron lungs of the muleteer knew no rest or pause.
Several times in the journey we stopped at a post-station to change our
cattle, but the same brazen throat sufficed for all the threatening and
encouragement that kept them at the top of their speed. Before we
arrived at our journey's end, however, he was hoarse as a raven, and
kept one hand pressed to his jaw to reinforce the exhausted muscles of
speech.
When the wide and dusty plain was passed, we began by a slow and winding
ascent the passage of the Guadarrama. The road is an excellent one, and
although so seldom used,--a few months only in the year,--it is kept in
the most perfect repair. It is exclusively a summer road, being in the
winter impassable with snow. It affords at every turn the most charming
compositions of mountain and wooded valley. At intervals we passed a
mounted guardia civil, who sat as motionless in his saddle as an
equestrian statue, and saluted as the coaches rattled by. And once or
twice in a quiet nook by the roadside we came upon the lonely cross that
marked the spot where a man had been murdered.
It was nearly sunset when we arrived at the summit of the pass. We
halted to ask for a glass of water at the hut of a gray-haired woman on
the mountain-top. It was given and received as always in this pious
country, in the name of God. As we descended, the mules seemed to have
gained new vigor from the prospect of an easy stretch of _facilis
descensus,_ and the zagal employed what was left of his voice in
provoking them to speed by insulting remarks upon their lineage. The
quick twilight fell as we entered a vast forest of pines that clothed
the mountain-side. The enormous trees looked in the dim evening light
like the forms of the Anakim, maimed with lightning but still defying
heaven. Years of battle with the mountain winds had twisted them into
every conceivable shape of writhing and distorted deformity. I never saw
trees that so nearly conveyed the idea of being the visible prison of
tortured dryads. Their trunks, white and glistening with oozing resin,
added to the ghostly impression they created in the uncertain and
failing light.
We reached the valley and rattled by a sleepy village, where we were
greeted by a chorus of outraged curs whose beauty-sleep we had
disturbed, and then began the slow ascent of the hill where St.
Ildefonso stands. We had not gone far when we heard a pattering of hoofs
and a ringing of sabres coming down the road to meet us. The diligence
stopped, and the Introducer of Ambassadors jumped to the ground and
announced, "El Regente del Reino!" It was the regent, the courteous and
amiable Marshal Serrano, who had ridden out from the palace to welcome
his guests, and who, after hasty salutations, galloped back to La
Granja, where we soon arrived.
We were assigned the apartments usually given to the papal nuncio, and
slept with an episcopal peace of mind. In the morning, as we were
walking about the gardens, we saw looking from the palace window one of
the most accomplished gentlemen and diplomatists of the new regime. He
descended and did the honors of the place. The system of gardens and
fountains is enormous. It is evidently modelled upon Versailles, but the
copy is in many respects finer than the original. The peculiarity of the
site, while offering great difficulties, at the same time enhances the
triumph of success. This is a garden taught to bloom upon a barren
mountain-side. The earth in which these trees are planted was brought
from those dim plains in the distance on the backs of men and mules. The
pipes that supply these innumerable fountains were laid on the bare
rocks and the soil was thrown over them. Every tree was guarded and
watched like a baby. There was probably never a garden that grew under
such circumstances,--but the result is superb. The fountains are fed by
a vast reservoir in the mountain, and the water they throw into the
bright air is as clear as morning dew. Every alley and avenue is a vista
that ends in a vast picture of shaggy hills or far-off plains,--while
behind the royal gardens towers the lordly peak of the Penalara, thrust
eight thousand feet into the thin blue ether.
The palace has its share of history. It witnessed the abdication of the
uxorious bigot Philip V. in 1724, and his resumption of the crown the
next year at the instance of his proud and turbulent Parmesan wife. His
bones rest in the church here, as he hated the Austrian line too
intensely to share with them the gorgeous crypt of the Escorial. His
wife, Elizabeth Farnese, lies under the same gravestone with him, as if
unwilling to forego even in death that tremendous influence which her
vigorous vitality had always exercised over his wavering and sensual
nature. "Das Ewig-Weibliche" masters and guides him still.
This retreat in the autumn of 1832 was the scene of a prodigious
exhibition of courage and energy on the part of another Italian woman,
Dona Louisa Carlota de Borbon. Ferdinand VIL, his mind weakened by
illness, and influenced by his ministers, had proclaimed his brother Don
Carlos heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own infant daughter.
His wife, Queen Christine, broken down by the long conflict, had given
way in despair. But her sister, Dona Louisa Carlota, heard of the news
in the south of Spain, and, leaving her babies at _Cadiz_ (two little
urchins, one of whom was to be king consort, and the other was to fall
by his cousin Montpensier's hand in the field of Carabanchel), she
posted without a moment's pause for rest or sleep over mountains and
plains from the sea to La Granja. She fought with the lackeys and the
ministers twenty-four hours before she could see her sister the queen.
Having breathed into Christine her own invincible spirit, they
succeeded, after endless pains, in reaching the king. Obstinate as the
weak often are, he refused at first to listen to them; but by their
womanly wiles, their Italian policy, their magnetic force, they at last
brought him to revoke his decree in favor of Don Carlos and to recognize
the right of his daughter to the crown. Then, terrible in her triumph,
Dona Louisa Carlota sent for the Minister Calomarde, overwhelmed him
with the coarsest and most furious abuse, and, unable to confine her
victorious rage and hate to words alone, she slapped the astounded
minister in the face. Calomarde, trembling with rage, bowed and said, "A
white hand cannot offend."
There is nothing stronger than a woman's weakness, or weaker than a
woman's strength.
A few years later, when Ferdinand was in his grave, and the baby Isabel
reigned under the regency of Christine, a movement in favor of the
constitution of 1812 burst out, where revolutions generally do, in the
south, and spread rapidly over the contiguous provinces. The infection
gained the troops of the royal guard at La Granja, and they surrounded
the palace bawling for the constitution. The regentess, with a proud
reliance upon her own power, ordered them to send a deputation to her
apartment. A dozen of the mutineers came in, and demanded the
constitution.
"What is that?" asked the queen.
They looked at each other and cudgelled their brains. They had never
thought of that before.
"Caramba!" said they. "We don't know. They say it is a good thing, and
will raise our pay and make salt cheaper."
Their political economy was somewhat flimsy, but they had the bayonets,
and the queen was compelled to give way and proclaim the constitution.
I must add one trifling reminiscence more of La Granja, which has also
its little moral. A friend of mine, a colonel of engineers, in the
summer before the revolution, was standing before the palace with some
officers, when a mean-looking cur ran past.
"What an ugly dog!" said the colonel.
"Hush!" replied another, with an awe-struck face. "That is the dog of
his royal highness the Prince of Asturias."
The colonel unfortunately had a logical mind, and failed to see that
ownership had any bearing on a purely aesthetic question. He defined his
position. "I do not think the dog is ugly because he belongs to the
prince. I only mean the prince has an ugly dog."
The window just above them slammed, and another officer came up and said
that the Adversary was to pay. "THE QUEEN was at the window and heard
every word you said."
An hour after the colonel received an order from the commandant of the
place, revoking his leave of absence and ordering him to duty in Madrid.
It is not very surprising that this officer was at the Bridge of
Alcolea.
At noon the day grew dark with clouds, and the black storm-wreath came
down over the mountains. A terrific fire of artillery resounded for a
half-hour in the craggy peaks about us, and a driving shower passed over
palace and gardens. Then the sun came out again, the pleasure-grounds
were fresher and greener than ever, and the visitors thronged in the
court of the palace to see the fountains in play. The regent led the way
on foot. The general followed in a pony phaeton, and ministers,
adjutants, and the population of the district trooped along in a
party-colored mass.
It was a good afternoon's work to visit all the fountains. They are
twenty-six in number, strewn over the undulating grounds. People who
visit Paris usually consider a day of Grandes Eaux at Versailles the
last word of this species of costly trifling. But the waters at
Versailles bear no comparison with those of La Granja. The sense is
fatigued and bewildered here with their magnificence and infinite
variety. The vast reservoir in the bosom of the mountain, filled with
the purest water, gives a possibility of more superb effects than have
been attained anywhere else in the world. The Fountain of the Winds is
one, where a vast mass of water springs into the air from the foot of a
great cavernous rock; there is a succession of exquisite cascades called
the Race-Course, filled with graceful statuary; a colossal group of
Apollo slaying the Python, who in his death agony bleeds a torrent of
water; the Basket of Flowers, which throws up a system of forty jets;
the great single jet called Fame, which leaps one hundred and thirty
feet into the air, a Niagara reversed; and the crowning glory of the
garden, the Baths of Diana, an immense stage scene in marble and bronze,
crowded with nymphs and hunting-parties, wild beasts and birds, and
everywhere the wildest luxuriance of spouting waters. We were told that
it was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant of the palace to
emulate her chaste prototype of the silver bow by choosing this artistic
basin for her ablutions, a sufficient number of civil guards being
posted to prevent the approach of Castilian Actaeons. Ford aptly remarks
of these extravagant follies: "The yoke of building kings is grievous,
and especially when, as St. Simon said of Louis XIV. and his Versailles,
'II se plut a tyranniser la nature.'"
As the bilious Philip paused before this mass of sculptured
extravagance, he looked at it a moment with evident pleasure. Then he
thought of the bill, and whined, "Thou hast amused me three minutes and
hast cost me three millions."
To do Philip justice, he did not allow the bills to trouble him much. He
died owing forty-five million piastres, which his dutiful son refused to
pay. When you deal with Bourbons, it is well to remember the Spanish
proverb, "A sparrow in the hand is better than a bustard on the wing."
We wasted an hour in walking through the palace. It is, like all
palaces, too fine and dreary to describe. Miles of drawing-rooms and
boudoirs, with an infinity of tapestry and gilt chairs, all the
apartments haunted by the demon of ennui. All idea of comfort is
sacrificed to costly glitter and flimsy magnificence. Some fine
paintings were pining in exile on the desolate walls. They looked
homesick for the Museum, where they could be seen of men.
The next morning we drove down the mountain and over the rolling plain
to the fine old city of Segovia. In point of antiquity and historic
interest it is inferior to no town in Spain. It has lost its ancient
importance as a seat of government and a mart of commerce. Its
population is now not more than eleven thousand. Its manufactures have
gone to decay. Its woollen works, which once employed fourteen thousand
persons and produced annually twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth, now
sustain a sickly existence and turn out not more than two hundred pieces
yearly. Its mint, which once spread over Spain a Danaean shower of
ounces and dollars, is now reduced to the humble office of striking
copper cuartos. More than two centuries ago this decline began. Boisel,
who was there in 1669, speaks of the city as "presque desert et fort
pauvre." He mentions as a mark of the general unthrift that the day he
arrived there was no bread in town until two o'clock in the afternoon,
"and no one was astonished at it."
Yet even in its poverty and rags it has the air of a town that has seen
better days. Tradition says it was founded by Hercules. It was an
important city of the Roman Empire, and a great capital in the days of
the Arab monarchy. It was the court of the star-gazing King Alonso the
Wise. Through a dozen centuries it was the flower of the mountains of
Castile. Each succeeding age and race beautified and embellished it, and
each, departing, left the trace of its passage in the abiding granite of
its monuments. The Romans left the glorious aqueduct, that work of
demigods who scorned to mention it in their histories; its mediaeval
bishops bequeathed to later times their ideas of ecclesiastical
architecture; and the Arabs the science of fortification and the
industrial arts.
Its very ruin and decay makes it only more precious to the traveller.
There are here none of the modern and commonplace evidences of life and
activity that shock the artistic sense in other towns. All is old,
moribund, and picturesque. It lies here in the heart of the Guadarramas,
lost and forgotten by the civilization of the age, muttering in its
senile dream of the glories of an older world. It has not vitality
enough to attract a railroad, and so is only reached by a long and
tiresome journey by diligence. Its solitude is rarely intruded upon by
the impertinent curious, and the red back of Murray is a rare apparition
in its winding streets.
Yet those who come are richly repaid. One does not quickly forget the
impression produced by the first view of the vast aqueduct, as you drive
into the town from La Granja. It comes upon you in an instant,--the two
great ranges of superimposed arches, over one hundred feet high,
spanning the ravine-like suburb from the outer hills to the Alcazar. You
raise your eyes from the market-place, with its dickering crowd, from
the old and squalid houses clustered like shot rubbish at the foot of
the chasm, to this grand and soaring wonder of utilitarian architecture,
with something of a fancy that it was never made, that it has stood
there since the morning of the world. It has the lightness and the
strength, the absence of ornament and the essential beauty, the vastness
and the perfection, of a work of nature.
It is one of those gigantic works of Trajan, so common in that
magnificent age that Roman authors do not allude to it. It was built to
bring the cool mountain water of the Sierra Fonfria a distance of nine
miles through the hills, the gulches, and the pine forests of Valsain,
and over the open plain to the thirsty city of Segovia. The aqueduct
proper runs from the old tower of Caseron three thousand feet to the
reservoir where the water deposits its sand and sediment, and thence
begins the series of one hundred and nineteen arches, which traverse
three thousand feet more and pass the valley, the arrabal, and reach the
citadel. It is composed of great blocks of granite, so perfectly framed
and fitted that not a particle of mortar or cement is employed in the
construction.
The wonder of the work is not so much in its vastness or its beauty as
in its tremendous solidity and duration. A portion of it had been cut
away by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, and in the reign
of Isabella the Catholic the monk-architect of the Parral, Juan
Escovedo, the greatest builder of his day in Spain, repaired it. These
repairs have themselves twice needed repairing since then. Marshal Ney,
when he came to this portion of the monument, exclaimed, "Here begins
the work of men's hands."
The true Segovian would hoot at you if you assigned any mortal paternity
to the aqueduct. He calls it the Devil's Bridge, and tells you this
story. The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the upper town,
and full of protestations of devotion. The fair Segovian listened to him
one evening, when her plump arms ached with the work of bringing water
from the ravine, and promised eyes of favor if his Infernal Majesty
would build an aqueduct to her door before morning. He worked all night,
like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, saw
him putting the last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun
lighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decided
that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from her
promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out of
his sight again.