the air in the neighboring Alcazar garden would of itself have been
enough to tell us, in the dark, that we had entered Andalusia. That was
beyond question a most delectable spot. A sort of fortress-prison
bordered it, and immediately on the other side of the prison-wall
blossomed the garden, where lemons and oranges and bergamot clambered
rankly against the bricks, perfuming the whole atmosphere, and overblown
roses dropped from their vines on to the paths. There were hedges of
rosemary, and trees of pimento, and angular ribs of prickly cactus,
carefully trained. From a balustraded terrace higher up descended a
stone flight of steps, the massive stone guard of which on each side was
scooped out so as to make a mossy bed for two streams of water
perpetually flowing down and losing themselves in the secret courses
that ministered to little scattered fountains, or laved the roots of the
verdant tangle. Now and again a lizard darted from point to point, like
an evil thought surprised in the heart of so much sweetness and
freshness. Everywhere there was a cool gush and ripple of water, and
some wide-spreading fig-trees made a pleasant bower in a bastion of the
low garden-wall overlooking the famous river. From this post of vantage
one can see the thick brown current slowly oozing by, and the ancient
bridge which spans it, fortified at both ends, connecting the Cordova of
to-day with the opposite bank, where the ancient city extended for two
or three miles. With its great arched gate, Roman made and finely
sculptured, this mellow light brown structure forms an effective link in
the landscape, and below its piers stand several Moorish mills, disused,
but as yet unbroken by age or floods.
We drove across the venerable viaduct afterward, and found that by an
extraordinary dispensation some very fresh and shining silver coins of
ancient Rome had lately been dug up from one of the shoals in the river
(a peculiar place, by-the-way, to bury them in), and that our guide had
some in his pocket. We forbore to deprive him of such treasures,
however, even at the very trifling price which he put upon them, and
contented ourselves with being swindled by him in a subsequent purchase
of some other articles.
II.
FROM Cordova may be made, by those who are especially favored, one of
the most interesting expeditions possible to the Hermitage, or, as the
Church authorities name it, the _Desierta_ (desert) of solitary monks,
genuine anchorites, a few miles distant in the Sierra Morena. There are
obstacles more formidable than the purely physical ones in the way of
this excursion, the bishop of the diocese being averse to granting
permission for the visit to any one who is not a good Catholic. Two
Englishmen who came before us, relying on the potent gold piece, had
made the toilsome ascent only to find that their sterling sovereigns
were of no avail. I think the presence of the Novice helped our party;
but it would be unwise to reveal the stratagem by which we all gained
admittance. Let it be enough to say that we went to the bishop's palace
after the usual hours of business, and by humble apologies obtained an
audience with the secretary. While we were waiting we sat down under a
frivolously gorgeous rococo ceiling, on a great double staircase of
marble leading up from the _patio_, which was well planted with shrubs,
and had walks paved with smooth round stones of various hue, set
edgewise in extensive patterns. The vaulted ceiling resounded powerfully
with every remark we made, which had the result of subduing our
conversation to whispers, for an attendant soon came to warn us that the
bishop was asleep, and that we must not speak loud on account of the
echo. Profiting by the great man's siesta, we extracted the desired
permission from his severe-faced but courteous secretary, who marked the
document "Especial."
[Illustration: "ARRÉ, BURR-R-RICO!"]
Our brief cavalcade of donkeys started the next morning at five, after
we had taken a preternaturally early cup of chocolate. The donkeys
appeared to know just where we were going, and would not obey the rein:
the driver, walking behind, governed them by a system of negatives,
informing them with a casual exclamation when they showed signs of
turning where he didn't want them to. "Advance there, Baker!" he would
cry. "Don't you know better than that? What a wretched little beast! Do
as I tell you." The animal in question was named Bread-dealer, or Baker,
and the one that I rode rejoiced in the eccentric though eminently
literary appellation of "College."
"To the right, College!" our muleteer would shout, exercising a despotic
power over my four-footed institution of learning. "Get up, little mule.
_Arré burr-r-rico!_" Firing off a volley of _r_'s with a tremendous
rising and falling intonation, which invariably moved the brute to take
one or two rapid steps before dropping back into his customary slow
walk. As the heat increased, and the way grew steeper, he sighed out his
"arré"--gee up--in a long, melancholy drawl, which seemed to express
profound despair concerning the mulish race generally. Muleteers in
Spain are termed generically, from this surviving Arabic word,
_arrieros_, or, as we may translate it, "gee-uppers."
In this manner we made our way along the dusty road among olive
orchards, and a sort of oak called _japarros_, until we began to mount
by a rough, stony path which sometimes divided itself like the branches
of a torrent, though we more than once succeeded in prodding the donkeys
into a lively canter. The white façades of villas--_quintas_ or
_carmens_ they are denominated hereabout--twinkled out from nooks of the
hills; but at that early hour everything was very still. We could almost
_see_ the silence around us. Higher up, unknown birds began to sing in
the sparse boscage that clothed the mountain flank or clustered in its
narrow dells. Midway of the ascent, furthermore, Baker, on whom
Velveteen was seated in solemn stride, with a blanket in place of
saddle, paused ominously, and then began a nasal performance which shook
our very souls. Why a donkey should bray in such a place it is hard to
determine, but _how_ he did it will forever remain impressed on our
tympana. There was something peculiarly terrible and unnerving in the
sound; and just as it ceased, our guide, Manuel, observed that this had
once been a great place for robbers. "A few years ago," said he, "no one
would have dared to come up along this road as we are doing." He added
that the marauders used to conceal themselves in the numerous caves in
the region, and pointed out one fissure in the rocks which his liberal
imagination converted into the entrance of a subterranean retreat
running for several miles into the heart of the mountains. At the same
instant, looking down across a gorge below our track, I saw a man with a
gun moving through a patch of steep olives, as if to head us off at a
point farther along; and on a jutting rock-rib above us a memorial cross
rose warningly. Crosses were formerly put up in the most impossible
places among these hills, to mark the spot where anybody fell a victim
to bandits or assassins; a fact of which the elder Dumas makes telling
use in one of his short stories.[6] Brigands were themselves punctilious
in setting up these reminders, which were held to exert an expiatory
influence. If any one would understand how hopelessly the Spanish mind
at one time perverted the relations of crime and religion, he may read
Calderon's "Devotion of the Cross," wherein the hero, Eusebio, a
terrible renegade who murders right and left, born at the foot of one of
these way-side crosses, is saved by his reverence for the holy symbol.
He is enabled, by virtue of this pious sentiment, to rise up after he is
dead, walk about, and confess his sins to a friar; after which he is
caught up into heaven!
The whole conjunction was somewhat alarming, but Manuel explained away
our man with a gun by saying that he was merely one of the armed
watchmen usually attached to country estates to protect crops and stock
from depreciation. As for the bandits, they had now been quite
dispersed, he declared, by the Civil Guard. That name, it is true,
called up new fears for Velveteen and myself as we thought of the two
relentless men who were on our trail: but we knew that for the moment,
at least, we were beyond their reach.
At last we gained the very summit, and drew up under a porch at the
walled gate of the Desert, while a shower began to fall in large
scattered drops, like the lingering contents of some gigantic
watering-pot, but soon spent itself. Our second pull at the
mournful-sounding bell was answered by a sad young monk, who opened a
square loop-hole in the wall, and asked our errand in a voice enfeebled
by voluntary privations. After inspecting our pass, he told us, with a
wan but friendly smile, that we must wait a little. It was Friday, and
we had to wait rather long, for the hermits were just at that time
undergoing the weekly flagellation to which they subject themselves. But
finally we were let in--donkeys, guide, _arriero_, and the colored maid
"Fan" sharing the hospitality. An avenue of tall, sombre, cypresses
opened before us, leading to the main building and offices. The Desert,
in fact, was green enough; well supplied with olives and pomegranates;
and hedges of the prickly-pear, with its thick, stiff leaves shaped like
a fire-shovel, and heavy as wax-work, cinctured the isolated huts in
which the brothers dwell each by himself. Precisely as we came to a
triangular plot in front of the entrance we were confronted by a skull
set up prominently in a sort of pyramidal monument, giving force by its
dusty grin to an inscription in Spanish, which read:
"AS THOU LOOKEST, SO ONCE LOOKED I:
AS I LOOK NOW, SO WILT THOU APPEAR HEREAFTER.
PONDER UPON THIS, AND SIN NOT."
Shortly beyond stood a catacomb above-ground, in which a number of
defunct hermits had been sealed up. It also bore a legend, but in Latin:
"THE DAY OF DEATH IS BETTER THAN THAT OF BIRTH."
In the vestibule of the house these drastic reminders of mortality were
supplemented by two allegorical pictures--hanging among some portraits
of evanished worthies who had ended their penitential days there--two
crude paintings which exhibited "The Soul Tortured by Doubt," and "The
Soul Blessed by Faith." It was not altogether in keeping with the
unworldly and ascetic atmosphere of this spiritual refuge, that a tablet
in the wall should record, with fulsome abasement of phrase, how her
most Gracious Majesty Isabella II. had, some few years ago, deigned to
visit the Desert, and how this stone had been placed there as a humble
monument of her condescension. Certainly, considering the ex-Queen's
character (if it may claim consideration), it is hard to see what honor
the anchorites should find in her visiting their abode.
A gray-haired brother, robed in the coarse and weighty brown serge which
he is obliged to wear in winter and summer alike, received us kindly and
showed us the expensively adorned plateresque chapel. He knelt and bowed
nearly to the threshold before unlocking the door, crossed himself, and
knelt again on the pavement within; then, advancing farther, he dropped
down once more on both knees, and bent over as if he had some intention
of using his good-natured, simple old head as a mop to polish the black
and white marble squares, but ended by another cross, and moving his
lips in noiseless prayer. The national manner of making the cross is
peculiar: after the usual touching of forehead and breast, the Spanish
Catholic concludes by suddenly attempting to swallow his thumb, and then
as hastily pulling it out of his mouth again, to save it up for some
other time. This movement, I suppose, emblemizes the eating of the
consecrated wafer, but it makes a grotesque impression that is anything
but solemn. At times you will also see him execute a unique triple
cross, with strange passes and dabs in the air which might easily be
mistaken for preliminary strategy directed against some erring mosquito
engaged in guerilla warfare on his eyebrow. We were obliged, in
conformity, to do as our Catholic companions did--receiving the
holy-water and making a simple cross--an act which, without being of
their faith, one may perform with unsectarian reverence. Brother Esteban
was on the watch to see that proper devotion was shown in this
peculiarly sacred chapel, and in the midst of his adoration he turned
quickly upon Manuel, asking, "Why don't you go down on _both_ your knees
in the accustomed manner?"
[Illustration: THE FRUIT OF THE DESIERTA.]
Manuel, being a master of ready deception, answered, without an
instant's delay, "Ah, that is my misfortune! I lately had an accident to
that leg" (indicating the one which had not sunk far enough), "and that
is why it is not easy to get down on both knees." However, he spread his
handkerchief wider, and painfully brought the offending member into
place.
Esteban frankly apologized, and then the praying went on again.
When we got out into the corridor, and our monkish friend was well in
advance, black Fan's repressed heresy broke into a startling reaction.
She dipped her hand again and again into the basin of holy-water,
wastefully dropping some of it on the floor, and began outlining
unlimited crosses from her sable forehead downward--covering her breast
with an imaginary armor of them--enough to keep her supplied for a
month, and proof against every possible misfortune. Her broad grin of
delight, exposing her vermilion lips and white teeth like a slice of
unripe watermelon, added to the horror of the situation, and I protested
against such uncouth profanity.
"Might's well keep goin' now I begun," she chuckled in reply. "I's
'fraid I'll forgit how!" She was making another plunge for the font,
when our pale, gentle-featured Novice stopped her in mid-career.
Fortunately good Esteban had not observed this small orgy going on. He
was as pleasant as ever when we went with him into a little room to buy
rosaries and deposit some silver pieces for charity; and there he made
farther and profuse apologies to Manuel. "Of course you see it was
impossible I should know there was anything the matter with your leg,"
he said, quite plaintively. And Manuel accepted his contrition with
double pleasure because he knew it to be wholly undeserved.
The hermits, as I have said, have their separate cottages scattered
about the grounds, each with a small patch of land to be cultivated.
There they raise fruit, which their rules forbid them to eat, and so it
is carried down as a present to some wealthy Cordovan families who
support the hermitage by their largesses. Every day poor folk toil up
from the plain, some five miles, to this airy perch, and are fed by the
monks; but they themselves eat little, abstaining from meat, wine,
coffee, tea--everything, indeed, except some few ounces of daily bread,
a pint of _garbanzos_ (the tasteless, round yellow bean which is the
universal food of the poor in Spain), and a soup made of bread, water,
oil, and garlic. They live on nothing and prayer. They rise at three in
the morning, and thrice a week they fast from that hour until noon.
Their step is slow, and their voices have a strange, inert, sickly
sound; but they appeared cheerful enough, and joked with each other. I
asked Esteban the name of a tiny yellow flower growing by the path, and
he couldn't tell me; but he plucked it tenderly, and began discoursing
to Manuel on its beauty. "_Tan chiquita_," he said, in his poor soft
voice. "So _little, little_, and yet so precious and so finely made!"
Another brother was deeply absorbed in snipping off bits of coiled brass
wire with a pair of pincers. "These are for the 'Our Fathers,'" he
explained, meaning the large beads in the rosary, separated from the
smaller "Ave Maria" ones by links of wire. The cottages or huts,
surrounded by an outer wall, contain a cell, sometimes cut out of a
bowlder lying on the spot, where there is a rude cot, a shelf for holy
books and the crucifix, and a grated window, across which waves,
perhaps, the broad-leaved bough of a fig-tree. An anteroom, provided
with a few utensils and the disciplinary scourge hanging mildly against
the wall, completes the strange interior. The lives of the hermits of
the Sierra are reduced to the ghastly simplicity of a skeleton; a part
of their time is spent in contemplating skulls, and they have a habit of
digging their own graves, in order to keep more plainly before their
minds the end of all earthly careers. Mistaken as all this seems to many
of us, there was a peacefulness about the Hermitage for which many a
storm-tossed soul sighs in vain; and I am glad that some few creatures
can find here the repose they desire while waiting for death. Some of
the hermits are men of rank, who have retired hither disheartened with
the world; others are low-born--men afflicted by some form of misfortune
or misdemeanor of their own, who wish to hide from life; but all
assemble in a pure democracy of sorrow and penitential piety, apparently
contented.
We breakfasted at ten in a room hospitably put at our disposal, the
windows of which admitted a delicious breeze and opened upon a
magnificent view of the plain far below, where the distant city rested
like a white mist--an impalpable thing. Brother José brought some
olives, to add to the refection which our sumpter-mule had carried to
this height. They had a ripe, acid, oily flavor, which made one think of
homely things and of patient housewives in remote American hills, who
lead lives as monotonous, as self-denying and unnoticed as those which
pass on this ridge of the Sierra in Andalusia. Our Novice thought the
olives had "a holy flavor;" and I could understand her feeling. Find me
a site more fitted for meditation on the volatility of mundane things
than this eyry on the mountain-head overlooking the historic valley!
There lies Cordova, a mere spot in the reach of soft citron and
straw-tinted fields; and the Guadalquivir, winding like a neglected
skein of tawny silk thrown down on the mapped landscape. The plain is
calm as oblivion. It is oblivion's self; for there the earth has
absorbed Cordova the Old, so that not a vestige remains where compressed
masses of human dwellings once stood. They are crumbled to an
indistinguishable powder. That soft autumnal soil has swallowed up the
bones of unnumbered generations, and no trace of them is left. We
imagined the glittering legions of Cæsar as they moved slowly through
the country, flashing the sun from their compact steel, at that time
when they put to the sword twenty-five thousand inhabitants of the city,
which had sided with Pompey. We saw the Moors once more envelop it with
arms and banners and the fluttering of snowy garments. But all these
vanished again like a moving cloud, or a smoke from burning stubble; and
the sun still pours its uninterrupted flood of splendor over the land,
bringing life and bringing death, with impartial ray.
[Illustration: MEMENTO MORI.]
The Spanish word for "crowded" or "populated" is still used to signify
"dense" in any ordinary connection, as the phrase _barba poblada_, for a
thick beard, testifies. The implication is that, when there is any
population at all, it must be crowded; a direct transmission,
apparently, from periods when inhabitants clustered in immense numbers
around the centres of civil power for safety. And the word holds good
to-day; for one finds, in the present shrunken human force of the
Peninsula, closely packed assemblages of people in the towns and cities,
with wide domains of comparatively untenanted country around.
When night closed above us again in the city; when mellow lamps glowed,
and a tropical fragrance flowed in from the gardens; when in the long
dusky pauses of warm nocturnal silence the watchman's weary and pathetic
cry resounded, or hollow-toned church-bells rung the hour, the romance
of Cordova seemed to concentrate itself, and fell upon me, as I
listened, in chords that took this form:
FLOWER OF SPAIN.
Like a throb of the heart of midnight
I hear a guitar faintly humming,
And through the Alcazar garden
A wandering footstep coming.
A shape by the orange bower's shadow--
Whose shape? Is it mine in a dream?
For my senses are lost in the perfumes
That out of the dark thicket stream.
'Mid the tinkle of Moorish waters,
And the rush of the Guadalquivir,
The rosemary breathes to the jasmine,
That trembles with joyous fear.
And their breath goes silently upward,
Far up to the white burning stars,
With a message of sweetness, half sorrow,
Unknown but to souls that bear scars.
Here, midway between stars and flowers,
I know not which draw me the most:
Shall my years yield earthly sweetness?
Shall I shine from the sky like a ghost?
A spirit I cannot quiet
Bids me bow to the unseen rod;
I dream of a lily transplanted,
To bloom in the garden of God.
Yet the footsteps come nearer and nearer;
Still moans the soft-troubled strain
Of the strings in the dusk. Well I know it:
'Twas called for me "Flower of Spain."
Ah, yes! my lover he made it,
And called it by my pet name:
I hear it, and--I'm but a woman--
It sweeps through my heart like a flame.
The night's heart and mine flow together;
The music is beating for each.
The moon's gone, the nightingale silent;
Light and song are both in his speech.
As the musky shadows that mingle,
As star-shine and flower-scent made one,
Our spirits in gladness and anguish
Have met: their waiting is done.
But over the leaves and the waters
What echoes the strange clanging bells
Send afloat from the dim-arched Mezquita!
How mournful the cadence that swells
From the lonely roof of the convent
Where pale nuns rest! On the hill,
Far off, the hermits in vigil
Are bowed at the crucifix still;
And the brown plain slumbers around us....
O land of remembrance and grief,
If I am truly the flower,
How withered are you, the leaf!
[Illustration: DIFFICULT FOR FOREIGNERS.]
[Illustration: THE JASMINE GIRL.]
There was a good deal of discussion among our group of pilgrims as to
the propriety of a foundation like the Hermitage of the Sierra
continuing to exist in an age like the present one. Whetstone, who had
declined to visit it, was of opinion that men who led such idle lives
should be suppressed by law, and even went so far as to talk about
hanging them. So singular a theory, emanating from a citizen of a free
republic, met with some opposition; but this was not pushed too far,
because we understood that Whetstone kept a hotel at home, and dreaded
lest some day we should be at his mercy. As for the rest of us, it was
not easy to pronounce that we were of much more value than the hermits;
and assuredly those earnest ascetics compared favorably with our
mule-driver, who was remarkable only for an expression of incipient
humor that was never able to attain the height of actual expression. I
was sure that, as he sighed out his final "Arré" in this world, he would
pass into the next with that vacant smile on his face, and the joke
which he might have perpetrated under fortunate circumstances still
unuttered. Nor did the average life of Cordova strike us as signally
indispensable to the world's progress. It was doubtless a very pleasant,
lazy life so far as it went, and we did not decide to hang the
inhabitants! They have a charming fashion there of building houses with
pleasant interior courts, in which the _sclinda_, a vine with pale
lavender clusters of blossoms suggesting the wistaria, droops amid
matted foliage, and lends its grace alike to crumbling architecture or
modern masonry. In these courts, separated from the street by gates of
iron grating beautifully designed, you will see pleasant little domestic
groups, and possibly a whole dinner-party going on in the fresh air. It
was likewise agreeable to repair to a certain restaurant--restored in
the Moorish manner--and there, while clapping hands echoed through the
light arcades, drink iced beer and lemon--a refreshing beverage, which
might reasonably take the place of fiery punches (in America) for hot
weather. "Neither will I deny," said Velveteen, "that it is a wonderful
sensation to stray into the Plaza de Geron Paez and come up suddenly
against that glorious old Roman gate--growing up as naturally as the
trees in front of it, but so much more wonderful than they--with its
fine crumbling yellow traceries. How nicely it would tell in a sketch,
eh, with some of the royal grooms--the _remontistas_--walking through
the foreground in their quaint costumes!"
The men to whom he referred wear, in the best sense, a thoroughly
theatrical garb of scarlet and black, finished off by boots of Cordovan
leather in the style of sixteenth-century Spain, turned down at the top,
laced, tasselled, and slashed open by a curve that runs from the side
down to the back of the heel. This shows the white stocking under short
trousers, giving to the masculine calf and ankle a grace for which they
are usually denied all credit.