A PILGRIMAGE
Evasio Mon was a great traveler. In Eastern countries a man who makes the
pilgrimage to Mecca adds thereafter to his name a title which carries
with it not only the distinction conferred upon the dullest by the sight
of other men and countries, but the bearer stands high among the elect.
If many pilgrimages could confer a title, this gentle-mannered Spaniard
would assuredly have been thus decorated. He had made almost every
pilgrimage that the Church may dictate--that wise old Church, which fills
so well its vocation in the minds of the restless and the unsatisfied. He
had been many times to Rome. He could tell you the specific properties of
every shrine in the Roman Catholic world. He made a sort of speciality in
latter-day miracles.
Did this woman want a son to put a graceful finish to her family of
daughters, he could tell her of some little-known pilgrimage in the
mountains which rarely failed.
"Go," he would say. "Go there, and say your prayer. It is the right thing
to do. The air of the mountains is delightful. The journey diverts the
mind."
In all of which he was quite right. And it was not for him, any more than
it is for the profane reader, to inquire why latter-day miracles are
nearly always performed at or near popular health resorts.
Was another in grief, Evasio Mon would send him on a long journey to a
gay city, where the devout are not without worldly diversion in the
evenings.
Neither was it upon hearsay only that he prescribed. He had been to all
these places, and tested them perhaps, which would account for his serene
demeanour and that even health which he seemed to enjoy. He had traveled
without perturbment, it would seem, for his journeys had left no wrinkles
on his bland forehead, neither was the light of restlessness in his quiet
eyes.
He must have seen many cities, but cities are nearly all alike, and they
grow more alike every day. Many men also must he have met, but they
seemed to have rubbed against him and left him unmarked--as sandstone may
rub against a diamond. It is upon the sandstone that the scratch remains.
He was not part of all that he had seen, which may have meant that he
looked not at men or cities, but right through them, to something beyond,
upon which his gaze was always fixed.
Living as he did, in a city possessing so great a shrine as that of the
"Virgen del Pilar," the scene of a vision accorded to St. James when
traveling through Spain, Mon naturally interested himself in the
pilgrims, who came from all parts of the world to worship in the
cathedral, who may be seen at any hour kneeling in the dim light of
flickering candles before the altar rails.
Mon's apartment, indeed, in the tall house next door to the Posada de los
Reyes on the Paseo del Ebro was a known resort of the more cultured of
the pilgrims, of these who came from afar; from Rome and from the
farthest limits of the Roman Church--from Warsaw to Minnesota.
Evasio Mon had friends also among the humble and such as sheltered in the
Posada de los Reyes, which itself was a typical Spanish hostelry, and one
of those houses of the road in which the traveler is lucky if he finds
the bedrooms all occupied; for then he may, without giving offense, sleep
more comfortably in the hayloft. Here, night and day, the clink of bells
and the gruff admonition of refractory mules told of travel, and the
constant come and go of strange, wild-looking men from the remoter
corners of Aragon, far up by the foothills of the Pyrenees. The huge
two-wheeled carts drawn by six, eight or ten mules, came lumbering
through the dust at all hours of the twenty-four, bringing the produce of
the greener lands to this oasis of the Aragonese desert. Some came from
other oases in the salt and stony plains where once an inland sea covered
all, while the others hailed from the north where the Sierras de Guara
rise merging into the giant Pyrenees.
Many of these drivers made their way up the stairs of the house where
Evasio Mon lived his quiet life, and gave a letter or merely a verbal
message, remembered faithfully through the long and dusty journey, to the
man who, though no priest himself, seemed known to every priest in Spain.
These letters and messages were nearly always from the curate of some
distant village, and told as often as not of a cheerful hopefulness in
the work.
Sometimes the good men themselves would come, sitting humbly beneath the
hood of the great cart, or riding a mule, far enough in front to avoid
the dust, and yet near enough for company. This was more especially in
the month of February, at the anniversary of the miraculous appearance,
at which time the graven image set up in the cathedral is understood to
be more amenable to supplication than at any other. And, having
accomplished their pilgrimage, the simple churchmen turned quite
naturally to the house that stood adjoining the cathedral. There, they
were always sure of a welcome and of an invitation to lunch or dinner,
when they were treated to the very best the city could afford, and, while
keeping strictly within the letter of the canonical law, could feast
their hearty country appetites even in Lent.
Mon so arranged his journeys that he should be away from Saragossa in the
great heats of the summer and autumn, which wise precaution was rendered
the easier by the dates of the other great festivals which he usually
attended. For it will be found that the miracles and other events
attractive to the devout nearly always happen at that season of the year
which is most suitable to the environments. Thus the traditions of the
Middle Ages fixed the month of February for Saragossa when it is pleasant
to be in a city, and September for Montserrat--to quote only one
instance--at which time the cool air of the mountains is most to be
appreciated.
Evasio Mon, however, was among those who deemed it wise to avoid the
great festival at Montserrat by making his pilgrimage earlier in the
summer, when the number of the devout was more restricted and their
quality more select. Scores of thousands of the very poorest in the land
flock to the monastery in September, turning the mountain into a picnic
ground and the festival into a fair.
Mon never knew when the spirit would move him to make this pleasant
journey, but his preparations for it must have been made in advance, and
his departure by an early train the day after meeting his old friend the
Count de Sarrion was probably sudden to every one except himself.
He left the train at Lerida, going on foot from the station to the town,
but he did not seek an hotel. He had a friend, it appeared, whose house
was open to him, in the Spanish way, who lived near the church in the
long, narrow street which forms nearly the whole town of Lerida. In
Navarre and Aragon the train service is not quite up to modern
requirements. There is usually one passenger train in either direction
during the day, though between the larger cities this service has of late
years been doubled. It was afternoon, and the hour of the siesta, when
Evasio Mon walked through the narrow streets of this ancient city.
Although the sun was hot, and all nature lay gasping beneath it, the
streets were unusually busy, and in the shades of the arcades at the
corner of the market-place, at the corner of the bridge, and by the bank
of the river, where the low wall is rubbed smooth by the trousers of the
indolent, men stood in groups and talked in a low voice. It is not too
much to state that the only serene face in the streets was that of Evasio
Mon, who went on his way with the absorbed smile which is usually taken
in England to indicate the Christian virtues, and is associated as often
as not with Dissent.
The men of Lérida--a simpler, more agricultural race than the
Navarrese--were disturbed; and, indeed, these were stirring times in
Spain. These men knew what might come at any moment, for they had been
born in stirring times and their fathers before them. Stirring times had
reigned in this country for a hundred years. Ferdinand VII--the beloved,
the dupe of Napoleon the Great, the god of all Spain from Irun to San
Roque, and one of the thorough-paced scoundrels whom God has permitted to
sit on a throne--had bequeathed to his country a legacy of strife, which
was now bearing fruit.
For not only Aragon, but all Spain was at this time in the most
unfortunate position in which a nation or a man--and, above all, a
woman--can find herself--she did not know what she wanted.
On one side was Catalonia, republican, fiery, democratic, and
independent; on the other, Navarre, more priest-ridden than Rome herself,
with every man a Carlist and every woman that which her confessor told
her to be. In the south, Andalusia only asked to be left alone to go her
own sunny, indifferent way to the limbo of the great nations. Which way
should Aragon turn? In truth, the men of Aragon knew not themselves.
Stirring times indeed; for the news had just penetrated to far remote
Lérida that the two greatest nations of Europe were at each other's
throats. It was a long cry from Ems to Lérida, and the talkers on the
shady side of the market-place knew little of what was passing on the
banks of the Rhine.
Stirring times, too, were nearer at hand across the Mediterranean. For
things were approaching a deadlock on the Tiber, and that river, too,
must, it seemed, flow with blood before the year ran out. For the
greatest catastrophe that the Church has had to face was preparing in the
new and temporary capital of Italy; and all men knew that the word must
soon go forth from Florence telling the monarch of the Vatican that he
must relinquish Rome or fight for it.
Spain, in her awkward search for a king hither and thither over Europe,
had thrown France and Germany into war. And Evasio Mon probably knew of
the historic scene at Ems as soon as any man in the Peninsula; for
history will undoubtedly show, when a generation or so has passed away,
that the latter stages of Napoleon's declaration of war were hurried on
by priestly intrigue. It will be remembered that Bismarck was the
deadliest and cleverest foe that Jesuitism has had.
Mon knew what the talkers in the market-place were saying to each other.
He probably knew what they were afraid to say to each other. For Spain
was still seeking a king--might yet set other nations by the ears. The
Republic had been tried and had miserably failed. There was yet a Don
Carlos, a direct descendant of the brother whom Ferdinand the beloved
cheated out of his throne. There was a Don Carlos. Why not Don Carlos,
since we seek a king? the men in the Phrygian caps were saying to each
other. And that was what Mon wanted them to say.
After dark he came out into the streets again, cloaked to the lips
against the evening air. He went to the large cafe by the river, and
there seemed to meet many acquaintances.
The next morning he continued his journey, by road now, and on horseback.
He sat a horse well, but not with that comfort which is begotten of a
love of the animal. For him the horse was essentially a means of
transport, and all other animals were looked at in a like utilitarian
spirit.
In every village he found a friend. As often as not he was the first to
bring the news of war to a people who have scarcely known peace these
hundred years. The teller of news cannot help telling with his tidings
his own view of them; and Evasio Mon made it known that in his opinion
all who had a grievance could want no better opportunity of airing it.
Thus he traveled slowly through the country towards Montserrat; and
wherever his slight, black-clad form and serene face had passed, the
spirit of unrest was left behind. In remote Aragonese villages, as in
busy Catalan towns where the artisan (that disturber of ancient peace)
was already beginning to add his voice to things of Spain, Evasio Mon
always found a hearing.
Needless to say he found in every village Venta, in every Posada of the
towns, that which is easy to find in this babbling world--a talker.
And Evasio Mon was a notable listener.