Madrid--The Fonda and its Porter--The Puerta del Sol--Postal
Irregularities--Tribute to the Madrileños--The Barber's
Pronunciamiento--Anecdotes of King Amadeus--Checkmating the Grand
Dames--Queen Isabella--The Embarrassed Mr. Layard of Nineveh--The
Great Powers Hesitate--America Goes Ahead--General Sickles--Mahomet
and the Mountain--Republicanism among the troops--A Peculiar
Pennsylvanian Dentist--Castelar under Torture--The Writer meets one
of his Sept--Politicians by Trade--Honour among Insurgents--Alonso
the Reckless.
First impressions of Madrid, "the only court," do not fill the visitor
with awe. It is an aggregate of masonry, fragmentary on the edges,
compact in the middle, on a sandy plateau in a waste of arid landscape.
There is lack of natural shade and water, albeit there are tree-planted
walks and gardens, with cedars and Himalayan pines, and fountains with
fulness of clear flow are abundant. It wants a river; the Manzanares, I
am told, is but a ditch. I do not know if that is so; I never could see
the Manzanares. A rugged, sun-blistered city, Madrid struck me as no
more characteristically Spanish--or what I had taught myself to accept
as such--than Turin is Italian; both are half-Frenchified. In the
northern distance are the summits of the Guadarrama hills, and the
unseen breeze which sweeps down from its snowy eyries amongst them cuts
like an icicle. The Madrileño fears it, for it has a trick of permeating
the streets with a subtile, chilling, killing breath; and when the
Madrileño steps from the sunny to the shady side of the street he is
careful to lift a corner of his cloak as screen to his mouth.
The central point of Madrid is the Puerta del Sol--a bare, broad,
irregular area off which nine thoroughfares diverge. Round it the
day-god, greatest friend of Spain, pivots in glory. Now he floods one
side with radiance, now he drops his cloth of gold over another. The
Puerta del Sol is the focus of interest for the population. Thither the
gossips repair, and there the affairs of the nation are discussed very
often by those who have acted, act, or hope to act as leaders of the
nation. Naturally I made for the Puerta del Sol, for it was of vital
importance to me to be in the movement, in the very vortex of the pool.
I was fortunate. I got rooms in the Fonda de Paris, an hotel at the
corner of the Calle de Alcalá, the principal avenue leading from the
Plaza. As proof of the unsettled condition of affairs and its effect
upon trade, it need only be said that at the _table d'hôte_ of this, the
first hotel in the capital, where one hundred and thirty persons usually
sit down to dinner, there were sometimes not more than fifteen or
twenty, and a proportion of these were fly-about Special Correspondents.
Yet in this exiguous circle of prudent people who were detained in
Madrid, or foolhardy people who had travelled there, turned up the
irrepressible British tourist. Of the latter class we had charming
specimens at dinner one evening in two English girls, with fresh peachy
complexions, and hair like wavy masses of ripe maize. They had no guide
but their faithful "Murray." What became of them subsequently I never
ascertained; but it is to be trusted they were as lucky as the
enterprising young lady who relied on Erin's honour and Erin's pride in
the reign of King Brian, and made the tour of the Emerald Isle with a
gold ring on the tip of a wand. That would hardly pay the hotel-bills
nowadays.
A great feature in the fonda was Constantine, the hall-porter, a tall
swarthy man, who was as fluent a linguist as an Alexandria dragoman. He
was Greek by birth, but had a strain of English blood on the mother's
side. His sire may have been a South Sea cannibal or a South African
lion-slayer for aught I remember; but that there was something
phenomenally bold in him I am certain. Constantine's instincts were
predatory, and his manners morose. There was a tradition that he had
been a bandit in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, or an innkeeper by the
Marseilles docks--much about the same thing, and that he was prepared to
do little jobs of human carving for a consideration. However, these may
have been fables got up by travellers in search of excitement to invest
Constantine with an interesting air of romance. He was very civil to me
and did not cheat me more than I chose. I never had occasion to ask him
to kill anybody.
From my windows I could command the mid-basin in the Plaza, more for use
than ornament, and as great a rendezvous of the quidnuncs as a
village-pump. The panorama of life lounged or moved or bustled
beneath--shifting groups of cloaked disputants, veiled women tripping
gracefully along, stately Civil Guards in three-cornered hats, sombre
priests with Don Basilio head-gear, the various moulds of human nature
from the grandee to the mendicant, and above all that brood with which I
soon grew familiar, and for which I conceived an invincible disgust--the
sallow, peering, prating, importunate brood of hungry place-hunters,
impatient to dip their fingers into the Government pie. Cabriolets
passed to and fro, tram-cars with such sleek well-conditioned mule-teams
jolted on the rails; here a horse-soldier trotted by with clattering
accoutrements, there a water-carrier sturdily trudged; and in a
sheltered angle a long-locked vendor of a magic hair-restorer vaunted
his wondrous balm in sonorous patter, and occasionally curtained his
face with his thick mane brought over from his back as tangible
testimony to the fertilizing properties of the balm. In short, from
those windows I could take in the cardiac pulsing of Madrid. Below me,
as I sat and smoked my cigarette, the beginning of change or crux,
accident or riot, the initial whims or humours of the populace, the
formation of a procession or the overture of a pronunciamiento, were
within my ken. And at one corner of the Puerta were the General Post
Office and Telegraphic Bureau, a matter of great convenience to me, if
only they were properly managed. However, it was far easier to collect
news than to send it to the desired destination. The post was as unsafe
as in those days in another land when Mr. Richard Turpin, highwayman,
and his comrogues intercepted his Majesty's mails. As for messages by
wire, I was not long in learning that no important information was
allowed to be sent; true, the money for its transmission was taken,
but--delayed, or forwarded, or suppressed even--the strict rule in that
establishment was "no money returned." Vain were complaints. The Special
Correspondent had no resource but that of the negro suffering from
toothache; 'twas his to grin and bear it. The idea of ever again seeing
the colour of the coin which has passed into the palm of a Spanish
functionary is laughable in its pastoral innocence. As well expect to
handle last year's snow. The system of ignorant espionage still obtained
in the Peninsula, as I was forced reluctantly to observe: the word
"Cuba" or "Carlos" on the telegraphic form at once aroused the scruples
and suspicions of the official, and led to the confiscation of the
message. In the end, I discovered how to facilitate the despatch of
news; but as that is my secret I keep it to myself. Suffice it that in
my bill of expenses the item "sundries" was elastic.
There are some valuable guide-books to Spain, and to them I refer the
reader if he desire to be crammed with curious knowledge about churches
and picture-galleries, museums of arms, and the beautiful upholstery of
the Duke of Sixty-Blazons' palace. My behest was with living not dead
Spain, as investigated during the throes of a political convulsion. I
made my notes on the Madrileños without bias, and without bias I give
them. I spent five weeks in constant and free intercourse with all
classes of the inhabitants. During that time I did not detect one
Belleville face; I did not catch the glitter of a knife except at a
dinner-table, nor remark a single drunkard staggering along the streets.
Yet I was in every quarter of the town, to the lowest, at all hours.
There are parts of London where the foreign visitor could not penetrate
and come back with the same story. The Madrileños are indolent--granted;
but they are frugal, temperate, and well-conducted. Occasionally a
poniard is slipped into the ribs of an enemy, but mistakes will occur in
the best-regulated families. If this be a vindictive and blood-sucking
people, the vampirism is adroitly concealed; the dirty linen must be
washed in the dark corner where the charcoal is stored, so that Paul Pry
may not be gratified with the sight. There is no working population at
Madrid; there are no large manufactories, no thriving centres of
employment. That is one reason why Madrid is orderly compared to other
and livelier cities. Prosperous Barcelona swarms with mechanics and
artisans, and that is one reason why Barcelona is disorderly. The
rights-of-man agitators generally find favour there. The International
has its ramifications in the Catalonian capital. In Madrid, the
International is a pigmy failure. Its emissaries came once and laboured
zealously to stir up the son of toil to a proper consciousness of his
dignity. After months of propagandism they succeeded in persuading
Figaro to shake a rebellious pole and fiercely flourish his
lathering-brush.
"Know, ye smooth-lipped minions of the despot Capital," quoth the
barbers in an indignant round-robin, "we shall no longer submit to the
gross tyranny of shaving you before eight of the morning!"
But Figaro was defeated; Madrid let its beard grow.
The sudden departure of the Italian-bred monarch had apparently plunged
the politicians into a pit of bewilderment. They did not know how they
stood. Amadeus after his reign of five-and-twenty months had perchance
left few partisans behind him, but assuredly no enemies. His principal
fault, but that was fatal, consisted in his being a foreigner. It was
universally vouchsafed that he was very brave, a true hidalgo in that
respect, and if he had been removed in the orthodox method by revolution
or the assassin, his name would have been garlanded with rosemary for
remembrance. But Spanish pride was nettled to the quick at the cavalier
way he had tossed back, with a shrug of the shoulders, the gift of a
crown when he had tired of it. He had looked upon the throne of Castile
as a gewgaw to be surrendered with indifference, and steamed contentedly
to Italy to enjoy his comparatively obscure Dukedom and rank of General
in preference. He had chosen the wiser and happier part, but to those he
had abandoned it was mortifying in the extreme. Still, he was an
unquailing chevalier, almost fit to be a Spaniard, this son of Victor
Emmanuel. He had disarmed hostility, and compelled the praise of the
envious, the very day he entered Madrid, forty-eight hours after the
funeral of Prim, when he spurred ahead of his escort and offered his
breast undismayed to the aim of any or all assassins.
That entry of Amadeus could not have inspired him with much of the
buoyancy of a bright expectation. There was in it more of sanguinary
suggestiveness than sanguine hope. The ghostly presence at the King's
first dinner in the palace could not be denied--that of the slaughtered
"Paladino," no longer fiery and strenuous, but a figure, inert, waxen,
blood-bolstered, a bullet-riddled flesh-target It was most unpropitious
of entries. There was an odour of cerecloth in the tapestry, the yellow
hue of immortelles in the épergnes, a sediment of bitterness in the
wine-cup, a strain of melancholy in the music. And yet there was some
semblance of gaiety, for with all his austere stateliness your Spaniard
is very like unto the Irishman:
"With one auspicious, and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole."
There were sundry plots to take the life of Amadeus, but Providence
protected him, and he made it a point, after each attempt or threat, to
show himself in public with the ostentation of a reckless courage. He
rode or walked about with a single aide-de-camp, which was a crime with
those monarchists who set store by the pageantry of state. On one
occasion, as he was returning to the palace, the horse in a
hackney-coach with a fat bourgeois inside took fright, and started off
at break-neck speed, overtaking the King's carriage. The King's coachman
whipped up his team, but the wheels of the two vehicles had locked in
each other, and the horses galloped frantically side by side. The
aide-de-camp, fearing a new and daring experiment in regicide, snatched
his rapier from the sheath and began furiously prodding through the
window of the hackney-coach. The fat bourgeois shrunk and flattened
himself into a corner, drew in his breath, and dodged the lunges of the
searching steel. When the palace-gates were reached, and the animals
were stopped, the unfortunate citizen was extricated from his hazardous
position more dead than alive. He was glistening with the wetness of
fright, trembled like an aspen, and blubbered as he begged for mercy.
The panelling was pierced, and the cushion ripped into rags; but by some
extraordinary luck the poor man, who was a harmless dealer in
provisions, had escaped without a scratch. But he owned that he never
before had five minutes of such violent exercise complicated with vile
terror. During the scene Amadeus kept his seat tranquilly, and relaxed
into a smile as he discovered the mistake of his too-zealous companion.
The conspiracies of the saloons were more successful, as efforts to
annoy without contravening law always are. They are not so readily met.
And the malicious ingenuity of woman, when she lays herself out to be
offensive, is remarkably inventive and diabolically persistent. Some of
the grand dames of Madrid had the impish inspiration to put the Royal
couple into Coventry. There is a fashionable carriage-drive in the
capital corresponding much to ours between Hyde Park Corner and Queen's
Gate. Whenever Amadeus and his spouse went there for an airing, the
blue-blooded of the opposition significantly trotted off. Once an
immense procession of the aristocratic families made its appearance, and
slowly and perseveringly "took the dust." Such a turn-out of gala
equipages had not been witnessed for years. All the ladies were arrayed
in the ancient Spanish costume; the fan and veil with high comb and
carnation in the hair in every case replaced the Parisian bonnet and
parasol. It was a protest against the foreign dynasty, and was clearly
meant as a demonstration of insult. One of the Royal household was equal
to the provocation; whether Spaniard or Italian I am not sure, but the
latter I think, so subtle was his revenge. He went round to all the
houses of ill-fame in the capital that night, and entered into
conversation, burnished with duros, with their female occupants. The
next evening Madrid was afforded the spectacle in its most fashionable
drive of a parade of courtesans, in ancient Spanish costumes, fanning
themselves, and smirking at their acquaintances from the vantage of
luxurious chariots. It was a scandal, but Madrid grinned, and the
patricians of the antediluvian stem confessed themselves beaten.
There was still a lingering fondness for the deposed Isabella among the
lower orders. They looked upon her as a good sort, one of the old stock,
prayerful, and affable. She was accustomed to enter wayside cabins, and
get into homely chat with the peasants. The Italian woman never did
that. Alphonse Daudet's description of Isabella as a stout queen, who by
her massive jaws and high complexion resembled a coarse-rinded
blood-orange, would not be endorsed by these humble yearners after the
bygone. Indeed, they regarded her as one who had been a type of beauty
in her time, and was still a type of good-nature, and were forgiving to
her peccadilloes, she was so devout. Of course I must not be understood
as speaking here of Spanish partisans of the Republican idea. They had
no more pity for the creatures tainted with Royalty than the Polynesian
for his leprous kinsman--but they were comparatively few.
Great Britain, at that period, was represented by Mr. Austin Layard, and
the United States by General Daniel Sickles. The British Envoy was in a
dilemma; he did not know how far he would be justified in recognising
the newly-proclaimed Republic; if he received visits of ceremonial it
would be an unpardonable breach of courtesy not to return them; in
short, to use a very graphic locution of the masses, he was waiting to
see how the cat jumped, and cheerfully submitted to a diplomatic
catarrh which confined him to his room. I went to visit him, when we had
an interesting dialogue on some recently exhumed relics of antiquity and
exquisite bits of crockery-ware. Mr. Layard impressed me as more taken
up with concerns of Nineveh and Wardour Street than of _la haute
politique_. But, as he frankly acknowledged, he was not free to act
until he had received his instructions from Downing Street. Though there
is no written pact to the effect, the rule is that Russia, Germany,
Austria--the Great Powers in short--shall only act in conjunction, and
after having exchanged confidential notes, when eventualities arise
affecting all their interests, such as this in Madrid; and--another
consideration besides--was there really any Government yet? It was only
provisional. It could hardly be supposed that any of the Great Powers
would refuse to bow to the will of the Spanish people; but what was its
will? That was a question that could not be admitted to be definitely
settled.
The United States had struck the key-note--had recognised the infant
Republic, while the Prime Minister, Señor Figueras, was waiting for the
chorus of acclamation from the "robust voices" of those Great Powers
which deliberate before they act. The United States are a fast-trotting
buggy; but these Great Powers in this miserable, played-out old
Continent are slow coaches. Not that there were not deliberations in the
White House before General Sickles was authorized to use his
discretionary power in signing the baptismal certificate of this
Republic of accident. General Sickles was undoubtedly clever; he had
experience in his time as a journalist, an advocate, and a soldier. It
was his opinion that Spain had found in the Republic the means of
establishing her power and prosperity on a solid basis. During the
crisis, he kept his Government informed of what was passing, and to his
demand transmitted by cable in the dawn of Wednesday, the 14th of
February, an answer was returned within twenty hours, permitting him to
exercise his judgment as he thought proper. He imagined that a Federal
Republic, on the pattern of that of the United States, with provincial
legislatures in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and so on, and a National
Congress in Madrid, was the panacea for the ills of Spain, and that that
would be sufficient to dissolve all antagonisms of race, custom, and
feeling, and amalgamate them into one accordant patriotic sentiment. The
General was over-hopeful in the estimation of others, who knew Spain as
well as he; but he acted rightly according to his views, and ably
according to his gifts--only it was to be hoped the General would use
his influence to dissuade his Government from offending its friends and
brothers of Spain by proposing anew a transaction that would lead to the
abandonment of Cuba--an awkward mission with which he was once charged.
Surely if a diplomatic representative could quietly talk the influential
personages of the nation to which he was accredited into a zeal for the
abolition of slavery in Porto Rico, he could quietly talk the
influential personages of his own nation into letting Spanish territory
alone. A pompous man this American Minister, active, talkative, and on
cordial terms with himself. He hobbled about on his cork leg, leaning on
the arm of his handsome Spanish wife, the second. There was a legend in
Madrid that the General had lost his limb in a duel about a lady; there
had been a question of petticoats in his career once, but it never
entered into the minds of those simple Madrileños that a soldier without
a breastful of decorations might have been wounded, as he had been, on
the battle-field.
The United States were friendly; but France, Republican France, what was
she doing? Why did she delay to move? She, at least, ought to have had
some fellow-feeling for another Republic without Republicans. The truth
was, M. Thiers could not come to any decision without consulting his
Council of Ministers. His action was not quite so unfettered as that of
President Grant. This was the more to be regretted that Señor Olózaga
recognised the Republic of mob acclamation--that of the 4th September,
1870, in Paris--without hesitation. The same compliment was felt by
Spaniards to be due to the Republic of accident.
On the 20th of February, Señor Castelar took a course that might give a
galvanic shock to the world of diplomats, but which was worthy of a
bold Republican prophet. Since the mountain would not come to Mahomet,
Mahomet went to the mountain. In plainer words--but has not one an
excuse for being figurative when speaking of Señor Castelar?--the
Minister for Foreign Affairs determined to take the bull by the horns
(pardon this figure for the sake of its aptness in Spain). The
representatives of the Great Powers did not call on him; he called on
them. His coy advances were met with frigid politeness. A Madrid paper
asserted that "an important and friendly conference" had been held
between the Minister and Mr. Layard, which, to say the least, was a
_suggestio falsi_. Mr. Layard, as an English gentleman, could not but
have received his visitor in a friendly manner; but he kept within the
strict line of his very delicate duties with a studious discretion.
Señor Castelar saw plainly that events had not prepared the way and made
straight the path of the new Republic towards recognition. The Great
Powers could not be found fault with, if they were slow to admit to the
brotherhood of nations a Republic which had already exhibited within
its fortnight's existence what may be literally called two dictatures
(those of Señores Rivero and Martos), the abdication of power by a
majority, two provisional and two "permanent" Governments, a cabinet of
conciliation, and a cabinet of homogeneity, not to mention a round of
permutations in the civil governorships of Madrid, and the
captain-generalcy of New Castile, and in the commands of the armies of
the North and Catalonia.
From the country poured in felicitations to the Republic from hamlet and
city, tumid with a rampant joy. These documents emphatically protested
that the majority of the population was Republican. Yet talk
confidentially to any Spaniard, not actually a Republican propagandist,
and not one of the ignorant lower classes of the towns--an average,
intelligent, middle-class Spaniard--and he would tell you there were no
Republicans in Spain. The thorough frankness with which Spaniards speak
of their own country, its divisions and its national faults, is
phenomenal. "We are very foolish," they own with a charming candour,
but the foreigner had better not chime in with them. They will fire up
in an instant. If they are foolish, it is no business of his; Spanish
quarrels are conducted precisely on the principles of those between man
and wife. The outsider who interposes in them must be prepared to wipe a
bloody nose.
But the doctrines of Republicanism were producing their effects in the
army nevertheless, and the first of these was a tendency to
demoralization. The troops at Barcelona fraternized with the working
men, and raised cries for the Republic and for their own liberation from
service. They desired individual as well as national independence. In
that they were but logical. The Republicans out of power inveighed
against standing armies as a monstrosity, a relic of effete Monarchical
tyranny. The argument was now used against the Republic; the bird of
freedom was menaced by a shaft plumed from her own wing. If discipline
were once generally relaxed in the army, which is the salt of Spain,
then farewell security and come chaos. That was the chief peril in the
way. A man, in the highest meaning of the word, one born to command,
was wanted to save the country. He was looked for in vain. Prim had left
no successor.
In forming my opinions on Spain and the Spaniards, I was aided not a
little by the good offices of a shrewd but eccentric American dentist,
named Maceehan, who had left Pennsylvania at so remote a date that
nobody could recollect it. Long as he had been absent from his native
country, he retained its accent, its peculiarities, and evergreen
patriotism, and on each recurring 4th of July gave a lavish banquet in
honour of American Independence in a restaurant decked with
star-spangled banners, and had the privilege of making all the magnates
of the capital, soldiers, ministers, courtiers, nobles, poets, and
painters, clink their glasses as he sang "Yankee Doodle." Long as he had
been in Madrid, he could not speak Spanish correctly, and his mistakes
fed the clubs with side-splitting anecdotes. He was the soul of
hospitality, and garrulous as a jay. He was in the secrets of the
wire-workers, and had a novel process of extracting information as he
extracted teeth. As his patient sat in the chair of torture he plied him
slyly with interrogatories, and learned what he wanted, but he never
betrayed confidences. In his way he was as proud as the proudest
Spaniard of them all. Emilio Castelar came to him once with an agonizing
toothache. Maceehan laid hold of the offending fang with his forceps.
Castelar shrieked and clutched at his hand.
"You have got the wrong tooth!"
"Caramba!" said the Pennsylvanian, lowering his instrument. "So you have
come here to teach me my business. I will thank you to leave the room,
señor."
"I beg a thousand pardons, but consider the pain. Do with me as you
like, dear doctor."
"The dear doctor in that case will adjourn the operation till to-morrow.
By that time the señor may have discovered that though the dear doctor
may not be an adept at literature or administration, he has some skill
at pulling teeth."
And Castelar, in spite of his apologies and entreaties and plaints, had
to accept the penance of four-and-twenty hours. He could not think of
going anywhere else, for Maceehan was master of his profession. There
was not a set of artificial grinders in Madrid with which the American
was not familiar. He had looked into the mouths of every Infante and
Infanta, had lanced the gums of awful Captains-General, and inserted
gold wires in the ivory treasures of most of the reigning beauties. He
had been dentist by appointment to Isabella, and had care of the
_mâchoire_ of the lovely Eugenia de Montijo in her maidenhood. The very
thought of sipping a cup of tea in the intimacy of a man who had
fingered the palate of a Cardinal, plugged the hollow in a Queen's
molar, and arrested the manifestation of caries in the central incisor
of an Empress, was too much. It was oppressive.
I was amply provided with letters of introduction at starting, but I was
in no hurry to present them. It was fortunate for me. Those who were in
power to-day were in disgrace to-morrow, and _vice versâ_, and most of
those to whom I had credentials were leaders of parties. One
non-politician, a scion of my own sept, but no relative, I did call
upon, as funds were to be forwarded to me through his agency. A
pleasant old man, he had a brogue as Irish as the _canavaun_ of the Bog
of Allen, although he had quitted Ireland in early childhood--a mellow,
musical, unctuous brogue. What a sovereign contempt he had for fomenters
of revolution, intriguers, and the drones who buzzed while others
worked, and wanted to be rewarded for buzzing!
"Namesake," he said, "if you knew the mean secret motives of half these
wretched politicians by trade, you would spit upon them. There was but
one man fit to govern this nation."
I forget whom he mentioned, but it was a Marshal (Narváez, I fancy),
who, when asked on his death-bed by his father-confessor, Did he forgive
his enemies? answered that he had none--he had shot them all.
"There may be nothing serious here for the present," he continued, "and
yet one can't tell; but I think they will go on shilly-shallying and
tinkering up constitutions for months to come."
"Then I should have a better field for my labours in the Carlist
country."
"Undoubtedly; but if you think of going there, you must cut off that
yellowish-red beard or they will call you Judas Iscariot. Do you speak
Basque?"
"No; but as to the beard, I am equal to the sacrifice of shaving it and
dying my moustache."
"Ah, yes; you may do that sure enough, but it is not so easy to learn
Basque!"
If I could not learn Basque I could learn of the Basques, and what I did
learn was so much to their credit that it is only fair to write it down.
They were not Thugs, they were neither sanguinary nor thievish. The
peasantry of the Basque provinces are the finest in Spain--intelligent,
hospitable, brave, gentle, but fiercely fanatical where religion is
concerned. Instances were narrated to me of travellers who had been
arrested by them, being liberated without damage to person or detriment
to purse. In one case a Frenchman was robbed by a small party, but his
money and papers were restored to him a few days after by one of the
chiefs, with an apology. The correspondent of the _Temps_, who
accompanied the army in a previous Carlist campaign, informed me that
after a skirmish in which forty Carlists were captured, he was anxious
to send an account of the affair to Paris, but he did not know how.
"Hold!" said a colonel, "I'll find you the means."
He called over a prisoner, and asked him if he were let off on parole,
would he take a letter through the disturbed district, and post it on
the other side for a French gentleman? The man pleaded fatigue.
"You'll be well paid."
At last he consented; my informant gave him the letter and a five-franc
piece. While monsieur was searching his pockets for more money to give
him, the prisoner said:
"I have no change, caballero; how shall we manage?"
The prisoner duly set off; the letter was duly posted and duly arrived,
and the prisoner faithfully returned and delivered himself up. Honour is
not yet extinct in the Basque provinces, nor is magnanimity in the
Spanish army. The commandant dismissed the peasant with a look of
admiration and a push on the back. But some fireside philosopher will
argue:
"Why, these honourable fellows cut telegraph wires and fire on railway
trains."
The Carlists explain: "The telegraph and the railway are our greatest
enemies; the one sends for reinforcements, the other brings them."
The unfortunate station-masters are to be pitied. Lizárraga sends one
word that he will incur the penalty of death if he makes up a train for
troops. The troops arrive, their commander demands to be furnished with
a train to take him to a certain point; if the station-master refuses he
is not merely threatened with the death-penalty, but incurs it on the
spot. But the fireside philosophers, assuming the cocked-hat of the
general, will continue:
"Why not protect the telegraphs and the railways?" The query may be met,
_more Hibernico_, by another:
Do the philosophers know how enormous and difficult an extent of country
has to be protected?
It would take more men than there are in the Spanish army altogether,
including the regiment of dismissed generals in Madrid, to act as
military milesmen in the perturbed territory. The Army of the North did
what it could--that is to say, it fortified the railway stations,
converting them into veritable block-houses, and supplied escorts to the
trains; but the Carlists had an unpurchasable ally in the darkness. They
could come down in the night and play old Harry with metals and wires.
The insurgents were ill-armed and undisciplined, but they were on their
own ground, every square inch of which they knew; they were leal to each
other, and they had acquired the secret of guerrilla campaigning--that
is, they harassed the regulars by fighting and running away, so that
they might live to fight another day. They avoided concentration in
mass, knowing how dangerous it is to pack all one's eggs in a single
basket.
So daring had these Carlists become that bands had made demonstrations
in perilous nearness to the capital, or rather they had been organized
in the capital itself and had taken to the field in the neighbourhood.
From a rising ground hard by the palace could be distinguished with the
naked eye a thicket on the desolate plain in the distance, where the
remnants of one band were known to be hiding. The fates were against
the insurgents, as they were met at Buendia and badly beaten two days
after they had unfurled the banner of revolt. Eleven of them were slain,
including a priest, twenty wounded and one hundred and seventeen taken
prisoners, including their two chiefs. The elder of these, Alonso, a man
of three-score and ten, died in the military hospital of Madrid on the
19th of March. He was a venerable fanatic of asinine stupidity to have
risked a fight with regular troops in the open. Fortune, in my
experience, favours not so much the brave as the wary. Had this
particular Alonso the brave, really an Alonso the reckless, availed
himself of a few picks and spades--the first farmhouse will seldom fail
to supply entrenching tools--he might have lived to die in his own bed
of a natural disease.