"A blackened ruin, lonely and forsaken,
Already wrapt in winding-sheets of sand,
So lies Toledo till the dead awaken,
A royal spoil of Time's resistless hand."
--ZORRILLA: _Toledo_.
In the thirteenth century the doctrine of transubstantiation assumed
especial importance. Miracle plays and cathedral glass told thrilling
stories of attacks made by Jews on the sacred Wafer, which bled under
their poniards or sprang from their caldrons and ovens in complete
figure of the Christ. The festival of Corpus Christi, then established
by Rome, was devoutly accepted in Spain and used to be celebrated with
supreme magnificence in Madrid. Early in the reign of Philip IV,
Prince Charles of England, who, with the adventurous Buckingham, had
come in romantic fashion to the Spanish capital, hoping to carry by
storm the heart of the Infanta, stood for hours in a balcony of the
Alcazar, gazing silently on the glittering procession. How they swept
by through the herb-strewn, tapestried streets--musicians,
standard-bearers, cross-bearers, files of orphans from the asylums,
six and thirty religious brotherhoods, monks of all the orders,
barefoot friars, ranks of secular clergy and brothers of charity, the
proud military orders of Alcantara, Calatrava, and Santiago, the
Councils of the Indies, of Aragon, of Portugal, the Supreme Council of
Castile, the City Fathers of Madrid, the Governmental Ministers of
Spain and Spanish Italy, the Tribunal of the Holy Office, preceded by
a long array of cloaked and hooded Familiars, bishops upon bishops in
splendid, gold-enwoven vestments, priests of the royal chapel
displaying the royal banner, bearers of the crosier and the
sacramental vessels, the Archbishop of Santiago, royal chaplains and
royal majordomos, royal pages with tall wax tapers, incense burners,
the canopied mystery of the Eucharist, the king, the prince,
cardinals, nuncio, the inquisitor general, the Catholic ambassadors,
the patriarch of the Indies, the all-powerful Count-Duke Olivares,
grandees, lesser nobility, gentlemen, and a display of Spanish and
German troops, closed by a great company of archers. So overwhelming
was that solemn progress, with its brilliant variety of sacerdotal
vestments, knightly habits, robes of state and military trappings, its
maces, standards, crosses, the flash of steel, gold, jewels, and
finally the sheen of candles, the clouds of incense, the tinkling of
silver bells before the _Santisimo Corpus_, that the heretic prince
and his reckless companion fell to their knees. One Spanish author
pauses to remark that for these, who could even then reject the open
arms of the Mother Church, the assassin's blow and the Whitehall block
were naturally waiting.
Such a pomp would have been worth the seeing, but we had arrived at
Madrid almost three centuries too late. Catholic friends shrugged
shoulder at mention of the Corpus procession, "_Vale poco._" And as
for the famous _autos sacramentales_, which used to be celebrated at
various times during the eight days of the Corpus solemnity, they may
be read in musty volumes, but can be seen in the city squares no more.
Calderon is said to have written the trifling number of seventy-two,
and Lope de Vega, whose fingers must have been tipped with pens, some
four hundred.
If only our train, which then would not have been a train, had brought
us, who then would not have come, to Madrid in season for a Corpus
celebration under the Austrian dynasty, we could have attended an
open-air theatre of a very curious sort. All the way to the _Plaza_,
we would have seen festivity at its height, pantomimic dances, merry
music, struttings of giants and antics of dwarfs, and perhaps groups
of boys insulting cheap effigies of snakes, modelled after the
monstrous _Tarasca_, carried in the Corpus parade in token of Christ's
victory over the Devil. At intervals along the route, adorned with
flowers and draperies, and reserved for the procession and the
dramatic cars, would have been altars hung with rich stuffs from the
Alcazar and the aristocratic palaces; silks and cloth of gold,
brocades, velvets, and shimmering wefts of the Indies. The one-act
play itself might be after the general fashion of the mediaeval
Miracles,--verse dialogue, tuned to piety with chords of fun, for the
setting forth of Biblical stories. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, Moses
feeding the Israelites with manna, the patience of Job, the trials of
Joseph, David, and Daniel, were thus represented.
More frequently, the _auto sacramental_ belonged to the so-called
Morality type of early Christian drama, being an allegorical
presentation of human experience or exposition of church doctrine.
Such were "The Fountain of Grace," "The Journey of the Soul," "The
Dance of Death," "The Pilgrim." Sometimes a Gospel parable, as the
"Lost Sheep" or the "Prodigal Son," gave the dramatic suggestion. But
these Spanish spectacles sought to associate themselves, as closely as
might be, with the Corpus worship, and many of them bear directly, in
one way or another, upon this sacrament.
If, for instance, we had chanced on the Madrid festival in 1681, we
could have witnessed in the decorated _Plaza_, with its thronged
balconies, the entrance of four scenic platforms or cars. The first,
painted over with battles, bears a Gothic castle; the second, with
pictures of the sea, a gallant ship; the third, a starry globe; the
fourth, a grove and garden, whose central fountain is so shaped as to
form, above, the semblance of an altar. In the complicated action of
the play, when the Soul, besieged in her fortress by the Devil, whose
allies are the World and the Flesh, calls upon Christ for succor, the
hollow sphere of the third car opens, revealing the Lord enthroned in
glory amid cherubim and seraphim; but the climax of the triumph is not
yet. That stout old general, the Devil, rallies fresh forces to the
attack, such subtle foes as Atheism, Judaism, and Apostasy, and
whereas, before, the Senses bore the brunt of the conflict, it is the
Understanding that girds on armor now. Yet in the final outcome not
the Understanding, but Faith draws the veil from before the altar of
the fourth car, and there, in the consecrated vessel for the holding
of the Wafer, appears the "Passion Child," the white bread from
Heaven, "very flesh and very blood that are the price of the soul's
salvation."
That is the way Spain kept her Corpus _fiesta_ in the good old times
of Charles the Bewitched; but not now. After the procession, the
bull-fight; and after the bull-fight, the latest vaudeville or ballet.
Last year it rained on Corpus Thursday, which fell on the first of
June, and Madrid gave up the procession altogether. Some of the
Opposition papers started the cry that this was shockingly irreligious
in Silvela, but when the Government organs haughtily explained that it
was the decision of the archbishop and Senor Silvela was not even
consulted, the righteous indignation of the Liberals straightway
subsided. The procession, which was to have been a matter of
kettledrums and clarionets, soldiery, "coaches of respect" from the
palace and the city corporation, and a full showing of the parochial
clergy, did not seem to be missed by the people. Corpus has long
ceased to be a chief event in the Capital.
There are a few cities in Spain, however, where the Corpus fete is
maintained with something of the old gayety and splendor. Bustling
Barcelona, never too busy for a frolic, keeps it merrily with an
elaborate parade from the cathedral all about the city,
and--delightful feature!--the distribution of flowers and sweetmeats
among the ladies. The procession in Valencia resembles those of Holy
Week in Seville. On litters strewn with flowers and thick-set with
candle-lights are borne carved groups of sacred figures and richly
attired images of Christ and the Virgin. But it is in lyric Andalusia
that these pageantries are most at home. Among her popular _coplas_ is
one that runs:--
"Thursdays three in the year there be,
That shine more bright than the sun's own ray--
Holy Thursday, Corpus Christi,
And our Lord's Ascension Day."
Cadiz, like Valencia, carries the _pasos_ in the Corpus procession. In
Seville, where the street displays of Holy Week are under the charge
of the religious brotherhoods, or _cofradias_, Corpus Christi gives
opportunity for the clergy and aristocracy to present a rival
exhibition of sanctified luxury and magnificence.
But it is in beautiful belated Granada that the Corpus fete is now at
its best. A brilliantly illustrated programme, whose many-hued cover
significantly groups a gamboge cathedral very much in the background,
and a flower-crowned Andalusian maiden, draped in a Manila shawl, with
a prodigious guitar at her feet, very much in the foreground,
announces a medley of festivities extending over eleven days. This
cheerful booklet promises, together with a constant supply of military
music, balcony decorations, and city illuminations, an assortment of
pleasures warranted to suit every taste--infantry reviews, cavalry
reviews, cadet reviews, masses under roof and masses in the open,
claustral processions, parades of giants, dwarfs, and _La Tarasca_, a
charity raffle in the park under the patronage of Granada's most
distinguished ladies, the erection of out-of-door altars, the
dispensing of six thousand loaves of bread among the poor (from my
experience of Granada beggars I should say the supply was
insufficient), a solemn Corpus procession passing along white-canopied
streets under a rain of flowers, three regular bull-fights with the
grand masters Guerrita, Lagartijillo, and Fuentes, followed by a
gloriously brutal _corrida_, with young beasts and inexperienced
fighters, cattle fair, booths, puppet shows, climbing of greased
poles, exhibition of fine arts and industries, horse racing, polo,
pigeon shoot, trapeze, balloon ascensions, gypsy dances, and fireworks
galore.
But even faithful Granada shared in the strange catalogue of
misfortunes which attended Corpus last year. The rains descended on
her Chinese lanterns, and the winds beat against her Arabic arches
with their thousands of gas-lights. On the sacred Thursday itself, the
Andalusian weather made a most unusual demonstration of hurricane and
cloudburst, with interludes of thunder and lightning. Great was the
damage in field, vineyard, and orchard, and as for processions, they
were in many places out of the question. Even Seville and Cordova had
to postpone both parades and bull-fights. But this was not the worst.
In Ecija, one of the quaintest cities of Andalusia, an image of the
Virgin as the Divine Shepherdess, lovingly arrayed and adorned with no
little outlay by the nuns of the Conception, caught fire in the
procession from a taper, like Seville's Virgin of Montserrat in the
last _Semana Santa_. The _Divina Pastora_ barely escaped with her
jewels. Her elaborate garments, the herbage and foliage of her
pasture, and one of her woolly sheep were burned to ashes. In Palma de
Mallorca, a romantic town of the Balearic Isles, a balcony, whose
occupants were leaning out to watch the procession, broke away, and
crashed down into the midst of the throng. A young girl fell upon the
bayonet of a soldier marching beneath, and was grievously hurt. Others
suffered wounds which, in one case at least, proved fatal. The
Opposition journals did not fail to make capital out of these untoward
events, serving them up in satiric verse with the irreverent
suggestion that, if this was all the favor a reactionary and
ultra-Catholic government could secure from Heaven, it was time to go
back to Sagasta.
The ecclesiastical Toledo, seat of the Primate of all Spain, is one
of the Spanish cities which still observe Corpus Christi as a high
solemnity, and Toledo is within easy pilgrimage distance of Madrid. I
had already passed two days in that ancient capital of the Visigoths,
ridding my conscience of the sightseers' burden, and I both longed and
dreaded to return. The longing overcame the dread, and I dropped in at
the _Estacion del Mediodia_ for preliminary inquiries. I could
discover no bureau of information and no official authorized to
instruct the public, but in this lotus-eating land what is nobody's
business is everybody's business. There could not be a better-humored
people. The keeper of the bookstand abandoned his counter, his
would-be customers lighting cigarettes and leaning up against trucks
and stacks of luggage to wait for his return, and escorted me the
length of the station to find a big yellow poster, which gave the
special time-table for Corpus Thursday. The poster was so high upon
the wall that our combined efforts could not make it out; whereupon a
nimble little porter dropped the trunk he was carrying, and climbed on
top of it for a better view. In that commanding position he could see
clearly enough, but just when my hopes were at the brightest, he
regretfully explained that he had never learned to read. As he
clambered down the proprietor of the trunk, who had been looking on
with as much serenity as if trains never went and starting bells never
rang, mounted in turn. This gentleman, all smiles and bows and tobacco
smoke, read off the desired items, which the keeper of the bookstand
copied for me in a leisurely, conversational manner, with a pencil
lent by one bystander on a card donated by another.
There is really something to be said for the Spanish way of doing
business. It takes time, but if time is filled with human kindliness
and social courtesies, why not? What is time for? Whenever I observed
that I was the only person in a hurry on a Madrid street, I revised my
opinion as to the importance of my errand.
As I entered the station again on the first of June at the penitential
hour of quarter past six in the morning, I was reflecting complacently
on my sagacity as a traveller. Had I not bethought me that, even in
the ecclesiastical centre of Spain and on this solemn festival, there
might be peril for a stranger's purse? What financial acumen I had
shown in calculating that, since my round-trip ticket to Toledo before
had cost three dollars, second class, I could probably go first class
on this excursion for the same sum, while two dollars more would be
ample allowance for balcony hire and extras! And yet how prudent in me
to have tucked away a reserve fund in a secret pocket inaccessible
even to myself! But why was the station so jammed and crammed with
broad-hatted Spaniards? And what was the meaning of that long line of
roughs, stretching far out from the third-class ticket office?
Bull-fight explained it all. Even reverend Toledo must keep the Corpus
holy by the public slaughter of six choice bulls and as many hapless
horses as their blind rage might rend. Worse than the pagan altars
that reeked with the blood of beasts, Spain's Christian festivals
demand torture in addition to butchery.
There were no first-class carriages, it appeared, upon the Corpus
train, and my round-trip ticket, second class, cost only a dollar,
leaving me with an embarrassment of riches. Pursing the slip of
pasteboard which, to my disgust, was stamped in vermilion letters
_Corrida de Toros_, I sped me to the train, where every seat appeared
to be taken, although it lacked twenty minutes of the advertised time
for departure; but a bald-headed philanthropist called out from a
carriage window that they still had room for one. Gratefully climbing
up, I found myself in the society of a family party, off for Toledo to
celebrate the saint-day of their hazel-eyed eight-year-old by that
treat of treats, a child's first bull-fight. When they learned that I
was tamely proposing to keep Corpus Christi by seeing the procession
and not by "assisting at the function of bulls," their faces clouded;
but they decided to make allowance for my foreign idiosyncrasies.
The train, besieged by a multitude of ticket-holders for whom there
were no places, was nearly an hour late in getting off. The ladies
dozed and chattered; the gentlemen smoked and dozed; little Hazel-eyes
constantly drew pictures of bulls with a wet finger on the window
glass. Reminded again by my handbag literature that Toledo is a nest
of thieves, I would gladly have put away my extra money, but there was
never a moment when all the gentlemen were asleep at once.
It was after ten when we reached our destination, the boy wild with
rapture because we had actually seen a pasture of grazing bulls. A
swarm of noisy, scrambling, savage-looking humanity hailed the arrival
of the train, and I had hardly made my way even to the platform before
I felt an ominous twitch at my pocket. The light-fingered art must
have degenerated in Toledo since the day of that clever cutpurse of
the "Exemplary Tales." Turning sharply, I confronted a group of my
fellow-worshippers, who, shawled and sashed and daggered, looked as
if they had been expressly gotten up for stage bandits. From the
shaggy pates, topped by gaudy, twisted handkerchiefs--a headdress not
so strange in a city whose stone walls looked for centuries on Moorish
turbans--to the bright-edged, stealthy hemp sandals, these were
pickpockets to rejoice a kodak. Their black eyes twinkled at me with
wicked triumph, while it flashed across my mind that my old hero, the
Cid, was probably much of their aspect, and certainly gained his
living in very similar ways. There were a full score of these
picturesque plunderers, and not a person of the nineteenth century in
sight. Since there was nothing to do, I did it, and giving them a
parting glance of moral disapproval, to which several of the sauciest
responded by blithely touching their forelocks, I pursued my pilgrim
course, purged of vainglory. At all events, I was delivered from
temptation as to a questionable _peseta_ in my purse--my pretty Paris
purse!--and I should not be obliged to travel again on that odious
bull-fight ticket.
We were having "fool weather," blowing now hot, now cold, but as at
this moment the air was cool, and every possible vehicle seemed
packed, thatched, fringed with clinging passengers, I decided, not
seeking further reasons, to walk up to the town. And what a town it
is! Who could remember dollars? So far from being decently depressed,
I was almost glad to have lost something in this colossal monument of
losses. It seemed to make connection.
Between deep, rocky, precipitous banks, strongly flows the golden
"king of rivers, the venerable Tajo," almost encircling the granite
pedestal of the city and spanned by ancient bridges of massy stone,
with battlemented, Virgin-niched, fierce old gates. And above, upon
its rugged height, crumbling hourly into the gritty dust that stings
the eye and scrapes beneath the foot, lies in swirls on floor and
pavement, blows on every breeze and sifts through hair and clothing,
is the proud, sullen, forsaken fortress of "imperial Toledo." Still it
is a vision of turrets, domes, and spires, fretwork, buttresses,
facades, but all so desolate, so dreary, isolated in that parched
landscape as it is isolated in the living world, that one approaches
with strangely blended feelings of awe, repugnance, and delight.
On we go over the Bridge of Alcantara, wrought aeons since by a gang of
angry Titans--the guidebooks erroneously attribute it to the Moors and
Alfonso the Learned--with a shuddering glance out toward the ruins of
feudal castles, here a battlemented keep set with mighty towers, there
a great, squat, frowning mass of stone, the very sight of which might
have crushed a prisoner's heart. Up, straight up, into the grim, gray,
labyrinthine city, whose zigzag streets, often narrowing until two
laden donkeys, meeting, cannot pass, so twist and turn that it is
impossible on entering one to guess at what point of the compass we
will come out. These crooked ways, paved with "agony stones," are
lined with tall, dark, inhospitable house fronts, whose few windows
are heavily grated, and whose huge doors, bristling with iron bosses,
are furnished with fantastic knockers and a whole arsenal of bolts and
chains.
[Illustration: THE KING OF THE GYPSIES]
Gloomy as these ponderous structures are, every step discloses a
novelty of beauty,--a chiselled angel, poised for flight, chased
escutcheons, bas-reliefs, toothed arches, medallions, weather-eaten
groups of saints and apostles gossiping in their scalloped niches
about the degeneracy of the times. The Moors, whose architecture, says
Becquer, seems the dream of a Moslem warrior sleeping after battle in
the shadow of a palm, have left their mark throughout Toledo in the
airy elegance of the traceries magically copied from cobwebs and the
Milky Way. That tragic race, the Jews, have stamped on the walls of
long-desecrated synagogues their own mysterious emblems. And Goths and
Christian knights have wrought their very likenesses into the stern,
helmeted heads that peer out from the capitals of marvellous columns
amid the stone grapes and pomegranates most fit for their heroic
nourishment. But all is in decay. Here stands a broken-sceptred statue
turning its royal back on a ragged vender of toasted _garbanzos_. Even
the image of Wamba has lost its royal nose.
You may traverse whispering cloisters heaped with fallen crosses, with
truant tombstones, and severed heads and limbs of august prophets.
Cast aside in dusky vaults lie broken shafts of rose-tinted marbles
and fragments of rare carving in whose hollows the birds of the air
once built their nests. Through the tangle of flowers and shrubbery
that chokes the patios gleam the rims of alabaster urns and basins of
jasper fountains. Such radiant wings and faces as still flash out from
frieze and arch and column, such laughing looks, fresh with a dewy
brightness, as if youth and springtime were enchanted in the stone!
And what supreme grace and truth of artistry in all this bewildering
detail! On some far-off day of the golden age, when ivory and agate
were as wax, when cedar and larch wood yielded like their own soft
leaves, the magician must have pressed upon them the olive leaf, the
acacia spray, the baby's foot, that have left these perfect traces.
And how did mortal hand ever achieve the intricate, curling,
unfolding, blossoming marvel of those capitals? And who save kings,
Wambas and Rodericks, Sanchos, Alfonsos, and Fernandos, should mount
these magnificent stairways? And what have those staring stone faces
above that antique doorway looked upon to turn them haggard with
horror? City of ghosts! The flesh begins to creep. But here, happily,
we are arrived in the _Plaza de Zocodover_, where Lazarillo de Tormes
used to display his talents as town crier, and in this long-memoried
market-place, with its arcaded sides and trampled green, may pause to
take our bearings.
Evidently the procession is to pass here, for the balconies, still
displaying the yellow fronds of Palm Sunday, are hung with all manner
of draperies--clear blue, orange with silver fringes, red with violet
bars, white with saffron scallops. Freed from sordid cares about my
pocket, I give myself for a little to the spell of that strange scene.
Beyond rise the rich-hued towers of the Alcazar, on the site where
Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, the Cid, and an illustrious line of Spanish
monarchs have fortified themselves in turn; but Time at last is
conqueror, and one visits the dismantled castle only to forget all
about it in the grandeur of the view. From the east side of the
_Zocodover_ soars the arch on whose summit used to stand the
_Santisimo Cristo del Sangre_, before whom the Corpus train did
reverence. And here in the centre blazed that momentous bonfire which
was to settle the strife between the old Toledan liturgy and the new
ritual of Rome; but the impartial elements honored both the Prayer
Books placed upon the fagots, the wind wafting to a place of safety
the Roman breviary, while the flames drew back from the other, with
the result that the primitive rite is still preserved in an especial
chapel of the cathedral.
A glorious _plaza_, famed by Cervantes, loved by Lope de Vega, but now
how dim and shabby! On the house-fronts once so gayly colored, the
greens have faded to yellows, the reds to pinks, and the pinks to
browns. The awning spread along the route of the procession is fairly
checkered with a miscellany of patches. I pass the compliments of the
day with a smiling peasant woman, whose husband, a striking
color-scheme in maroon blanket, azure trousers, russet stockings, and
soiled gray sandals, offers me his seat on the stone bench beside her.
But I am bound on my errand, and they bid me "Go with God." I select a
trusty face in a shop doorway and ask if I can rent standing room in
the balcony above. Mine honest friend puts his price a trifle high to
give him a margin for the expected bargaining, but I scorn to haggle
on a day when I am short of money, and merely stipulate, with true
Spanish propriety, that no gentlemen shall be admitted. This makes an
excellent impression on the proprietor, who shows me up a winding
stair with almost oppressive politeness. A little company of ladies,
with lace mantillas drooping from their graceful heads, welcome me
with that courteous cordiality which imparts to the slightest
intercourse with the Spanish people (barring pickpockets) a flavor of
fine pleasure. Because I am the last arrival and have the least claim,
they insist on giving me the best place on the best balcony and are
untiring in their explanations of all there is to be seen.
The procession is already passing--civil guards, buglers, drummers,
flower wreaths borne aloft, crosses of silver and crosses of gold,
silken standards wrought with cunning embroideries. But now there come
a sudden darkness, a gust of wind, and dash of rain. The ranks of
_cofradias_ try in vain to keep their candles burning, the pupils from
the colleges of the friars, with shining medals hung by green cords
about their necks, peep roguishly back at the purple-stoled dignitary
in a white wig, over whom an anxious friend from the street is trying
to hold an umbrella. The Jesuit _seminaristas_ bear themselves more
decorously, the tonsures gleaming like silver coins on their young
heads. The canons lift their red robes from the wet, and even bishops
make some furtive efforts to protect their gold-threaded chasubles.
Meanwhile the people, that spectral throng of witches, serfs, feudal
retainers, and left-overs from the Arabian Nights, press closer and
closer, audaciously wrapping themselves from the rain in the rich old
tapestries of France and Flanders, which have been hung along both
sides of the route from a queer framework of emerald-bright poles and
bars. The dark, wild, superstitious faces, massed and huddled
together, peer out more uncannywise than ever from under these
precious stuffs which brisk soldiers, with green feather brushes in
their caps, as if to enable them to dust themselves off at short
notice, are already taking down.
All the church bells of the city are chiming solemnly, and the
splendid _custodia_, "the most beautiful piece of plate in the world,"
a treasure of filigree gold and jewels, enshrining the Host, draws
near. It is preceded by a bevy of lovely children, not dressed, as at
Granada, to represent angels, but as knights of chivalry. Their dainty
suits of red and blue, slashed and puffed and trimmed with lace, flash
through the silvery mist of rain. Motherly voices from the balconies
call to them to carry their creamy caps upside down to shield the
clustered plumes. Their little white sandals and gaiters splash
merrily through the mud.
A flamingo gleam across the slanting rain announces Cardinal Sancha,
behind whom acolytes uplift a thronelike chair of crimson velvet and
gold. Then follow ranks of taper-bearing soldiers, and my friends in
the balcony call proudly down to different officers, a son, a husband,
a blushing _novio_, whom they present to me then and there. The
officers bow up and I bow down, while at this very moment comes that
tinkling of silver bells which would, I had supposed, strike all
Catholic Spaniards to their knees. It is perhaps too much to expect
the people below to kneel in the puddles, but the vivacious chatter in
the balconies never ceases, and the ladies beside me do not even cross
themselves.
The parade proceeds, a gorgeous group in wine-colored costume carrying
great silver maces before the civic representation. The governor of
the province is pointed out to me as a count of high degree, but in
the instant when my awed glance falls upon him he gives a monstrous
gape unbecoming even to nobility. The last of the spruce cadets, who
close the line, have hardly passed when the thrifty housewife
beseeches our aid in taking in out of the rain her scarlet balcony
hanging, which proves to be the canopy of her best bed. But the sun is
shining forth again when I return to the street to follow the
procession into the cathedral.
Already this gleam of fair weather has filled the _Calle de Comercio_
with festive senoritas, arrayed in white mantillas and Manila shawls
in honor of the bull-fight. Shops have been promptly opened for a
holiday sale of the Toledo specialties--arabesqued swords and daggers,
every variety of Damascened wares, and marchpane in form of mimic
hams, fish, and serpents. The Toledo steel was famous in Shakespeare's
day, even in the mouths of rustic dandies, whose geographical
education had been neglected. When the clever rogue, Brainworm, in one
of Jonson's comedies, would sell Stephen, the "country gull," a cheap
rapier, he urges, "'Tis a most pure Toledo," and Stephen replies
according to his folly, "I had rather it were a Spaniard." But onward
is the glorious church, with its symmetric tower, whose spire wears a
threefold crown of thorns. The exterior walls are hung, on this one
day of the year, with wondrous tapestries that Queen Isabella knew. An
army of beggars obstructs the crowd, which presses in, wave upon wave,
through the deep, rich portals in whose ornamentation whole lifetimes
have carved themselves away.
Within this sublime temple, unsurpassed in Gothic art, where every
pavement slab is worn by knees more than by footsteps, where every
starry window has thrown its jewel lights on generations of believers,
one would almost choose to dwell forever. One looks half enviously at
recumbent alabaster bishops and kneeling marble knights, even at dim
grotesques, who have rested in the heart of that grave beauty, in that
atmosphere of prayer and chant, so long. Let these stone figures troop
out into the troubled streets and toil awhile, and give the rest of us
a chance to dream. But the multitude, which has knelt devoutly while
_Su Majestad_ was being borne into the _Capilla Mayor_, comes pouring
down the nave to salute the stone on which--ah me!--on which the
Virgin set her blessed foot December 18, 666, when she alighted in
Toledo cathedral to present the champion of the Immaculate Conception,
St. Ildefonso, with a chasuble of celestial tissue. The gilded,
turreted shrine containing that consecrated block towers almost to the
height of the nave. A grating guards it from the devout, who can only
touch it with their finger tips, which then they kiss. Hundreds, with
reverend looks, stand waiting their turn--children, peasants,
bull-fighters, decorated officers, refined ladies, men of cultured
faces. The sound of kissing comes thick and fast. Heresy begins to
beat in my blood.
Not all that heavenward reach of columns and arches, not that
multitudinous charm of art, can rid the imagination of a granite
weight. I escape for a while to the purer church without, with its
window-gold of sunshine and lapis-lazuli roof. When the mighty magnet
draws me back again, those majestic aisles are empty, save for a tired
sacristan or two, and the silence is broken only by a monotone of
alternate chanting, from where, in the _Capilla Mayor_, two priests
keep watch with _El Senor_.
"He will be here all the afternoon," says the sacristan, "and nothing
can be shown; but if you will come back to-morrow I will arrange for
you to see even Our Lady's robes and gems."
Come back! I felt myself graying to a shadow already. Of course I
longed to see again that marvellous woodwork of the choir stalls, with
all the conquest of Granada carved amid columns of jasper and under
alabaster canopies, but I was smothered in a multitude of ghosts. They
crowded from every side,--nuns, monks, soldiers, tyrants, magnificent
archbishops, the martyred Leocadia, passionate Roderick, weeping
Florinda, grim Count Julian, "my Cid," Pedro the Cruel, those five
thousand Christian nobles and burghers of Toledo, slain, one by one,
at the treacherous feast of Abderrahman, those hordes of flaming Jews
writhing amid the Inquisition fagots. I had kept my Corpus. I had seen
the greatest of all _autos sacramentales_, Calderon's masterpiece,
"Life is a Dream."
"On a single one of the Virgin's gold-wrought mantles," coaxed the
sacristan, "are eighty-five thousand large pearls and as many
sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds. I will arrange for you to see
everything, when Our Lord is gone away."
But no. I am a little particular about treasures. Since Toledo has
lost the emerald table of King Solomon and that wondrous copy of the
Psalms written upon gold leaf in a fluid made of melted rubies, I will
not trouble the seven canons to unlock the seven doors of the
cathedral sacristy. Let the Madonna enjoy her wealth alone. I have
_pesetas_ enough for my ticket to Madrid.