a place where stood a chapel erected by St. James to receive the
miraculous image of the Virgin, which still remains. It is an immense
edifice, with a rectangular base, surmounted by eleven domes painted in
different colors, giving the whole a pleasing Moorish effect. The walls
are unadorned and dark in color. Let us enter. It is a vast cathedral,
dark, bare, and cold, divided into three naves, encircled by modest
chapels. One’s eye turns quickly to the sanctuary which rises in the
middle: there stands the statue of the Virgin. It is a temple within a
temple, and might stand alone in the middle of the square if the
building which surrounds it were torn away. A circle of beautiful marble
columns, arranged in the form of an ellipse, bear up a dome richly
adorned with sculpture, open at the top, and ornamented within the
opening by aspiring figures of angels and saints. In the centre stands
the great altar; on its right the statue of St. James; on the left, far
back under a silver canopy which gleams against a background of a
richly-draped velvet curtain sown with stars, amid the flashing of
thousands of costly offerings, in the glare of innumerable lights, the
famous statue of the Virgin, where St. James placed it nineteen
centuries ago, carved in wood, black with age, all enveloped in a
bishop’s gown, excepting its head and the head of the Christ child. In
front of it, between the columns grouped around the sanctuary and in the
far recesses of the naves, in every place from which one can see the
venerated image, kneel faithful worshippers, prostrate, their heads
almost touching the pavement, their hands clasping the crucifix--poor
women, laboring-men, ladies, soldiers, boys, and girls--and through the
different doorways of the cathedral passes a continuous stream of
people, walking slowly on tiptoe, with solemn faces; and in that deep
silence not a murmur, not a rustle, not a sigh; the very life of the
crowd seems suspended: it seems as though they were all expecting a
divine apparition, a mysterious voice, some awful revelation from the
dim sanctuary; and even one who does not have their faith, and who does
not pray, is forced to gaze himself at that point where all eyes are
turned, and the current of his thoughts is interrupted by a sort of
restless expectation.
“Oh, would that some voice would speak!” I thought. “Would that the
apparition would appear! Would that there might be a word or a sigh
which would turn my hair white with fear and make me utter a cry the
like of which was never heard on earth, if so I might for ever be
delivered from that horrible doubt which saps my brain and saddens my
life!”
I tried to enter the sanctuary, but I could not have done so without
passing over the shoulders of a hundred worshippers, some of whom had
already begun to look surly because I was going around with a note-book
and pencil in my hand. I attempted to go down into the subterranean
crypt where are the tombs of the archbishops and the urn which holds the
heart of John II. of Austria, the natural son of Philip IV., but this I
was not allowed to do. I asked to see the vestments, the gold, the
jewels, which had been poured out at the feet of the Virgin by the
lords, the rulers, and the monarchs of every age and every land, but I
was told that it was not the proper time, and not even by showing a
shiny peseta was I able to corrupt the honest sacristan. But I was not
refused some information concerning the worship of the Virgin after I
had told him, to win favor in his eyes, that I was born in Rome in the
Borgo Pio, and that from the little terrace in front of my home I could
see the windows of the Pope’s apartments.
“It is a fact,” said he, “almost a miracle--and one would not believe it
if it were not attested by tradition--that at the very early time when
the statue of the Virgin was placed on its pedestal, even down to the
days in which we are living, except in the night when the cathedral is
closed, the sanctuary has never been empty a moment--not even a moment,
in the full sense of the word. Our Lady of the Pillar has never been
alone. In the pedestal there has been a hollow worn by kisses in
which I could put my head. Not even the Moors dared to forbid the
worship of Our Lady; the chapel of St. James was always respected.
The cathedral has been struck by lightning many times, and the
sanctuary too, even on theinside, right in the midst of a crowd of people.
Well! the souls of the lost may deny the protection of the Virgin, but
no--one--has--ever--been--struck! And the bombs of the French? They have
burned and ruined other buildings, but when they fell on the cathedral
of Our Lady it was as though they had fallen on the rocks of the Sierra
Morena. And the French, who pillaged on every hand, did they have the
heart to touch the treasures of Our Lady? One general only allowed
himself to take some trifling thing to give to his wife, offering a rich
gift to the Virgin in compensation, but do you know what followed? In
the next battle a cannon-ball carried away one of his legs. There is not
a trace of a general or a king who has imposed on Our Lady, and moreover
it is written up above that this church will stand to the end of the
world.” And he ran on in this vein until a priest made a mysterious sign
from a dark corner of the sacristy, and he at once bowed and
disappeared.
As I came out of the cathedral, with my mind occupied with a picture of
the solemn sanctuary, I met a long procession of Carnival chariots, led
by a band of music, accompanied by a crowd, followed by a great number
of carriages, on their way to the Coso. I do not ever remember to have
seen faces so grotesque, ridiculous, and preposterous as those worn by
the maskers, and, although I was alone and not at all disposed to
merriment, I could no more have kept from laughing than I could have
done at the close of one of Fucini’s sonnets. The crowd, on the other
hand, was decorous and silent and the maskers were as grave as possible.
One would have said that both parties were more impressed by the
melancholy presentiment of Lent than by the short-lived gaiety of the
Carnival. I saw some pretty little faces at the windows, but as yet no
type of that proverbial Spanish beauty, of the rich dark complexion, and
the _fiery black eyes_ which Martinez de la Rosa, an exile in London,
remembered with such passionate sighs among the beauties of the North. I
passed between two carriages, pushed my way out of the crowd, thereby
drawing down some curses which I promptly entered in my note-book, and
turned at random down two or three narrow little streets. I came out at
the square of San Salvador in front of the cathedral of the same name,
which is also called the Seo--a richer and more splendid edifice than
that of Our Lady of the Pillar.
Neither the Græco-Roman façade, although majestic in its proportions,
nor the high, light tower, is a preparation for the grand spectacle of
the interior. On entering I found myself surrounded by gloomy shadows.
For an instant my eyes could not discover the outlines of the building.
I saw only a shimmer of broken light resting here and there on column
and arch. Then slowly I distinguished five naves, divided by four orders
of Gothic pilasters, the walls far in the distance, and the long series
of lateral chapels, and I was overwhelmed by the sight. It was the first
interior which corresponded with the image I had formed of the Spanish
cathedrals, so varied, magnificent, and rich. The principal chapel,
surrounded by a great Gothic dome in the form of a tiara, alone contains
the riches of a great church. The large altar is of alabaster covered
with rosettes, scrolls, and arabesques; the vaulted roof is adorned with
statues; on the right and left are tombs and urns of princes; in an
angle stands the chair in which the kings of Arragon sat at their
coronation. The choir rising in the middle of the great nave is a
mountain of treasures. Its exterior, broken by some passages leading to
little chapels, presents an incredible variety of statuettes, little
columns, bas-reliefs, friezes, and mosaics, and one would have to look
all day to see it thoroughly. The pilasters of the two outer naves and
the arches which span the chapels are richly adorned from the base to
the capital with statues--some so enormous that they seem to be raising
the edifice on their shoulders--with pictures, sculpture, and ornament
of every style and of every size. In the chapels there is a wealth of
statues, rich altars, royal tombs, busts, and paintings, which are so
shrouded by the deep gloom that they appear only as a confused mass of
colors, reflections, and shadowy forms, among which the eye loses itself
and the imagination faints. After much running hither and thither, with
my note-book open and pencil in hand, noting this and sketching that,
with my brain in a whirl, I tore out the chequered leaves, and,
promising myself that I would not write another word, I left the
cathedral and began to walk through the city, seeing for at least an
hour only long dim aisles and statues gleaming in the deep recesses of
mysterious chapels.
There come moments to the gayest and most enamored traveller, as he
walks the streets of a strange city, in which he is suddenly overwhelmed
by such a strong feeling of utter weariness that if he were able by a
word to fly back to his home and his dear ones with the rapidity of the
genii of the “Arabian Nights,” he would pronounce that word with a cry
of joy. I was seized by such a feeling just as I turned into a narrow
street far from the centre of the city, and it almost terrified me. I
anxiously rehearsed all the images I had formed of Madrid, Seville, and
Granada, hoping in this way to arouse and rekindle my curiosity and
enthusiasm; but those images now seemed dull and lifeless. My thoughts
carried me back to my home, when on the day before my departure in my
feverish impatience I could hardly wait for the hour of starting; but
even that did not remove my sadness. The idea of having to see so many
more new cities, of having to pass so many nights in hotels, of having
to find myself for so long a time in the midst of a strange people,
disheartened me. I asked myself how I could have resolved to leave home.
It seemed as if I were suddenly separated from my country by a
measureless distance--that I was in a wilderness alone, forgotten by
all. I looked around; the street was empty, my heart turned cold, tears
gathered in my eyes. “I cannot stay here,” I said to myself; “I shall
die of melancholy. I will return to Italy.”
I had not made an end of speaking these words before I almost burst into
hysterical laughter. In an instant everything regained life and splendor
in my eyes. I thought of Castile and of Andalusia with a sort of frantic
joy, and, shaking my head with an air of pity for my recent dejection, I
lighted a cigar and walked on, happier than I had been at first.
It was the last day of the Carnival: in the evening on the principal
streets I saw a procession of maskers, carriages, bands of young men,
large family parties with children and nurses and budding girls,
walking two by two. But there was no disagreeable shouting, no coarse
songs of drunken men, no troublesome crowding and pushing. Now and then
one felt a light rub on the elbow, but light enough to seem like the
greeting of a friend who would say, “It is I,” rather than the jostling
of some thoughtless fellow; and together with the touch at the elbow
there were voices, much gentler than of old when the Saragossa women
used to scream from the windows of their tottering houses, and much more
ardent than the boiling oil which they poured down on the invaders. Oh!
those were certainly not the times of which I heard recently at Turin,
when an old priest of Saragossa assured me that in seven years he had
not received the confession of a mortal sin.
That night I found at the hotel a madcap of a Frenchman whose equal I
believe does not exist under the sun. He was a man of forty, with one of
those putty-like faces which say “Here I am; come and cheat me”--a
wealthy merchant, as it appeared, who had just arrived from Barcelona
and expected to leave the next day for St. Sebastian. I found him in the
dining-room telling his story to a group of tourists, who were bursting
with laughter. I too joined the circle and listened to his story.
The fellow was a native of Bordeaux, and had lived for years at
Barcelona. He had left France because his wife had run away from him,
without saying good-bye, with the ugliest man in the town, leaving four
children on his hands. He had never heard of her since the day of her
flight. Some told him she had gone to America, others that she was in
Africa or Asia, but those were mere groundless conjectures. For four
years he had believed her to be dead. One fine day at Barcelona, as he
was dining with a friend from Marseilles, his guest said to him (but you
ought to have seen with what comical dignity he described the
circumstance):
“My friend, I am going to make a trip to St. Sebastian one of these
days.”
“What for?”
“Just a little diversion.”
“A love-affair, eh?”
“Yes, at least--I will tell you. It is not exactly a love-affair,
because, as for me, I do not care to come in at the tail end of a
love-affair. It is a caprice. A pretty little woman, however. Why, only
the day before yesterday I received a letter. I did not want to go, but
there were so many _comes_ and _I expect yous_ and _my friends_ and
_dear friends_, that I allowed myself to be tempted.” So saying, he drew
out the letter with a grimace of lordly pride.
The merchant takes it, opens it, and reads.
“By the gods! my wife!” and without another word he leaves his friend,
runs home, packs his valise, and hurries to the station.
When I entered the room the man had just shown the letter to everybody
present, and had spread on the table, so that every one could see them,
his certificate of baptism, his marriage articles, and other papers
which he had brought along in case his wife might not wish to recognize
him.
“What are you going to do?” we all asked with one voice.
“I shall not do her any harm. I have made up my mind: there will be no
bloodshed, but there will be a punishment even more terrible.”
“But what will that be?” demanded one of his auditors.
“I have made up my mind,” replied the Frenchman with profoundest
gravity, and, taking from his pocket a pair of enormous scissors, he
added solemnly, “I am going to cut off her hair and her eyebrows!”
We all burst into a shout of laughter.
“Messieurs!” cried the abused husband, “I have said it, and I will keep
my word. If I have the pleasure of meeting you here again, I will see
that you are presented with her wig.”
Here ensued a pandemonium of laughter and shouts of applause, but the
Frenchman did not for a moment relax his tragic scowl.
“But if you find a Spaniard in the house?” some one asked.
“I shall then throw him out of the window,” he responded.
“But if there are a number there?”
“All the world out of the window.”
“But you will make a scandal; the neighbors will run in, the police, and
the people.”
“And I,” cried the terrible man, striking his hand on his chest, “I will
throw the neighbors, the police, the people, and the whole city out of
the window if it is necessary.”
And he went on in this vein, swaggering about and gesticulating with the
letter in one hand and the scissors in the other, in the midst of the
convulsive laughter of the tourists.
_Vivir para ver_ (Live and see), says the Spanish proverb; and it ought
rather to say _viager_ (travel), for it seems that only in hotels and on
the train does one fall in with such originals. Who knows how it all
came out in the end?
On entering my room I asked the waiter what those two things on the wall
were which I had been seeing since the evening of my arrival, and which
seemed to have some claims to pass as paintings.
“Sir,” he replied, “they are nothing less than the brothers Argensola,
Arragonese, natives of Barbastro, most celebrated poets of Spain.”
And truly such were the two brothers Argensola, two veritable literary
twins, who had the same temperament, studied the same subjects, wrote in
the same style, pure, dignified, and refined, striving with all their
powers to raise a barrier against the torrent of depraved taste which in
their time, the end of the sixteenth century, had begun to invade the
literature of Spain. One of them died in Naples, the secretary of the
viceroy, and the other died at Tarragona, a priest. The two left a name
illustrious and beloved, upon which Cervantes and Lope de Vega have
placed the noble seal of their praise. The sonnets of the Argensola
brothers are recognized as the most beautiful in Spanish literature for
their clearness of thought and dignity of form, and there is one of them
in particular, to Lupercio Leonardo, which the legislators repeat in
answer to the grandiloquent philippics of the orators on the left,
emphasizing the last lines. I quote it with the hope that it may supply
some of my readers with an answer to their friends who reprove them for
being enamored, as was the poet, of a lady with a weakness for rouge:
“Yo os quiero confesar, don Juan, primero
Que aquel blanco y carmin de doña Elvira
No tiene de ella mas, si bien se mira,
Que el haberle costado su dinero:
“Pero tambien que me confieses quiero
Que es tanto la beldad de su mentira,
Que en vano à competir con ella aspira
Belleza igual de rostro verdadero.
“Mas que mucho que yo perdido ande
Por un engaño tal, pues que sabemos
Que nos engaña asì naturaleza?
“Porque ese cielo azul que todos vemos
No es cielo, ni es azul; làstima grande
Que no sea verdad tanta belleza!”
(_First, Don Juan, I wish to confess that the comely white and red of
Lady Elvira are no more hers than the money with which she bought them.
But in thy turn I wish thee to confess that no like beauty of an honest
cheek may dare compete with the beauty of her feigning. But why should I
be vexed by such deception if it be known that Nature so deceives us?
And, in fact, that the azure sky which we all see is truly neither sky
nor is it azure? Alas, that so much beauty is not true!_)
* * * * *
The following morning I wished to try a pleasure similar to that which
Rousseau indulged in following the flight of flies--the pleasure of
wandering through the streets of the city at random, stopping to look at
the most insignificant things, as one would do in the streets at home if
one were obliged to wait for a friend. I visited some public buildings,
among them the palace of the Bourse, containing a magnificent hall in
which are twenty-four columns, each ornamented with four shields placed
above the four faces of the capital and bearing the arms of Saragossa. I
visited the old church of Santiago and the beautiful palace of the
archbishop; stood in the centre of the vast, cheerful Square of the
Constitution, which divides the Coso, and into which run the two other
principal streets of the city; and from that point I set out and
wandered about until noon, to my infinite delight. Now I stopped to
watch a boy playing _nocino_; now I poked my curious head into a little
café frequented by scholars; now I slackened my pace to overhear
servants joking with each other at a street-corner; now I flattened my
nose against the window of a bookshop; now I almost pestered a
tobacconist to death by asking for cigars in German; now I stopped to
chat with a peddler of matches; here I bought a diary, then asked a
soldier for a light, again asked a girl to show me the way, and,
pondering the lines of Argensola, I commenced facetious sonnets, hummed
the hymn of Riego, thought of Florence, the wine of Malaga, the counsels
of my mother, of King Amadeus, my purse, a thousand things and nothing;
and I would not have changed places with a grandee of Spain.
Toward evening I started to see the New Tower, one of the most curious
monuments in Spain. It is eighty-four metres high, or four metres higher
than Giotto’s tower, and without a crack leans about two and a half
metres from the perpendicular, like the Tower of Pisa. It was erected in
1304. Some affirm that it was built just as it now stands, others that
it settled afterward; there are different opinions. It is octagonal in
form, and is built entirely of bricks, but presents a marvellous variety
of design and ornamentation--a different appearance at every point, a
graceful blending of Gothic and Moorish architecture. To gain admittance
I was obliged to ask permission of some municipal official who lived
hard by, who, after he had eyed me carefully from the tips of my boots
to the hairs of my head, gave the key to the keeper and said to me, “You
may go, sir.”
The keeper was a vigorous old man, who climbed up the interminable steps
much more rapidly than I could follow.
“You will have a magnificent view, sir,” said he.
I told him that we Italians also had a leaning tower like that of
Saragossa. He turned so that he could look at me and said sternly, “Ours
is the only one in the world.”--“Oh, nonsense! I say that we have one
too, and I have seen it with my eyes, at Pisa, but then, if you don’t
want to believe me, you may read it here. See, the guide-book tells
about it.”
He gave me a look and muttered, “Perhaps so.”
Perhaps so! the stubborn old numbskull! I could have thrown the book at
his head.
Finally we reached the top. It is a wonderful sight. One sees Saragossa
at a glance--the great Coso, the avenue of Santa Engracia, the suburbs;
and then below, where it seems one can almost touch them, the
richly-colored domes of Our Lady of the Pillar; just beyond, the bold
tower of the Seo; yonder the famous Ebro sweeping around the city with a
majestic curve, and the wide valley, enamored, in the words of
Cervantes, with the beauty of her waters and the dignity of their flow;
and the Huerba and the bridges and the hills, which could tell of so
many bloody repulses and desperate assaults.
The keeper read in my face the thoughts which were passing through my
mind, and, as though he was continuing a conversation which I had
commenced, he began to point out the places at which the French forced
their entrance, and where the citizens made the most stubborn
resistance. “It was not the bombs of the French,” said he, “which made
us surrender. We ourselves burned the houses and blew them up with
mines. It was the plague. During the last days there were in the
hospitals more than fifteen thousand of the forty thousand men who
defended the city. There was not time to bring in the wounded or to bury
the dead. The ruins of the houses were covered with putrefying corpses,
which poisoned the air. One-third of the buildings of the city were
destroyed, yet no one said surrender, and if any one had done so, he
would have been strung up on one of the gallows which had been erected
in every square.
“We would have died behind the barricades, in the fire, beneath the
rubbish of our walls, rather than have bowed the head. But when Palafox
found himself at the point of death, when it was known that the French
were victorious in other places, and that there was no longer any hope,
then we were obliged to lay down our arms. But the defenders of
Saragossa surrendered themselves with all the honors of war, and when
that crowd of soldiers, peasants, monks, and boys--haggard, ragged,
blood-stained, and battle-scarred--filed out before the French army, the
victors trembled with awe and had not the heart to rejoice over their
victory. The lowest of our peasants could carry his head as high as the
first of their marshals. Saragossa”--and, speaking these words, the old
man was magnificent--“Saragossa _has spit in the face of Napoleon_!”
I thought at that moment of Thiers’ history, and the remembrance of his
account of the fall of Saragossa raised within me a feeling of disdain.
Not one generous word for the sublime sacrifice of that devoted people!
To him their valor was but the raging of fanatics or a senseless mania
for war on the part of the peasants weary of their monotonous life in
the fields, and of monks surfeited with the solitude of the cell; their
unyielding heroism was only obstinacy; their love of country, foolish
pride. They did not die _pour cet ideal de grandeur_ which animated the
courage of the imperial troops. As if liberty, justice, and the honor of
a people were not nobler than the ambition of an emperor seeking to
triumph by treachery and wishing to rule with violence!
The sun was setting, the towers and minarets of Saragossa were gilded by
the last rays, the sky was liquid. Again I looked around to impress
clearly upon my memory the picture of the city and the country, and
before I descended I said to the keeper, who regarded me with an air of
benevolent curiosity: “Tell the strangers who in after-time may come to
visit this tower that one day a young Italian a few hours before he
started for Castile, in bidding a last farewell to the capital of
Arragon from this balcony, bared his head with a sentiment of the
deepest reverence, thus, and, as he was not able to kiss, one by one,
the brows of all the descendants of the heroes of 1809, he gave a kiss
to the keeper;” and so I kissed him and he me, and I went away content,
and he too; and you may laugh who will.
* * * * *
After this it seemed to me that I could say I had seen Saragossa, and I
turned toward the hotel, summing up my impressions. I was still very
desirous of having a conversation with some good Saragossan, and after
dinner I entered a café, where I quickly found an architect and a
shopkeeper, who between sips of chocolate explained to me the political
situation of Spain and the most effectual means of “bringing her safely
through her troubles.” They thought very differently. The shopkeeper, a
little man with a flat nose and a great furrow between his eyes, wanted
a federal republic right off hand, that very night, before he went to
bed, and he provided, as a _sine-quâ-non_ condition for the prosperity
of the new government, the execution of Serrano, Sagasta, and Zorilla,
to convince them, once for all, that “they cannot trifle with the
Spanish people.” “And to that king of yours,” he concluded, looking me
in the eyes--“to your king, whom you have sent us--pardon me, my dear
Italian, for the frankness with which I say it--to your king I would
give a first-class ticket to return to his native Italy, where the air
is better for kings. We are Spanish, my dear Italian,” said he, laying
his hand on my knee,--“we are Spanish, and we do not want foreigners,
either cooked or raw.”