how it differs from our own. In Spain, with the exception of cigarettes
and Havanas--which are sold in special shops--they do not smoke cigars
which cost less than tres cuartos, a sum equal to about three cents.
These resemble our Roman cigars, although they are not quite so large,
and are very good indeed or very bad according to their manufacture,
which has become rather careless. Regular customers, who are called in
Spanish by the very curious name of _parroquianos_, can get _escogidos_
(selected cigars) by paying something extra; the man of fastidious
taste, by adding still more to the sum, can secure _los escogidos de la
escogidos_ (the choicest of the choice). On the counter stands a little
plate with a wet sponge to moisten stamps, without the annoyance of
having to lick them, and in a corner is a little box for letters and
stamps. The first time one enters one of these shops, especially if
there are many in it, it makes one laugh to see the three or four
salesmen throwing the money on the counter so hard that it bounces up
higher than their heads, and catching it in the air with the ease of
dice-throwers. They do this only to ascertain by the sound if the money
is good, for there are a great many counterfeits in circulation. The
coin in commonest circulation is the _real_, which is equal to about
four cents; four _reales_ make a _peseta_; five _pesetas_, a _duro_,
which is equal to one dollar of blessed memory if you will add a few
pennies. Five dollars make a _doblon de Isabel_, a gold-piece. The
people calculate by _reales_. The _real_ is divided into eight
_cuartos_, or seventeen _ochavos_, or thirty-four _maravedis_--Moorish
coins which have lost their original form and resemble worn buttons
rather than coins. Portugal also has a monetary unit smaller than ours,
the _reis_, which is not equal to a half cent in value, and everything
is counted by the _reis_. Imagine a poor traveller who has arrived in
all his ignorance, eaten a good breakfast, and asked for his bill, when
he hears the waiter say with a stern face, not eighty cents, but _eight
hundred reis_! It makes his hair stand on end.
Before evening I went to see the birthplace of the Cid. If I had not
thought of it myself, the guides would certainly have suggested it to
me, for everywhere I went they kept whispering in my ear, “The remains
of the Cid!” “Monument of the Cid!” An old man, majestically wrapped in
his cloak, said to me with an air of protection, “_Venga usted commigo_”
(Come with me, sir), and he made me climb a hill overlooking the city,
on the top of which one can still see the remains of an enormous castle,
the ancient dwelling-place of the kings of Castile. Before reaching the
monument of the Cid one comes to a triumphal arch in the Doric style,
simple and graceful, which was erected by Philip II. in honor of
Ferdinand Gonzales on the same spot, it is said, where stood the house
in which the famous commander was born. A little farther on one finds
the monument of the Cid, erected in 1784. It is a stone column, standing
on a pedestal of masonry and surrounded by an heraldic shield which
bears this inscription: “In this place stood the house where was born,
in the year 1026, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known as the Cid Campeador. He
died in Valencia in 1099, and his body was borne to the monastery of St.
Peter of Cardena near this city.” While I was reading these words the
cicerone told me a popular legend about the death of the hero. “When the
Cid died,” said he, very gravely, “there was no one left to guard his
corpse. A Jew entered the church, approaching the bier, and said,
‘Behold the great Cid, whose beard no one dared to touch so long as he
was alive. I will touch it now, and will see what he is able to do.’ So
saying, he stretched out his hand, but as he was just on the point of
touching it the corpse grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it a
hand’s-breadth out of the scabbard. The Jew uttered a cry and fell to
the ground half dead. The priests ran in, the Jew was lifted up, and
when he came to himself he told the miracle. Then they all looked toward
the Cid, and saw that his hand still rested on the hilt of his sword in
a threatening attitude. God willed that the body of the great warrior
should not be defiled by the hand of an unbeliever.” When the guide had
said this he looked at me, and, perceiving that I made not the least
sign of incredulity, he led me underneath a stone arch, which must have
been one of the old gates, a few steps distant from the monument, and,
pointing out a horizontal mark which was visible on the wall a few feet
above the ground, he said to me, “This is the measure of the Cid’s arms
when he was young and came here to play with his companions;” and he
stretched his arms along the mark to let me see how much longer it was.
Then he wished me to measure also, and I too was too short, whereupon he
gave me a look of triumph and started to go back to the city. Coming to
a lonely street, he stopped before the door of a church and said to me,
“This is the church of Saint Agnes, where the Cid made King Alfonso VI.
swear that he had not had any part in the murder of his brother Sancho.”
I asked him to tell me the whole story, and he continued:
“The prelates, the knights, and the other dignitaries of the state were
present. The Cid put the Bible on the altar and made the king place his
hand on it, and then the Cid said to him: ‘King Alfonso, you must swear
to me that you are not stained by the blood of Don Sancho my lord, and,
if you swear falsely, may you die by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’
and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he changed color. And the Cid said again:
‘King Alfonso, you must swear that you neither ordered nor counselled
the death of Don Sancho my lord; and, if you swear falsely, may you die
by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’ and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he
changed color a second time. Twelve vassals confirmed the oath of the
king. The Cid would have kissed his hand, but the king would not permit
him to do so, and hated him from that moment to the end of his life.”
The old man added, however, that another tradition records the fact that
he did not have King Alfonso sworn on the Bible, but on a bolt of the
church-door, and that for a long time travellers came from all the
countries of the world to see that bolt; that the people attributed to
it I know not what supernatural virtues, and so it was much spoken of in
every place; and that it gave rise to so many and such extravagant
fables that the bishop, Don Fray Pascual, was constrained to have it
removed, because it created a dangerous rivalry between the door and the
high altar. The cicerone told me nothing more, but one could fill
several volumes if he wished to collect all the traditions of the Cid
which are current in Spain. No legendary warrior was ever dearer to his
people than this terrible Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar. Poetry has made him
little less than a god; his glory lives in the national spirit of the
Spaniards, as though a few lustres, instead of eight centuries, had
passed since the times in which he lived. The heroic poem which is
called by his name, the greatest monument of the poetry of Spain, still
continues to be the most powerful national work in Spanish literature.
* * * * *
As evening was drawing on I went to walk beneath the portico of the
Plaza Mayor, in the hope of seeing something of the people. But the rain
was pouring down and a high wind was blowing, so I found only some
groups of boys, workmen, and soldiers, and directly turned back to the
hotel. The emperor of Brazil had arrived in the morning, and was leaving
for Madrid that night. In the room where I dined, together with some
Spaniards--who talked pleasantly with me until the hour of departure
arrived--there dined also all the major-domos, the valets, servants, and
clerks of His Imperial Majesty, and the dear knows who else, a household
which sat around a large table and filled it full. In all my life I have
never seen a more motley crowd of human beings. There were white, black,
yellow, and copper-colored faces, with some eyes and noses and mouths
which could not be equalled in the whole collection of the _Pasquino_ of
Teza. Every one was talking in a different and much-abused language; one
spoke English, another Portuguese, another French, another Spanish,
while some spoke a mixture of all four languages, the like of which was
never heard before, adding words, sounds, and accents of some outlandish
dialect. However, they understood each other and jabbered all together,
making such a confusion that it seemed as though they were speaking the
horrible secret language of some savage land unknown to the world.
Before I left Old Castile, the cradle of the Spanish monarchy, I wished
to see Soria, the town built on the ruins of ancient Numantia; Segovia,
with its immense Roman aqueduct; Sant Idelfonso, the delightful garden
of Philip V.; and Avilo, the native city of Saint Theresa. But when I
had hurriedly and in desperation gone through the four elementary
operations of arithmetic before buying my ticket to Valladolid, I said
to myself that there was nothing great to be seen in those four cities,
that the “Guide” exaggerated, that fame has pieced out their little
attractions, that it is better to see a few things rather than many, if
only those few are well seen and will be remembered. I indulged in these
and other sophistries, and they corresponded perfectly with the results
of my calculation and the motives of my hypocrisy.
So I left Burgos without having really seen anything but monuments,
cicerones, and soldiers, for the fair Castilians, frightened by the
rain, had not dared to risk their little feet in the streets, and
therefore my recollections of the city are rather sad, in spite of the
gorgeousness of its colors and the magnificence of its cathedral.
From Burgos to Valladolid the country is almost the same as that from
Saragossa to Miranda. There are the same vast, desolate plains, bounded
by dun-colored hills of angular form with bare summits. These silent,
solitary wastes, flooded by dazzling light, bear one away in fancy to
African deserts, to the hermit’s life, to the sky, to the infinite, and
raise in the heart an irrepressible feeling of weariness and melancholy.
Surrounded by these plains, this solitude, this silence, one understands
the mystical nature of the Castilian people, the ardent faith of their
kings, the sacred inspiration of their poets, the divine ecstasy of
their saints, their churches, their grand cloisters, and their glorious
history.
VALLADOLID.
Valladolid, “the rich,” as Quevedo calls it, a famous dispenser of
colds,--Valladolid, of all the cities lying north of the Tagus, was the
city which I had the liveliest desire to see, although I knew that it
contained no grand artistic monuments and no modern buildings of
importance. Its name, its history, and its character had a peculiar
attraction for me as I had imagined them in my own way from my knowledge
of its inhabitants. I expected that it would be a noble, cheerful, and
studious city, and I could not picture its streets to my mind without
seeing Gongora walking here or Cervantes there or Leonardo de Argensola
yonder, and all the other poets, historians, and scholars who dwelt
there when it was the seat of the splendid court of the monarch. And as
I thought of the court I saw in the vast squares of this city, which had
so won my heart, a confused mingling of religious processions,
bull-fights, military parades, masquerades, balls--all the mad merriment
of the festival in celebration of the birth of Philip IV., from the
arrival of the English admiral with his retinue of six hundred to the
final banquet famous for the twelve hundred dishes of meat, to repeat
the popular tradition, without counting the plates of those who were not
served. I arrived in the night and went to the first hotel, when I fell
asleep with the delightful thought that I should awake in an unknown
city.
And to awake in an unknown city when one has gone there from choice is
indeed a very lively pleasure. The thought that from the moment you step
out of the house in the morning until you return to it at night you will
do nothing but pass from curiosity to curiosity, from pleasure to
pleasure, that everything you see will seem new, and that at every step
you will be learning something, and that all will be impressed upon your
memory so long as you live; that through the livelong day you will be as
free as air and as gay as a lark, without a thought in the world unless
it be to amuse yourself, and that by amusing yourself you are at the
same time gaining health of body, mind, and soul; that, finally, the
termination of all these pleasures, instead of bringing to you a feeling
of melancholy, like the evening of a holiday, will be only the beginning
of another company of delights, which will attend you from that city to
the next, and from it to a third, and so on as long as your fancy is
pleased not to confine them within bounds,--all these thoughts, I say,
which present themselves in a crowd as soon as you open your eyes, give
you such a joyful surprise that
[Illustration: _Street in Valladolid_]
before you know it you find yourself standing in the middle of the room
with your hat on and the Guide in your hands.
Let us go, then, to enjoy Valladolid.
Alas! how changed from the time of Philip III.! The population, which
was then above one hundred thousand, has dwindled to less than twenty
thousand; in the principal streets there is a fair showing of university
students and tourists on their way to Madrid; the other streets are
dead. The city makes upon one the impression of a great abandoned
palace, where one still sees traces of carving, gilding, and mosaic, and
finds in some of the central rooms a few poor families which reflect by
their melancholy life the vast solitude of the edifice.
There are many spacious squares, an old palace, houses in ruins, empty
convents, long streets grass-grown and deserted; in short, all the
appearances of a great city fallen into decay. The most beautiful part
is the Plaza Mayor, a vast arena, encircled all around by a portico
supported by heavy columns of bluish granite, behind which rise houses,
all three stories in height. In front of the houses run three orders of
terraces of great length, where it is said twenty-four thousand people
can be conveniently seated. The portico extends along the two sides of a
wide street which opens into the square, and here and in two or three
other adjacent streets there is a great concourse of people. It was
market-day: under the porticoes and in the square swarmed a crowd of
country-folk, vegetable-sellers, and market-men, and, as they speak
Castilian with admirable purity of expression and pronunciation at
Valladolid, I began to stroll about among the baskets of lettuce and the
piles of oranges, to catch as I might the _bon-mots_ and the cadences of
that most beautiful language.
Among other things I remember a curious proverb repeated by a woman who
was vexed beyond endurance by a young bully. “_Sabe Usted_,” she said,
planting herself before him, “_lo que es que destruye al hombre?_” (I
stopped and pricked up my ears.) “_Tres muchos y tres pocos: mucho
hablar y poco saber; mucho gastar y poco tener; mucho presumir y nada
valer._” (Do you know, sir, what it is that ruins a man? Three muckles
and three mickles: much talking and little sense; much spending and
little keeping; much presumption and no worth.)
It seemed to me that I could perceive a great difference between the
voices of these people and those of the Catalans: here they were more
liquid and silvery, and the gestures too were livelier and the
expression of the faces more animated; but there was nothing remarkable
about their features and complexion, and in their dress they differed
very little from the peasants of Northern Italy.
It was in the square at Valladolid that it occurred to me for the first
time that I had not seen a pipe since I entered Spain. The
laboring-men, the peasants, the poor, all classes, smoke the cigarette,
and it is ridiculous to see great strapping fellows, with long
moustaches, going about with that little microscopic thing in their
mouths, half hidden in their beards. And they are very careful to smoke
it up to the very last particle of tobacco, until they have only a bit
of smouldering ashes left on their lower lip, and they even cling to
this as though it were a drop of liquor, and finally they spit out the
ashes with the air of one who is making a sacrifice.
Something else occurred to me also--a fact which I often observed
afterward as long as I remained in Spain: I never heard any whistling.
From the Plaza Mayor I passed on to the wide, cheerful Plaza of San
Pablo, where is the ancient royal palace. The façade is not remarkable
either for grandeur or beauty. I entered the doorway, and before I could
feel a sense of admiration for the magnificence of the hall I felt only
sadness at the sepulchral silence which reigned in it. Nothing else
produces the impression made upon one by a cemetery so closely as does
an abandoned castle, for there especially, to a greater extent than in
other places, the contrast is very strong and sharp between the
remembrance of what has been and the actual condition in which one finds
it. Alas for the superb retinue of plumed cavaliers! Alas for the
splendid feasts, the fervid enjoyment of a prosperity which seemed
eternal! It is a novel pleasure--that of coughing a little in front of
those hollow sepulchres, as invalids sometimes cough to test their
strength, and of hearing the echo of your lusty voice, which assures you
that you are young and hearty. On the inside of the palace there is a
court of generous size surrounded by busts of the Roman emperors in
demi-relief, a beautiful staircase, and wide galleries on the upper
stories. I coughed and the echo answered, “What health!” and I went out
comforted.
A drowsy porter showed me another palace in the same square which I had
overlooked, and told me that in it was born the great king Philip II.,
from whom Valladolid had received the title of a city. “You know, sir,
Philip II., son of Charles V., father of”--“I know, I know,” I hastened
to reply to save the narration, and, casting a gloomy glance at the
gloomy palace, I passed on.
Opposite to the royal palace is the Dominican convent of San Pablo, with
a façade of the Gothic order so richly and extravagantly ornamented with
statuettes, bas-reliefs, and traceries of every sort that one half of
them would amply adorn an immense palace. At that moment the sun was
shining on it, and the effect was magnificent. While I stood
contemplating at my ease that labyrinth of sculpture, from which it
seems one’s eye will never turn when once it has become fixed upon it, a
little rogue, six or eight years old, who had been sitting in a distant
corner of the square, rushed from his place as though he had been thrown
from a sling, and ran toward me, crying in an affectionate, plaintive
tone, “_Señorito! Señorito!_ I like you so much!”
This is something new, I thought, for the ragamuffins to make
declarations of love. He came and stood in front of me, and I asked,
“Why do you love me?”
“Because,” he answered frankly, “you will give me alms.”
“And why should I give you alms?”
“Because,” he replied, hesitating, and then resolutely, in the tones of
one who has found a good reason--“because, sir, you have a book.”
The Guide which I held under my arm! But, you see, one must travel to
learn these new things. I carried a Guide, foreigners carry Guides;
foreigners give alms; therefore I ought to give him alms; all this
reasoning instead of saying, “I am hungry!”
I was pleased by the plausibility of this discovery, and dropped into
the hands of this profound boy the few _cuartos_ which I found in my
pockets.
Turning into a street near by, I saw the façade of the Dominican college
of San Gregorio, Gothic in its architecture, and more dignified and
richer than the convent of San Pablo. Then I went from street to street
until I came to the square of the cathedral. At the point where the
street widens into the square I met a very graceful little Spanish
lady, to whom I might have applied those two verses of Espronceda:
“Y que yo la he de querer
Por su paso de andadura,”
or that line of ours, “She walks not like a mortal thing,” for in their
gait lies the supreme grace of the Spanish women. She had in her walk
those thousand fugitive little friskings and easy undulating motions
which the eye cannot follow one by one, nor the memory retain, nor words
express, but which, taken altogether, form the most feminine of woman’s
charms. Here I found myself in an embarrassing position. I saw the great
mass of the cathedral looming up at the end of the square, and curiosity
prompted me to look at it; but a few feet in front of me I saw this
little person, and a curiosity not less lively constrained me to look at
her; and so, as I did not wish to lose the first glimpse of the church
nor the fleeting sight of the woman, my glances ran from her face to the
dome and from the dome to her face with such breathless rapidity that
the fair unknown must have certainly thought that I had discovered a
correspondence of line or some mysterious bond of sympathy between the
building and herself, for she also turned and looked at the church, and
smiled as she passed me.
The cathedral of Valladolid, although it is unfinished, is one of the
largest cathedrals in Spain. It is an imposing mass of granite, and
produces upon the mind of the incredulous an effect similar to that
produced by the church of the Pillar at Saragossa. On first entering one
flies in thought to the Basilica of St. Peter’s. Architecturally, it is
dignified and simple, and receives a sombre reflection from the dark
color of the stone. The walls are bare, the chapels dark, the arched
columns, the doors, and everything gigantic and severe. It is one of
those cathedrals which make one stammer out his prayers with a sense of
secret dread. I had not yet seen the Escurial, but I thought of it. It
was, in fact, designed by the same architect. The church was left
unfinished, so that the work of building the convent might be carried
on, and on visiting the convent one is reminded of the church.
In a little chapel to the right of the great altar rises the tomb of
Pedro Ansurez, a gentleman and benefactor of Valladolid, whose sword has
been placed above his monument. I was alone in the church and heard the
echoing of my footsteps. Suddenly a keen sense of fear seized me and an
indescribable feeling of childish fright: I turned my back upon the tomb
and went out.
As I was going out I met a priest and asked where the house of Cervantes
was. He answered that it was in the street of Cervantes, and pointed out
the way I ought to take. I thanked him, and he asked me if I was a
stranger; I said I was.
“From Italy?”
“Yes, from Italy.”