AIRING THE SAINTS
As Holy Week drew near, Gallardo gave his mother a great joy. In former
years the swordsman used to join the procession of the San Lorenzo
parish as a devotee of Our Lord Jesus of the Great Power, dressed in a
black tunic with a tall hood and a mask that left only his eyes visible.
It was a gentleman's fraternity, and the bull-fighter, finding himself
on the road to fortune, had joined it, forsaking popular brotherhoods in
which devotion was accompanied by drunkenness and scandal.
Gallardo talked with pride of the seriousness of this religious
association. Everything was orderly and well disciplined, as in the
army. On the night of Holy Thursday, when the clock on San Lorenzo was
striking the second stroke of two at break of day, the doors opened
instantaneously and the whole interior of the temple, full of lights and
with the fraternity in line, appeared before the eyes of the multitude
which was crowded together in the darkness of the churchyard.
The black-cowled figures, silent and gloomy, with no other expression of
life than the glitter of their eyes behind the dark mask, advanced two
by two with slow step, keeping a wide space between pair and pair,
grasping their torches of livid flame and trailing their long tunics on
the floor.
The multitude, with that impressionability inherent in Southern peoples,
contemplated intently the passing of the hooded brethren whom they
called Nazarenes, mysterious maskers who perhaps were great gentlemen,
moved by traditional devotion to figure in this nocturnal procession
which ended immediately at sunrise.
It was a silent fraternity. The Nazarenes must not speak, and they
marched escorted by municipal guards who took care that the importunate
should not molest them. Drunkards abounded in the multitude. There
wandered through the streets tireless devotees who, in memory of the
Passion of Our Lord, began on Holy Wednesday to demonstrate their piety
by walking from tavern to tavern, and did not reach the last station
until Saturday, in which they took final refuge after innumerable falls
by the way which had been for them likewise a sort of Via Dolorosa.
As the members of the fraternity, sentenced to silence under heavy
penalty, marched along in procession, the drunken concourse drew near
and murmured in their ears the most atrocious insults against the
maskers and their families, whom perhaps they did not know. The Nazarene
held his peace and suffered in silence, swallowing the outrages and
offering them as a sacrifice to the Lord of Great Power. But these
troublesome fellows, like flies that would not be driven away, incited
to further activity by this meekness, redoubled their offensive buzzing
until at last some pious masker thought that, although silence was
obligatory, inaction was not, and without speaking a word, raised the
torch and struck a drunkard who had disturbed the sacred order of the
ceremony.
During the course of the procession, when the bearers of the statues
halted for rest and the heavy platforms of the images hung about with
lanterns stood still, at a light hiss the hooded brethren stopped, the
couples standing face to face, with the flambeau resting on one foot,
gazing at the crowd through the masks with their mysterious eyes. They
were like gloomy apparitions escaped from an Inquisition sentence,
grotesque beings seeming to shed perfumes of incense and stench of
burning flesh.
The mournful blast of the copper trumpets sounded, breaking the silence
of the night. Above the points of the hoods the pennants of the
fraternity, squares of black velvet edged with gold fringe, moved in the
breeze; the Roman anagram, S. P. Q. R., recalled the intervention of the
Prefect of Judea in the death of the Saviour.
The image of Our Father Jesus of the Great Power advanced on a heavy
platform of wrought metal with black velvet hangings that grazed the
ground, hiding the feet of the twenty sweaty, half-naked men who walked
beneath carrying it. Four groups of lanterns with golden angels shone at
the corners; in the centre was Jesus, a Jesus tragic, painful, bleeding,
crowned with thorns, bent beneath the weight of the cross, his face
cadaverous and his eyes tearful, dressed in an ample velvet tunic so
covered with golden flowers that the rich cloth could scarcely be
distinguished beneath the delicate arabesque in the complicated design
of the embroidery.
The presence of the Lord of the Great Power called forth sighs from
hundreds. "Father Josu!" murmured the old women, their eyes fixed on the
image with hypnotic stare. "Lord of the Great Power! Remember us!"
The image rested in the centre of a plaza with its escort of hooded
inquisitionists, and the devotion of the Andalusian people, which
confides all conditions of its soul to song, greeted the float with
bird-like trills and interminable lamentations.
An infantile voice of tremulous sweetness broke the silence. It was a
young woman who, advancing through the crowd until she stood in the
first row, broke into a _saeta_ to Jesus. The three verses of the song
were for the Lord of Great Power, for the most divine statue, and for
the sculptor Montanes, one of the great Spanish artists of the golden
age.
This _saeta_ was like the first shot of a battle that starts an
interminable outburst of explosions. Hers was not yet ended when another
was heard from a different quarter, and another and another, as if the
plaza were a great cage of mad birds which, on being awakened by the
voice of a companion, all joined in song at once in bewildering
confusion. Masculine voices, grave and hoarse, united their sombre tones
to the feminine trilling. All sang with their eyes fixed on the image,
as if they stood alone before it, forgetting the crowd that surrounded
them, deaf to the other voices, without losing place or hesitating in
the complicated trills of the _saeta_, which made discord and mingled
inharmoniously with the chanting of the others. The hooded brethren
listened motionless, gazing at the Jesus, who received these warblings
without ceasing to shed tears beneath the weight of the cross and the
stinging pain of the thorns, until the conductor of the image, deciding
that the halt be over, rang a silver bell on the fore-end of the
platform. "Arise!" The Lord of Great Power, after several vibrations,
rose higher and the feet of the invisible bearers began to move along
the ground like tentacles.
Next came the Virgin, "Our Lady of the Greater Sorrow," for every parish
paraded two images--one of the Son of God and the other of His Holy
Mother. Beneath a velvet canopy the golden crown of the Lady of Greater
Sorrow trembled, surrounded by lights. The train of her mantle, many
yards long, fell behind the image, held out by a kind of wooden
hoop-skirt, showing the splendor of its heavy embroideries, glittering
and costly, on which the skill and patience of an entire generation had
been spent.
The hooded brethren, with sputtering torches, escorted the Virgin, the
reflection of their lights trembling on this regal mantle which filled
the scene with glittering splendor. To the sound of the double beat of
drums marched a group of women, their bodies in shadow and their faces
reddened by the flame of the candles they carried in their hands; old
women in _mantillas_, with bare feet; young women dressed in white gowns
originally intended as winding-sheets; women who walked with difficulty
as though suffering from painful maladies--a whole battalion of
suffering humanity, delivered from death through the mercy of the Lord
of Great Power and His Most Holy Mother, walking behind their images to
fulfil a vow.
The procession, after marching slowly through the streets, with long
halts accompanied by songs, entered the cathedral, which remained open
all night. The defile of lights on entering the enormous naves of this
temple brought out from obscurity the gigantic columns wrapped in
purple hangings edged with lines of gold, without dissipating the thick
darkness of the vaulted roof. The hooded men marched like black insects
in the ruddy light of the torches below, while night was still massed
above. They went out into the starlight again, leaving this crypt-like
obscurity, and the sun surprised the procession in the open street,
extinguishing the brilliancy of their torches, causing the gold of the
holy vestments and the tears and sweat of agony on the images to glisten
in the light of dawn.
Gallardo was devoted to the Lord of the Great Power and to the majestic
silence of his fraternity, but this year he decided to parade with those
of the Macarena who escorted the miraculous Virgin of Hope.
Senora Angustias was overjoyed when she heard his decision. Well did he
owe it to this Virgin for having saved him from his last goring.
Besides, this flattered her sentiments of plebian simplicity.
"Every one with his kind, Juaniyo. Thou goest with the upper class, but
remember that the poor always loved thee and that they had begun to talk
against thee, thinking that thou didst despise them."
The bull-fighter knew it too well. The tumultuous populace which
occupied the bleachers in the plaza had begun to show a certain
animosity toward him, thinking themselves forgotten. They criticised his
intercourse with the rich and his drawing away from those who had been
his first admirers. To overcome this animosity, Gallardo took advantage
of every opportunity, flattering the rabble with the unscrupulous
servility of those who must live by public applause. He had sent for the
most influential brethren of the Macarena to explain to them that he
would be in the procession. The people must not know of it. He did it as
a devotee and wished his act to remain a secret. But in a few days,
nothing else was discussed in the whole ward. The Macarena would be
carried this year in great beauty! They scorned the rich devotees of the
Great Power with its orderly, insipid procession, and they gave
attention only to their rivals of the boisterous Triana on the other
side of the river, who were so arrogant over their objects of devotion,
Our Lady of Protection and Christ of the Expiration, whom they called
the Most Holy _Cachorro_.
Gallardo collected all his own and his wife's jewels to contribute to
the Macarena's splendor. In her ears he would put some pendants of
Carmen's which he had bought in Madrid, investing in them the profits of
several bull-fights. On her breast she should wear his chain of rolled
gold, and hanging from it all his rings and the great diamond buttons
which he put in his shirt bosom when he went out dressed in courtly
style.
"_Josu!_ How fine our brunette will be," said the women of the
neighborhood speaking of the Virgin. "Senor Juan is running everything.
Half Seville will go mad with enthusiasm."
The _matador_ believed in the Virgin and with devout egoism he wished to
enter into her favor in view of future dangers, but he trembled as he
thought of the jokes of his friends when they gathered in the _cafes_
and societies on Sierpes Street.
"They will cut off my _coleta_ if they recognize me. But one has to get
along with everybody."
On Holy Thursday he went to the cathedral at night with his wife to hear
the _Miserere_. The temple, with its stupendously high vaulted arches,
was without other light than that of the ruddy glow from the candles on
the columns. The people of the better class were caged behind the
grilles of the chapels on the sides, avoiding contact with the sweaty
crowd that surged in the naves. The lights destined for the musicians
and singers shone from out the obscurity of the choir like a
constellation of red stars. Eslava's _Miserere_ sent forth its sweet
Italian melodies into this awesome atmosphere of shade and mystery. It
was an Andalusian _Miserere_, somewhat playful and gay, like the
flapping of bird wings, with romances like love serenades and choruses
like revellers' roundelays, the joy of living in a fair land that causes
forgetfulness of death and protests against the sorrow of the Passion.
When the tenor's voice ended the last romance and his lamentations were
lost in the vaulted ceiling, apostrophizing the deicide city,
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" the crowd scattered, desiring to return as soon
as possible to the streets, which had the aspect of a theatre, with the
electric lights, their rows of chairs on the sidewalks, and their boxes
in the plazas.
Gallardo returned home to dress himself as a Nazarene. Senora Angustias
had given much care to his costume, which took her back to the days of
her youth. Ah! her poor husband, who on this night had put on his
warlike trappings and, throwing his lance over his shoulder, had gone
out into the streets not to return till the following day, when he came
back with his helmet dented and his armour covered with filth, after
having camped with his brothers-in-arms in all the taverns in Seville!
The swordsman cared for his underwear with feminine scrupulousness. He
paid the Nazarene costume the same attentions he gave a fighting dress
on a bull-fight afternoon. He put on silk stockings and patent leather
shoes, and the white sateen gown prepared by his mother's hands, and
over this the pointed cape of green velvet that fell from his shoulders
to his knees, like a chasuble. The coat of arms of the fraternity was
richly and carefully embroidered with a profusion of colors on one side
of the breast. Then he drew on white gloves and grasped a tall cane,
emblem of dignity in the fraternity; a staff covered with green velvet
and tipped with silver.
In a narrow street Gallardo met the procession of the Company of the
Jews, a troop of men in coats of mail, who, eager to show their warlike
discipline, kept step as they marched in time to a drum that beat
ceaselessly. They were young men and old, with their countenances framed
by the metallic chin-straps of the helmet, wearing wine-colored habits,
flesh-colored cotton hose, and high sandals. They wore the Roman sword
at the belt, and, to imitate modern soldiers, the cord that held their
lances hung from one shoulder, like a gun-case. At the head of the
company floated the Roman banner with its senatorial inscription.
The procession marched with traditional slowness, stopping whole hours
at the crossways. They did not value time. It was twelve o'clock at
night and the Macarena would not return to her abode until twelve on the
following morning, taking more time to travel about the city than is
needed to go from Seville to Madrid.
First came the _paso_ of the "Sentence of Our Lord Jesus Christ," a
float filled with figures representing Pilate seated on a golden throne
surrounded by soldiers in colored skirts and plumed helmets, watching
the sad Jesus soon to march to the place of execution in a tunic of
brown velvet covered with embroideries, and three golden plumes that
signified rays of divinity above his crown of thorns. This _paso_
proceeded without attracting attention, as if humbled by the proximity
of the one that came after, the Queen of the popular wards, the
miraculous Virgin of Hope, the Macarena. When the Virgin with the rosy
cheeks and long lashes left San Gil beneath a trembling canopy of
velvet, bowing with the movement of the hidden bearers, a deafening
acclamation arose from the multitude that surged through the small
plaza. But how pretty the great Senora! She never grew older!
The mantle, splendid, immense, with heavy gold embroidery that resembled
the meshes of a net, hung behind the float, like the wide-spread tail of
a gigantic peacock. Her glass eyes shone as if filled with tears of
emotion in response to the acclamations of the faithful, and to this
glitter was added the scintillation of the jewels that covered her body,
forming an armor of gold and precious stones over the embroidered
velvet. She seemed sprinkled with a shower of luminous drops, in which
flamed all the colors of the rainbow. From her neck hung strings of
pearls, chains of gold with dozens of rings linked together that
scattered magic splendors as she moved. The tunic and the front of the
mantle were hung with gold watches fastened on with pins, pendants of
emeralds and diamonds, rings with enormous stones like luminous pebbles.
All the devotees sent their jewels that they might light the most Holy
Macarena on her journey. The women exhibited their hands divested of
ornaments on this night of religious sacrifice, happy to have the Mother
of God display jewels that were their pride. The public knew them from
having seen them every year. That one which the Virgin displayed on her
breast, hanging from a chain, belonged to Gallardo, the bull-fighter.
But others shared the popular honors along with him. Feminine glances
devoured rapturously two enormous pearls and a strand of rings. They
belonged to a girl of the ward who had gone to Madrid two years before,
and being a devotee of the Macarena, returned to see the feast with an
old gentleman. The luck of that girl--!
Gallardo, with his face covered, and leaning on a staff, the emblem of
authority, marched before the _paso_ with the dignitaries of the
brotherhood. Other hooded brothers carried long trumpets adorned with
green bannerets with fringes of gold. They raised the mouthpiece to an
aperture in the masks, and an ear-splitting blast, an agonizing sound,
rent the silence. But this hair-raising roar awoke no echo of death in
the hearts that beat around them.
Along the dark and solitary cross-streets came whiffs of springtime
breezes laden with garden perfumes, the fragrance of orange blossoms,
and the aroma of flowers in pots ranged behind grilles and balconies.
The blue of the sky paled at the caress of the moon which rested on a
downy bed of clouds, thrusting its face between two gables. The
melancholy defile seemed to march against the current of Nature, losing
its funereal gravity at each step. In vain the trumpets sounded
lamentations of death, in vain the minstrels wept as they intoned the
sacred verses, and in vain the grim executioners kept step with
hangman's frown. The vernal night laughed, scattering its breath of
perfumed life. No one dwelt on death.
Enthusiastic _Macarenos_ surrounded the Virgin like a troop of
revellers. Gardeners came from the suburbs with their dishevelled women
who dragged a string of children by the hand, taking them on an
excursion lasting until the dawn. Young fellows of the ward with new
hats and with curls smoothed down over their ears flourished clubs with
warlike fervor, as though some one were likely to display lack of
respect for the beautiful Lady, so that the support of their arm would
be necessary. All jostled together, crowding into the narrow streets
between the enormous _paso_ and the walls, but with their eyes fixed on
those of the image, talking to her, hurling compliments to her beauty
and miraculous power with the inconsistency produced by wine and their
frivolous bird-like minds.
"_Ole, la Macarena!_ The greatest Virgin in the world! She who excels
all other Virgins!"
Every fifty steps the sacred platform was halted. There was no hurry.
The journey was long. At many houses they demanded that the Virgin stop
so that they could gaze on her at leisure. Every tavern keeper also
asked for a pause at the door of his establishment, alleging his rights
as a citizen of the ward. A man crossed the street directing his steps
toward the hooded brethren with the staffs who walked in advance of the
float.
"Hold! Let them stop! For here is the greatest singer in the world who
wishes to sing a couplet to the Virgin."
"The greatest singer in the world," leaning against one friend, and
handing his glass to another, advanced toward the image with shaking
legs, and after clearing his throat delivered a torrent of hoarse sounds
in which trills obliterated the clarity of the words. It could only be
understood that he sang to the "Mother," the Mother of God, and as he
uttered this word, his voice acquired additional tremors of emotion with
that sensibility to popular poesy that finds its most sincere
inspiration in maternal love.
Another and then another voice was heard, as if the minstrel had started
a musical contest; as if the street were filled with invisible birds,
some hoarse and rasping, others shrill, with a penetrating screech that
suggested a red and swollen throat, ready to burst. Most of the singers
kept hidden in the crowd, with the simplicity of devotion that does not
crave to be seen in its manifestations; others were eager to exhibit
themselves, planting themselves in the midst of the crowd before the
holy Macarena.
When the songs ended the public burst into vulgar exclamations of
enthusiasm, and again the Macarena, the beautiful, the only, was
glorified, and wine circulated in glasses around the feet of the image;
the most vehement threw their hats at her as if she were a real girl, a
pretty girl, and it was not clear now whether it was the fervor of the
faithful who sang to the Virgin, or a pagan orgy that accompanied her
transit through the streets.
In advance of the float went a youth dressed in a violet tunic and
crowned with thorns. He trod the bluish paving stones with bare feet and
marched with his body bowed beneath the weight of a cross twice as big
as himself, and when after a long wait he rejoined the float, good
souls aided him to drag his burden.
The women wept with tender compassion as they saw him. Poor boy! With
what holy fervor he performed his penance. Every one in the ward
remembered his sacrilegious crime. Accursed wine, that turns men mad!
Three years before, on the morning of Holy Friday, when the Macarena was
about to retire to her church after having wandered all night through
the streets of Seville, this sinner, who was really a good boy and had
been revelling with his friends overnight, had compelled the float to
stop at a tavern on the plaza of the marketplace. He sang to the Virgin,
and then, possessed of a holy enthusiasm, burst into endearing
expressions, _Ole!_ Pretty Macarena! He loved her more than his
sweetheart! To better express his faith, he threw at her feet what he
had in his hand, thinking it was his hat, and a wine glass burst on the
handsome face of the great Lady. They took him weeping to the police
station. But he loved the Macarena as if she were his mother! It was the
accursed wine that made men do they knew not what! He trembled with fear
at the years of imprisonment awaiting him for disrespect to religion; he
shed tears of repentance for his sacrilege; until finally, even the most
indignant interceded in his favor and the matter was settled by his
promise to give an example to sinners by performing an extraordinary
penance. Sweaty and panting he dragged the cross, changing the position
of the burden when one of his shoulders became numbed by the painful
weight. His comrades pitied him; they dared not laugh at his penance,
and they compassionately offered him glasses of wine. But he turned his
eyes away from the offering, fixing them on the Virgin to make her a
witness to his martyrdom. He would drink the next day without fear, when
the Macarena was left safe in her church.
The float halted in a street of the ward of the Feria, and now the head
of the procession had reached the centre of Seville. The green-hooded
brethren and the company wearing the coats of mail advanced with warlike
mien like an army marching to attack. They wished to reach Campana
Street and take possession of the entrance to Sierpes Street before
another fraternity should present itself. The vanguard once in control
of this position could tranquilly await the Virgin's arrival. The
_Macarenos_ each year made themselves masters of the famous street and
took whole hours to pass through it, enjoying the impatient protests of
the fraternities of other wards.
Sierpes Street was converted into a sort of reception hall with the
balconies thronged with people, electric globes hanging from wires
strung from wall to wall, and all the _cafes_ and stores illuminated;
the windows were filled with heads, and rows of chairs along the walls,
with crowds, rising in their seats each time the distant trumpeting and
beating of the drums announced the proximity of a float.
It was three in the morning and nothing indicated the lateness of the
hour. People were eating in _cafes_ and taverns. The thick odor of oil
escaped through the doors of the places where fish was frying. Itinerant
venders stationed themselves in the centre of the street crying sweets
and drinks. Whole families who only came to light on occasions of great
festivity, had been there from two o'clock in the afternoon watching
the passing of processions and more processions. There were Virgins with
mantles of overwhelming sumptuousness which drew shouts of admiration by
their display of velvet; Redeemers, crowned with gold and wearing
vestments of brocade, and a whole world of absurd images whose tragic,
bleeding, or tearful faces contrasted with the theatrical luxury and
richness of their clothing. Foreigners, attracted by the strangeness of
this Christian ceremony, joyous as a pagan feast in which there were no
faces of woe and sadness but those of the images, heard their names
called out by Sevillians seated near them. The floats started off--those
of the Sacred Decree of the Holy Christ of Silence; of Our Lady of
Sorrows; of Jesus with the Cross on His Shoulder; of Our Lady of the
Valley; of Our Father Jesus of the Three Falls; of Our Lady of Tears; of
the Lord of Good Death; and of Our Lady of the Three Necessities,
accompanied by Nazarenes black and white, red, green, blue and violet,
all masked, hiding their mysterious personality beneath their pointed
hoods.
The heavy platforms advanced slowly and with great difficulty because of
the narrowness of the street. On reaching the plaza of San Francisco,
opposite the viewing stand built in front of the Government palace, the
floats made a half-turn until they stood facing the images and by a
genuflexion of their bearers they saluted the illustrious strangers and
royal personages gathered to witness the feast.
Near the floats marched boys with pitchers of water. The catafalque had
scarcely stopped when a fold of the velvet hangings which hid its
interior was raised and twenty or thirty men appeared, sweaty, purple
from fatigue, half naked, with handkerchiefs bound around their heads,
and looking like tired savages. They were the so-called "Galicians," in
which geographic appellative are confounded all lusty workmen whatever
may be their origin, as though the other sons of the country were not
capable of constant or fatiguing labor. They greedily drank the water,
or, if there were a tavern near, they rebelled against the director of
the float and demanded wine. Thus the festivities were prolonged through
the whole night, frivolous, gay, and theatrical. In vain the brass horns
sent forth their death-laments proclaiming the greatest of crimes, the
unjust death of a God. Nature did not respond to this traditional
sorrow. The river went purling on beneath the bridges, spreading its
luminous sheet through the silent fields; the orange trees,
incense-givers of the night, opened their thousand white mouths and shed
the fragrance of voluptuous fruit upon the air; the palms waved their
clusters of plumes over the Moorish ramparts of the Alcazar; the
Giralda, a blue phantom, vanished in the heavens, eclipsing stars and
hiding a portion of the sky behind its shapely mass; and the moon,
intoxicated by nocturnal perfumes, seemed to smile at the earth swollen
with the nutrient sap of spring, at the luminous furrow-like streets of
the city in whose ruddy depths swarmed a multitude content just to be
alive, which drank and sang and found a pretext for interminable
feasting in a tragic death of long ago.
At the door of a _cafe_ stood Nacional with all his family watching the
passing of the brotherhood. "Superstition and ignorance!" But he
followed the custom, coming every year to witness the invasion of
Sierpes Street by the noisy Macarenes.
He immediately recognized Gallardo by his genteel bearing and the
athletic jauntiness with which he wore the inquisitorial vestment.
"Juanillo; have the procession stop. There are some foreign ladies in
the _cafe_ who want to get a good look at the Macarena."
The sacred platform came to a halt; the band played a gay march, one of
those that enlivens the audience at the bull-ring, and immediately the
hidden conductors of the float commenced to raise one leg in unison,
then the other, executing a dance that made the catafalque move with
violent undulations, crowding the people against the walls. The Virgin,
with the burden of her heavy mantle, jewels, flowers, and lanterns,
danced to the music. This exhibition was the result of practice and one
which was the pride of the _Macarenos_. The good youths of the ward,
holding both sides of the float, supported it during this violent
commotion and shouted with enthusiasm at this exhibition of strength and
skill.
"Let all Seville come to see this! It is great! This only the
_Macarenos_ do!"
And when the music and the undulations ceased and the float again stood
still there was thunderous applause mingled with impious and vulgar
compliments to the Most Holy Macarena. They shouted _vivas_ to the Most
Holy Macarena, the sainted, the only.
The brotherhood continued on its triumphal march, leaving stragglers in
every tavern and fallen on every street. The sun, as it rose, surprised
it far from the parish at the extreme opposite side of Seville, made
the jewelled armor on the image scintillate with its first rays, and
lighted up the livid countenances of the Nazarenes who had taken off
their masks. The image and her attendants, overtaken by the dawn,
resembled a dissolute troop returning from an orgy. The two floats were
abandoned in the middle of the street near the market, while the whole
procession took an eye-opener in the nearby taverns, substituting great
glasses of Cazalla and Rute brandy for native wine. The hooded
brethren's white garments were now filthy rags; nothing but miserable
relics remained of the brilliant "Jewish" army which looked as though
returning from a defeat. The captain walked with unsteady step, the
melancholy plumes fallen over his livid countenance, his only thought to
defend his glorious raiment from being rubbed and pulled to pieces.
Respect the uniform!
Gallardo left the procession soon after sunrise. He had done enough in
accompanying the Virgin all night and surely she would take it into
account. Besides, this last part of the feast, until the Macarena
entered San Gil, now nearly mid-day, was the most disagreeable. The
people who arose fresh and tranquil from sleep jested at the hooded
brethren so ridiculous in the sunlight, dragging along in their
drunkenness and filth. It was not prudent for a matador to be seen with
them.
Senora Angustias kept watch for him in the courtyard and helped the
Nazarene take off his vestments. He must rest after having fulfilled his
duty to the Virgin. Easter Sunday he was to have a bull-fight; the first
after his accident. Accursed trade! For him rest was impossible, and the
poor women, after a period of tranquillity, saw their old fears and
anguish renewed.