CHAPTER XSHADOWS OF THE PHILIPSA day or two later I was installed for a fortnight in a casa de huéspedes in the calle San Bernardo. In such places as one plans to remain for any length of time there are few cheaper arrangements for ample fare in all Europe than these Spanish "houses of guests." My room, which was temporarily on the second-floor front, but solemnly pledged to be soon changed to the third-floor back, was all that an unpampered wanderer could have required. Breakfast was light; a cup of chocolate and a roll--no self-respecting traveler ventures to sample Spanish coffee more than once. But one soon grows accustomed and indeed to prefer the European abstemiousness at the first meal. In compensation thealmuerzoandcomida, at twelve and seven, were more than abundant. A thick soup, not unseldom redolent of garlic, was followed by a salad, and that by apuchero, which is to say an entire meal on one platter,--in the center a square of boiled beef flanked like St. Peter's amid the hills of Rome by seven varieties of vegetables, thegarbanzos--bright yellow chickpeas of the size of marbles--with the usual disproportion granted that robust comestible in Spain, overtowering not only every other eminence but carpeting the intervening valleys. That despatched, or seriously disfigured, there came a second offering from the animal world,--acocidoor anolla podrida, after which the repast descended gradually by fruit, cheese, and cigarettes to its termination. Through it all a common wine flowed generously.Even on Friday this sturdy good cheer knew no abatement. Centuries ago, in the raging days of the Moor, the faithful of Spain were granted for their Catholic zeal and bodily behoof this dispensation, that they might nourish their lean frames on whatever it should please Santiago, their patron, to bring within bowshot of their home-made crosspieces. The Moor has long since removed his dusky shadow from the land, but the dispensation remains. Indeed, there is left scarcely a custom the inobservance of which betrays the non-Catholic; or if one there be at all general it is this: when he yawns--which he is not unwont to do even at table--the devout Spaniard makes over his mouth the sign of the cross, to keep the devil from gaining a foothold therein--an exorcism that is not always successful.There is yet another custom, quite the opposite of religious in result at least, which the guest at a casa de huéspedes must school himself to endure. It grows out of the Spaniard's infernal politeness. Figure to yourself that you have just returned from a morning of tramping through sweltering Madrid on the ephemeral breakfast already noted, and sit down at table just as a steaming puchero is served. With a melodious and self-sacrificing "Serve yourself, señor," the addle-pated Spaniard across the way pushes the dish to his neighbor; to which the neighbor responds by pushing it back again with a "No! Serveyourself, señor," followed in quick succession by "No! No! Serve yourself, señor;" "No! No! No! señor! Serve yourself!" "No! No! No! No! serve--" and so on to the end of time, or until a wrathy Anglo-Saxon, rising in his place, picks up the source of dispute and establishes order.Our household in the calle San Bernardo consisted of a lawyer, a "man of affairs"--using the latter word in its widest signification--of two young Germans, "Don Hermann" and "Don Ricardo," for some time employed in the city, and of the family itself. Of this the husband, a slouching, toothless fellow of fifty, and the grandmother were mere supernumeraries. The speaking parts were taken by the wife and daughter, the former an enormous, unpolished woman with a well-developed mustache and the over-developed voice of a stevedore. Indeed, a stentorian, grating voice and a habit of speaking always at the tiptop of it is one of the chief afflictions of the Spanish women of the masses--and of their hearers. Is it by chance due to the custom of studying and reciting always aloud and in chorus during their few years of schooling? Quién sabe? There was presented during my stay in Madrid the play, or more properly playlet--zarzuela--"Levantar Mueros--Raising the Dead"; but I dared not go lest it turn out to be a dramatized sewing circle.But it remains to introduce the star member of the cast, the center of that San Bernardo universe around which revolved mother, supernumeraries, and guests like planets in their orbits--the daughter. I fully expect to wander many a weary mile before I again behold so beautiful a maid--or one that I should take more pleasure in being a long way distant from. She was sixteen--which in Spain is past childhood--a glorious, faultless blonde in a land where blondes are at high premium, her lips forming what the Spaniard calls a "nido de besos"--a nest of osculatory delights--and-- But why drive the impossible task further? Such radiant perfections in human form must be seen at least to be appreciated. It is sufficient, perhaps, to mention that her likeness was on sale in every novelty shop in Madrid and found more purchasers than that of Machaquito, King of the Toreros. In short, a supreme beauty--had she been captured early and suitably polished instead of remaining at home with mother until she had acquired mother's voice, and mother's roughshod manners, and a slothful habit of life that was destined, alas, in all probability to end by reproducing her mother's bulk and mustache.There are two things worth seeing in howling, meeowling, brawling, blistering Madrid--her outdoor life and the Prado museum. It was the latter that I viewed by day, for when relentless August has settled down the capital is not merely hot, it is plutonic, cowering under a dead, sultry heat without the relief of a breath of air, a heat that weighs down like a leaden blanket and makes Seville seem by comparison a northern seaport. A saying as old as its foolish founder's grave credits the city with three month's invierno and nine months' infierno, a characterization that loses much in symmetry, though gaining, perhaps, in force by translation. It was my fortune to have happened into the place when the lowest circle of the latter region was having its inning.Wherefore I went often to the Prado; and came as often away more physically fatigued than after a four-hour watch in a stokehole, and with my head in a bewildered whirl that even a long stroll in the Buen Retiro only partly reduced. It is like the irrationality of man to bring together these thousands of masterpieces, so close together that not one of them can produce a tenth of its proper effect. Of the pictures in the Prado the seeing alone would require two years of continuous work, the attempt to describe, a lifetime; pictures running through all the gamut of art from the fading of the pre-Raphaelites down to Goya, that plain-spoken Goya who seems to have stood afar off and thrown paint by the bucketful at his canvas--with marvelous results. A pandemonium of paintings, not one of which but off by itself would bring daily inspiration to all beholders. It is the tendency of all things to crowd together--wealth, art, learning, work, leisure, poverty; man's duty to combat this tendency by working for a sane and equitable distribution. The Prado collection would be a treasure, indeed, had those who exerted themselves to bring these paintings together given half that exertion to spreading them out. Then it might be that in a land as rich with art as Spain one would not find daubs and beer-calendars hung in the place of honor in the homes and fondas of "the masses." When the good day comes that the accumulation of the Prado is dispersed I shall bespeak as my share the "Borrachos" or "Vulcan's Forge" of sturdy Velazquez.[image]La Puerta del Sol, Madrid: the Spaniard'center of the universe]Those who are curious may also visit, at seasons and with permissions, the unpleasing royal palace, about the outer walls of which sleep scores of fly-proof vagrants in the shade of half leafless trees, and sundry other government buildings, all of which--except the vagrants--are duly and fully described in the guide-books. There is, too, the dailyjuego de Pelota, imported from the Basque provinces, a sort of enlarged handball played in a slate-walled chamber in which the screaming of gamblers for bids and their insults to the players know no cessation. Wandering aimlessly through her streets, as the sojourner in Madrid must who cannot daily sleep the day through, I found myself often pausing to admire the splendid displays in the windows of her tailors. Spain has no wool schedule, and as I gazed a deep regret came over me that I could not always be a dweller in Madrid when my garb grows threadbare or a tailor bill falls due. But there was sure remedy for such melancholy. When it grew acute I had but to turn and note the fitting of these splendid fabrics on the passer-by, and the sadness changed to a wonder that the madrileño tailor has the audacity to charge at all for his services.[image]An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-timeSo bare and uninviting are her environs--and she has no suburbs--that Madrid never retires outwardly as other cities for her picnics and holidays, but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro. The congestion is greatest about the Estanque Grande. The largest body of water the normal madrileño ever sees is this artificial pond of about the area--though not the depth--of a college swimming-pool. On it are marooned a few venerable rowboats, for a ride in which most of the residents of Madrid have been politely quarreling every fair day since they reached a quarrelsome age. Small wonder dwellers in the capital cry out in horror at the idea of drinking water. One might as sanely talk of burning wood for fuel.Obviously no untraveled native of "las Cortes" has more than a vague conception of the sea. Indeed, the ignorance on this point is nothing short of pathetic, if one may judge from the popular sea novel that fell into my hands during my stay. The writer evidently dwelt in the usual hotbox that constitutes a Madrid lodging and had not the remotest, wildest notion what thing a sea may be, nor the ability to tell a mainsail from a missionary's mule. But he was a clever man--to have concocted such a yarn and escaped persecution.Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the congregating. Dinner leisurely finished, the madrileño of high or low degree begins to drift slowly thither. By nine the public benches are taken; by ten one can and must move only with the throng at the accepted pace, or pay a copper to sit in haughty state in one of the now unstacked chairs. Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in from the four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette, languidly unlimbers its instruments, and near eleven falls to work--or play. About the same time there come wandering through the trees, as if drawn here by merest chance, five threadbare blind men, each with a battered violin or horn tucked tenderly under one arm. During the opening number they listen attentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians. Then as the official players pause to roll new cigarettes the sightless ragamuffins take their stand near at hand and strike up a music that more than one city of the western world could do worse than subsidize. Thereafter melody is incessant; and with it the murmur of countless voices, the scrape of leisurely feet on the gravel, the cries of the hawkers of all that may by any chance be sought, and louder and more insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--aged forty to sixty and of both sexes--"El País!" "El Heraldo!" "La Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!"Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in the afternoon in Madrid. The concert does not end until three and half the babies of the city are playing in the sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when the musicians leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Even did one feel the slightest desire to turn in there is not the remotest possibility of finding one's room less than a sweatbox. The populace shows little inclination to disperse, and though many saunter unwillingly homeward for form's sake, it is not to sleep, for one may still hear chatting and the muffled twang of guitars behind the blinds of the open windows. As for myself, I drifted commonly after the concert into the "Circo Americano" or a zarzuela, though such entertainments demonstrated nothing except how easily the madrileño is amused. Yet even these close early--for Madrid; and rambling gradually into my adopted section, it was usually my fortune to run across a "friend of the house"--of whom more anon--to retire with him to the nearestJuego de Billar, or billiard-hall, there to play the night gray-headed.The doors of Madrid close at midnight, and neither the madrileño nor his guests have yet reached that stage of civilization where they can be entrusted with their own latch-key. But it is easy for all that to gain admittance. One has only to halt before one's door, clap one's hands soundly three or six or nine or fifteen times, bawl in one's most musical and top-most voice, "Ser-r-r-r-reno!" not forgetting to roll the r like the whir of a broken emery-wheel, and then sit calmly down on the curb and wait. Within a half-hour, or an hour at most, the watchman is almost sure to appear, rattling with gigantic keys, carrying staff and lantern, and greeting the exile with all the compliments of the Spanish season, unlocks, furnishes him a lighted wax taper, wishes him a "good night" and a long day's sleep, and gracefully pockets his two-cent fee.Theoretically the sereno is supposed to keep order--or at least orderly. But nothing is more noted for its absence in Madrid by night than order. The sereno of the calle San Bernardo showed great liking for the immediate neighborhood of our casa de huéspedes--after I had been admitted. Rare the night--that is, morning--that he did not sit down beneath my window--for my promotion to the third-floor back was postponed until I left the city--with a pair of hackmen or day-hawks and fall to rehearsing in a foghorn-voice the story of his noble past. Twice or thrice I let drop a hint in the form of what water was in my pitcher. But the serenos of Madrid are imperturbable, and water is precious. On each such occasion the romancer moved over some two feet and serenely continued his tale until the rising sun sent him strolling homeward."Don Ricardo," of our German boarders, aspired to change from his stool in a banking-house to the bullring. He had taken a course in Madrid's Escuela Taurina and was already testing his prowess each Sunday as a banderillero in the little plaza of Tetuan, a few miles outside the city. In consequence--for "Ricardo" was a companionable youth for all his ragged Spanish--our casa de huéspedes became a rendezvous of lesser lights in the taurine world. Two or three toreros were sure to drop in each evening before we had sipped the last of our wine, to spend an hour or two in informaltertulia. I had not been a week in the city before I numbered among my acquaintances Curdito, Capita de Carmona, Pepete, and Moreno de Alcala, all men whose names have decorated many a ringside poster.There appeared one evening among the "friends of the house" a young man of twenty, of singularly attractive appearance and personality. Clear-eyed, of lithe yet muscular frame, and a spring-like quickness in every movement, he was noticeable above all for his modest deportment, having barely a touch of that arrogant self-esteem that is so frequently the dominating characteristic of the Spaniard. His speech was the soft, musical Andalusian; his conversation quickly demonstrated him a man of a high rate of intelligence.Such was Faustino Posadas, bullfighter, already a favorite among the aficionados of Spain, though it is by no means often that a youth of twenty finds himself vested with the red muleta. Son of the spare-limbed old herder who has been keeper for many years of the Tabladas, or bull pastures, of Seville, he had been familiar with the animals and their ways from early childhood. At sixteen he was already a banderillero. A famous espada carried him in his caudrilla to Peru and an accident to a fellow torero gave him the opportunity to despatch his first two bulls in the plaza of Lima. He returned to Spain a full-fledged "novillero" and was rapidly advancing to the rank of graduate espada, with the right to appear before bulls of any age.Once introduced, Posadas appeared often in the calle San Bernardo; much too often in fact to leave any suspicion that either his friendship for "Don Ricardo" or the charms of our conversation was the chief cause of his coming. A very few days passed before it had become a fixed and accepted custom for him to set out toward nine for the Paseo with the radiant daughter of the house--though mother waddled between, of course, after the dictates of Spanish etiquette. Within a week he was received by the family on the footing of a declared suitor; and of his favor with the señorita there was no room for doubt.There was always a long hour between the termination of supper and the time when Madrid began its nightly promenade, during which it was natural that our conversation should touch chiefly upon affairs of the ring."Don Henrico," asked Capita one evening--for I was known to the company as "Henrico Franco"--"is it true that there are no bullfights in your country?""Vaya que gente!" burst out Moreno, when I had at length succeeded in making clear to them our national objections to the sport. "What rubbish! What does it matter if a few old hacks that would soon fall dead of themselves are killed to make sport for the aficionados? As for the bull-- Carajo, hombre! You yourself, if you were in such a rage as the toro, would no more feel the thrust of a sword than the pricking of a gadfly."Posadas, on the other hand, readily grasped the American point of view. He even admitted that he found the goring of the horses unpleasant and that he would gladly see that feature of the córrida eliminated if there were any other way of tiring the bull before the last act. But for the bull himself he professed no sympathy whatever."What would you have us do?" he cried in conclusion. "Spain offers nothing else for a son of the people without political pull than to become torero. Without that we must work as peasants on black bread and a peseta a day.""As in any other trade," I inquired, "I suppose you enter the ring without any thought of danger, any feeling of fear?""No, I don't remember ever being afraid," laughed the Sevillian, "though when Miúra furnishes the stock I like to hear mass before the córrida.""What are the secrets of success?""I know only one," answered Posadas, "and that is no secret. Every move the bull makes shows first in the whites of his eyes. Never for an instant do I take my eyes off his. So it has been my luck not to be once wounded," he concluded, making the sign of the cross."Cogidas!" cried Capita, passing a hand over a dull brown welt on his neck. "Caramba! I have five of them, and every one by a cursed miúra. No, I never felt pain, only a cold chill that runs down to your very toes. But afterward--in the hospital! Carajo!"One would suppose that men engaged in so perilous a calling would take extreme bodily care of themselves. Not a torero among them, however, knew the meaning of "training" as the word is used by our athletes. They drank, smoked--even during the córrida--ate what and when they pleased, and more commonly spent the night strolling in the Paseo with an "amiga" or carousing in a wineshop than sleeping. Whether it is a leaving of the Moor or native to this blear, rocky land, there is much of the fatalist in the Spaniard, especially the Andalusian. He is by nature a gambler; be he torero, beggar, or senator, he is always ready and willing to "take a chance.""If a man is marked to be killed in the ring he will be killed there," asserted Pepete. "He cannot change his fate by robbing himself of the pleasures of life."Posadas was engaged to appear in the plaza of Madrid on the first Sunday of our acquaintance. When I descended to the street at three the city was already drifting ringward, a picador in full trim now and then cantering by on his Rozinante--a sight fully as exciting to the populace as the circus parade of our own land. I had reached the edge of the Puerta del Sol when I heard a "Hola, amigo!" behind me and turning, beheld none other than Jesús the Sevillian bearing down upon me with outstretched hand. He had found work at his trade in the city--though not yet a barber apparently."And Gásparo?" I asked."Perdido, señor! Lost again!" he sighed. "Perhaps he has found a new amiga. But I much more fear he has fallen into the fingers of the police. Mira V., señor. In all the journey we have not been able once to hide ourselves on a freight train. At last, señor, in Castillejo, Gásparo goes mad and swears he will ride once for nothing. With twenty people looking on he climbs a wagon. A man shouts 'thief!' and around the station comes running a guardia civil. I have not been able to find Gásparo since. Señor, I have come to think it is not right to ride on the railroad without a ticket. Gásparo, perhaps, is in prison. But we will meet again when he comes out," he concluded cheerfully, as I turned away.At the plaza fully twelve thousand were gathered. The córrida was distinguished particularly for its clumsiness, though the fighters, while young, were not without reputation. Falls and bruises were innumerable and the entire performance a chapter of accidents that kept the aficionados in an uproar and gave no small amount of work to the attendant surgeons. Of the three matadores, Serenito, a hulking fellow whose place seemed last of all in the bullring, was gored across the loins by his first bull and forced to abandon his task and fee to the sobresaliente. Then Platerito--"Silver-plated"--a mere whisp of a man, having dedicated to the populace as is the custom in Madrid the death of the fifth bull, gasconaded up to the animal, fell immediately foul of a horn, whirled about like a rag caught on a fly-wheel, and landed on his shoulders fully sixty feet away. To the astonishment even of the aficionados he sprang to his feet as jaunty as ever and duly despatched the animal, though not over handily.The misfortunes of his fellows served to bring out by contrast the skill of Posadas. Not only did he pass the day unscathed, but killed both his bulls at the first thrust so instantly that the thud of their fall might be heard outside the plaza, how rare a feat only he knows who has watched the hacking and butchering of many a "novillero." Indeed, so pleasing was his work that he was at once engaged, contrary to all precedent, to appear again on the ensuing Sunday.By that time I had learned enough of the "fine points of the game" to recognize that the Sevillian was approaching already true matador "form," and as I took leave of him next day it was with the conviction that success in his chosen career was as sure as the certainty of soon winning his most cherished reward."Vaya, Don Henrico," he laughed as we shook hands. "We shall see each other again. Some day when I go to Mexico or the Americas of the south I shall come by New York and you shall show me all you have told us of."There are few countries in which it is more difficult to lay out an itinerary that will take in the principal points of interest without often doubling on one's track than Spain. By dint of long calculation and nice adjustment of details I sketched a labyrinthian route that my kilometer-book, together with what walking I should have time for, would cover. As for my check-book there was left exactly three pesetas a day for the remainder of my time in the peninsula.So one cloudy morning in early August I took train at the Estación del Norte and wound away upward through the gorges of the Guardarrama to Segovia. Only there did I realize that the rumble of Madrid had been absolutely incessant in my ears; the stillness of the ancient city was almost oppressive, even more than in Toledo one felt peculiarly out of the world and a sensation that he must not remain too long lest he be wholly forgotten and lose his place in life's procession.In the morning I set off by the highway that follows for some miles the great unmortared aqueduct, that chief feature of Segovia, a thing indeed far greater than the town, as if a man's gullet, or his thirst should be larger than himself, so difficult is it for a city to obtain water in this thirsty land. Where the road abandoned the monument it continued across a country brown and sear, with almost the aspect of an American meadow in autumn, steadily rising all but imperceptibly. Well on in the morning I entered a forest, at a side road of which I was joined by two guardias civiles, who marched for an hour with me exchanging information and marveling that I had wandered so far afield. It has been my lot to become well, nay, intimately acquainted with the police of many lands, and I know of none that, as a body, are more nearly what police should be than these civil guards of Spain, to whom is due the suppression of all the old picturesque insecurities of the road. They have neither the bully-ism of our own club-wielders nor the childishness of Asiatic officers. Except in blistering Bailen the bearing of every pair I met--they never travel singly--was such as to win at once the confidence of the stranger and to draw out of him such facts as it is their duty to learn so naturally that it seemed but a mutual exchange of politenesses. There are, no doubt, petty corruptions in so large a body, but in the presence of almost any of them one has a conviction that their first thought is their duty.The highway ended its climb at noon in La Granja--The Grange--residence of the king in spring and autumn, a town little Spanish in aspect seated in a carefully cropped forest at the base of a thickly wooded mountain. I roamed unchallenged for half the afternoon through the royal park, replete with fountains compared with which those of Versailles are mere water-squirts; playthings that Philip the half-mad accused of costing three million and amusing him three minutes. I was more fortunate, for they cost me nothing and amused me fully half an hour.After which I picked up the highway again and, winding around the regal village, struck upward into the mountains of Guardarrama. At the hamlet of Valsain I had just paused at the public spring when the third or fourth tramp I had seen on the road in all Spain swung around a bend ahead, marching doggedly northward. As I stooped to drink, a moan and a thud sounded behind me. I turned quickly around to behold the roadster writhing in the middle of the highway, the gravel of which had cut and gashed one side of his face. The simple villagers, swarming wide-eyed out of their houses, would have it at first that he was my companion and I to blame for his mishap. He bore patent signs of months on the road, being burned a tawny brown in garb and face by the sun that was evidently the author of his misfortune. For a time the village stood open-mouthed about him, the brawny housewives now and then giving vent to their sympathy and helpless perplexity by a long-drawn "ay de mi!" I suggested water, and a dozen women, dashing away with the agility of middle-aged cows, brought it in such abundance that the victim was all but drenched to the skin before I could drive them off. He revived a bit and while a woman clumsily washed the blood and gravel from his face, I addressed him in all the languages I could muster, for he was evidently no Spaniard. The only response was a few inarticulate groans, and when he had been carried to a grassy slope in the shade, I went on, knowing him in kind if awkward hands.A half-perpendicular hour passed by, and I seemed to have left Spain behind. The road was toiling sharply upward through deep forests of evergreen, cool as an Alpine valley, opening now and then to offer a vista of thick treetops and a glimpse of red-tiled villages; a scene as different from sterile, colorless, sunken-cheeked Castille as could well be imagined. Nor did the dusk descend so swiftly in these upper heights. The sun had set when I reached the summit at six thousand feet and, passing through the Puerto de Navacerrada, started swiftly downward in the thickening gloom; but it was some time before the night had settled down in earnest.I had marched well into it when I was suddenly startled by a sound of muffled voices out of the darkness ahead. I moved forward noiselessly, for this lonely pass has many a story to tell. A dim light shone through what appeared to be a window. I shouted for admittance and a moment later found myself in the hovel of a peon caminero.Within, besides the family, were two educated Spaniards, one indeed who had been a secretary in the American Legation up to the outbreak of the recent war. When he had been apprised of my mode of travel and my goal, he stared wonderingly at me for a moment and then stepped out with me into the night. Marching a few paces down the highway until we had rounded some obstruction, he pointed away into the void."Do you see those lights?" he asked.Far away and to the right, so far and so high in the heavens that they seemed constellations, twinkled three clusters of lights, almost in a row but far separated one from another."The third and farthest," said my companion, "is El Escorial; and your time is well-chosen, for to-morrow is the day of Saint Lawrence, her patron saint."We returned to the hut, where the wife of the peon was moved to cook me a bowl of garbanzos and spread me a blanket on the stone floor. In the morning the sharply descending highway carried me quickly down the mountain, and by sunrise I was back once more in the familiar Castille. It was verging on noon when, surmounting a sterile rise, I caught sight of the dome and towers of the Escorial. A roadside stream, of which the water was lukewarm, removed the grime of travel, and I climbed sweltering into the village of Escorial de Arriba, pitched on a jagged shoulder of the calcined mountain high above the monastery.Spain is wont to show her originality and indifference to the convenience of travelers, and on this, the anniversary of the grilling of him in whose honor it was built, the great monastery was closed for the only time during the year. I experienced no regret, however, for the vast gloomy structure against its background of barren, rocky hills had far too much the aspect of some dank prison to awaken any desire to enter. Least impressive of famous buildings, the Escorial is certainly the most oppressive. There is poetry, inspiration in many a building, in the Taj Mahal, the Cathedral of Cologne; but not in the Escorial. It suggests some frowning, bulky bourgeois of forty whose mother thinks him and who would fain believe himself one of the most poetic and spiritual of men.I wandered away the day in the town, drifting in the afternoon down into the village "de Abajo." There, in the multitude about the stone-pile of a bullring, I ran across Curdito in festive garb. He was scheduled to kill all three bulls of the day's córrida, but in spite of his urgent invitation I felt in no mood to sit out the blistering afternoon on a bare stone slab of this rough-and-tumble plaza.El Escorial was so overrun with visitors to her annual celebration that not a lodging of any sort was to be had in either the upper or the lower village. The discovery brought me no shock, for a night out of doors I neither dreaded nor regretted. But as I sauntered at dusk down past the great building into the flanking "woods of Herrera," I could not but wonder how those travelers who bewail the accommodations of the "only possible hotel" would have met the situation.Behind the monastery extends a broad, silent forest, not over thick, and beneath the trees squat bushes and brown heather. I spread the day's copy of theHeraldobetween two shrubs and, stretching out at my ease, fell to munching the lunch I had bought in the village market. Let the circumstances be right and I know few more genuine joys than to sleep the night out of doors. Lie down in the open while a bit of daylight still lingers, or awaken there when the dawn has come, and there is a feeling of sordidness, mixed with the ludicrous, a sense of being an outcast prone on the common earth. But while the night, obscuring all details, hangs its canopy over the world there are few situations more pleasing.When I had listened a while to the panting of the August night I fell asleep. For weeks past I had been viewing too many famous spots, perhaps, had been delving too constantly into the story of Spain, My constant use of Castilian, too, had borne fruit; English words no longer intruded even on my inner meditations. Was it possible also that the market lunch had been too heavy, or the nearness of the gloomy monastery too oppressive? At any rate I fell to dreaming.At first there passed a procession of all Spain,--arrieros, peasants, Andalusian maidens, toreros, priests, Jesús the tramp, a chanting water-seller, merchants and beggars; close followed by two guardias civiles who looked at me intently as they passed. Then suddenly in their place Moors of every garb and size were dancing about me. They seemed to be celebrating a victory and to be preparing for some Mohammedan sacrifice. A mullah advanced upon me, clutching a knife. I started to my feet, a distant bell boomed heavily, and the throng vanished like a puff of smoke.Away off above, in a hollow in the gaunt mountain, I made out gradually the form of a man sitting pensive, elbows on knees, gazing dark-browed down upon me. He was in royal robes, and all at once he seemed to start, to grow in size, and a line across his breast expanded to the letters "Felipe II." Larger and larger he grew until he overtowered the mountain itself; then slowly, scowlingly he rose and strode down upon me. A women joined him, a scrawny woman who laid a hand inertly in his, and I recognized Bloody Mary, who seemed thus in an instant to have leaped over the seas from her island kingdom to join her gloomy husband.In rapid succession new figures appeared,--Herrera first, a torpid, lugubrious man strangely like the building he has left behind; then quickly a multitude, through which strolled a man whose crown bore the name "Pedro," running his sword with a chuckle of devilish laughter through any that came within easy reach, young or old, asleep or awake. Of a sudden there stalked forth from nowhere a lean, deep-eyed man of fifty, a huge parchment volume under one arm, an almost cynical, yet indulgent smile on his countenance; and as if to prove who he was there raced down over the mountain a man not unlike him in appearance, astride a caricature of a horse, and behind him a dumpy, wondering peasant ambling on an ass. The cavalier sprang suddenly from his hack and fell affectionately on the shoulder of the parchment-bearer, then bounding back into the saddle he charged straight for Felipe, who, stepping to one side, flung, backhanded, Mary his wife far out of sight over the mountain.A sound drew my attention to another side. Across the plain was marching with stately tread a long file of Moors, each carrying in one hand his head, by the hair."Los Abencerrajes!" I seemed to shout; and almost before it was uttered there remained only Felipe and behind him a score of indistinct forms. He waved a hand toward me and turned his back, and the company moved down upon me unlimbering a hundred instruments of torture. Distant bells were tolling mournfully. A priest advanced holding aloft a crucifix and chanting in sepulchral voice:"The hour of heretics sounds."Louder and funereally rang the dismal bells; the torturers drew near; I struggled to rise to my feet--and awoke.The bells of the monastery were booming out over the night.CHAPTER XICRUMBLING CITIESIt was well along in the next afternoon that I descended at the station of Avila and climbed a long dusty mile into the city. A scent of the dim, half-forgotten past hovered over the close-walled, peculiarly garbed place. When I had made a circuit of her ancient wall, through which her no less time-worn cathedral thrusts its hips, I drifted down into the dusty vega below, where in the church of Santo Tomás sleeps the dead hope of "los reyes católicos." If the sculptor be trustworthy the prince would have been an intelligent, kindly lad, even though his martial valor might never have rivaled that of his stout-hearted mother. Returned to the city, I strolled for an hour along the lofty Paséo del Rastro, watching the sun sink red behind the serrated jumble of mountains on the far western horizon, beyond which lay my next stopping-place; and so to bed in the Posada de la Estrella amid the munching asses and snoring arrieros.Avila is connected with Salamanca by rail, but the route forms a sharp angle with its apex many miles to the north. I had decided, therefore, to walk. Swinging down through the western city gate and across the babbling Adaja by the aged stone bridge, I clambered again upward to where a huge stone cross invites to a rest in its shade and a final retrospect of crumbling Avila and her many-turreted, constraining wall. An easy two-days' walk lay before me. For had not Heir Baedeker, so seldom in error as to plain facts, announced the distance as thirty-five miles?As I wended on up the hillside, however, I was suddenly stricken profane by a stone sign-post rising before me with the dismal greeting:"Salamanca 99 kilómetres."Herr Baedeker was wrong by a little matter of thirty miles.But I had set the time of my entrance into Salamanca; delay would bring havoc to my delicately adjusted itinerary. I doubled my pace.The way led through a country as savage of aspect as any in Spain, waterless, dusty, glaring, overspread with huge rocks tumbled pell-mell as if the Mason of the universe had thrown here the materials left over from His building. By afternoon a few lean farms began to crowd their way in between the rocks, now and then a sturdy, thick-set tree found place, and over all nature hovered great clouds of locusts whose refrain reminded how euphonious is the Spaniard's name for what we dub "dog days,"--"canta la chicharra--the locust sings." The inhabitants of the region seemed somewhat more in fortune's favor than the rest of the peninsula. Passing peasants, though rare, had none a hungry look; their carts were fancifully carved and painted both on body and wheels, while the trappings of their cattle were decorative in the extreme.All a summer day I tramped forward over hill and hollow toward the great jagged range, the hardy trees dying out, the fields growing in size and number, but the sierra seeming to hold ever as far aloof. Beyond a small withered forest in which were roaming flocks of brown goats, I climbed a steady five miles to a summit village exhibiting every outward sign of poverty and most fittingly named "Salvadios--God save us." The keeper of its one quasi-public house deigned after long argument to set before me a lame excuse for supper, but loudly declined to furnish lodging. I withdrew, therefore, to a threshing-floor across the way, heaped high with still unbroken bundles of wheat, and put in a shiveringly cold night--so great is the contrast between the seething plains by day and this hilltop bitten by every wind--not once falling into a sound sleep for the gaunt, savage curs that prowled about me.At dawn I was already afoot and three hours later entered the city of Penaranda, in the outskirts of which a fine plaza de toros was building, but within all the confines of which was no evidence of school, library, nor indeed of restaurant. I contented myself with a bit of fruit and trudged on. This may not, perhaps, have been the hottest day of all that Spanish summer, but it bore certainly all the earmarks thereof. The earth lay cracked and blistered about me, the trees writhing with the heat, the rays rising from the rocky soil like a dense stage-curtain of steam. In a shriveled and parched pueblo of mud huts, exactly resembling the villages of Palestine, I routed out a kindly old woman for a foreshortened lunch; and then on again in the inferno, choking fields of grain and vineyards soon becoming numerous on either hand. The wise husbandmen, however, had sought refuge, and in all the grilling landscape was not a human being to be seen, save and except a sweat-dripping pedestrian from foreign parts straining along the scorching highway.This swung at length to the right, swooped down through a river that had not a drop of water, and staggering to the top of an abrupt knoll, showed me far off, yet in all distinctness, a rich reddish-brown city gathered together on a low hilltop and terminating in glinting spires. It was Salamanca; and of all the cities I have come thus upon unheralded and from the unpeopled highway none can rival her in richness of color, like ripe old wine, a city that has grown old gracefully and with increasing beauty. So fascinating the sight that I sat down beneath the solitary tree by the way to gaze upon it--and to swing half round the circuit of the shrub as the sun drove the scanty shadow before it.But I was still far off the golden-brown city and, setting slowly onward in the descending evening, I all but encircled the place before the carretera, coming upon the ancient puente romano, clambered upward into its unrivaled Blaza Mayor.Just back of this, four stories above the Plaza de la Verduga, or Place of the Green Stuff, lives a widow whose little spare chamber is let in the winter season to some unpretentious student of the now unpretentious university. I engaged this, together with what of physical nourishment should be reasonable, at three pesetas a day. As I took possession, the daughter of the hostess, a muchacha of eight, peered in upon me hugging a doll under one arm."Qué muñeca más bonita!" I hazarded, which turned out to be unwise, for the homage so overcame her diffidence that she came in not only to offer the information that my complexion strangely resembled that of a lobster in the salmantino museum, but such a fund of further information that it was long before I had inveigled her outside the door and, throwing myself on the bed, slept the clock round.As in many another city it had been my fortune to reach Salamanca on the eve of one of her great festivals. Indeed, that must be a foresighted traveler who can journey through Spain without being frequently caught up in the whirlpool of some local fiesta. The excuse this time was Assumption Day. The festivities within the city walls offered nothing of extraordinary, being chiefly confined to a band concert in the central plaza. Richer by far would be the richest city of the earth could she purchase and transplant into her own midst the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, with its small forest of palms, the rich brown medallioned façades and surrounding colonnades beneath which the salmantino is wont to stroll, la salmantina on his arm, while the band plays in the flower-shrouded stand in its center. Salamanca might sell, too, in spite of her boast that it is the finest in Spain, being poorer than the proverbial church mouse, were she not also Spanish and prouder than she is poor.The real fiesta, however, took the form of a bullfight that had a character all its own. Salamanca, as I have hinted, is no longer a city of wealth. Indeed, those occasions are rare in these modern days when she can indulge in a round of the national sport, even though she possesses one of the largest bullrings in Spain. On this great holiday, however, the city fathers had decided that nothing within the bounds of reason was too good for the recreating of Salamanca's long unfeasted children. A full-sized bullfight would, to be sure, have far overstepped the bounds above mentioned. But after long debate and deep investigation it had been concluded that a córrida with four bulls, no horses, one real matador, and seats of all shades and distinctions at one peseta each might be conceded.With this unlimited choice of vantage-points at my own price I went out early to the plaza and picked my place in the sombra in what was evidently a section reserved for the guardia civil; for before long the guards, in full uniform and their three-cornered hats, began to gather about me, first in pairs, then in groups, then in swarms, until I was wholly, shut in and surrounded by guardias civiles like a dandelion in the center of a bed of tulips. Far from resenting my intrusion, however, if such it was, they initiated me into their order with botas and cigarettes and included me in their conversation and merriment during the rest of the day.The entertainment began at four. With that exception, however, it had few points of similarity with the regulation córrida. The procession entered, fully six men in torero garb--though that of two or three of them fitted like amateur theatrical costumes--followed by two horsemen, two, in their shirt-sleeves, as was also señor el alcalde in his box. The key thrown, the fight began; with the elimination of the one unquestionably unpleasant feature,--the killing of horses. Even aged hacks cost money and, as I have already more than once suggested, money is a rare commodity in Salamanca. When the bull had been worried a bit with the cloaks, the banderilleros proceeded at once to plant their darts. The professional matador, a young man rejoicing in the name of Trueno--"Thunder"--had, therefore, a far more difficult task than usual, for more than anything else it is the venting of his rage and strength on the blindfolded steeds that tires the bull, and on this occasion it was a still wild and comparatively fresh animal which the diestro was called upon to face. He despatched his three allotted bulls, however, without accident and to the vociferous satisfaction of the audience, which filled even at the low price only a bit more than the shaded section. It was not, as the guardia beside me was at some pains to explain, that there were not salmantinos quite sufficient to pack the plaza to overflowing, but that there were not pesetas enough in town to go round. In the throng, too, were no small number of peasants from all the widely surrounding country, some in the old dress with knee breeches.But to touch upon the unusual features of the córrida. As a part of the worrying of the second bull a chulo placed a chair in the ring and, standing upon it with neither weapon nor cloak, awaited the charge. When the bull had all but reached him he sprang suddenly into the air, the animal dashed under him and, falling upon the unoffending article of furniture, dissolved it thoroughly into its component parts and scattered them broadcast about the arena.The most nerve-thrilling performance, however, that it was my privilege to see in all the devil-may-care land of Spain was the feat that followed immediately on the death of the chair-wrecker. It was the "star attraction" of the day and was announced on the posters in all the Spaniard's richness of superlatives--and he is a born and instinctive writer of "ads." Clinging as closely as possible to the eloquent phraseology of the original the announcement may be set forth in near-English as follows:"Various are the chances (tricks) which are executed in the different plazas of Spain inside the taurine art, but none that has more called attention than that which is practised by JOSÉ VILLAR son of the memorable matador (killer, murderer) of bulls Villarillo who"--not father Illo, who has left off all earthly sport, but son José--"locating himself in the center of the arena and placed with the head towards below and the feet by above imploring the public to maintain the most impressive silence during the risk (fate) consummates the trick (chance) of Tancredo; very well, this Management not reflecting on (sparing) either expense or sacrifice has contracted with him in order that he shall fulfill (lift, pull off;sic.) this trick (risk) on the third bull to the end that the salmantinos shall know it, with which program this Management believes to have filled to the full the desires of the aficionados (rooters, fans, amateurs)."The second bull, therefore, having been ignominiously dragged to oblivion and the butcher-shop, and the blood patches of the arena resanded, there sallied forth from the further gate a small, athletic man of thirty-five or so, hatless--and partly hairless--dressed from head to foot in the brightest red, of a material so thin that the movement of his every muscle could be plainly seen beneath it. He was entirely empty-handed. He marched with sprightly stride across the ring and, bowing low to the alcalde in his box above, addressed to the public a warning and an entreaty to maintain the utmost silence during the "consummation of the risk." An assistant then appeared, carrying a small wooden box with a piece of gas-pipe six feet long fixed upright in the top of it. This Villar placed exactly in the center of the ring, a hundred yards or more in every direction from the barrier. Across the gas-pipe, near the top, he fastened a much shorter piece, thus forming a cross. On the box he placed a circular roll of cloth, stood on his head thereon, hooked his toes over the cross-piece, waved a hand gaily to the public, and folded his arms. Every other torero stepped outside the ring, and the toril gate swung open.A wild snort, and there plunged into the arena as powerful and savage a brute as it had ever yet been my lot to see. For an instant he stood motionless, blinking in the blinding sunlight. Then suddenly catching sight of the statue flaming with the hated color, he shot away toward it with the speed of an express-train--a Spanish express at least--until, a bare three feet from it, he stopped instantly stone-still by thrusting out his forelegs like a Western broncho, then slowly, gingerly tiptoed up to the motionless figure, sniffed at it, and turned and trotted away.The public burst forth in a thunderclap of applause. Villar got right end up as calmly and gracefully as a French count in a drawing-room, laid a hand on his heart, and smiling serenely, bowed once, twice, th---- and just then a startled roar went up from the tribunes, for the bull had suddenly turned and, espying the man in red, dashed at him with lowered horns and a bellow of anger.There is nowhere registered, so far as my investigations carry, the record of José Villar, son of Villarillo, in the hundred-yard dash. But this much may be asserted with all assurance, that it has in it nothing of that slow, languid, snail-like pace of the ten-second college champion. Which was well; for some two inches below his flying heels, as he set a new record likewise in the vaulting of barriers, the murderous horns crashed into the oak plank tablas with the sound of a freight collision and an earnestness that gave work to the plaza carpenters for some twenty minutes to come.Therein Villar was more fortunate than the Mexican Tancredo, inventor of the "suerte," and for whom it was named. Tancredo, like Dr. Guillotin, was overreached by his own invention, for while his record for the hundred was but a second or two less than that of Villar, it was just this paltry margin that made him, on the day next following his last professional appearance, the chief though passive actor in a spectacle of quite a different character.The "Suerte de Tancredo" has never won any vast amount of popularity in Spain, except with the spectators. Toreros in general manifest a hesitation akin to bashfulness in thus seeking the plaudits of the multitude. By reason of which diffidence among his fellows, José, son of Villarillo, memorable matador de toros, pockets after each such recreation a sum that might not seem overwhelming to an American captain of industry or to a world-famous tenor, but one which the average Spaniard cannot name in a single breath.Salamanca's day of amusement did not, however, by any means end here. Beneath the name of "Thunder," the professional matador, there was printed with equal bombast that of FERNANDO MARTÍN. Now Fernando was quite evidently a salmantino butt, a tall gawky fellow whose place in the society of Salamanca was apparently very similar to that of those would-be or has-been baseball players to be found vegetating in many of our smaller towns. Like them, too, Fernando was in all probability wont to hover about the pool-rooms and dispensing-parlors of his native city, boasting of his untested prowess at the national game. That his talents might not, therefore, forever remain hidden under a wineglass, and also, perhaps, because his services might be engaged at five hundred pesetas less than the five hundred that a professional sobresaliente would have demanded, the thoughtful city fathers had caused him to be set down on the program, likewise in striking type, as "SUBSTITUTE WITH NECESSITY (CON NECESIDAD) TO KILL THE FOURTH BULL."It was this "necesidad" that worked the undoing of Fernando Martín. When the customary by-play had been practised on the fourth animal, enter Fernando with bright red muleta, false pigtail, glinting sword, and anything but the sure-of-one's-self countenance of a professional espada. He faced the brute first directly in front of the block of guardias civiles, and the nearest he came to laying the animal low at the first thrust was to impale on a horn and sadly mutilate a sleeve of his own gay and rented jacket. The crowd jeered, as crowds will the world over at the sight of a man whose father and mother and even grandfather they have known for years trying to prove himself the equal of men imported from elsewhere. Fernando advanced again, maneuvering for position, though with a peculiar movement of the knees not usual among toreros, and which was all too visible to every eye in the hooting multitude. Trueno, the professional, stuck close at his side in spite of the clamorous demand of the public that he leave the salmantino to play out his own game unhampered. Martín hazarded two or three more nerveless thrusts, with no other damage, thanks to the watchful eye and cloak of Trueno, than one toss of ten feet and a bleeding groin. By this time the jeering of his fellow-townsmen had so overshadowed the tyro's modicum of good sense that he turned savagely on his protector and ordered him to leave the ring. Fortunately Trueno was not of the stuff to take umbrage at the insults of a foolish man in a rage, or the population of Salamanca would incontestably have been reduced by one before that merry day was done.The utmost length of time between the entrance of a professional matador for the last act and the death of the bull is four or five minutes. Fernando Martín trembled and toiled away ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Slowly, but certainly and visibly his bit of courage oozed away; the peculiar movement of his knees grew more and more pronounced. No longer daring to meet the bull face to face, he skulked along the barrier until the animal's tail was turned and, dashing past him at full speed, stabbed backward at his neck as he ran, to the uproarious merriment of the spectators. Trueno saved his life certainly a score of times. At last, when the farce had run close upon fifty minutes, a signal from the alcalde sent across the arena the sharp note of a bugle, twocabestros, or trained steers were turned into the ring, and the bull, losing at once all belligerency, trotted docilely away with them. The star of Fernando Martín, would-be matador de toros, was forever set, and if he be not all immune to ridicule his native city surely knows him no more.It is law that no bull that has once entered the ring shall live. Curious to know what was to be the fate of this animal, I sprang over the barrier and hurried across to the gate by which he had disappeared. There I beheld a scene that forever dispelled any notion that the task of the matador is an easy one, however simple it may look from the tribunes. The bull was threshing to and fro within a small corral, bellowing with rage and lashing the air with his tail. It required six men and a half-hour of time to lasso and drag him to the fence. With a hundred straining at the rope his head was drawn down under the gate, a man struck him several blows with a sledge, and another, watching his opportunity, swung his great navaja and laid wide open the animal's throat.It was late when, having mingled for some time with the country folk dancing on the sandy plain before the plaza, I returned to the city for my bundle and repaired to the station. A twelve-hour ride was before me. For I had decided to explore a territory where even the scent of tourists is unknown,--the northwest province of Galicia.The train that I boarded at eleven was crowded with countrymen returning from the day's festival, a merry but in no sense intoxicated company, in which I saw my first wooden-shod Galicians. The car was, for once, of the American pattern--though of Spanish width--with thirty seats each large enough for three persons. The brakeman, too, who stood lantern on arm in the open door, bore an unusual resemblance to an American "shack."A dozen men were standing in the aisle, but to my surprise one seat near the center of the car seemed to be unoccupied. When I reached it, however, I found a priest stretched out on his back, his hands clasped over his paunch, snoring impressively. I carried a protest to the brakeman and with a snort he swooped down upon the sleeper. At sight of him, however, he recoiled."Carajo!" he cried. "Es un padre! I could n't disturb his reverence."I stooped and touched the monopolist on the shoulder, being in no mood to remain standing all night. Moreover, I had long been curious to know the Spaniard's attitude toward a man who should treat a priest as an ordinary human being. "His reverence" grunted. I touched him again. His snore lost a beat or two and began once more. I shook him more forcibly. He opened his blood-shot eyes, snorted "Huh!" so much like a certain monopolist of the animal kingdom that even the passengers about me laughed at the resemblance--and fell again to snoring. I sat down gently on his fat legs and, when he kicked me off, confiscated a place. He sat up with the look of a man whose known world has suddenly crumbled about his ears and glared at me with bulging eyes a full two minutes, while over the faces of the onlookers flitted a series of winks and smiles.He was just huddling himself up again in the two-thirds of the seat that remained to him when the door opened and Trueno, the matador, his littlecoletapeeping out from beneath his hat, his sword-case under one arm, entered and, spying the extra place, sat down in it with scant ceremony. We fell to talking. The torero was a jovial, explosive, devil-may-care fellow who looked and dressed his character well. The priest slunk off somewhere in the thickest hours and his place was taken by a peasant who had been standing near me since leaving Salamanca. When he found opportunity to break into the conversation he addressed me with an amused smile:"You are not then a Catholic, señor?""No.""Ah! A socialist!" he cried with assurance.For to the masses of southern Europe socialist and non-Catholic are synonymous."I doubt, señor," I observed, "whether you yourself are a Catholic.""Cómo, señor!" he cried, raising his hands in a comical gesture of quasi-horror. "I, a cristino viejo, no Catholic!""Do you go to church and do what your cura commands?""What nonsense!" he cried, using a still more forcible term. "Who does? My wife goes now and then to confession. I go to church, señor, to be baptized, married, and buried.""Why go then?""Caramba!" he gasped. "How else shall a man be buried, married, and baptized?"Toward morning I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by the extraordinary sensation of feeling cold. Dawn was touching the far horizon. The train was straining upward through a sharply rising country. As the sun rose we came in sight of Astorga, standing drearily on her bleak hilltop, and in memory of Gil Blas and for the unlimbering of my legs I alighted and climbed into the town. It proved as uninteresting as any in Spain, and before the morning was old I was again riding northwestward. Soon there came an utter change of scene; tunnels grew unaccountable, the railroad winding its way doggedly upward through a wild, heavily wooded mountain region that had little in common with familiar Spanish landscapes. In mid-afternoon I dismounted at the station of Lugo, the capital of Galicia.
CHAPTER X
SHADOWS OF THE PHILIPS
A day or two later I was installed for a fortnight in a casa de huéspedes in the calle San Bernardo. In such places as one plans to remain for any length of time there are few cheaper arrangements for ample fare in all Europe than these Spanish "houses of guests." My room, which was temporarily on the second-floor front, but solemnly pledged to be soon changed to the third-floor back, was all that an unpampered wanderer could have required. Breakfast was light; a cup of chocolate and a roll--no self-respecting traveler ventures to sample Spanish coffee more than once. But one soon grows accustomed and indeed to prefer the European abstemiousness at the first meal. In compensation thealmuerzoandcomida, at twelve and seven, were more than abundant. A thick soup, not unseldom redolent of garlic, was followed by a salad, and that by apuchero, which is to say an entire meal on one platter,--in the center a square of boiled beef flanked like St. Peter's amid the hills of Rome by seven varieties of vegetables, thegarbanzos--bright yellow chickpeas of the size of marbles--with the usual disproportion granted that robust comestible in Spain, overtowering not only every other eminence but carpeting the intervening valleys. That despatched, or seriously disfigured, there came a second offering from the animal world,--acocidoor anolla podrida, after which the repast descended gradually by fruit, cheese, and cigarettes to its termination. Through it all a common wine flowed generously.
Even on Friday this sturdy good cheer knew no abatement. Centuries ago, in the raging days of the Moor, the faithful of Spain were granted for their Catholic zeal and bodily behoof this dispensation, that they might nourish their lean frames on whatever it should please Santiago, their patron, to bring within bowshot of their home-made crosspieces. The Moor has long since removed his dusky shadow from the land, but the dispensation remains. Indeed, there is left scarcely a custom the inobservance of which betrays the non-Catholic; or if one there be at all general it is this: when he yawns--which he is not unwont to do even at table--the devout Spaniard makes over his mouth the sign of the cross, to keep the devil from gaining a foothold therein--an exorcism that is not always successful.
There is yet another custom, quite the opposite of religious in result at least, which the guest at a casa de huéspedes must school himself to endure. It grows out of the Spaniard's infernal politeness. Figure to yourself that you have just returned from a morning of tramping through sweltering Madrid on the ephemeral breakfast already noted, and sit down at table just as a steaming puchero is served. With a melodious and self-sacrificing "Serve yourself, señor," the addle-pated Spaniard across the way pushes the dish to his neighbor; to which the neighbor responds by pushing it back again with a "No! Serveyourself, señor," followed in quick succession by "No! No! Serve yourself, señor;" "No! No! No! señor! Serve yourself!" "No! No! No! No! serve--" and so on to the end of time, or until a wrathy Anglo-Saxon, rising in his place, picks up the source of dispute and establishes order.
Our household in the calle San Bernardo consisted of a lawyer, a "man of affairs"--using the latter word in its widest signification--of two young Germans, "Don Hermann" and "Don Ricardo," for some time employed in the city, and of the family itself. Of this the husband, a slouching, toothless fellow of fifty, and the grandmother were mere supernumeraries. The speaking parts were taken by the wife and daughter, the former an enormous, unpolished woman with a well-developed mustache and the over-developed voice of a stevedore. Indeed, a stentorian, grating voice and a habit of speaking always at the tiptop of it is one of the chief afflictions of the Spanish women of the masses--and of their hearers. Is it by chance due to the custom of studying and reciting always aloud and in chorus during their few years of schooling? Quién sabe? There was presented during my stay in Madrid the play, or more properly playlet--zarzuela--"Levantar Mueros--Raising the Dead"; but I dared not go lest it turn out to be a dramatized sewing circle.
But it remains to introduce the star member of the cast, the center of that San Bernardo universe around which revolved mother, supernumeraries, and guests like planets in their orbits--the daughter. I fully expect to wander many a weary mile before I again behold so beautiful a maid--or one that I should take more pleasure in being a long way distant from. She was sixteen--which in Spain is past childhood--a glorious, faultless blonde in a land where blondes are at high premium, her lips forming what the Spaniard calls a "nido de besos"--a nest of osculatory delights--and-- But why drive the impossible task further? Such radiant perfections in human form must be seen at least to be appreciated. It is sufficient, perhaps, to mention that her likeness was on sale in every novelty shop in Madrid and found more purchasers than that of Machaquito, King of the Toreros. In short, a supreme beauty--had she been captured early and suitably polished instead of remaining at home with mother until she had acquired mother's voice, and mother's roughshod manners, and a slothful habit of life that was destined, alas, in all probability to end by reproducing her mother's bulk and mustache.
There are two things worth seeing in howling, meeowling, brawling, blistering Madrid--her outdoor life and the Prado museum. It was the latter that I viewed by day, for when relentless August has settled down the capital is not merely hot, it is plutonic, cowering under a dead, sultry heat without the relief of a breath of air, a heat that weighs down like a leaden blanket and makes Seville seem by comparison a northern seaport. A saying as old as its foolish founder's grave credits the city with three month's invierno and nine months' infierno, a characterization that loses much in symmetry, though gaining, perhaps, in force by translation. It was my fortune to have happened into the place when the lowest circle of the latter region was having its inning.
Wherefore I went often to the Prado; and came as often away more physically fatigued than after a four-hour watch in a stokehole, and with my head in a bewildered whirl that even a long stroll in the Buen Retiro only partly reduced. It is like the irrationality of man to bring together these thousands of masterpieces, so close together that not one of them can produce a tenth of its proper effect. Of the pictures in the Prado the seeing alone would require two years of continuous work, the attempt to describe, a lifetime; pictures running through all the gamut of art from the fading of the pre-Raphaelites down to Goya, that plain-spoken Goya who seems to have stood afar off and thrown paint by the bucketful at his canvas--with marvelous results. A pandemonium of paintings, not one of which but off by itself would bring daily inspiration to all beholders. It is the tendency of all things to crowd together--wealth, art, learning, work, leisure, poverty; man's duty to combat this tendency by working for a sane and equitable distribution. The Prado collection would be a treasure, indeed, had those who exerted themselves to bring these paintings together given half that exertion to spreading them out. Then it might be that in a land as rich with art as Spain one would not find daubs and beer-calendars hung in the place of honor in the homes and fondas of "the masses." When the good day comes that the accumulation of the Prado is dispersed I shall bespeak as my share the "Borrachos" or "Vulcan's Forge" of sturdy Velazquez.
[image]La Puerta del Sol, Madrid: the Spaniard'
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La Puerta del Sol, Madrid: the Spaniard'
center of the universe]
Those who are curious may also visit, at seasons and with permissions, the unpleasing royal palace, about the outer walls of which sleep scores of fly-proof vagrants in the shade of half leafless trees, and sundry other government buildings, all of which--except the vagrants--are duly and fully described in the guide-books. There is, too, the dailyjuego de Pelota, imported from the Basque provinces, a sort of enlarged handball played in a slate-walled chamber in which the screaming of gamblers for bids and their insults to the players know no cessation. Wandering aimlessly through her streets, as the sojourner in Madrid must who cannot daily sleep the day through, I found myself often pausing to admire the splendid displays in the windows of her tailors. Spain has no wool schedule, and as I gazed a deep regret came over me that I could not always be a dweller in Madrid when my garb grows threadbare or a tailor bill falls due. But there was sure remedy for such melancholy. When it grew acute I had but to turn and note the fitting of these splendid fabrics on the passer-by, and the sadness changed to a wonder that the madrileño tailor has the audacity to charge at all for his services.
[image]An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-time
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An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-time
So bare and uninviting are her environs--and she has no suburbs--that Madrid never retires outwardly as other cities for her picnics and holidays, but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro. The congestion is greatest about the Estanque Grande. The largest body of water the normal madrileño ever sees is this artificial pond of about the area--though not the depth--of a college swimming-pool. On it are marooned a few venerable rowboats, for a ride in which most of the residents of Madrid have been politely quarreling every fair day since they reached a quarrelsome age. Small wonder dwellers in the capital cry out in horror at the idea of drinking water. One might as sanely talk of burning wood for fuel.
Obviously no untraveled native of "las Cortes" has more than a vague conception of the sea. Indeed, the ignorance on this point is nothing short of pathetic, if one may judge from the popular sea novel that fell into my hands during my stay. The writer evidently dwelt in the usual hotbox that constitutes a Madrid lodging and had not the remotest, wildest notion what thing a sea may be, nor the ability to tell a mainsail from a missionary's mule. But he was a clever man--to have concocted such a yarn and escaped persecution.
Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the congregating. Dinner leisurely finished, the madrileño of high or low degree begins to drift slowly thither. By nine the public benches are taken; by ten one can and must move only with the throng at the accepted pace, or pay a copper to sit in haughty state in one of the now unstacked chairs. Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in from the four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette, languidly unlimbers its instruments, and near eleven falls to work--or play. About the same time there come wandering through the trees, as if drawn here by merest chance, five threadbare blind men, each with a battered violin or horn tucked tenderly under one arm. During the opening number they listen attentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians. Then as the official players pause to roll new cigarettes the sightless ragamuffins take their stand near at hand and strike up a music that more than one city of the western world could do worse than subsidize. Thereafter melody is incessant; and with it the murmur of countless voices, the scrape of leisurely feet on the gravel, the cries of the hawkers of all that may by any chance be sought, and louder and more insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--aged forty to sixty and of both sexes--"El País!" "El Heraldo!" "La Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!"
Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in the afternoon in Madrid. The concert does not end until three and half the babies of the city are playing in the sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when the musicians leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Even did one feel the slightest desire to turn in there is not the remotest possibility of finding one's room less than a sweatbox. The populace shows little inclination to disperse, and though many saunter unwillingly homeward for form's sake, it is not to sleep, for one may still hear chatting and the muffled twang of guitars behind the blinds of the open windows. As for myself, I drifted commonly after the concert into the "Circo Americano" or a zarzuela, though such entertainments demonstrated nothing except how easily the madrileño is amused. Yet even these close early--for Madrid; and rambling gradually into my adopted section, it was usually my fortune to run across a "friend of the house"--of whom more anon--to retire with him to the nearestJuego de Billar, or billiard-hall, there to play the night gray-headed.
The doors of Madrid close at midnight, and neither the madrileño nor his guests have yet reached that stage of civilization where they can be entrusted with their own latch-key. But it is easy for all that to gain admittance. One has only to halt before one's door, clap one's hands soundly three or six or nine or fifteen times, bawl in one's most musical and top-most voice, "Ser-r-r-r-reno!" not forgetting to roll the r like the whir of a broken emery-wheel, and then sit calmly down on the curb and wait. Within a half-hour, or an hour at most, the watchman is almost sure to appear, rattling with gigantic keys, carrying staff and lantern, and greeting the exile with all the compliments of the Spanish season, unlocks, furnishes him a lighted wax taper, wishes him a "good night" and a long day's sleep, and gracefully pockets his two-cent fee.
Theoretically the sereno is supposed to keep order--or at least orderly. But nothing is more noted for its absence in Madrid by night than order. The sereno of the calle San Bernardo showed great liking for the immediate neighborhood of our casa de huéspedes--after I had been admitted. Rare the night--that is, morning--that he did not sit down beneath my window--for my promotion to the third-floor back was postponed until I left the city--with a pair of hackmen or day-hawks and fall to rehearsing in a foghorn-voice the story of his noble past. Twice or thrice I let drop a hint in the form of what water was in my pitcher. But the serenos of Madrid are imperturbable, and water is precious. On each such occasion the romancer moved over some two feet and serenely continued his tale until the rising sun sent him strolling homeward.
"Don Ricardo," of our German boarders, aspired to change from his stool in a banking-house to the bullring. He had taken a course in Madrid's Escuela Taurina and was already testing his prowess each Sunday as a banderillero in the little plaza of Tetuan, a few miles outside the city. In consequence--for "Ricardo" was a companionable youth for all his ragged Spanish--our casa de huéspedes became a rendezvous of lesser lights in the taurine world. Two or three toreros were sure to drop in each evening before we had sipped the last of our wine, to spend an hour or two in informaltertulia. I had not been a week in the city before I numbered among my acquaintances Curdito, Capita de Carmona, Pepete, and Moreno de Alcala, all men whose names have decorated many a ringside poster.
There appeared one evening among the "friends of the house" a young man of twenty, of singularly attractive appearance and personality. Clear-eyed, of lithe yet muscular frame, and a spring-like quickness in every movement, he was noticeable above all for his modest deportment, having barely a touch of that arrogant self-esteem that is so frequently the dominating characteristic of the Spaniard. His speech was the soft, musical Andalusian; his conversation quickly demonstrated him a man of a high rate of intelligence.
Such was Faustino Posadas, bullfighter, already a favorite among the aficionados of Spain, though it is by no means often that a youth of twenty finds himself vested with the red muleta. Son of the spare-limbed old herder who has been keeper for many years of the Tabladas, or bull pastures, of Seville, he had been familiar with the animals and their ways from early childhood. At sixteen he was already a banderillero. A famous espada carried him in his caudrilla to Peru and an accident to a fellow torero gave him the opportunity to despatch his first two bulls in the plaza of Lima. He returned to Spain a full-fledged "novillero" and was rapidly advancing to the rank of graduate espada, with the right to appear before bulls of any age.
Once introduced, Posadas appeared often in the calle San Bernardo; much too often in fact to leave any suspicion that either his friendship for "Don Ricardo" or the charms of our conversation was the chief cause of his coming. A very few days passed before it had become a fixed and accepted custom for him to set out toward nine for the Paseo with the radiant daughter of the house--though mother waddled between, of course, after the dictates of Spanish etiquette. Within a week he was received by the family on the footing of a declared suitor; and of his favor with the señorita there was no room for doubt.
There was always a long hour between the termination of supper and the time when Madrid began its nightly promenade, during which it was natural that our conversation should touch chiefly upon affairs of the ring.
"Don Henrico," asked Capita one evening--for I was known to the company as "Henrico Franco"--"is it true that there are no bullfights in your country?"
"Vaya que gente!" burst out Moreno, when I had at length succeeded in making clear to them our national objections to the sport. "What rubbish! What does it matter if a few old hacks that would soon fall dead of themselves are killed to make sport for the aficionados? As for the bull-- Carajo, hombre! You yourself, if you were in such a rage as the toro, would no more feel the thrust of a sword than the pricking of a gadfly."
Posadas, on the other hand, readily grasped the American point of view. He even admitted that he found the goring of the horses unpleasant and that he would gladly see that feature of the córrida eliminated if there were any other way of tiring the bull before the last act. But for the bull himself he professed no sympathy whatever.
"What would you have us do?" he cried in conclusion. "Spain offers nothing else for a son of the people without political pull than to become torero. Without that we must work as peasants on black bread and a peseta a day."
"As in any other trade," I inquired, "I suppose you enter the ring without any thought of danger, any feeling of fear?"
"No, I don't remember ever being afraid," laughed the Sevillian, "though when Miúra furnishes the stock I like to hear mass before the córrida."
"What are the secrets of success?"
"I know only one," answered Posadas, "and that is no secret. Every move the bull makes shows first in the whites of his eyes. Never for an instant do I take my eyes off his. So it has been my luck not to be once wounded," he concluded, making the sign of the cross.
"Cogidas!" cried Capita, passing a hand over a dull brown welt on his neck. "Caramba! I have five of them, and every one by a cursed miúra. No, I never felt pain, only a cold chill that runs down to your very toes. But afterward--in the hospital! Carajo!"
One would suppose that men engaged in so perilous a calling would take extreme bodily care of themselves. Not a torero among them, however, knew the meaning of "training" as the word is used by our athletes. They drank, smoked--even during the córrida--ate what and when they pleased, and more commonly spent the night strolling in the Paseo with an "amiga" or carousing in a wineshop than sleeping. Whether it is a leaving of the Moor or native to this blear, rocky land, there is much of the fatalist in the Spaniard, especially the Andalusian. He is by nature a gambler; be he torero, beggar, or senator, he is always ready and willing to "take a chance."
"If a man is marked to be killed in the ring he will be killed there," asserted Pepete. "He cannot change his fate by robbing himself of the pleasures of life."
Posadas was engaged to appear in the plaza of Madrid on the first Sunday of our acquaintance. When I descended to the street at three the city was already drifting ringward, a picador in full trim now and then cantering by on his Rozinante--a sight fully as exciting to the populace as the circus parade of our own land. I had reached the edge of the Puerta del Sol when I heard a "Hola, amigo!" behind me and turning, beheld none other than Jesús the Sevillian bearing down upon me with outstretched hand. He had found work at his trade in the city--though not yet a barber apparently.
"And Gásparo?" I asked.
"Perdido, señor! Lost again!" he sighed. "Perhaps he has found a new amiga. But I much more fear he has fallen into the fingers of the police. Mira V., señor. In all the journey we have not been able once to hide ourselves on a freight train. At last, señor, in Castillejo, Gásparo goes mad and swears he will ride once for nothing. With twenty people looking on he climbs a wagon. A man shouts 'thief!' and around the station comes running a guardia civil. I have not been able to find Gásparo since. Señor, I have come to think it is not right to ride on the railroad without a ticket. Gásparo, perhaps, is in prison. But we will meet again when he comes out," he concluded cheerfully, as I turned away.
At the plaza fully twelve thousand were gathered. The córrida was distinguished particularly for its clumsiness, though the fighters, while young, were not without reputation. Falls and bruises were innumerable and the entire performance a chapter of accidents that kept the aficionados in an uproar and gave no small amount of work to the attendant surgeons. Of the three matadores, Serenito, a hulking fellow whose place seemed last of all in the bullring, was gored across the loins by his first bull and forced to abandon his task and fee to the sobresaliente. Then Platerito--"Silver-plated"--a mere whisp of a man, having dedicated to the populace as is the custom in Madrid the death of the fifth bull, gasconaded up to the animal, fell immediately foul of a horn, whirled about like a rag caught on a fly-wheel, and landed on his shoulders fully sixty feet away. To the astonishment even of the aficionados he sprang to his feet as jaunty as ever and duly despatched the animal, though not over handily.
The misfortunes of his fellows served to bring out by contrast the skill of Posadas. Not only did he pass the day unscathed, but killed both his bulls at the first thrust so instantly that the thud of their fall might be heard outside the plaza, how rare a feat only he knows who has watched the hacking and butchering of many a "novillero." Indeed, so pleasing was his work that he was at once engaged, contrary to all precedent, to appear again on the ensuing Sunday.
By that time I had learned enough of the "fine points of the game" to recognize that the Sevillian was approaching already true matador "form," and as I took leave of him next day it was with the conviction that success in his chosen career was as sure as the certainty of soon winning his most cherished reward.
"Vaya, Don Henrico," he laughed as we shook hands. "We shall see each other again. Some day when I go to Mexico or the Americas of the south I shall come by New York and you shall show me all you have told us of."
There are few countries in which it is more difficult to lay out an itinerary that will take in the principal points of interest without often doubling on one's track than Spain. By dint of long calculation and nice adjustment of details I sketched a labyrinthian route that my kilometer-book, together with what walking I should have time for, would cover. As for my check-book there was left exactly three pesetas a day for the remainder of my time in the peninsula.
So one cloudy morning in early August I took train at the Estación del Norte and wound away upward through the gorges of the Guardarrama to Segovia. Only there did I realize that the rumble of Madrid had been absolutely incessant in my ears; the stillness of the ancient city was almost oppressive, even more than in Toledo one felt peculiarly out of the world and a sensation that he must not remain too long lest he be wholly forgotten and lose his place in life's procession.
In the morning I set off by the highway that follows for some miles the great unmortared aqueduct, that chief feature of Segovia, a thing indeed far greater than the town, as if a man's gullet, or his thirst should be larger than himself, so difficult is it for a city to obtain water in this thirsty land. Where the road abandoned the monument it continued across a country brown and sear, with almost the aspect of an American meadow in autumn, steadily rising all but imperceptibly. Well on in the morning I entered a forest, at a side road of which I was joined by two guardias civiles, who marched for an hour with me exchanging information and marveling that I had wandered so far afield. It has been my lot to become well, nay, intimately acquainted with the police of many lands, and I know of none that, as a body, are more nearly what police should be than these civil guards of Spain, to whom is due the suppression of all the old picturesque insecurities of the road. They have neither the bully-ism of our own club-wielders nor the childishness of Asiatic officers. Except in blistering Bailen the bearing of every pair I met--they never travel singly--was such as to win at once the confidence of the stranger and to draw out of him such facts as it is their duty to learn so naturally that it seemed but a mutual exchange of politenesses. There are, no doubt, petty corruptions in so large a body, but in the presence of almost any of them one has a conviction that their first thought is their duty.
The highway ended its climb at noon in La Granja--The Grange--residence of the king in spring and autumn, a town little Spanish in aspect seated in a carefully cropped forest at the base of a thickly wooded mountain. I roamed unchallenged for half the afternoon through the royal park, replete with fountains compared with which those of Versailles are mere water-squirts; playthings that Philip the half-mad accused of costing three million and amusing him three minutes. I was more fortunate, for they cost me nothing and amused me fully half an hour.
After which I picked up the highway again and, winding around the regal village, struck upward into the mountains of Guardarrama. At the hamlet of Valsain I had just paused at the public spring when the third or fourth tramp I had seen on the road in all Spain swung around a bend ahead, marching doggedly northward. As I stooped to drink, a moan and a thud sounded behind me. I turned quickly around to behold the roadster writhing in the middle of the highway, the gravel of which had cut and gashed one side of his face. The simple villagers, swarming wide-eyed out of their houses, would have it at first that he was my companion and I to blame for his mishap. He bore patent signs of months on the road, being burned a tawny brown in garb and face by the sun that was evidently the author of his misfortune. For a time the village stood open-mouthed about him, the brawny housewives now and then giving vent to their sympathy and helpless perplexity by a long-drawn "ay de mi!" I suggested water, and a dozen women, dashing away with the agility of middle-aged cows, brought it in such abundance that the victim was all but drenched to the skin before I could drive them off. He revived a bit and while a woman clumsily washed the blood and gravel from his face, I addressed him in all the languages I could muster, for he was evidently no Spaniard. The only response was a few inarticulate groans, and when he had been carried to a grassy slope in the shade, I went on, knowing him in kind if awkward hands.
A half-perpendicular hour passed by, and I seemed to have left Spain behind. The road was toiling sharply upward through deep forests of evergreen, cool as an Alpine valley, opening now and then to offer a vista of thick treetops and a glimpse of red-tiled villages; a scene as different from sterile, colorless, sunken-cheeked Castille as could well be imagined. Nor did the dusk descend so swiftly in these upper heights. The sun had set when I reached the summit at six thousand feet and, passing through the Puerto de Navacerrada, started swiftly downward in the thickening gloom; but it was some time before the night had settled down in earnest.
I had marched well into it when I was suddenly startled by a sound of muffled voices out of the darkness ahead. I moved forward noiselessly, for this lonely pass has many a story to tell. A dim light shone through what appeared to be a window. I shouted for admittance and a moment later found myself in the hovel of a peon caminero.
Within, besides the family, were two educated Spaniards, one indeed who had been a secretary in the American Legation up to the outbreak of the recent war. When he had been apprised of my mode of travel and my goal, he stared wonderingly at me for a moment and then stepped out with me into the night. Marching a few paces down the highway until we had rounded some obstruction, he pointed away into the void.
"Do you see those lights?" he asked.
Far away and to the right, so far and so high in the heavens that they seemed constellations, twinkled three clusters of lights, almost in a row but far separated one from another.
"The third and farthest," said my companion, "is El Escorial; and your time is well-chosen, for to-morrow is the day of Saint Lawrence, her patron saint."
We returned to the hut, where the wife of the peon was moved to cook me a bowl of garbanzos and spread me a blanket on the stone floor. In the morning the sharply descending highway carried me quickly down the mountain, and by sunrise I was back once more in the familiar Castille. It was verging on noon when, surmounting a sterile rise, I caught sight of the dome and towers of the Escorial. A roadside stream, of which the water was lukewarm, removed the grime of travel, and I climbed sweltering into the village of Escorial de Arriba, pitched on a jagged shoulder of the calcined mountain high above the monastery.
Spain is wont to show her originality and indifference to the convenience of travelers, and on this, the anniversary of the grilling of him in whose honor it was built, the great monastery was closed for the only time during the year. I experienced no regret, however, for the vast gloomy structure against its background of barren, rocky hills had far too much the aspect of some dank prison to awaken any desire to enter. Least impressive of famous buildings, the Escorial is certainly the most oppressive. There is poetry, inspiration in many a building, in the Taj Mahal, the Cathedral of Cologne; but not in the Escorial. It suggests some frowning, bulky bourgeois of forty whose mother thinks him and who would fain believe himself one of the most poetic and spiritual of men.
I wandered away the day in the town, drifting in the afternoon down into the village "de Abajo." There, in the multitude about the stone-pile of a bullring, I ran across Curdito in festive garb. He was scheduled to kill all three bulls of the day's córrida, but in spite of his urgent invitation I felt in no mood to sit out the blistering afternoon on a bare stone slab of this rough-and-tumble plaza.
El Escorial was so overrun with visitors to her annual celebration that not a lodging of any sort was to be had in either the upper or the lower village. The discovery brought me no shock, for a night out of doors I neither dreaded nor regretted. But as I sauntered at dusk down past the great building into the flanking "woods of Herrera," I could not but wonder how those travelers who bewail the accommodations of the "only possible hotel" would have met the situation.
Behind the monastery extends a broad, silent forest, not over thick, and beneath the trees squat bushes and brown heather. I spread the day's copy of theHeraldobetween two shrubs and, stretching out at my ease, fell to munching the lunch I had bought in the village market. Let the circumstances be right and I know few more genuine joys than to sleep the night out of doors. Lie down in the open while a bit of daylight still lingers, or awaken there when the dawn has come, and there is a feeling of sordidness, mixed with the ludicrous, a sense of being an outcast prone on the common earth. But while the night, obscuring all details, hangs its canopy over the world there are few situations more pleasing.
When I had listened a while to the panting of the August night I fell asleep. For weeks past I had been viewing too many famous spots, perhaps, had been delving too constantly into the story of Spain, My constant use of Castilian, too, had borne fruit; English words no longer intruded even on my inner meditations. Was it possible also that the market lunch had been too heavy, or the nearness of the gloomy monastery too oppressive? At any rate I fell to dreaming.
At first there passed a procession of all Spain,--arrieros, peasants, Andalusian maidens, toreros, priests, Jesús the tramp, a chanting water-seller, merchants and beggars; close followed by two guardias civiles who looked at me intently as they passed. Then suddenly in their place Moors of every garb and size were dancing about me. They seemed to be celebrating a victory and to be preparing for some Mohammedan sacrifice. A mullah advanced upon me, clutching a knife. I started to my feet, a distant bell boomed heavily, and the throng vanished like a puff of smoke.
Away off above, in a hollow in the gaunt mountain, I made out gradually the form of a man sitting pensive, elbows on knees, gazing dark-browed down upon me. He was in royal robes, and all at once he seemed to start, to grow in size, and a line across his breast expanded to the letters "Felipe II." Larger and larger he grew until he overtowered the mountain itself; then slowly, scowlingly he rose and strode down upon me. A women joined him, a scrawny woman who laid a hand inertly in his, and I recognized Bloody Mary, who seemed thus in an instant to have leaped over the seas from her island kingdom to join her gloomy husband.
In rapid succession new figures appeared,--Herrera first, a torpid, lugubrious man strangely like the building he has left behind; then quickly a multitude, through which strolled a man whose crown bore the name "Pedro," running his sword with a chuckle of devilish laughter through any that came within easy reach, young or old, asleep or awake. Of a sudden there stalked forth from nowhere a lean, deep-eyed man of fifty, a huge parchment volume under one arm, an almost cynical, yet indulgent smile on his countenance; and as if to prove who he was there raced down over the mountain a man not unlike him in appearance, astride a caricature of a horse, and behind him a dumpy, wondering peasant ambling on an ass. The cavalier sprang suddenly from his hack and fell affectionately on the shoulder of the parchment-bearer, then bounding back into the saddle he charged straight for Felipe, who, stepping to one side, flung, backhanded, Mary his wife far out of sight over the mountain.
A sound drew my attention to another side. Across the plain was marching with stately tread a long file of Moors, each carrying in one hand his head, by the hair.
"Los Abencerrajes!" I seemed to shout; and almost before it was uttered there remained only Felipe and behind him a score of indistinct forms. He waved a hand toward me and turned his back, and the company moved down upon me unlimbering a hundred instruments of torture. Distant bells were tolling mournfully. A priest advanced holding aloft a crucifix and chanting in sepulchral voice:
"The hour of heretics sounds."
Louder and funereally rang the dismal bells; the torturers drew near; I struggled to rise to my feet--and awoke.
The bells of the monastery were booming out over the night.
CHAPTER XI
CRUMBLING CITIES
It was well along in the next afternoon that I descended at the station of Avila and climbed a long dusty mile into the city. A scent of the dim, half-forgotten past hovered over the close-walled, peculiarly garbed place. When I had made a circuit of her ancient wall, through which her no less time-worn cathedral thrusts its hips, I drifted down into the dusty vega below, where in the church of Santo Tomás sleeps the dead hope of "los reyes católicos." If the sculptor be trustworthy the prince would have been an intelligent, kindly lad, even though his martial valor might never have rivaled that of his stout-hearted mother. Returned to the city, I strolled for an hour along the lofty Paséo del Rastro, watching the sun sink red behind the serrated jumble of mountains on the far western horizon, beyond which lay my next stopping-place; and so to bed in the Posada de la Estrella amid the munching asses and snoring arrieros.
Avila is connected with Salamanca by rail, but the route forms a sharp angle with its apex many miles to the north. I had decided, therefore, to walk. Swinging down through the western city gate and across the babbling Adaja by the aged stone bridge, I clambered again upward to where a huge stone cross invites to a rest in its shade and a final retrospect of crumbling Avila and her many-turreted, constraining wall. An easy two-days' walk lay before me. For had not Heir Baedeker, so seldom in error as to plain facts, announced the distance as thirty-five miles?
As I wended on up the hillside, however, I was suddenly stricken profane by a stone sign-post rising before me with the dismal greeting:
"Salamanca 99 kilómetres."
Herr Baedeker was wrong by a little matter of thirty miles.
But I had set the time of my entrance into Salamanca; delay would bring havoc to my delicately adjusted itinerary. I doubled my pace.
The way led through a country as savage of aspect as any in Spain, waterless, dusty, glaring, overspread with huge rocks tumbled pell-mell as if the Mason of the universe had thrown here the materials left over from His building. By afternoon a few lean farms began to crowd their way in between the rocks, now and then a sturdy, thick-set tree found place, and over all nature hovered great clouds of locusts whose refrain reminded how euphonious is the Spaniard's name for what we dub "dog days,"--"canta la chicharra--the locust sings." The inhabitants of the region seemed somewhat more in fortune's favor than the rest of the peninsula. Passing peasants, though rare, had none a hungry look; their carts were fancifully carved and painted both on body and wheels, while the trappings of their cattle were decorative in the extreme.
All a summer day I tramped forward over hill and hollow toward the great jagged range, the hardy trees dying out, the fields growing in size and number, but the sierra seeming to hold ever as far aloof. Beyond a small withered forest in which were roaming flocks of brown goats, I climbed a steady five miles to a summit village exhibiting every outward sign of poverty and most fittingly named "Salvadios--God save us." The keeper of its one quasi-public house deigned after long argument to set before me a lame excuse for supper, but loudly declined to furnish lodging. I withdrew, therefore, to a threshing-floor across the way, heaped high with still unbroken bundles of wheat, and put in a shiveringly cold night--so great is the contrast between the seething plains by day and this hilltop bitten by every wind--not once falling into a sound sleep for the gaunt, savage curs that prowled about me.
At dawn I was already afoot and three hours later entered the city of Penaranda, in the outskirts of which a fine plaza de toros was building, but within all the confines of which was no evidence of school, library, nor indeed of restaurant. I contented myself with a bit of fruit and trudged on. This may not, perhaps, have been the hottest day of all that Spanish summer, but it bore certainly all the earmarks thereof. The earth lay cracked and blistered about me, the trees writhing with the heat, the rays rising from the rocky soil like a dense stage-curtain of steam. In a shriveled and parched pueblo of mud huts, exactly resembling the villages of Palestine, I routed out a kindly old woman for a foreshortened lunch; and then on again in the inferno, choking fields of grain and vineyards soon becoming numerous on either hand. The wise husbandmen, however, had sought refuge, and in all the grilling landscape was not a human being to be seen, save and except a sweat-dripping pedestrian from foreign parts straining along the scorching highway.
This swung at length to the right, swooped down through a river that had not a drop of water, and staggering to the top of an abrupt knoll, showed me far off, yet in all distinctness, a rich reddish-brown city gathered together on a low hilltop and terminating in glinting spires. It was Salamanca; and of all the cities I have come thus upon unheralded and from the unpeopled highway none can rival her in richness of color, like ripe old wine, a city that has grown old gracefully and with increasing beauty. So fascinating the sight that I sat down beneath the solitary tree by the way to gaze upon it--and to swing half round the circuit of the shrub as the sun drove the scanty shadow before it.
But I was still far off the golden-brown city and, setting slowly onward in the descending evening, I all but encircled the place before the carretera, coming upon the ancient puente romano, clambered upward into its unrivaled Blaza Mayor.
Just back of this, four stories above the Plaza de la Verduga, or Place of the Green Stuff, lives a widow whose little spare chamber is let in the winter season to some unpretentious student of the now unpretentious university. I engaged this, together with what of physical nourishment should be reasonable, at three pesetas a day. As I took possession, the daughter of the hostess, a muchacha of eight, peered in upon me hugging a doll under one arm.
"Qué muñeca más bonita!" I hazarded, which turned out to be unwise, for the homage so overcame her diffidence that she came in not only to offer the information that my complexion strangely resembled that of a lobster in the salmantino museum, but such a fund of further information that it was long before I had inveigled her outside the door and, throwing myself on the bed, slept the clock round.
As in many another city it had been my fortune to reach Salamanca on the eve of one of her great festivals. Indeed, that must be a foresighted traveler who can journey through Spain without being frequently caught up in the whirlpool of some local fiesta. The excuse this time was Assumption Day. The festivities within the city walls offered nothing of extraordinary, being chiefly confined to a band concert in the central plaza. Richer by far would be the richest city of the earth could she purchase and transplant into her own midst the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, with its small forest of palms, the rich brown medallioned façades and surrounding colonnades beneath which the salmantino is wont to stroll, la salmantina on his arm, while the band plays in the flower-shrouded stand in its center. Salamanca might sell, too, in spite of her boast that it is the finest in Spain, being poorer than the proverbial church mouse, were she not also Spanish and prouder than she is poor.
The real fiesta, however, took the form of a bullfight that had a character all its own. Salamanca, as I have hinted, is no longer a city of wealth. Indeed, those occasions are rare in these modern days when she can indulge in a round of the national sport, even though she possesses one of the largest bullrings in Spain. On this great holiday, however, the city fathers had decided that nothing within the bounds of reason was too good for the recreating of Salamanca's long unfeasted children. A full-sized bullfight would, to be sure, have far overstepped the bounds above mentioned. But after long debate and deep investigation it had been concluded that a córrida with four bulls, no horses, one real matador, and seats of all shades and distinctions at one peseta each might be conceded.
With this unlimited choice of vantage-points at my own price I went out early to the plaza and picked my place in the sombra in what was evidently a section reserved for the guardia civil; for before long the guards, in full uniform and their three-cornered hats, began to gather about me, first in pairs, then in groups, then in swarms, until I was wholly, shut in and surrounded by guardias civiles like a dandelion in the center of a bed of tulips. Far from resenting my intrusion, however, if such it was, they initiated me into their order with botas and cigarettes and included me in their conversation and merriment during the rest of the day.
The entertainment began at four. With that exception, however, it had few points of similarity with the regulation córrida. The procession entered, fully six men in torero garb--though that of two or three of them fitted like amateur theatrical costumes--followed by two horsemen, two, in their shirt-sleeves, as was also señor el alcalde in his box. The key thrown, the fight began; with the elimination of the one unquestionably unpleasant feature,--the killing of horses. Even aged hacks cost money and, as I have already more than once suggested, money is a rare commodity in Salamanca. When the bull had been worried a bit with the cloaks, the banderilleros proceeded at once to plant their darts. The professional matador, a young man rejoicing in the name of Trueno--"Thunder"--had, therefore, a far more difficult task than usual, for more than anything else it is the venting of his rage and strength on the blindfolded steeds that tires the bull, and on this occasion it was a still wild and comparatively fresh animal which the diestro was called upon to face. He despatched his three allotted bulls, however, without accident and to the vociferous satisfaction of the audience, which filled even at the low price only a bit more than the shaded section. It was not, as the guardia beside me was at some pains to explain, that there were not salmantinos quite sufficient to pack the plaza to overflowing, but that there were not pesetas enough in town to go round. In the throng, too, were no small number of peasants from all the widely surrounding country, some in the old dress with knee breeches.
But to touch upon the unusual features of the córrida. As a part of the worrying of the second bull a chulo placed a chair in the ring and, standing upon it with neither weapon nor cloak, awaited the charge. When the bull had all but reached him he sprang suddenly into the air, the animal dashed under him and, falling upon the unoffending article of furniture, dissolved it thoroughly into its component parts and scattered them broadcast about the arena.
The most nerve-thrilling performance, however, that it was my privilege to see in all the devil-may-care land of Spain was the feat that followed immediately on the death of the chair-wrecker. It was the "star attraction" of the day and was announced on the posters in all the Spaniard's richness of superlatives--and he is a born and instinctive writer of "ads." Clinging as closely as possible to the eloquent phraseology of the original the announcement may be set forth in near-English as follows:
"Various are the chances (tricks) which are executed in the different plazas of Spain inside the taurine art, but none that has more called attention than that which is practised by JOSÉ VILLAR son of the memorable matador (killer, murderer) of bulls Villarillo who"--not father Illo, who has left off all earthly sport, but son José--"locating himself in the center of the arena and placed with the head towards below and the feet by above imploring the public to maintain the most impressive silence during the risk (fate) consummates the trick (chance) of Tancredo; very well, this Management not reflecting on (sparing) either expense or sacrifice has contracted with him in order that he shall fulfill (lift, pull off;sic.) this trick (risk) on the third bull to the end that the salmantinos shall know it, with which program this Management believes to have filled to the full the desires of the aficionados (rooters, fans, amateurs)."
The second bull, therefore, having been ignominiously dragged to oblivion and the butcher-shop, and the blood patches of the arena resanded, there sallied forth from the further gate a small, athletic man of thirty-five or so, hatless--and partly hairless--dressed from head to foot in the brightest red, of a material so thin that the movement of his every muscle could be plainly seen beneath it. He was entirely empty-handed. He marched with sprightly stride across the ring and, bowing low to the alcalde in his box above, addressed to the public a warning and an entreaty to maintain the utmost silence during the "consummation of the risk." An assistant then appeared, carrying a small wooden box with a piece of gas-pipe six feet long fixed upright in the top of it. This Villar placed exactly in the center of the ring, a hundred yards or more in every direction from the barrier. Across the gas-pipe, near the top, he fastened a much shorter piece, thus forming a cross. On the box he placed a circular roll of cloth, stood on his head thereon, hooked his toes over the cross-piece, waved a hand gaily to the public, and folded his arms. Every other torero stepped outside the ring, and the toril gate swung open.
A wild snort, and there plunged into the arena as powerful and savage a brute as it had ever yet been my lot to see. For an instant he stood motionless, blinking in the blinding sunlight. Then suddenly catching sight of the statue flaming with the hated color, he shot away toward it with the speed of an express-train--a Spanish express at least--until, a bare three feet from it, he stopped instantly stone-still by thrusting out his forelegs like a Western broncho, then slowly, gingerly tiptoed up to the motionless figure, sniffed at it, and turned and trotted away.
The public burst forth in a thunderclap of applause. Villar got right end up as calmly and gracefully as a French count in a drawing-room, laid a hand on his heart, and smiling serenely, bowed once, twice, th---- and just then a startled roar went up from the tribunes, for the bull had suddenly turned and, espying the man in red, dashed at him with lowered horns and a bellow of anger.
There is nowhere registered, so far as my investigations carry, the record of José Villar, son of Villarillo, in the hundred-yard dash. But this much may be asserted with all assurance, that it has in it nothing of that slow, languid, snail-like pace of the ten-second college champion. Which was well; for some two inches below his flying heels, as he set a new record likewise in the vaulting of barriers, the murderous horns crashed into the oak plank tablas with the sound of a freight collision and an earnestness that gave work to the plaza carpenters for some twenty minutes to come.
Therein Villar was more fortunate than the Mexican Tancredo, inventor of the "suerte," and for whom it was named. Tancredo, like Dr. Guillotin, was overreached by his own invention, for while his record for the hundred was but a second or two less than that of Villar, it was just this paltry margin that made him, on the day next following his last professional appearance, the chief though passive actor in a spectacle of quite a different character.
The "Suerte de Tancredo" has never won any vast amount of popularity in Spain, except with the spectators. Toreros in general manifest a hesitation akin to bashfulness in thus seeking the plaudits of the multitude. By reason of which diffidence among his fellows, José, son of Villarillo, memorable matador de toros, pockets after each such recreation a sum that might not seem overwhelming to an American captain of industry or to a world-famous tenor, but one which the average Spaniard cannot name in a single breath.
Salamanca's day of amusement did not, however, by any means end here. Beneath the name of "Thunder," the professional matador, there was printed with equal bombast that of FERNANDO MARTÍN. Now Fernando was quite evidently a salmantino butt, a tall gawky fellow whose place in the society of Salamanca was apparently very similar to that of those would-be or has-been baseball players to be found vegetating in many of our smaller towns. Like them, too, Fernando was in all probability wont to hover about the pool-rooms and dispensing-parlors of his native city, boasting of his untested prowess at the national game. That his talents might not, therefore, forever remain hidden under a wineglass, and also, perhaps, because his services might be engaged at five hundred pesetas less than the five hundred that a professional sobresaliente would have demanded, the thoughtful city fathers had caused him to be set down on the program, likewise in striking type, as "SUBSTITUTE WITH NECESSITY (CON NECESIDAD) TO KILL THE FOURTH BULL."
It was this "necesidad" that worked the undoing of Fernando Martín. When the customary by-play had been practised on the fourth animal, enter Fernando with bright red muleta, false pigtail, glinting sword, and anything but the sure-of-one's-self countenance of a professional espada. He faced the brute first directly in front of the block of guardias civiles, and the nearest he came to laying the animal low at the first thrust was to impale on a horn and sadly mutilate a sleeve of his own gay and rented jacket. The crowd jeered, as crowds will the world over at the sight of a man whose father and mother and even grandfather they have known for years trying to prove himself the equal of men imported from elsewhere. Fernando advanced again, maneuvering for position, though with a peculiar movement of the knees not usual among toreros, and which was all too visible to every eye in the hooting multitude. Trueno, the professional, stuck close at his side in spite of the clamorous demand of the public that he leave the salmantino to play out his own game unhampered. Martín hazarded two or three more nerveless thrusts, with no other damage, thanks to the watchful eye and cloak of Trueno, than one toss of ten feet and a bleeding groin. By this time the jeering of his fellow-townsmen had so overshadowed the tyro's modicum of good sense that he turned savagely on his protector and ordered him to leave the ring. Fortunately Trueno was not of the stuff to take umbrage at the insults of a foolish man in a rage, or the population of Salamanca would incontestably have been reduced by one before that merry day was done.
The utmost length of time between the entrance of a professional matador for the last act and the death of the bull is four or five minutes. Fernando Martín trembled and toiled away ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Slowly, but certainly and visibly his bit of courage oozed away; the peculiar movement of his knees grew more and more pronounced. No longer daring to meet the bull face to face, he skulked along the barrier until the animal's tail was turned and, dashing past him at full speed, stabbed backward at his neck as he ran, to the uproarious merriment of the spectators. Trueno saved his life certainly a score of times. At last, when the farce had run close upon fifty minutes, a signal from the alcalde sent across the arena the sharp note of a bugle, twocabestros, or trained steers were turned into the ring, and the bull, losing at once all belligerency, trotted docilely away with them. The star of Fernando Martín, would-be matador de toros, was forever set, and if he be not all immune to ridicule his native city surely knows him no more.
It is law that no bull that has once entered the ring shall live. Curious to know what was to be the fate of this animal, I sprang over the barrier and hurried across to the gate by which he had disappeared. There I beheld a scene that forever dispelled any notion that the task of the matador is an easy one, however simple it may look from the tribunes. The bull was threshing to and fro within a small corral, bellowing with rage and lashing the air with his tail. It required six men and a half-hour of time to lasso and drag him to the fence. With a hundred straining at the rope his head was drawn down under the gate, a man struck him several blows with a sledge, and another, watching his opportunity, swung his great navaja and laid wide open the animal's throat.
It was late when, having mingled for some time with the country folk dancing on the sandy plain before the plaza, I returned to the city for my bundle and repaired to the station. A twelve-hour ride was before me. For I had decided to explore a territory where even the scent of tourists is unknown,--the northwest province of Galicia.
The train that I boarded at eleven was crowded with countrymen returning from the day's festival, a merry but in no sense intoxicated company, in which I saw my first wooden-shod Galicians. The car was, for once, of the American pattern--though of Spanish width--with thirty seats each large enough for three persons. The brakeman, too, who stood lantern on arm in the open door, bore an unusual resemblance to an American "shack."
A dozen men were standing in the aisle, but to my surprise one seat near the center of the car seemed to be unoccupied. When I reached it, however, I found a priest stretched out on his back, his hands clasped over his paunch, snoring impressively. I carried a protest to the brakeman and with a snort he swooped down upon the sleeper. At sight of him, however, he recoiled.
"Carajo!" he cried. "Es un padre! I could n't disturb his reverence."
I stooped and touched the monopolist on the shoulder, being in no mood to remain standing all night. Moreover, I had long been curious to know the Spaniard's attitude toward a man who should treat a priest as an ordinary human being. "His reverence" grunted. I touched him again. His snore lost a beat or two and began once more. I shook him more forcibly. He opened his blood-shot eyes, snorted "Huh!" so much like a certain monopolist of the animal kingdom that even the passengers about me laughed at the resemblance--and fell again to snoring. I sat down gently on his fat legs and, when he kicked me off, confiscated a place. He sat up with the look of a man whose known world has suddenly crumbled about his ears and glared at me with bulging eyes a full two minutes, while over the faces of the onlookers flitted a series of winks and smiles.
He was just huddling himself up again in the two-thirds of the seat that remained to him when the door opened and Trueno, the matador, his littlecoletapeeping out from beneath his hat, his sword-case under one arm, entered and, spying the extra place, sat down in it with scant ceremony. We fell to talking. The torero was a jovial, explosive, devil-may-care fellow who looked and dressed his character well. The priest slunk off somewhere in the thickest hours and his place was taken by a peasant who had been standing near me since leaving Salamanca. When he found opportunity to break into the conversation he addressed me with an amused smile:
"You are not then a Catholic, señor?"
"No."
"Ah! A socialist!" he cried with assurance.
For to the masses of southern Europe socialist and non-Catholic are synonymous.
"I doubt, señor," I observed, "whether you yourself are a Catholic."
"Cómo, señor!" he cried, raising his hands in a comical gesture of quasi-horror. "I, a cristino viejo, no Catholic!"
"Do you go to church and do what your cura commands?"
"What nonsense!" he cried, using a still more forcible term. "Who does? My wife goes now and then to confession. I go to church, señor, to be baptized, married, and buried."
"Why go then?"
"Caramba!" he gasped. "How else shall a man be buried, married, and baptized?"
Toward morning I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by the extraordinary sensation of feeling cold. Dawn was touching the far horizon. The train was straining upward through a sharply rising country. As the sun rose we came in sight of Astorga, standing drearily on her bleak hilltop, and in memory of Gil Blas and for the unlimbering of my legs I alighted and climbed into the town. It proved as uninteresting as any in Spain, and before the morning was old I was again riding northwestward. Soon there came an utter change of scene; tunnels grew unaccountable, the railroad winding its way doggedly upward through a wild, heavily wooded mountain region that had little in common with familiar Spanish landscapes. In mid-afternoon I dismounted at the station of Lugo, the capital of Galicia.