CHAPTER XIX.

BULL OF CRUSADE.

Any account of Spanish doctors without a death, would be dull as a blank day with fox-hounds, although the medical man, differing from the sportsman, dislikes being in at it. He, the moment the fatal sisters three are running into their game, slips out, and leaves the last act to the clergyman: hence the Spanish saying, “When the priest begins, the physician ends.” It is related in the history of Don Quixote, that no sooner did the barber feel the poor knight’s wrist, than he advised him to attend to his soul and send for his confessor; and now, when a Castilian hidalgo takes to his bed, his friends pursue much the same course,nor does the catastrophe often differ. Lord Bacon, great in wise saws and instances, prayed that his death might come from Spain, because then it would be long on the journey; but he was not aware that the gentlemen in black formed an exception to the proverbial procrastination and dilatoriness of their fellow countrymen. As patients are soon dispatched, the law[12]of the land subjects every physician to a fine of ten thousand maravedis, who fails after his first visit to prescribe confession; the chief object in sickness being, as the preamble states, to cure the soul; and so it is in Italy, where Gregory XVI. issued in 1845 three decrees; one to forbid railroads, another to prohibit scientific meetings, and a third to order all medical men to cease to attend invalids who had not sent for the priest and communicated after the third visit. In Spain, the first question asked in our time of the sick man was, not whether he truly repented of his sins, but whether he had got the Bull; and if the reply was in the negative, or his old nurse had omitted to send out and buy one, the last sacraments were denied to the dying wretch.

NECESSITY OF THE BULL.

One Word on this wonderful Bull, that disarms death of its sting, and which, although few of our readers may ever have heard of it, plays a far more important part in the Peninsula than the quadruped does in the arena. Fastings are nowhere more strictly enjoined than here, where Lent represents the Ramadan of the Moslem. The denials have been mitigated to those faithful who have good appetites, by the paternal indulgence of their holy father at Rome, who, in consideration that it was necessary to keep the Spanish crusaders in fighting condition in order more effectually to crush the infidel, conceded to Saint Ferdinand the permission that his army might eat meat rations during Lent, provided there were any, for, to the credit of Spanish commissariats in general, few troops fast more regularly and religiously. The auspicious day on which the arrival is proclaimed of this welcome bull that announces dinner, is celebrated by bells merry as at a marriage feast; in the provincial cities mayors and corporations go to cathedral in what is called state, to the wonder of the mob and amusement of their betters at the resurrection of quiz coaches, the robes, maces, and obsolete trappings, by which these shadows of a former power and dignity hope to mark individual and collective insignificancy. A copy of this precious Bull cannot of course be had for nothing, and as it must be paid for, and in ready money, it forms one of the certain branches of public income. Although the proceeds ought to be expended on crusading purposes, Ferdinand VII., the Catholic King, and the only sovereign in possession of such a revenue, never contributed one mite towards the Christian Greeks in their recent struggle against the Turkish unbelievers.

DEATH-BED IN SPAIN

These bulls, or rather paper-money notes, are prepared with the greatest precautions, and constituted one of the most profitable articles of Spanish manufacture; a maritime war with England was dreaded, not so much from regard to the fasting transatlantic souls, as from the fear of losing, as Dr. Robertson has shown, the sundry millions of dollars and silver dross remitted from America in exchange for these spiritual treasures. They were printed at Seville, at the Dominican convent, thePorta cœli; but Soult, who now it appears is turning devotee, burnt down this gate of heaven, with its passports, and the presses. The bulls are only good for the year during which they are issued; after twelve months they become stale and unprofitable. There is then, says Blanco White, and truly, for we have often seen it, “a prodigious hurry to obtain new ones by all those who wish well to their souls, and do not overlook the ease and comfort of their stomachs.” A fresh one must be annually taken out, like a game-certificate, before Spaniards venture to sport with flesh or fowl, and they have reason to be thankful that it does not cost three pounds odd: for the sum ofdos reales, or less than sixpence, man, woman, and child may obtain the benefit of clergy and cookery; but evil betides the uncertificated poacher, treadmills for life are a farce, perdition catches his soul. His certificate is demanded by the keeper of conscience when he is caught in the trap of sickness, and if without one, his conviction is certain; he cannot plead ignorance of the law, for a postscript and condition is affixed to all notices of jubilees, indulgences, and other purgatorial benefits, which are fixed on the church doors; and the language is as courteous and peremptory as in our popular assessed tax-paper—“Sehade tener la bula:” youmusthave the bull; if you expect to derive any relief from these relaxations in purgatory, which all Spaniards most particularly do: hence the commonphrase used by any one, when committing some little peccadillo in other matters,tengo mi bula para todo—I have got my bull, my licence to do any thing. The possession of this document acts on all fleshly comforts like soda on indigestion, indeed it neutralizes everything except heresy. As it is cheap, a Protestant resident, albeit he may not quite believe in its saving effects, will do well to purchase one for the sake of the peace of mind of his weaker brethren, for in this religion of forms and outer observances, more horror is felt by rigid Spaniards, at seeing an Englishman eating meat during a fast, than if he had broken all the ten commandments. The sums levied from the nation for these bulls is very large, although they are diminished before finally paid into the exchequer; some of the honey gathered by so many bees will stick to their wings, and the place of chief commissioner of the Bula is a better thing than that in the Excise or Customs of unbelieving countries.

To return to the dying man: if he has the bull, the host is brought to him with great pomp; the procession is attended by crowds who bear crosses, lighted candles, bells and incense; and as the chamber is thrown open to the public, the ceremony is accompanied by multitudes of idlers. The spectacle is always imposing, as it must be, considering that the incarnate Deity is believed to be present. It is particularly striking on Easter Sunday, when the host is taken to all the sick who have been unable to communicate in the parish church. Then the priest walks either under a gorgeous canopy, or is mounted in the finest carriage in the town; and while all as he passes kneel to the wafer which he bears, he chuckles internally at his own reality of power over his prostrate subjects; the line of streets are gaily decorated as for the triumphal procession of a king: the windows are hung with velvets and tapestries, and the balconies filled with the fair sex arrayed in their best, who shower sweet flowers down on the procession just at the moment of its passage, and sweeter smiles during all the rest of the morning on their lovers below, whose more than divided adoration is engrossed by female divinities.

BURIAL DRESSES.

To die without confession and communication is to a Spaniard the most poignant of calamities, as he cannot be saved while he is taught that there is in these acts a preserving virtue of their own, independent of any exertions on his part. The host is given whenhuman hopes are at an end, and the heat, noise, confusion, and excitement, seldom fail to kill the already exhausted patient. Then when life’s idle business at a gasp is o’er, the body is laid out in acapilla ardiente, or an apartment prepared as a chapel, by taking out the furniture; where the family is rich, a room on the ground floor is selected, in which a regular altar is dressed up, and rows of large candles lighted placed around the body; the public is then allowed to enter, even in the case of the sovereign: thus we beheld Ferdinand VII. laid out dead and full dressed with his hat on his head, and his stick in his hand. This public exhibition is a sort of coroner’s inquest; formerly, as we have often seen, the body was clad in a monk’s dress, with the feet naked and the hands clasped over the breast; the sepulchral shadow then thrown over the dead and placid features by the cowl, seldom failed to raise a solemn undefinable feeling in the hearts of spectators, speaking, as it did, a language to the living which could not be misunderstood.

The woollen dresses of the mendicant orders were by far the most popular, from the idea that, when old, they had become too saturated with the odour of sanctity for the vile nostrils of the evil one; and as a tattered dress often brought more than half-a-dozen new ones, the sale of these old clothes was a benefit alike to the pious vendor and purchaser; those of St. Francis were preferred, because at his triennial visits to purgatory, he knows his own, and takes them back with him to heaven; hence Milton peopled his shadowy limbo with wolves in sheep’s clothing:—

—— “who, to be sure of Paradise,Dying put on the robes of Dominick,Or in Franciscan think to pass unseen.”

BURIAL PLACES.

Women in our time were often laid out in nuns’ dresses, wearing also the scapulary of the Virgin of Carmel, which she gave to Simon Stock, with the assurance that none who died with it on, should ever suffer eternal torments. The general adoption of these grave fashions induced an accurate foreigner to remark, that no one ever died in Spain except nuns and monks. In this hot country, burial goes hand in hand with death, and it is absolutely necessary from the rapidity with which putrefaction comes on. The last offices are performed in somewhat an indecent manner: formerly the interment took place in churches, or in the yards nearthem, a custom which from hygeian reasons is now prohibited. Public cemeteries, which give at least 4 per cent. interest, have been erected outside the towns, in which long lines of catacombs gape greedily for those occupants who can pay for them, while a wide ditch is opened every day for those who cannot. In thiscampo santo, or holy field, death levels all ranks, which seems hard on those great families who have built and endowed chapels to secure a burial among their ancestors. They however raised no objections to the change of law, nor have ever much troubled themselves about the dilapidated sepulchres and crumbling effigies of their “grandsires cut in alabaster;” the real opposition arose from the priests, who lost their fees, and thereupon assured their flocks, that a future resurrection was anything but certain to bodies committed into such new-fangled depositories.

Be that as it may, the corpse in its slight coffin is carried out, followed by the male relations, and is then put into its niche without further form or prayer. Ladies who die soon after marriage, and before the bridal hours have danced their measure, are sometimes buried in their wedding dresses, and covered with flowers, the dying injunctions of Shakspere’s Queen Catherine:—

“When I am dead, good wench,Let me be used with honour; strew me o’erWith maiden flowers, that all the world may knowI was a chaste wife to my grave.”

At such funerals the coffin is opened in the catacomb, to gratify the indecent curiosity of the crowd; the dress is next day discussed all over the town, and theentierroor funeral is pronounced to bemuy lucidoor very brilliant; but life in Spain is a jest, and these things show it. The place assigned for children who die under seven years of age lies apart from that of the adults; their early death is held in Spain to be rather a matter of congratulation than of grief, since those whom the gods love die young; their epitaphs tell a mixed tale of joy and sorrow.El parvulo fue arrebatado á la gloria, the little one was snatched up into Paradise:—

“There is beyond the sky a heaven of joy and love,And holy children, when they die, go to that world above.”

BURIAL OF THE POOR.

Yet nature will not be put aside, and many a mother have we seen, loitering alone near the graves, adorning them with rosesand plucking up weeds which have no business to grow there; the little corpses are carried to the tomb by little children of the same age, clad in white, and are strewed with flowers short-lived as themselves, sweets to the sweet. The parents return home yearning after the lost child—its cradle is empty, its piteous moan is heard no more, its playthings remain where it left them, and recall the cruel gap which grief cannot fill up, although it

“Stuffs out its vacant garments with its form.”

The bodies of the lower orders, dressed in their ordinary attire, are borne to their long home by four men, as is described by Martial; “no useless coffins enclose their breasts,” they are carried forth as was the widow’s son at Nain. And often have we seen the frightful death-tray standing upright at the doors of the humble dead, with a human outline marked on the wood by the death-damp of a hundred previous burdens. Such bodies are cast into the trench like those of dogs, and often naked, as the survivors or sextons strip them even of their rags. Those poorer still, who cannot afford to pay the trifling fee, sometimes during the night, suspend the bodies of their children in baskets, near the cemetery porch. We once beheld a cloaked Spaniard pacing mournfully in the burial-ground of Seville, who, when the public trench was opened, drew from beneath the folds the body of his dead child, cast it in and disappeared. Thus half the world lives without knowing how the other half dies.

FUNERAL SERVICE.

In the upper ranks the etiquette of the funeral commences after the reality is over. The first necessary step is within three days to pay a visit of condolence to the family; this is calledpara dar el pesame. The relations are all assembled in the best room, and seated on chairs placed at the head, the women at one end and the men at another. When a condoling lady and gentleman enter, she proceeds to shake hands with all the other ladies one after another, and then seats herself in the next vacant chair; the gentleman bows to each of the men as he passes, who rise and return it, a grave dumb-show of profound affliction being kept up by all. On reaching the chief mourners, they are addressed by each condoler with this phrase, “Acompaño á usted en su sentimiento;” “I share in the affliction of your grace;” the company meanwhile remain silent as an assemblageof undertakers. After sitting among them the proper time, each retires with much the same form.

In a few days afterwards a printed letter is sent round in the name of all the surviving relations to announce the death to the friends of the family, and to beg the favour of attendance at the funeral service: these invitations are all headed with a cross (+), which is calledEl Cristus. Before the invasion of the enemy, who not only destroyed the walls of convents, but sapped religious belief also, very many books were printed, and private letters written, with this sign prefixed. In our time sundry medical men at Seville always headed with it their prescriptions, the Cardinal Archbishop having granted a certain number of years’ release from purgatory to all who sanctified with this mark their recipes even of senna and rhubarb. Under this cross, in the invitation, are placed the letters R. I. P. A., which signify “Requiescat in pace. Amen.” At the appointed hour the mourners meet in thecasa mortuaria, or the house of death, and proceed together to church. All are dressed in full black, and before the progress of paletots and civilization, wore no cloaks: this, as it rendered each man of them more uncomfortable than St. Bartholomew was without his skin, was considered an offering of genuine grief to the manes of the deceased. Uncloaking in Spain is, be it remembered, a mark of respect, and is equivalent to our taking off the hat. When the company arrives at church, they are received by the ministers, and the ceremony is very solemnly performed before a catafalque covered with a pall, which is placed before the altar, and is brilliantly lighted up with wax candles. As soon as the service is concluded, all advance and bow to the chief mourners, who are seated apart, and thus the tragedy concludes. Parents do not put on mourning for their children, which is a remnant of the patriarchal and Roman superiority of the head of the family, for whom, however, when dead, all the other members pay the most observant respect. The forms and number of days of mourning are most nicely laid down, and are most rigidly observed, even by distant relations, who refrain from all kinds of amusements:—

“None bear about the mockery of woeTo public dances or to private show.”

ALL SOULS’ DAY.

We well remember the death of a kind and venerable Marquesaat Seville just before the carnival, whose chief grief at dying, was the thought of the number of young ladies who would thus be deprived of their balls and masquerades; many, anxious and obliging, were the inquiries sent after her health, and more even were the daily prayers offered up to the Virgin, for the prolongation of her precious existence, could it be only for a few weeks.

November drear, brings in other solemnities connected with the dead, and in harmony with the fall of the sear and yellow leaves, to which Homer compares the races of mortal men. The night before the first of November—our All Hallow-e’en—is kept in Spain as a vigil or wake; it is the fated hour of love divinations and mysteries; then anxious maidens used to sit at their balconies to see the image of their destined husbands pass or not pass by. November the first is dedicated to the sainted dead, and November the second to all souls: it is termed in Spanishel dia de los difuntos, the day of the dead, and is most scrupulously observed by all who have lost during the past year some friend, some relation—how few have not! The dawn is ushered in by mournful bells, which recall the memory of those who cannot come back at the summons; the cemeteries are then visited; at Seville, long processions of sable-clad females, bearing chased lamps on staves, walk slowly round and round, chaunting melancholy dirges, returning when it gets dusk in a long line of glittering lights. The graves during the day are visited by those who take a sad interest in their occupants, and lamps and flower garlands are suspended as memorials of affection, and holy water is sprinkled, every drop of which puts out some of the fires of purgatory. These picturesque proceedings at once resemble theEed es Segheerof modern Cairo, theferaliaof the Romans, theΝεμεσιαof the Greeks: here are the flower offerings of Electra, thefunes assensi, the funeral torches of pagan mourners, which have vainly been prohibited to Christian Spaniards by their early Council of Illiberis. In Navarre, and in the north-west of Spain, bread and wheat offerings calledrobosare made, which are the doles or gifts offered for the souls’ rest of the deceased by the pious of ancient Rome.

PURGATORY.

As on this day the cemetery becomes the public attraction, it too often looks rather a joyous fashionable promenade, than a sad and religious performance. The levity of mere strangersand the mob, contrasts strangely with the sorrow of real mourners. But life in this world presses on death, and the gay treads on the heels of pathos; the spot is crowded with mendicants, who appeal to the order of the day, and importune every tender recollection, by begging for the sake of the lamented dead. Outside the dreary walls all is vitality and mirth; a noisy sale goes on of cakes, nuts, and sweetmeats, a crash of horses and carriages, a din and flow of bad language from those who look after them, which must vex the repose of thebenditas animas, or the blessed souls in purgatory, for whom otherwise all classes of Spaniards manifest the fondest affection and interest.

PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND.

Such is the manner in which the body of a most orthodox Catholic Castilian is committed to the earth; his soul, if it goes to purgatory, is considered and called blessed by anticipation, as the admittance into Paradise is certain, at the expiration of the term of penal transportation, that is, “when the foul crimes done in the days of nature are burnt and purged away,” as the ghost in Hamlet says, who had not forgotten his Virgil. If the scholar objects to a Spanish clergyman, that the whole thing is Pagan, he will be told that he may go farther and fare worse. In the case of a true Roman Catholic, this term of hard labour may be much shortened, since that can be done by masses, any number of which will be said, if first paid for. The vicar of St. Peter holds the keys, which always unlock the gate to those who offer the golden gift by which Charon was bribed by Æneas; thus, to a judicious rich man, nothing, supposing that he believes the Popeversusthe Bible, is so easy as to get at once into Heaven; nor are the poor quite neglected, as any one may learn who will read the extraordinary number of days’ redemption which may be obtained at every altar in Spain by the performance of the most trumpery routine. The only wonder is how any one of the faithful should ever fail to secure his delivery from this spiritual Botany Bay without going there at all, or, at least, only for the form’s sake. It was calculated by an accurate and laborious German, that an active man, by spending three shillings in coach-hire, might obtain in an hour, by visiting different privileged altars during the Holy week, 29,639 years, nine months, thirteen days, three minutes and a half diminution of purgatorial punishment. This merciful reprieve was offered by Spanish priests inSouth America, on a grander style, on one commensurate with that colossal continent; for a single mass at the San Francisco in Mexico, the Pope and prelates granted 32,310 years, ten days, and six hours indulgence. As a means of raising money, says our Mexican authority, “I would not give this simple institution of masses for the benefit of souls, for the power of taxation possessed by any government; since no tax-gatherer is required; the payments are enforced by the best feelings, for who would not pay to get a parent’s or friend’s soul from the fire?” Purgatory has thus been a Golconda mine of gold to his Holiness, as even the poorest have a chance, since charitable persons can deliver blank souls by taking out ahabeas animamwrit, that is, by paying the priest for a mass. The especial days are marked in the almanac, and known to every waiter at the inn; moreover, notice is put on the church door,Hoy se saca anima, “this day you can get out a soul.” They are generally left in their warm quarters in winter, and taken out in the spring.

Alas for poor Protestants, who, by non-payment of St. Peter’s pence, have added an additional act of heresy, and the worst of all, the one which Rome never pardons. These defaulters can only hope to be saved by faith, and its fruits, good works; they must repent, must quit their long-cherished sins, and lead a new life; for them there is no rope of St. Francis to pull them out, if once in the pit; no rosary of St. Domenick to remove them, quick, presto, begone, from torment to happiness. Outside the pale of the Vatican, their souls have no chance, and inside the frontiers of Spain their bodies have scarcely a better prospect, should they die in that orthodox land. There the greatest liberal barely tolerates any burial at all of their black-blooded heretical carcasses, as no corn will grow near them. Until within a very few years at seaport towns, their bodies used to be put in a hole in the sands, and beyond low water mark; nay, even this concession to the infidel offended the semi-Moro fishermen, who true believers and persecutors feared that their soles might be poisoned: not that either sailor or priest ever exhibited any fear of taking British current coin, all cash that comes into their nets being most Catholic, so says the proverb,El dinero es muy Catolico.

LUTHERAN BURIAL.

CEMETERY AT MALAGA.

Matters connected with the grave have been placed, as regards Protestants, on a much more pleasant footing within these lastfew years; and it may be a consolation to invalids, who are sent to Spain for change of climate, and who are particular, to know, in case of accidents, that Protestant burial-grounds are now permitted at Cadiz, Malaga, and in a few other places. The history of the permission is curious, and has never, to the best of our belief, been told. In the days of Philip II. Lutherans were counted in many degrees worse than dogs; when caught alive, they were burnt by the holy tribunal; and when dead, were cast out on the dunghill. Even when our poltroon James I. sent, in 1622, his ill-judged olive-bearing mission, by which Spain was saved from utter humiliation, Mr. Hole, the secretary of the ambassador, Lord Digby, having died at Santander, the body was not allowed to be buried at all; it was put into a shell, and sunk in the sea; but no sooner was his lordship gone, than “the fishermen,” we quote from Somers’ tracts, “fearing that they should catch no fish as long as the coffin of a heretic lay in their waters,” fished it up, “and the corpse of our countryman and brother was thrown above ground, to be devoured by the fowls of the air.” In the treaty of 1630, the 31st Article provided for the disposal of the goods of those Englishmen who might die in Spain, but not for their bodies. “These,” says a commentator of Rymer, “must be left stinking above ground, to the end that the dogs may be sure to find them.” When Mr. Washington, page to Charles I., died at Madrid, at the time his master was there, Howell, who was present, relates that it was only as an especial favour to the suitor of the Spanish Infanta that the body was allowed to be interred in the garden of the embassy, under a fig-tree. A few years afterwards, 1650, Ascham, the envoy of Cromwell, was assassinated, and his corpse put, without any rites, into a hole; but the Protector was not a man to be trifled with, and knew well how to deal with a Spanish government, always a craven and bully, from whom nothing ever is to be obtained by concession and gentleness, which is considered as weakness, while everything is to be extorted from itsfears. He that very yearcommandeda treaty to be prepared for the proper burial of his subjects, to which the blustering Spaniard immediately assented. This provision was stipulated into the treaty of Charles II. in 1664, and was conceded and ratified again in 1667 to Sir Richard Fanshawe.

No step, however, appears to have been taken before 1796, when Lord Bute purchased a spot of ground for the burial of Englishmen outside the Alcalá-gate, at Madrid. During the war, when all Spain was a churchyard to our countrymen, this bit of land was taken possession of by a worthy Madrilenian, not for his place of sepulture, but for good and profitable cultivation. In 1831 Mr. Addington caused some researches to be made, and the original conveyance was found in theContaduria de Hypothecas, the registry of deeds and mortgages which backward Spain possesses, and which advanced England does not. The intruder was ejected after some struggling on his part. Before Lord Bute’s time the English had been buried at night and without ceremonies, in the garden of the conventde los Recoletos; and, as Lord Bute’s new bit of ground was extensive and valuable, the pious monks wished to give up the English corner in their garden, in exchange for it; but the transfer was prevented by the recent law which forbade all burial in cities. The field purchased by Lord Bute is now unenclosed and uncultivated; fortunately it has not been much wanted, only fifteen Protestants having died at Madrid during the last thirty years. In November, 1831, Ferdinand VII. finally settled this grave question by a decree, in which he granted permission for the erection of a Protestant burial-ground in all towns where a British consul or agent should reside, subject to mostdegradingconditions. The first cemetery set apart in Spain, in virtue of this gracious decree from a man replaced on his throne by the death of 30,000 Englishmen, was the work of Mr. Mark, our consul at Malaga; he enclosed a spot of ground to the east of that city, and placed a tablet over the entrance, recording the royal permission, and above that a cross. Thus he appealed to the dominant feelings of Spaniards, to their loyalty and religion. The Malagenians were amazed when they beheld this emblem of Christianity raised over the last home of Lutheran dogs, and exclaimed, “So even these Jews make use of the cross!” The term Jew, it must be remembered, is the acme of Spanish loathing and vituperation. The first body interred in it was that of Mr. Boyd, who was shot by the bloody Moreno, with the poor dupe Torrijos and the rest of his rebel companions.

THE SPANISH FIGARO.

The Spanish Figaro—Mustachios—Whiskers—Beards—Bleeding—Heraldic Blood—Blue, Red, and Black Blood—Figaro’s Shop—The Baratero—Shaving and Toothdrawing.

FEWwho love Don Quixote, will deem any notice on the Peninsular surgeon complete in which the barber is not mentioned, even be it in a postscript. Although the names of both these learned professors have long been nearly synonymous in Spain, the barber is much to be preferred, inasmuch as his cuts are less dangerous, and his conversation is more agreeable. He with the curate formed the quiet society of the Knight of La Mancha, as the apothecary and vicar used to make that of most of our country squires of England. Let, therefore, every Adonis of France, now bearded as a pard although young, nay, let each and all of our fair readers, albeit equally exempt from the pains and penalties of daily shaving, make instantly, on reaching sunny Seville, a pilgrimage to the shrine of San Figaro. His shop—apocryphal it is to be feared as other legendary localities—lies near the cathedral, and is a no less established lion than the house of Dulcinea is at Toboso, or the prison tower of Gil Blas is at Segovia. Such is the magic power of genius. Cervantes and Le Sage have given form, fixture, and local habitation to the airy nothings of their fancy’s creations, while Mozart and Rossini, by filling the world with melody, have bidden the banks of the Guadalquivir re-echo to their sweet inventions.

SPANISH MUSTACHIOS.

To those even who have no music in their souls, the movement from doctors to barbers is harmonious in a land where beards were long honoured as the type of valour and chivalry, and where shaving took the precedence of surgery; and even to this day,la tienda de barbero, the shop of the man of the razor, is better supplied than many a Spanish hospital both with patients and cutting instruments. One word first on the black whiskers of tawny Spain. Thesepatillas, as they are now termed, mustbe distinguished from the ancient mustachio, themostacho, a very classical but almost obsolete word, which the scholars of Salamanca have derived fromμυστἁξ, the upper lip. Their present and usual name isBigote, which is also of foreign etymology, being the Spanish corruption of the German oathbey gott, and formed under the following circumstances: for nicknames, which stick like burrs, often survive the history of their origin. The free-riding followers of Charles V., who wore these tremendous appendages of manhood, swore like troopers, and gave themselves infinite airs, to the more infinite disgust of their Spanish comrades, who have a tolerable good opinion of themselves, and a first-rate hatred of all their foreign allies. These strange mustachios caught their eyes, as the stranger sounds which proceeded from beneath them did their ears. Having a quick sense of the ridiculous, and a most Oriental and schoolboy knack at a nickname, they thereupon gave the sound to the substance, and called the redoubtable garnish of hair,bigotes. This process in the formation of phrases is familiar to philologists, who know that an essential part often is taken for the whole. For example, a hat, in common Spanish parlance, is equivalent to a grandee, as with us the woolsack is to a Lord Chancellor. It is natural that unscholastic soldiers, when dealing with languages which they do not understand, should fix on their enemies, as a term of reproach, those words which, from hearing used the most often, they imagine must constitute the foundation of the hostile grammar. Thus our troops called the Spaniardslos Carajos, from their terrible oaths and terrible runnings away. So the clever French designated asles godams, those “stupid” fellows in red jackets who never could be made to know when they were beaten, but continued to make use of that significant phrase in reference to their victors, until they politely showed them the shortest way home over the Pyrenees.

THE BEARD.

The real Spanish mustachio, as worn by the real Don Whiskerandoses, men with shorter cloaks and purses than beards and rapiers, have long been cut off, like the pig-tails of our monarchs and cabinet ministers. Yet their merits are embalmed in metaphors more enduring than that masterpiece in bronze with which Mr. Wyatt, full of Phidias, has adorned King George’s back and Charing Cross. Thushombre de mucho bigote, a man of much moustache, means, in Spanish, a personage of considerable pretension,a fine, liberal fellow, and anything, in short, but a bigot in wine, women, or theology. The Spanish original realities, like the pig-tails of Great Britain, have also been immortalised by fine art, and inimitably painted by Velazquez. Under his life-conferring brush they required no twisting with hot irons. Curling from very ire and martial instinct, they were calledbigotes á la Fernandina, and their rapid growth was attributed to the eternal cannon smoke of the enemy, into which nothing could prevent their valorous wearers from poking their faces. This luxuriance has diminished in these degenerate times, unless Napier’s ‘History of the Peninsular War’ be, as the Spaniards say, written in a spirit of envy and jealousy against their heroic armies, which alone trampled on the invincible eagles of Austerlitz.

As among the Egyptian gods and priests, rank was indicated by the cut of the beard, so in Spain the military civil and clerical shapes were carefully defined. The Charley, or Imperial, as we term the little tuft in the middle of the under lip, a word by the way which is derivable either from our Charles or from his namesake emperor, was called in SpainEl perrillo, “the little dog,” the terminating tail being omitted, which however becoming in the animal and bronzes, shocked Castilian euphuism.

THE BIGOTE.

In the mediæval periods of Spain’s greatness the beard and not the whisker was the real thing; and as among the Orientals and ancients, it was at once the mark of wisdom and of soldiership; to cut it off was an insult and injury scarcely less than decapitation; nay, this nicety of honour survived the grave. The seated corpse of the Cid, so tells his history, knocked down a Jew who ventured to take the dead lion by his beard, which, as all natural philosophers know, has an independent vitality, and grows whether its master be alive or dead, be willing or unwilling. When the insolent Gauls pulled these flowing ornaments of the aged Roman senators, they, who with unmoved dignity had seen Marshal Brennus steal their plate and pictures, could not brook that last and greatest outrage. In process of time and fashion the beards of Spain fell off, and being only worn by mendicant monks and he-goats, were considered ungentlemanlike, and were substituted among cavaliers by the Italian mostachio; the seat of Spanish honour was then placed under the nose, that sensitive sentinel. The renowned Duke of Alva being of course in wantof money, once offered one of his bigotes as a pledge for a loan, and one only was considered to be a sufficient security by the Rothschilds of the day, who remembered the hair-breadth escape of their ancestor too well to laugh at anything connected with a hero’s beard;nous avons changé tout cela. The united Hebrews of Paris and London would not now advance a stiver for every particular hair on the bodies of Narvaez and Espartero, not even if the moustache reglémentaire of Montpensier, and a bushel of Bourbon beards, warranted legitimate, were added.

The use of thebigotein Spain is legally confined to the military, most of whose generals—their name is legion—are tenderly chary of their Charlies, dreading razors no less than swords; when the Infante Don Carlos escaped from England, the only real difficulty was in getting him to cut off his moustache; he would almost sooner have lost his head, like his royal Englishtocayoor omonyme. Elizabeth’s gallant Drake, when he burnt Philip’s fleet at Cadiz, simply called his Nelsonic touch “singeing the King of Spain’s whiskers.” Zurbano the other day thought it punishment enough for any Basque traitors to cut off theirbigotes, and turn them loose, like rats without tails,pour encourager les autres. It is indeed a privation. Thus Majaval, the pirate murderer, who by the glorious uncertainty of English law was not hanged at Exeter, offered his prison beard, when he reached Barcelona, to the delivering Virgin. Many Spanish civilians and shopkeepers, in imitation of the transpyreneanCalicots, men who wear moustachios on their lips in peace, and spectacles on their noses in war, so constantly let them grow, that Ferdinand VII. fulminated a royal decree, which was to cut them off from the face of the Peninsula, as the Porte is docking his true believers. Such is the progress of young and beardless civilization. The attempt to shorten the cloaks of Madrid nearly cost Charles III. his crown, and this cropping mandate of his beloved grandson was obeyed as Spanish decrees generally are, for a month all but twenty-nine days. These decrees, like solemn treaties, charters, stock-certificates, and so forth, being mostly used to light cigars; now-a-days that the Moro-Spaniard is aping the true Parisian polish, the national countenance is somewhat put out of face, to the serious sorrow and disparagement of poor Figaro.

SPANISH BLEEDING.

As for his house and home none can fail finding it out; no cicerone is wanted, for the outside is distinguished from afar by the emblems of his time-honoured profession: first and foremost hangs a bright glittering metal Mambrino-helmet basin, with a neat semicircular opening cut out of the rim, into which the throat of the patient is let during the operation of lathering, which is always done with the hand and most copiously; near it are suspended huge grinders, which in an English museum would pass for the teeth of elephants, and for those of Saint Christopher in Spanish churches, where comparative anatomy is scouted as heretical in the matter of relics; strange to say, and no Spanish theologian could ever satisfy us why, this saint is not the “especial advocate” against the toothache; here Santa Apollonia is the soothing patroness. Near these molars are displayed awful phlebotomical symbols, and rude representations of bloodlettings; for in Spain, in church and out, painting does the work of printing to the many who can see, but cannot read. The barber’s pole, with its painted bandage riband, the support by which the arm was kept extended, is wanting to the threshold of the Figaros of Spain, very much because bleeding is generally performed in the foot, in order that the equilibrium of the whole circulation may be maintained. The painting usually presents a female foot, which being an object, and not unreasonably, of great devotion in Spain, is selected by the artist; tradition also influences the choice, for the dark sex were wont formerly to be bled regularly as calves are still, to obtain whiteness of flesh and fairness of complexion: as it was usual on each occasion that the lover should restore the exhausted patient by a present, the purses of gallants kept pace with the venous depletion of their mistresses. TheSangradosof Spain, professional as well as unprofessional, have long been addicted to the shedding of innocent blood; indeed, no people in the world are more curious about the pedigree purity of their own blood, nor less particular about pouring it out like water, whether from their own veins or those of others. One word on this vital fluid with which unhappy Spain is too often watered during her intestine disorders.

HERALDIC BLOOD.

If the Iberian anatomists did not discover its circulation, the heralds have “tricked” out its blazoning, as we do our admirals, with all the nicety of armorial coloring.Blue blood, Sangreazul, is the ichor of demigods which flows in the arteries of the grandees and highest nobility, each of whose pride is to be

“A true Hidalgo, free from every stainOf Moor or Jewish blood,”

FIGARO’S SHOP.

a boast which like some others of theirs wants confirmation, as it is in the power of one woman to taint the blood of Charlemagne; and nature, which cannot be written down by Debretts, has stamped on their countenances the marks of hybrid origin, and particularly from these very and most abhorred stocks; it is from this tint of celestial azure that the termsangre suis given in Spain to the elect and best set of earth, thehaute volée, who soar above vulgar humanity.Redblood flows in the veins of poor gentlemen and younger brothers, and is just tolerated by all, except judicious mothers, whose daughters are marriageable.Blood, simple blood, is the puddle which paints the cheek of the plebeian and roturier; it has, or ought to possess, a perfect incompatibility with the better coloured fluid, and an oil and vinegar property of non-amalgamation. There is more difference, as Salario says, between such bloods, than there is between red wine and Rhenish. These and other dreams are, it is to be feared, the fond metaphors of heralds. The rosy stream in mockery ofrougecroix andbluedragons flows inversely and perversely: in the arteries of the lusty muleteer it is the lava blood of health and vigour; in the monkey marquis and baboon baron it stagnates in the dull lethargy of a blue collapse. Their noble ichor is virtually more impoverished than their nominal rent-roll, since the operation of transmission of wholesome blood from young veins into a worn-out frame, which is so much practised elsewhere, is too nice for theSangre suandSangradosof Spain; the thin fluid is never enriched with the calipash heiress of an alderman, nor is the decayed genealogical stock renewed by the golden graft of a banker’s only daughter. The insignificant grandees of Spain quietly permitted Christina to barter away their country’s liberties; but when her children by the base-born Muñoz came betwixt them and their nobility, then alone did they remonstrate. Indifferent to the degradation of the throne, they were tremblingly alive to the punctilios of their own order. Those Peninsular ladies who are blues, by blood not socks, are equally fastidious in the serious matter of its admixture even byHymen: one of them, it is said, having chanced in a moment of weakness to mingle her azure with something brownish, alleged in excuse that she had done so for her character’s sake. “Que disparate, mi Señora.” “What nonsense, my lady!” was her fair confidante’s reply; “ten bastards would have less discoloured your blood, than one legitimate child the issue of such a misalliance.”

To stick, however, to our colours;black bloodis the vile Stygean pitch which is found in the carcasses of Jews, Gentiles, Moors, Lutherans, and other combustible heretics, with whose bodies the holy tribunal made bonfires for the good of their souls. Nay, in the case of the Hebrew this black blood is also thought to stink, whence Jews were called by learned Latinistsputos, quia putant; and certainly at Gibraltar an unsavoury odour seems to be gentilitious in the children of Israel, not however to unorthodox and unheraldic nostrils a jot more so, than in the believing Spanish monk. Recently the colourblackhas been assigned to the blood of political opponents, and a copious “shedding of vile black blood” has been the regular panacea of every military Sangrado. How extremes meet! Thus, this aristocracy of colour, in despotical old Spain, which lies in the veins, is placed on the skin in new republican America. Where is the free and easy Yankee would recognise a brother, in a black?

THE BARATERO.

To return to Figaro. There is no mistaking his shop; for independently of the external manifestations of the fine arts practised within, his threshold is the lounge of all idlers, as well as of those who are anxious to relieve their chins of the thick stubble of a three days’ growth. The house of the barber has, since the days of Solomon and Horace, been the mart of news and gossip,—of epigram and satire, as Pasquino the tailor’s was at Rome. It is the club of the lower orders, who here take up a position, and listen, cloaked as Romans, to some reader of the official Gazette, which, with a cigar, indicates modern civilization, and soothes him with empty vapour. Here, again, is the mint of scandal, and all who have lived intimately with Spaniards, know how invariably every one stabs his neighbour behind his back with words, the lower orders occasionally using knives sharper even than their tongues. Here, again, resort gamblers, who, seated on the ground with cards more begrimed than the earth,pursue their fierce game as eager as if existence was at stake; for there is generally some well-known cock of the walk, a bully, orguapo, who will come up and lay his hand on the cards, and say, “No one shall play with any cards but with mine”—aqui no se juega sino con mis barajas. If the parties are cowed, they give him a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him—Aquí no se cobra el barato sino con un puñal de Albacete—“You get no change here except out of an Albacete knife.” If the defiance be accepted,Vamos allais the answer—“Let’s go to it.” There’s an end then of the cards, all flock to the more interestingécarté; instances have occurred, where Greek meets Greek, of their tying the two advanced feet together, and yet remaining fencing with knife and cloak for a quarter of an hour before the blow be dealt. The knife is held firmly, the thumb is pressed straight on the blade, and calculated either for the cut or thrust.

The termBaratostrictly means the present which is given to waiters who bring a new pack of cards. The origin is Arabic,Baara, “avoluntarygift;” in the corruption of theBaratero, it has become an involuntary one. Our legal termBarratryis derived from the mediævalBarrateria, which signified cheating or foul play. Cervantes well knew thatBaratarin old Spanish meant to exchange unfairly, to thimble-rig, to sell anything under its real value, and therefore gave the name ofBarrateriato Sancho’s sham government. TheBaraterois quite a thing of Spain, where personal prowess is cherished, and there is one in every regiment, ship, prison, and even among galley-slaves.

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