At Alsasua we came upon a village bleaker than Beasain, with soldiers billeted under every roof. They loitered in twos and threes about the wide street, which was drab with patches of dirty snow. Here were placed a few mountain guns under custody of a shivering sentry, there a bugler in slovenly greatcoat blew some call with pinched lips on a battered instrument. At the station—a rude shanty with wooden partitions and a plank erection run up as refreshment-stall—some attempt had been made at fortification. There were mud-works thrown up in its vicinity, and the walls were roughly loop-holed. A party of Linesmen were in possession. On a siding close by was the locomotive which had been riddled with shot by the insurgents on the now disused line to Pampeluna. Our own locomotivewas awaiting us, with steam up, and I hurried to procure my ticket. I pushed a piece of honest red gold through the wicket, and an extremely nice, slim female clerk gave me the pasteboard with my change and thanks. Something struck me in the silver shoved towards me; the leaden hue of the pesetas was suspicious. I took up one and rung it; the dull sound convinced me it was bad. I rung another—same result. I was desolate; but I had to call the attention of the extremely nice girl to the error she had fallen into; and she coolly, without adumbration of a blush, or faintest pretence at apology, took back the base coins, and gave me their equivalent in coins that were sterling. And then, for the first time, it broke upon me, that it was not considered a scoundrelly act to pass bad money upon an innocent foreigner, or upon an innocent native, for the matter of that. I further learned that if I had removed that bad money from the counter, I should have had to bear with the loss. That extremely nice girl would have assured me with all politeness that I must be labouring under an illusion.
The Spaniard has personal dignity to a prodigious degree. But his personal dignity does not hinder the ordinary Spaniard from endeavouring to foist counterfeit stamps upon his neighbour whenever he has the chance.
The tarantara of a bugle stirred a company of soldiers to take their places in the train. They were our escort to Miranda, on the borders of Old Castile, where we might consider ourselves out of danger. It is my opinion we were never in any danger.
We reached Miranda safely, and from that swept down in the darkness to Madrid without molest, the most of us snoring as regularly as the funnel of the engine snorted. I had a fearsome vision of a sweet Spanish maiden who had knowingly placed a worthless peseta in the tirelire at Mass, and had been sentenced by Santa Cruz to grill on the gridiron of hell for the term of her natural life. A carpet-bag utilized as a pillow was the origin of my vision. Had that carpet-bag been more carelessly packed, the penalty on the poor girl might have been prolonged to eternity.
Madrid—The Fonda and its Porter—The Puerta del Sol—Postal Irregularities—Tribute to the Madrileños—The Barber's Pronunciamiento—Anecdotes of King Amadeus—Checkmating the Grand Dames—Queen Isabella—The Embarrassed Mr. Layard of Nineveh—The Great Powers Hesitate—America Goes Ahead—General Sickles—Mahomet and the Mountain—Republicanism among the troops—A Peculiar Pennsylvanian Dentist—Castelar under Torture—The Writer meets one of his Sept—Politicians by Trade—Honour among Insurgents—Alonso the Reckless.
FIRSTimpressions of Madrid, "the only court," do not fill the visitor with awe. It is an aggregate of masonry, fragmentary on the edges, compact in the middle, on a sandy plateau in a waste of arid landscape. There is lack of natural shade and water, albeit there are tree-planted walks and gardens, with cedars and Himalayan pines, and fountains with fulness of clear flow are abundant. It wants a river; the Manzanares, I am told, is but a ditch.I do not know if that is so; I never could see the Manzanares. A rugged, sun-blistered city, Madrid struck me as no more characteristically Spanish—or what I had taught myself to accept as such—than Turin is Italian; both are half-Frenchified. In the northern distance are the summits of the Guadarrama hills, and the unseen breeze which sweeps down from its snowy eyries amongst them cuts like an icicle. The Madrileño fears it, for it has a trick of permeating the streets with a subtile, chilling, killing breath; and when the Madrileño steps from the sunny to the shady side of the street he is careful to lift a corner of his cloak as screen to his mouth.
The central point of Madrid is the Puerta del Sol—a bare, broad, irregular area off which nine thoroughfares diverge. Round it the day-god, greatest friend of Spain, pivots in glory. Now he floods one side with radiance, now he drops his cloth of gold over another. The Puerta del Sol is the focus of interest for the population. Thither the gossips repair, and there the affairs of the nation are discussed very often by those who have acted, act, or hope to act as leaders of the nation.Naturally I made for the Puerta del Sol, for it was of vital importance to me to be in the movement, in the very vortex of the pool. I was fortunate. I got rooms in the Fonda de Paris, an hotel at the corner of the Calle de Alcalá, the principal avenue leading from the Plaza. As proof of the unsettled condition of affairs and its effect upon trade, it need only be said that at thetable d'hôteof this, the first hotel in the capital, where one hundred and thirty persons usually sit down to dinner, there were sometimes not more than fifteen or twenty, and a proportion of these were fly-about Special Correspondents. Yet in this exiguous circle of prudent people who were detained in Madrid, or foolhardy people who had travelled there, turned up the irrepressible British tourist. Of the latter class we had charming specimens at dinner one evening in two English girls, with fresh peachy complexions, and hair like wavy masses of ripe maize. They had no guide but their faithful "Murray." What became of them subsequently I never ascertained; but it is to be trusted they were as lucky as the enterprising young lady who relied on Erin's honourand Erin's pride in the reign of King Brian, and made the tour of the Emerald Isle with a gold ring on the tip of a wand. That would hardly pay the hotel-bills nowadays.
A great feature in the fonda was Constantine, the hall-porter, a tall swarthy man, who was as fluent a linguist as an Alexandria dragoman. He was Greek by birth, but had a strain of English blood on the mother's side. His sire may have been a South Sea cannibal or a South African lion-slayer for aught I remember; but that there was something phenomenally bold in him I am certain. Constantine's instincts were predatory, and his manners morose. There was a tradition that he had been a bandit in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, or an innkeeper by the Marseilles docks—much about the same thing, and that he was prepared to do little jobs of human carving for a consideration. However, these may have been fables got up by travellers in search of excitement to invest Constantine with an interesting air of romance. He was very civil to me and did not cheat me more than I chose. I never had occasion to ask him to kill anybody.
From my windows I could command the mid-basin in the Plaza, more for use than ornament, and as great a rendezvous of the quidnuncs as a village-pump. The panorama of life lounged or moved or bustled beneath—shifting groups of cloaked disputants, veiled women tripping gracefully along, stately Civil Guards in three-cornered hats, sombre priests with Don Basilio head-gear, the various moulds of human nature from the grandee to the mendicant, and above all that brood with which I soon grew familiar, and for which I conceived an invincible disgust—the sallow, peering, prating, importunate brood of hungry place-hunters, impatient to dip their fingers into the Government pie. Cabriolets passed to and fro, tram-cars with such sleek well-conditioned mule-teams jolted on the rails; here a horse-soldier trotted by with clattering accoutrements, there a water-carrier sturdily trudged; and in a sheltered angle a long-locked vendor of a magic hair-restorer vaunted his wondrous balm in sonorous patter, and occasionally curtained his face with his thick mane brought over from his back as tangible testimony to the fertilizing properties ofthe balm. In short, from those windows I could take in the cardiac pulsing of Madrid. Below me, as I sat and smoked my cigarette, the beginning of change or crux, accident or riot, the initial whims or humours of the populace, the formation of a procession or the overture of a pronunciamiento, were within my ken. And at one corner of the Puerta were the General Post Office and Telegraphic Bureau, a matter of great convenience to me, if only they were properly managed. However, it was far easier to collect news than to send it to the desired destination. The post was as unsafe as in those days in another land when Mr. Richard Turpin, highwayman, and his comrogues intercepted his Majesty's mails. As for messages by wire, I was not long in learning that no important information was allowed to be sent; true, the money for its transmission was taken, but—delayed, or forwarded, or suppressed even—the strict rule in that establishment was "no money returned." Vain were complaints. The Special Correspondent had no resource but that of the negro suffering from toothache; 'twas his to grin and bear it. The ideaof ever again seeing the colour of the coin which has passed into the palm of a Spanish functionary is laughable in its pastoral innocence. As well expect to handle last year's snow. The system of ignorant espionage still obtained in the Peninsula, as I was forced reluctantly to observe: the word "Cuba" or "Carlos" on the telegraphic form at once aroused the scruples and suspicions of the official, and led to the confiscation of the message. In the end, I discovered how to facilitate the despatch of news; but as that is my secret I keep it to myself. Suffice it that in my bill of expenses the item "sundries" was elastic.
There are some valuable guide-books to Spain, and to them I refer the reader if he desire to be crammed with curious knowledge about churches and picture-galleries, museums of arms, and the beautiful upholstery of the Duke of Sixty-Blazons' palace. My behest was with living not dead Spain, as investigated during the throes of a political convulsion. I made my notes on the Madrileños without bias, and without bias I give them. I spent five weeks in constant and free intercourse with allclasses of the inhabitants. During that time I did not detect one Belleville face; I did not catch the glitter of a knife except at a dinner-table, nor remark a single drunkard staggering along the streets. Yet I was in every quarter of the town, to the lowest, at all hours. There are parts of London where the foreign visitor could not penetrate and come back with the same story. The Madrileños are indolent—granted; but they are frugal, temperate, and well-conducted. Occasionally a poniard is slipped into the ribs of an enemy, but mistakes will occur in the best-regulated families. If this be a vindictive and blood-sucking people, the vampirism is adroitly concealed; the dirty linen must be washed in the dark corner where the charcoal is stored, so that Paul Pry may not be gratified with the sight. There is no working population at Madrid; there are no large manufactories, no thriving centres of employment. That is one reason why Madrid is orderly compared to other and livelier cities. Prosperous Barcelona swarms with mechanics and artisans, and that is one reason why Barcelona is disorderly. The rights-of-managitators generally find favour there. The International has its ramifications in the Catalonian capital. In Madrid, the International is a pigmy failure. Its emissaries came once and laboured zealously to stir up the son of toil to a proper consciousness of his dignity. After months of propagandism they succeeded in persuading Figaro to shake a rebellious pole and fiercely flourish his lathering-brush.
"Know, ye smooth-lipped minions of the despot Capital," quoth the barbers in an indignant round-robin, "we shall no longer submit to the gross tyranny of shaving you before eight of the morning!"
But Figaro was defeated; Madrid let its beard grow.
The sudden departure of the Italian-bred monarch had apparently plunged the politicians into a pit of bewilderment. They did not know how they stood. Amadeus after his reign of five-and-twenty months had perchance left few partisans behind him, but assuredly no enemies. His principal fault, but that was fatal, consisted in his being a foreigner. Itwas universally vouchsafed that he was very brave, a true hidalgo in that respect, and if he had been removed in the orthodox method by revolution or the assassin, his name would have been garlanded with rosemary for remembrance. But Spanish pride was nettled to the quick at the cavalier way he had tossed back, with a shrug of the shoulders, the gift of a crown when he had tired of it. He had looked upon the throne of Castile as a gewgaw to be surrendered with indifference, and steamed contentedly to Italy to enjoy his comparatively obscure Dukedom and rank of General in preference. He had chosen the wiser and happier part, but to those he had abandoned it was mortifying in the extreme. Still, he was an unquailing chevalier, almost fit to be a Spaniard, this son of Victor Emmanuel. He had disarmed hostility, and compelled the praise of the envious, the very day he entered Madrid, forty-eight hours after the funeral of Prim, when he spurred ahead of his escort and offered his breast undismayed to the aim of any or all assassins.
That entry of Amadeus could not have inspired him with much of the buoyancy of a bright expectation.There was in it more of sanguinary suggestiveness than sanguine hope. The ghostly presence at the King's first dinner in the palace could not be denied—that of the slaughtered "Paladino," no longer fiery and strenuous, but a figure, inert, waxen, blood-bolstered, a bullet-riddled flesh-target It was most unpropitious of entries. There was an odour of cerecloth in the tapestry, the yellow hue of immortelles in the épergnes, a sediment of bitterness in the wine-cup, a strain of melancholy in the music. And yet there was some semblance of gaiety, for with all his austere stateliness your Spaniard is very like unto the Irishman:
There were sundry plots to take the life of Amadeus, but Providence protected him, and he made it a point, after each attempt or threat, to show himself in public with the ostentation of a reckless courage. He rode or walked about with a single aide-de-camp, which was a crime with those monarchists who set store by the pageantry ofstate. On one occasion, as he was returning to the palace, the horse in a hackney-coach with a fat bourgeois inside took fright, and started off at break-neck speed, overtaking the King's carriage. The King's coachman whipped up his team, but the wheels of the two vehicles had locked in each other, and the horses galloped frantically side by side. The aide-de-camp, fearing a new and daring experiment in regicide, snatched his rapier from the sheath and began furiously prodding through the window of the hackney-coach. The fat bourgeois shrunk and flattened himself into a corner, drew in his breath, and dodged the lunges of the searching steel. When the palace-gates were reached, and the animals were stopped, the unfortunate citizen was extricated from his hazardous position more dead than alive. He was glistening with the wetness of fright, trembled like an aspen, and blubbered as he begged for mercy. The panelling was pierced, and the cushion ripped into rags; but by some extraordinary luck the poor man, who was a harmless dealer in provisions, had escaped without a scratch. But he owned that he never before hadfive minutes of such violent exercise complicated with vile terror. During the scene Amadeus kept his seat tranquilly, and relaxed into a smile as he discovered the mistake of his too-zealous companion.
The conspiracies of the saloons were more successful, as efforts to annoy without contravening law always are. They are not so readily met. And the malicious ingenuity of woman, when she lays herself out to be offensive, is remarkably inventive and diabolically persistent. Some of the grand dames of Madrid had the impish inspiration to put the Royal couple into Coventry. There is a fashionable carriage-drive in the capital corresponding much to ours between Hyde Park Corner and Queen's Gate. Whenever Amadeus and his spouse went there for an airing, the blue-blooded of the opposition significantly trotted off. Once an immense procession of the aristocratic families made its appearance, and slowly and perseveringly "took the dust." Such a turn-out of gala equipages had not been witnessed for years. All the ladies were arrayed in the ancient Spanish costume; thefan and veil with high comb and carnation in the hair in every case replaced the Parisian bonnet and parasol. It was a protest against the foreign dynasty, and was clearly meant as a demonstration of insult. One of the Royal household was equal to the provocation; whether Spaniard or Italian I am not sure, but the latter I think, so subtle was his revenge. He went round to all the houses of ill-fame in the capital that night, and entered into conversation, burnished with duros, with their female occupants. The next evening Madrid was afforded the spectacle in its most fashionable drive of a parade of courtesans, in ancient Spanish costumes, fanning themselves, and smirking at their acquaintances from the vantage of luxurious chariots. It was a scandal, but Madrid grinned, and the patricians of the antediluvian stem confessed themselves beaten.
There was still a lingering fondness for the deposed Isabella among the lower orders. They looked upon her as a good sort, one of the old stock, prayerful, and affable. She was accustomed to enter wayside cabins, and get into homely chatwith the peasants. The Italian woman never did that. Alphonse Daudet's description of Isabella as a stout queen, who by her massive jaws and high complexion resembled a coarse-rinded blood-orange, would not be endorsed by these humble yearners after the bygone. Indeed, they regarded her as one who had been a type of beauty in her time, and was still a type of good-nature, and were forgiving to her peccadilloes, she was so devout. Of course I must not be understood as speaking here of Spanish partisans of the Republican idea. They had no more pity for the creatures tainted with Royalty than the Polynesian for his leprous kinsman—but they were comparatively few.
Great Britain, at that period, was represented by Mr. Austin Layard, and the United States by General Daniel Sickles. The British Envoy was in a dilemma; he did not know how far he would be justified in recognising the newly-proclaimed Republic; if he received visits of ceremonial it would be an unpardonable breach of courtesy not to return them; in short, to use a very graphic locution of the masses, he was waiting to see how thecat jumped, and cheerfully submitted to a diplomatic catarrh which confined him to his room. I went to visit him, when we had an interesting dialogue on some recently exhumed relics of antiquity and exquisite bits of crockery-ware. Mr. Layard impressed me as more taken up with concerns of Nineveh and Wardour Street than ofla haute politique. But, as he frankly acknowledged, he was not free to act until he had received his instructions from Downing Street. Though there is no written pact to the effect, the rule is that Russia, Germany, Austria—the Great Powers in short—shall only act in conjunction, and after having exchanged confidential notes, when eventualities arise affecting all their interests, such as this in Madrid; and—another consideration besides—was there really any Government yet? It was only provisional. It could hardly be supposed that any of the Great Powers would refuse to bow to the will of the Spanish people; but what was its will? That was a question that could not be admitted to be definitely settled.
The United States had struck the key-note—hadrecognised the infant Republic, while the Prime Minister, Señor Figueras, was waiting for the chorus of acclamation from the "robust voices" of those Great Powers which deliberate before they act. The United States are a fast-trotting buggy; but these Great Powers in this miserable, played-out old Continent are slow coaches. Not that there were not deliberations in the White House before General Sickles was authorized to use his discretionary power in signing the baptismal certificate of this Republic of accident. General Sickles was undoubtedly clever; he had experience in his time as a journalist, an advocate, and a soldier. It was his opinion that Spain had found in the Republic the means of establishing her power and prosperity on a solid basis. During the crisis, he kept his Government informed of what was passing, and to his demand transmitted by cable in the dawn of Wednesday, the 14th of February, an answer was returned within twenty hours, permitting him to exercise his judgment as he thought proper. He imagined that a Federal Republic, on the pattern of that of the United States, with provinciallegislatures in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and so on, and a National Congress in Madrid, was the panacea for the ills of Spain, and that that would be sufficient to dissolve all antagonisms of race, custom, and feeling, and amalgamate them into one accordant patriotic sentiment. The General was over-hopeful in the estimation of others, who knew Spain as well as he; but he acted rightly according to his views, and ably according to his gifts—only it was to be hoped the General would use his influence to dissuade his Government from offending its friends and brothers of Spain by proposing anew a transaction that would lead to the abandonment of Cuba—an awkward mission with which he was once charged. Surely if a diplomatic representative could quietly talk the influential personages of the nation to which he was accredited into a zeal for the abolition of slavery in Porto Rico, he could quietly talk the influential personages of his own nation into letting Spanish territory alone. A pompous man this American Minister, active, talkative, and on cordial terms with himself. He hobbled about on his cork leg, leaning on the armof his handsome Spanish wife, the second. There was a legend in Madrid that the General had lost his limb in a duel about a lady; there had been a question of petticoats in his career once, but it never entered into the minds of those simple Madrileños that a soldier without a breastful of decorations might have been wounded, as he had been, on the battle-field.
The United States were friendly; but France, Republican France, what was she doing? Why did she delay to move? She, at least, ought to have had some fellow-feeling for another Republic without Republicans. The truth was, M. Thiers could not come to any decision without consulting his Council of Ministers. His action was not quite so unfettered as that of President Grant. This was the more to be regretted that Señor Olózaga recognised the Republic of mob acclamation—that of the 4th September, 1870, in Paris—without hesitation. The same compliment was felt by Spaniards to be due to the Republic of accident.
On the 20th of February, Señor Castelar took a course that might give a galvanic shock to theworld of diplomats, but which was worthy of a bold Republican prophet. Since the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet went to the mountain. In plainer words—but has not one an excuse for being figurative when speaking of Señor Castelar?—the Minister for Foreign Affairs determined to take the bull by the horns (pardon this figure for the sake of its aptness in Spain). The representatives of the Great Powers did not call on him; he called on them. His coy advances were met with frigid politeness. A Madrid paper asserted that "an important and friendly conference" had been held between the Minister and Mr. Layard, which, to say the least, was asuggestio falsi. Mr. Layard, as an English gentleman, could not but have received his visitor in a friendly manner; but he kept within the strict line of his very delicate duties with a studious discretion. Señor Castelar saw plainly that events had not prepared the way and made straight the path of the new Republic towards recognition. The Great Powers could not be found fault with, if they were slow to admit to the brotherhood of nations a Republic which hadalready exhibited within its fortnight's existence what may be literally called two dictatures (those of Señores Rivero and Martos), the abdication of power by a majority, two provisional and two "permanent" Governments, a cabinet of conciliation, and a cabinet of homogeneity, not to mention a round of permutations in the civil governorships of Madrid, and the captain-generalcy of New Castile, and in the commands of the armies of the North and Catalonia.
From the country poured in felicitations to the Republic from hamlet and city, tumid with a rampant joy. These documents emphatically protested that the majority of the population was Republican. Yet talk confidentially to any Spaniard, not actually a Republican propagandist, and not one of the ignorant lower classes of the towns—an average, intelligent, middle-class Spaniard—and he would tell you there were no Republicans in Spain. The thorough frankness with which Spaniards speak of their own country, its divisions and its national faults, is phenomenal. "We are very foolish," they own with a charming candour, butthe foreigner had better not chime in with them. They will fire up in an instant. If they are foolish, it is no business of his; Spanish quarrels are conducted precisely on the principles of those between man and wife. The outsider who interposes in them must be prepared to wipe a bloody nose.
But the doctrines of Republicanism were producing their effects in the army nevertheless, and the first of these was a tendency to demoralization. The troops at Barcelona fraternized with the working men, and raised cries for the Republic and for their own liberation from service. They desired individual as well as national independence. In that they were but logical. The Republicans out of power inveighed against standing armies as a monstrosity, a relic of effete Monarchical tyranny. The argument was now used against the Republic; the bird of freedom was menaced by a shaft plumed from her own wing. If discipline were once generally relaxed in the army, which is the salt of Spain, then farewell security and come chaos. That was the chief peril in the way. Aman, in the highest meaning of the word, one born to command, was wanted to save the country. He was looked for in vain. Prim had left no successor.
In forming my opinions on Spain and the Spaniards, I was aided not a little by the good offices of a shrewd but eccentric American dentist, named Maceehan, who had left Pennsylvania at so remote a date that nobody could recollect it. Long as he had been absent from his native country, he retained its accent, its peculiarities, and evergreen patriotism, and on each recurring 4th of July gave a lavish banquet in honour of American Independence in a restaurant decked with star-spangled banners, and had the privilege of making all the magnates of the capital, soldiers, ministers, courtiers, nobles, poets, and painters, clink their glasses as he sang "Yankee Doodle." Long as he had been in Madrid, he could not speak Spanish correctly, and his mistakes fed the clubs with side-splitting anecdotes. He was the soul of hospitality, and garrulous as a jay. He was in the secrets of the wire-workers, and had a novel process of extractinginformation as he extracted teeth. As his patient sat in the chair of torture he plied him slyly with interrogatories, and learned what he wanted, but he never betrayed confidences. In his way he was as proud as the proudest Spaniard of them all. Emilio Castelar came to him once with an agonizing toothache. Maceehan laid hold of the offending fang with his forceps. Castelar shrieked and clutched at his hand.
"You have got the wrong tooth!"
"Caramba!" said the Pennsylvanian, lowering his instrument. "So you have come here to teach me my business. I will thank you to leave the room, señor."
"I beg a thousand pardons, but consider the pain. Do with me as you like, dear doctor."
"The dear doctor in that case will adjourn the operation till to-morrow. By that time the señor may have discovered that though the dear doctor may not be an adept at literature or administration, he has some skill at pulling teeth."
And Castelar, in spite of his apologies and entreaties and plaints, had to accept the penance offour-and-twenty hours. He could not think of going anywhere else, for Maceehan was master of his profession. There was not a set of artificial grinders in Madrid with which the American was not familiar. He had looked into the mouths of every Infante and Infanta, had lanced the gums of awful Captains-General, and inserted gold wires in the ivory treasures of most of the reigning beauties. He had been dentist by appointment to Isabella, and had care of themâchoireof the lovely Eugenia de Montijo in her maidenhood. The very thought of sipping a cup of tea in the intimacy of a man who had fingered the palate of a Cardinal, plugged the hollow in a Queen's molar, and arrested the manifestation of caries in the central incisor of an Empress, was too much. It was oppressive.
I was amply provided with letters of introduction at starting, but I was in no hurry to present them. It was fortunate for me. Those who were in power to-day were in disgrace to-morrow, andvice versâ, and most of those to whom I had credentials were leaders of parties. One non-politician, a scion of my own sept, but no relative, I did call upon, asfunds were to be forwarded to me through his agency. A pleasant old man, he had a brogue as Irish as thecanavaunof the Bog of Allen, although he had quitted Ireland in early childhood—a mellow, musical, unctuous brogue. What a sovereign contempt he had for fomenters of revolution, intriguers, and the drones who buzzed while others worked, and wanted to be rewarded for buzzing!
"Namesake," he said, "if you knew the mean secret motives of half these wretched politicians by trade, you would spit upon them. There was but one man fit to govern this nation."
I forget whom he mentioned, but it was a Marshal (Narváez, I fancy), who, when asked on his death-bed by his father-confessor, Did he forgive his enemies? answered that he had none—he had shot them all.
"There may be nothing serious here for the present," he continued, "and yet one can't tell; but I think they will go on shilly-shallying and tinkering up constitutions for months to come."
"Then I should have a better field for my labours in the Carlist country."
"Undoubtedly; but if you think of going there, you must cut off that yellowish-red beard or they will call you Judas Iscariot. Do you speak Basque?"
"No; but as to the beard, I am equal to the sacrifice of shaving it and dying my moustache."
"Ah, yes; you may do that sure enough, but it is not so easy to learn Basque!"
If I could not learn Basque I could learn of the Basques, and what I did learn was so much to their credit that it is only fair to write it down. They were not Thugs, they were neither sanguinary nor thievish. The peasantry of the Basque provinces are the finest in Spain—intelligent, hospitable, brave, gentle, but fiercely fanatical where religion is concerned. Instances were narrated to me of travellers who had been arrested by them, being liberated without damage to person or detriment to purse. In one case a Frenchman was robbed by a small party, but his money and papers were restored to him a few days after by one of the chiefs, with an apology. The correspondent of theTemps, who accompanied the army in a previous Carlist campaign, informed me that after a skirmishin which forty Carlists were captured, he was anxious to send an account of the affair to Paris, but he did not know how.
"Hold!" said a colonel, "I'll find you the means."
He called over a prisoner, and asked him if he were let off on parole, would he take a letter through the disturbed district, and post it on the other side for a French gentleman? The man pleaded fatigue.
"You'll be well paid."
At last he consented; my informant gave him the letter and a five-franc piece. While monsieur was searching his pockets for more money to give him, the prisoner said:
"I have no change, caballero; how shall we manage?"
The prisoner duly set off; the letter was duly posted and duly arrived, and the prisoner faithfully returned and delivered himself up. Honour is not yet extinct in the Basque provinces, nor is magnanimity in the Spanish army. The commandant dismissed the peasant with a look of admiration and a push on the back. But some fireside philosopher will argue:
"Why, these honourable fellows cut telegraph wires and fire on railway trains."
The Carlists explain: "The telegraph and the railway are our greatest enemies; the one sends for reinforcements, the other brings them."
The unfortunate station-masters are to be pitied. Lizárraga sends one word that he will incur the penalty of death if he makes up a train for troops. The troops arrive, their commander demands to be furnished with a train to take him to a certain point; if the station-master refuses he is not merely threatened with the death-penalty, but incurs it on the spot. But the fireside philosophers, assuming the cocked-hat of the general, will continue:
"Why not protect the telegraphs and the railways?" The query may be met,more Hibernico, by another:
Do the philosophers know how enormous and difficult an extent of country has to be protected?
It would take more men than there are in the Spanish army altogether, including the regiment of dismissed generals in Madrid, to act as military milesmen in the perturbed territory. The Army ofthe North did what it could—that is to say, it fortified the railway stations, converting them into veritable block-houses, and supplied escorts to the trains; but the Carlists had an unpurchasable ally in the darkness. They could come down in the night and play old Harry with metals and wires. The insurgents were ill-armed and undisciplined, but they were on their own ground, every square inch of which they knew; they were leal to each other, and they had acquired the secret of guerrilla campaigning—that is, they harassed the regulars by fighting and running away, so that they might live to fight another day. They avoided concentration in mass, knowing how dangerous it is to pack all one's eggs in a single basket.
So daring had these Carlists become that bands had made demonstrations in perilous nearness to the capital, or rather they had been organized in the capital itself and had taken to the field in the neighbourhood. From a rising ground hard by the palace could be distinguished with the naked eye a thicket on the desolate plain in the distance, where the remnants of one band were known to behiding. The fates were against the insurgents, as they were met at Buendia and badly beaten two days after they had unfurled the banner of revolt. Eleven of them were slain, including a priest, twenty wounded and one hundred and seventeen taken prisoners, including their two chiefs. The elder of these, Alonso, a man of three-score and ten, died in the military hospital of Madrid on the 19th of March. He was a venerable fanatic of asinine stupidity to have risked a fight with regular troops in the open. Fortune, in my experience, favours not so much the brave as the wary. Had this particular Alonso the brave, really an Alonso the reckless, availed himself of a few picks and spades—the first farmhouse will seldom fail to supply entrenching tools—he might have lived to die in his own bed of a natural disease.
A Late Capital—The Gambling Mania—A French Rendezvous—The Duke de Fitzpepper—The Morality of Passing Bad Money—Spanish Compliments—Men in Pickle—A Licentious Ballet—Federal Manners—Prim's Artifice—Nouvilas Goes North—A Carlist Proclamation—Don Alfonso—Midnight Oil—Castelar's Circular.
MADRIDis not an early capital—natural effect of the climate. In the middle of the day the blinds are let down, the shops are shut, the streets are empty—everybody who can at all manage it is taking the siesta. The business of sunlight is at a standstill. The few hours thus stolen from the day are religiously made restitution of to the night, which is undoubtedly the most agreeable period for a stroll. Pleasure is in full swing, the promenades are alive, flirtation is methodically practised in the Spanish way—that is, through an intervening lattice—theatres and ball-rooms contribute to the programme of diversion, the coffee-houses (wherechocolate is mostly consumed) are packed to the door-posts, and the business of gaslight is prosecuted with a desperate concentration of energy and a brooding perseverance.
The business of gaslight, unfortunately, is high play. That is one of the social curses of Spain. Everybody gambles, to the sentries in the guard-house, the patients in the hospitals, the felons in the gaols. Such is the overwhelming dominion of this national passion that I should not be surprised at reading of a condemned man on his way to the garrote craving a hand of cards with the executioner to distract him from his sorrows. Strained the situation was at this crisis, and in all the clubs the cards were thrown on the tables with a fever as of men seeking some relaxation from the fierce game of politics; but, as I had opportunity to assure myself afterwards, this was nothing exceptional. The fever for play as high as the pocket can allow, often higher, is normal. The foreigner—and all foreigners provided with the slightest credentials are most graciously made free of the clubs—soon takes note of that.
The Fornos, the Suizo, and other coffee-houses were transformed into debating-forums, and sometimes I frequented them to catch what was going on; but my haunt of predilection was a restaurant patronized by French refugees. They had brought with them the Gaulish gaiety, and it was instructive to see Communists, fugitive aristocrats, bagmen with the asphalte of the boulevards still clinging to the soles of their boots, and steady old settlers in Madrid foregathering in friendly forgetfulness of differing shades of political coats. One of the three Marquesses de Fonvielle and de Coutuly, of theTemps, amongst other journalists, used to drop in regularly. De Coutuly has since strayed into diplomacy. Touching journalists who wander into that luxurious labyrinth, the representative of theNew York Herald, at Madrid, a painstaking gentleman with a certain cleverness, Russell Young, subsequently became United States' Minister to China. Prizes of this class, which rain upon Continental and American publicists, seldom fall to the lot of their brethren of the British press, unless they get into Parliament or boldly single themselves outfrom the anonymous herd. Then they are sometimes promoted to a Consulship in an insalubrious region, where they have every facility for studying the manners of the buck-nigger, and the customs of the lively sand-fly. Far and away the most interesting customer of this restaurant was the Duke de Fitzpepper, a tall, dark, strong man with curly black hair, a boisterous voice, and a bold laugh. He had to quit France on account of an affair of honour. He had been in the Imperial Navy, had a squabble with his captain, and resigned his commission that he might send him a challenge. They met with the customary duelling swords, but de Fitzpepper made a mistake. He ran his antagonist through. I know naught of the merits of the quarrel, but to my insularly uneducated mind it appeared that the gallant nobleman experienced inadequate remorse at having the blood of a fellow-creature on his soul. Perhaps I am hyper-sensitive, but when de Fitzpepper used to boast "Je me connais dans le flingot," it sent a thread of cold water creeping down my spine, not from fear but from aversion. Yet it was impossible to keep alooffrom him for long, he was such a joyous, dashing, carry-your-outworks pattern of a musketeer.
Evil associations corrupt good manners, I suppose, which must be the excuse for a Frenchman with whom I entered into conversation in this mirthful caravanserai. I happened to show him a coin which had been passed upon me, an escudo, which would be worth a sovereign if it were not counterfeit.
"What a shame!" he exclaimed as he fingered it. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's useless to me."
"Lend it to me, pray."
I gave it to him, and the following night he asked me what commission I would allow him. He had passed the bad escudo in his turn. I was indignant, and accused him of having been guilty of a dishonest act. I would touch none of the proceeds of his crookedness.
"Nonsense!" he said, astonished. "I got rid of it in a hell. They're all rogues there when they have a chance."
I submit to the casuists that this was a verynice case of conscience. Winning money at cards is not earning it. He who seeks to win it is demoralized, and it is to his advantage and the advantage of society that he should be discouraged in his pernicious foolishness. Therefore, q.e.d., it was commendable to palm that base coin upon him. I was unequal to deciding the question off-hand, so I elected to take not a real of the Frenchman's equivocal profit. But if the Frenchman was to blame, was I not responsible in the first instance, as having afforded him the means of cheating his neighbour? When the casuists shall have elucidated this riddle to their satisfaction, perhaps they will oblige by telling me how many thousand angels could alight on the point of a needle.
Morality is at a low ebb in Madrid, or rather the moral code is regulated by notions peculiar to the latitude. So with habits. A man must be "native and to the manner born," before he can affect competency to interpret them. For example, when a Madrileño asseverates that his house is yours, or that his equipage which you so much admire is at your disposal, he does not intend thatyou should take up your residence with him there and then, or hold his coachman at your beck. It is simply a form of etiquette, a mode of speech, as of the Englishman of past generations who challenged you to mortal combat and subscribed himself "your obedient humble servant." You will be guilty of a grave solecism if you imitate that American to whom the grandee remarked with effusion that the stud which captivated his taste was his own, his very own.
"Thanks," said Brother Jonathan; "I'll take the roan and the chestnut to-day and call for the others to-morrow!"
Although a man may tender you fraudulent coinage with a brazen front, he may be keen in honour, and resent an insult to his sister with a knife-stab; although he may intrigue for a Government place with a slimy self-abasement, under circumstances the same being may go forth unflinchingly and sacrifice himself on the altar of his country. Spain is the home of paradox. The beggar is addressed as "your worship," mutiny is a venial offence, bribery of officials is a recognised prescription. At the very epoch of which I write,the murderers of Prim were stalking about the capital; it was a town-crier's secret who they were and who was the personage who was their employer, yet none had the temerity to denounce them. And in the saladero, or the "salting-tub," as the prison was called, it was notorious that there were malefactors who gave lessons in forgery, and who positively utilized their cells as convenient head-quarters from which to prey on the unwary public. Their plan was to write to somebody of position, whose name they had lighted on in a directory, and inform him that they had often heard speak of him as a citizen of integrity, and felt that they might trust him; they were singularly situated, immured for a debt of a few duros, and yet in the vicinity of his residence they were cognizant of an immense buried treasure; if he would only send them the trifle needful to pay off that debt and cover their fare to his town, they would take him with them to the site of the secret hoard, and repay him with interest for his kindness. This transparent ruse actually told with hundreds of dupes. How theauri sacra fameswill deprive sane men ofsense! He would be a spendthrift of sympathy who would waste his sympathy upon them.
I had been under the impression that Spain was a deeply religious country. The impression was illusive. It may be fanatically religious in parts, but too often the educated classes rail at religion. As comes to pass when inordinate demand has been made on credulity, a reaction arises, and those whose faith was implicit yesterday become the scoffing heretics of to-day. The tide has turned, and it is no unfrequent occurrence to hear a Spaniard declare he is not a Christian, whose fathers would have perhaps burned at a stake the wretch who would have dared to utter such a profanity. This is very bad. One extreme is as wicked as another. If the Scylla of stupid superstition was dangerous, the Charybdis of arrogant scepticism is destructive. This is essentially a Roman Catholic country, yet never have I seen anywhere, in the lands where Roman Catholicism is disliked and contemned even, the ceremonies and institutions of the Church treated with more undisguised ribaldry. I went to the Novedades, a popular theatre in ahumble quarter of the town in the vicinity of the Calle de Toledo, to see what the piece on the occasion, "El Triunfo de la República," was like. I got in as a "Carlist ballet" was being danced; two men were dressed to represent two famous cabecillas, Saballs and a colleague, two others to represent the Carlist priest, Santa Cruz, and a monk of the party. Santa Cruz was bulky as Friar Tuck, leered from under his scoop hat, drank wine, reeled, toddled, fell, and kicked up his heels as the wild Mabille quadrille music was played; and high was the content and noisily expressed the delight of the audience. The four women who took part in the Terpsichorean orgie wore the robes of nuns, and must have belonged to the order of Sisters of Shame, if to any. They had blue hoods, white bands across their foreheads and bosoms, red crosses wrought on their habits, and trailing skirts of white. Their dancing was not voluptuous; it would be a misnomer to let it down with so mild an epithet; it was grossly indecent. They exposed their limbs, and the audience was ecstatic at the sight. Not a murmur of censure was to be heard. And thisbacchanalian riot, too obscene for any self-respecting house of ill-fame, was supposed to be held in a church. The scenery showed a mockery of ecclesiastical architecture and pious pictures. As a dramatic effort, "El Triunfo de la República" was very poor. Zorilla was caricatured as a fox (a play upon his name), and Sagasta as a devil-fish, and the apotheosis revealed the Genius of Spain waving a flag lettered with the words, "Viva la República Federal!" The flag was welcomed with vehement cheers, in affirmation that those who looked on and admired the burlesque of ministers of the national faith were all stout Federal Republicans, corresponding somewhat to the Communists of the Paris of two years before.
These Federals, I own, I do not like. A deputation of them from the provinces arrived one of these evenings, and put up at the Fonda de Paris. They were scrubby louts, smoked between the courses although ladies were at table, which, however, could be condoned, as it was Spanish. But they also wore their hats. That irritated one guest, and he called to a waiter to bring him a hat which he would findon a peg outside. Having been handed his head-gear, he clapped it on, and said that was all he wanted. The hint was not lost. The boors dined in a room by themselves during the rest of their stay. And yet these Federal Republicans profess to respect public opinion; but by the phrase must be understood the opinion of those who agree with them. The Intransigentes, on whose support they depend, have arms in their hands, and will try to keep them. Only one man was ever able to disarm them, and he was assassinated. If Prim did not know the Spanish mind intuitively, and as no other man ever knew it, even he would not have succeeded. After the promiscuous distribution of arms to the multitude had been made from the windows of the storehouses in Madrid at the close of 1868, he tried every means to get them back, but to no purpose. Promises of rewards to those who would give up the guns were useless; threats and coaxings were in vain. At last Prim hit on a notable scheme. At a review he publicly insulted the corps he was so long trying to disembody; he either rode past them without noticing them, or made remarks ontheir appearance the reverse of complimentary. The officers threw up their commissions in dudgeon; they had served the cause of the people faithfully, and were not to be treated with contempt; they would no longer carry arms for such ungrateful friends. It was just what Prim wanted.
While Madrid was thus seething and bubbling as if it were on the verge of boiling over, and the great question of elections for the new Cortes to determine the future "permanent" style of administration was being mooted, the Carlists were plucking up heart and maturing their designs. They fancied they would soon have the nation before them thenudum et cœcum corpusof Sylla's description—defenceless and blind. Nouvilas, one of the numberless generals of Spain, was ordered to the north. At a Republican meeting before his departure, he promised that he would take his five sons with him to fight against the Carlists. At the same meeting he declared himself the uncompromising enemy of all dictatorships, and warned those who expected that he would use his power in that sense not to make a mistake. He was a soldier, not a politician, and theday that the Republic would be consolidated, and peace secured, he would retire into private life. It did not seem as if peace were shortly to be secured. There was a proposition to raise fifty battalions of free corps to crush the insurgents. The only difficulty in the way was the loan for their armaments. The battalions were to be organized by provinces, and each was to be composed of 900 men (making a total of 44,100), and to be officered from the reserve. The proposition of itself was sufficient to wake the fools out of their paradise. These Carlists were not to be underrated. If they could do nothing else, they could issue proclamations. They were great at these. They promised to give the army the "licencia absoluta" which some soldiers demanded from the Republic at Barcelona. One Ramon V. Valcarces, commandant-general of the province of Lugo, was exceedingly anxious that the Galicians should come out to conquer or die. He told them that the national banner of their legitimate King waved triumphantly in the provinces of Catalonia, Castile, Leon, the Asturias, and the Vasco-Navarre, which was a piece of bounce—legitimate, may it be called?—on his part; and added scathingly that the Government at Madrid was in the hands of a group of adventurers, who called themselves Spaniards and Liberals. Those impostors would raise the taxes until it would be impossible to pay them, would sell the Antilles and persecute religion.
Tidings were wafted to us mysteriously that the brother of the legitimate King, H.R.H. Don Alfonso, of Bourbon and Lorraine, had held a review of the forces of Saballs at Vidra, in Catalonia. His Royal Highness was accompanied by his wife, the Doña Maria. His Royal Highness wore flesh-coloured riding breeches with black stripes, jack-boots, a zamarra or sheep-skin upper garment, and a flat white cap of the make of those used by Scotch shepherds. Doña Maria wore a cap of the same kind, with a gold tassel coquettishly falling over her left shoulder. The august pair were mounted, and the lady, who chivalrously accompanied her husband, witched the Carlists with noble horsemanship. Don Alfonso was surrounded by a brilliant staff, conspicuous amongst whom was a son ofthat Don Enrique of Bourbon who was shot in a duel by the Duke of Montpensier.
The "only court" did not lack a moidering liveliness. Of nights I usually leant by my balcony overlooking the Puerta del Sol, and watched the frail sodality of the Moon prowling about in charge of the superfluous duenna, the while the brawl of palaver, the cries of "água fresca," or of the last edition of theCorrespondencia, the "theeah" in such wise cadenced, or the boom of the watchman's voice came floating upwards, before I sat me down to a hard spell of work, sifting grain from chaff, and committing my thoughts to paper, a moistened towel round my temples, and a pot of black coffee at my elbow. The sun was usually ogling the fountain in the Plaza before I had finished.
The burden of work imposed upon the correspondent who desired to be loyal to duty was weighty on occasion. For example, late on the 26th of February the official journal came out with a lengthy circular from Don Emilio Castelar, to the representatives of Spain abroad. The object was to obtain the recognition of the Republic by Powersother than the United States and Switzerland. I saw the importance of sending a translation of this pregnant State paper at once, and shut myself up in my room with a supply of pens, ink, and paper, and the indispensable coffee-pot. I was not an accomplished Spanish scholar, but with the aid of a youthful groundwork in Latin, a fair knowledge of Italian, a familiarity with French, and a dictionary, I succeeded in turning out a full, accurate—nay, I will say a vivid—rendering of this historic composition before I unlocked my door, and transmitted it to London within twelve hours. Spanish is not difficult. If Italian is the daughter of Latin, Spanish is the son. And with energy and mother-wit, one can do much.
Castelar's was a brilliant and sustained effort; but it read more like an essay by Macaulay than a diplomatic holograph. It was splendid, but it was not official. It lacked crispness, and dealt in excessive rhetoric from the phrase in an opening paragraph where it spoke of Spain assuming a place in the Amphictyonic council of Europe, to the closing sentence. The fall of the Monarchy wastraced to the hour when the institution solemnly ceded its own country to the foreigner (alluding to the pitiful abdication of Charles IV. in favour of his "friend and ally" Napoleon, at Bayonne in 1808). True, attempts had been thrice made since to revive the old system with a new spirit, but they had failed; in 1812, the Democratic Monarchy; in 1837, the Parliamentary Monarchy; in 1869, the Elective Monarchy. The former order of things disappeared through inherent domestic causes; the Republic appeared of its own virtue, by the law of necessity. In 1869 the Constituent Cortes had proclaimed a Monarchy for three fundamental reasons: firstly, because it corresponded with the traditions of the Spanish people; secondly, because they believed it would secure liberal principles; and thirdly, because it would harmonize their form of government with that existing in nearly every part of Europe. The trouble was where to find the monarch. They had no dynasty typifying religious and national principles united to modern spirit like that of England, no princes like those who had built up the unity of Italy and of Germany on battlefields;their sovereign houses presented no stability. They had to look outside for a king, at the double risk of disturbing the peace of Europe and wounding the national sentiment. They found him in the scion of an illustrious line, united to France by the war of 1859, to Prussia by the war of 1866, to Great Britain by the establishment of parliamentary rule in Italy. But the national sentiment of Spain was against him. It left him in a solitude that was asphyxia. At last he renounced a crown of which he only felt the weight on his brow and not the dignity in his soul. When he left, this Government came not by violent revolution, but by logical evolution. The Republic was not provisional, but definitive. (As if there were any finality in politics!) The Cortes which had proclaimed it were the most permanent estate in the nation, inasmuch as when others melted away they remained. It was the same Cortes which undertook the national defence in the epic years from 1808 to 1814, which abrogated the rights of Don Carlos to the ancient crown, and which sanctioned the dethronement of the Bourbons. Spain owedthe change she had effected to no cosmopolitan influences or agitations. She sought autonomy, not Utopianism; she coveted no conquest, but she wished to show that she was living, not dead; that she was still great, but not with the greatness of ruin, like the empires buried under the valleys of Asia.
There was an excellent thickset gentleman in Madrid, a literary pluralist, who combined the offices of "own correspondent" to several London journals. He was a diligent "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," who would never set even the Manzanares on fire. He met me after I had despatched my version of Castelar's circular, and was cooling my aching brain on the shady side of the Puerta del Sol.
"Did you read that thing of 'Musica's'?" he said. ("Musica" was the nickname of the silver-tongued professor-politician.)
"Yes; lovely and long and flimsy as a rainbow," I remarked.
"I think you ought to send an epitome of it to London."
"I shall not."
"Well, I may tell you Chose is sending the whole of it on," he continued.
Chose was a most formidable rival.
"Who translated it for him?" I asked.
"As it is very important I am getting my sons to do it. Indeed, he asked me."
"And you never told me."
"Ah! you see, he has a reputation to sustain."
"And I have a reputation to make."
"I'll let you have aprécisto-morrow."
"No, thanks," I answered, turning on my heel.
The thickset gentleman looked mighty blank when he gazed on the paper a few days after with my translation covering nearly two columns of small type, nor did his astonishment lessen when I confided to him that it had been made for me by the Man in the Moon.
Warning to Ladies—The Hotel Parliament—An Anglo-Spanish Mentor—The Evil Genii of the Monarchy—The Curses of Spain—Government and Religion Affairs of Climate—The Carlists, Norwegians, and English, all Republicans!—Notions on Heredity—The Five Spanish Parties—The Army the Lever of Power—The Student-Cæsar—OrderversusRepublic—The Chained Colours—Dorregaray's Appeal to the Soldiers—Influence of the Church—Wanted: a Benevolent Despot.
INthe first line, it may be generous to warn ladies (if any of the gentler sex there be among my readers) to skip this chapter. There will be no indelicate disclosures—not that indelicate disclosures would bar the inquisitiveness of some females, judging by the ingenuity with which they intrigue for seats at the trials in the Divorce Court, and the avidity with which they devour "spicy," that is scandalous, details; but matter of a political, speculative, and quasi-philosophical nature is to bediscussed, and I fear me much it will be dry and prosy.
A shady little room in one of the upper stories of the Fonda de Paris was used as reading-room. It was thickly carpeted, the walls were covered with oil paintings in massive ornamented frames, and on the tables were placed curious jars, antique candlesticks, bronze statuettes, damascened daggers, and what is known as the merchandise ofbijouterieandvertu. There were few papers there, and but one book, a Spanish Army List in gorgeous green velvet cover with gilt clasps. In fact, it was more of an auctioneer's private show-room thancabinet de lecture, for the Brothers Fallola were dealers inbric-à-brac, and could not forego the chance of poking their wares under the notice of their customers. The Italian is first cousin to the Hebrew.
We held a grave Parliament of our own in this little room, and there I made the acquaintance of an English settler in Spain—an elderly gentleman who had been engaged in mining. He was well educated, had travelled widely, was pronounced in his views, and as he expressed them with candourand was possessed of a high order of intelligence, I listened to him with attention. Indeed, we all accepted him as Mentor. He indoctrinated me into the knotty catechism of Spanish politics.
Broadly speaking, he maintained that the monarchy was its own greatest enemy. It had fallen because of its indifference to public opinion. Among its evil genii were the pastrycook Marforio, Father Claret, and Sister Patrocinio. The birth of a daughter to Ferdinand VII., fault of nature, was the primal fatality. As Count O'Neil remarked when he heard the natal salute stop at the nineteenth cannon-shot, unhappy Spain was doomed, because of the gender of the newly-born, to be over-shadowed with the pall of grief and mourning. But the primal error was the unnatural marriage of Isabella to her cousin, Don Francisco. Never was there a more ill-assorted union. A woman of ardent temperament and strong fibre was allied to a feeble nonentity without sap or spirit. Had she become the spouse of a man like Victor Emmanuel, things might have gone better.
Spain was a grand country, he held, one of therichest in creation in minerals, forests, vineyards, orchards, silk and flocks. The people were a people that improved upon intercourse, and had some grand qualities. But the curses of Spain were the ignorance of the masses, the greed of the professional politicians, and the varying ascendancy of some one man's power in the army.
"Was the country ripe for its existing form of government?" I asked.
"Government," said he, "like religion, is very much a matter of birth and training, or, to put it more briefly, of climate. The circumcision of Judaism, the ablutions of Mahometanism, are the simple useful dictates of some wise man skilled in sanitary science. People of warm southern natures crave light and colour and music in worship; in colder lands, with dispositions hardier and less imaginative, they are satisfied with severe forms——"
"I know all those theories about religion," I interrupted, "but I am anxious to have your judgment on government."
"Identically the same—affair of climate. Those who have to brave privations and work hard for aliving are Republicans; the Swiss, for example, the Norwegians, and the Carlists."
"The Carlists! I thought they were Royalists."
The Mentor laughed as he said, "Royalists! why, they are the only Republicans in this land. Have you not heard of their fueros? They reject the tax of blood—they will have no unwilling soldiers taken from their midst. So Republican are they that they will not tolerate a Bishop in their ecclesiastical organization, strict Catholics though they profess themselves. He of Seo de Urgel is the nearest Bishop to their territory, and his diocese is properly in Andorra."
"But the Norwegians are Monarchists," I ventured.
"In name only, as the English are. There is no more democratic administration in the world than that of king-ruled Norway; and in England you are likewise a Republic—that is, you enjoy Republican freedom, only you choose to call the President a Queen. The Queen is but a figure-head, the vivified Union Jack. The Prime Minister, that is to say the elect of the people, not the Queen, sways the genuine wand of power."
"And the House of Lords, the most Conservative hereditary legislature in Europe, how do you account for its existence in this British Republic?" I hazarded as a clincher.
"An accident, my dear sir," he replied, as he pulled at his cigarette. "Like that puff of smoke, it has no power; it is but vapour, and like vapour it will disappear some day, to be succeeded by a Senate on the French or American model. Life-peerages can be justified; the hereditary principle has been tried and found wanting. The male offspring of a jockey are not necessarily skilful horsemen; the son of a fencing-master may be an awkward butter-fingers; the daughter of aprima ballerinamay be a cripple."
I passed that figure of speech about the vapour, though disciplined vapour drives a locomotive. But I urged, "Do you not believe in blood? Would you place the descendant of a line of brave and cultured men, with traditions to look back upon, on the same level with Bill Sykes or a Bosjesman? Is a game-cock a dunghill? Is a thoroughbred a plough-horse?"
"R-o-t, rot, my dear sir," said Mentor, with an irritating coolness. "Of game-cocks I know nothing; but as far as your horse argument goes, I am prepared to meet you. Care is taken that the mare shall be mated with the proper sire, so that the qualities long worked up to, by judicious crossing, shall not be lost or deteriorated; but there is no such selection in the case of a lord; he follows his own figary, and his figary is usually money, to regild a faded shield. Blood, sir, has less to do with those things than education and the associations of childhood. Send an earl's son to St. Giles', and he will grow up a saucy gutter-boy; send a burglar's son to Eton, and he may develop into what is conventionally recognised as a gentleman."
There was no arguing down our Mentor on this point, so the subject was changed, and he tried to disintegrate the ingredients in the very mixed dish of Spanish parties—a complete olla podrida. There were five factions in the distracted State, two schools of Monarchists and three of Republicans. These were—1st, the Alfonsists, or those who wished that the son of the deposed Queen should be raised tothe throne; 2nd, the Legitimists or Carlists (embracing a large body of the clergy); 3rd, the Republicans of long standing, who were actually in power; 4th, the ex-Monarchists—the neo-Republicans or Radicals, who sometimes called themselves Progresistas, and favoured the United Republic; and 5th, the Intransigentes, or the Irreconcilables, the extreme of the extreme, who clamoured for a Federal Republic.
"As example of that ignorance of the masses of which I spoke," said Mentor, "the mob of Madrid is fiercely Federal, which proves that it does not know what Federalism is; for one of the first results of Federalism would be to reduce this capital to the plane of a third-rate provincial town. Federalism is Spanish dismemberment. If such a system were adopted, you would have a Royalist North, a Red Republican Catalonia, and a pauperized Castile, politically piebald. Catalonia is Federal, in which Catalonia writes itself down ass, for that province is manufacturing, and with the downfall of protection its prosperity must depart."
"Is there any chance of Amadeus being coaxed back?"
He laughed a laugh that embarrassed me.
"A kick is not soon forgotten, for it is always an insult even when administered with an embroidered slipper."
"What do you think of the situation at the moment?" (This was in the first week of March.)
"Madrid," he answered, "is a hot-bed of political intrigue, and a complicated intrigue is in act of being developed at present. This, I take it, is a fair estimate of the situation. The men in office are controlled by fears of the violent Republicans outside, whom they are powerless to keep under; and the Radicals are anxious to get into office to restrain these same violent Republicans, but hesitate because of the apprehension that they have not sufficient material force behind them. They would fain climb, but that they fear to fall. Thus, as you perceive, the disorganization of the army is at the bottom of all the difficulties, for that it is which leaves the mastery with the dreaded Intransigents. Those, the 'partisans of action' as they are aptlycalled sometimes, have more energy than either the Ministry or the Radicals, and if this dilly-dallying goes on much longer they may make a bold attempt to get the reins into their own hands. The Radicals are opposed to a dissolution of the Assembly because they fear the Reds would command the polls at the new elections, and go in for sweeping changes on the model of their predecessors in Paris. The present Ministers have not the vigour to check the manœuvring that would bring about such an occurrence, and the Radicals believe that they only could oppose and beat down the fanatics of Communistic proclivities. There are cynics, however, who sneer at patriotic affirmations, and whisper that loaves and fishes have more to do with them than love of country."
I reflected that patriotism of that order was not an exclusively Iberian production, but that possibly the cynics were disappointed politicians themselves.
"The state of the army," resumed Mentor, "is the question after all. A great portion of the rank and file are violently Republican, and one cause ofinsubordination is that the privates do not believe in the Republicanism of their officers. Of course, the object of the Ministry in raising the proposed battalions of volunteers, is less to put down Carlism than to have a force to fall back upon in case of the army giving itself furlough. I have reason to know that one Minister at least is very uneasy on account of the want of discipline of the troops, and urges upon his colleagues that their first labour should be devoted to repressing all signs of disorder. But the fight for place at Madrid has more interest for them, and the army is melting away. When Ministers make up their minds to a rigorous supervision of the soldiery, there may be no soldiers to supervise."
It dawned upon me that Spaniards, although enjoying the reputation of being quick with lethal weapons under the spur of sudden passion, were very slow in taking ordinary resolutions. "Mañana" is the watchword of the nation: a favourite proverb is twisted into "Never do to-day what you can possibly put off till to-morrow." As a French writer wittily observed, the chariot of State inSpain is fashioned of tortoise-shell and drawn by snails.
"What do you think of Castelar?"
"Castelar!" echoed the Mentor, with a shoulder-movement of compassionate irony, "honest, but weak. He is too good, too single-minded, too amiable, too much of a student to play the Cæsar. Picture to yourself a doctrinaire who can quote Aristotle in the Chamber, while his country is travelling the road to ruin. Poor Señor Castelar is not the coming man."
"And where may we look for him?" I asked.
"Quien sabe? At this moment he may be waxing his moustache in the Balearic Islands, or sipping chocolate in the coffee-house on the ground-floor."
That coffee-house was always full at the juncture. Indeed, to one who had not been made stoical by familiarity with excitements, the tokens of the atmosphere were portentous. Congress often sat under the protection of an armed guard. The crowds in the streets were always large. The talk was of bloodshed; but I had grown so sceptical that I would hardly believe in bloodshed in Madriduntil what looked a liquid red had been chemically analyzed and proved to be blood. We had false alarms every other night, and shops were shut for an hour or two; but we got no nearer to revolution than the discussions of sundry excited parliaments over the marble-topped tables. There Spaniards flushed purple, and gesticulated violently over their temperate glasses of sweetened water. What a blessing this is not a whisky-drinking country!
"No," continued the Mentor; "Castelar is the least of all fitted to govern Spain. This people requires to be ruled by stern will and strong grip. The result of handing it over to a weak administration is palpable. Of all nations of the world, Spain is least prepared for Republicanism, and the theoretical Republicans who essayed to control her, in an evil moment for themselves, must before this have discovered the gross blunder they have made. The Republic is a splendid word; but Order is a word more wholesome. The present so-called rulers are incapable of preserving order. They sowed the wind when they taught the soldiers to be malcontent under the Monarchy, because an army was anartificial need in a free nation. Now that the soldiers are taking them at their word, they are reaping the whirlwind. They promised Spain liberty, and Spain, from every indication, is about to enjoy a spell of license. Heaven knows how it will all end; but those who have acutely watched changes like this in other countries are not slow to tell us that we shall have anarchy first to the full."
"And then?" I inquired, "for anarchy is no remedy. It is never final. What shall we have after that?"
"Perhaps a Conservative Republic, but more likely an iron despotism, the dominance of some successful General who has the knack of answering his opponents by ordering their heads to be sliced off."
"Is not that General as likely as not to come from the Carlist camp?" I demanded.
Mentor shook his head in a decisive negative. "No," he said; "outside the northern and a portion of the eastern provinces, Carlism has no solidity."
"But may not the name of Dorregaray, who has crossed the frontier again, turn out to be a spell-word?They tell me he distinguished himself in the war with Morocco."
"Yes," assented Mentor, "he commanded a regiment of galley-slaves there."