"And," I continued, "in Cuba at the outbreak of hostilities he was to the fore."
"True, true; but I would not give that," and he snapped his fingers, "for the fidelity of such as Dorregaray. He served under Don Carlos in the civil war from 1836 to 1840, and that did not hinder him from donning a uniform under Isabella. Cosas de España! Have you never heard of Piquero? His action is a pretty fair criterion of the political morality of your ordinary ambitious Spanish soldier."
No, the man's name was new to me.
"Well, he commanded the regiment of Malaga when Ferdinand VII. returned from France and was made absolute monarch. General Piquero, as soon as he got wind of the decree of absolutism, thought he would be first to curry favour at Court, and sent an address to the palace, praying that his regiment might have the honour of wearing chainsemblazoned on the colours in testimony of attachment to the King. The prayer was magnanimously acceded to, and the chains were absolutely borne on the colours for years. Yet not very long afterward this Piquero, this mean, fawning cur, changed front and became a yelping hungry mastiff of democracy. I don't anticipate Dorregaray would play that part."
"Anyhow," I persisted, "the Carlist General has sent forth a manifesto in his self-assumed capacity of commander-in-chief of the Vascongadas and Navarre to the soldiers of the Spanish army. He calls upon them to lay down their arms, promising them free discharges if they desire it, but promotion, decorations, and rewards if they join his standard. What do you think of that?"
"I do not blame him," said Mentor. "In thus tempting the army, he is only doing as every military chief who has ever lifted himself to power by a pronunciamiento has done. The sergeants and corporals are invariably lured with the bait that they shall be made captains and lieutenants, the common soldiers that their pay and rationsshall be increased. Such men as go over to Dorregaray only act as too many of their predecessors have acted. In this instance they have an excuse; they can say, 'We were Royalist soldiers a few weeks ago; we are transformed into Republican soldiers now. Our will was never consulted. We are Royalist still, therefore we rally to Don Carlos, who represents the principle of Monarchy.' They could say this, but I am far from thinking they will. Spaniards of the rank and file do not chop logic; it is the non-commissioned officers who initiate mutinies for purposes of personal advancement; the private is a machine, not a thinking bayonet."
In response to my inquiry as to the influence which remained to the Church, my Mentor shook his head, and said outside the hilly regions where Carlism prevailed, and the remote rural districts, it was next to null, save among the more comfortable class of women. The common Spaniard took his faith as he would his heritage; he was a Christian because his fathers were so before him—it was an affair of family—and his calling himself a Christian,which signifies Christian exclusively of the Roman Catholic persuasion, is a survival of the thoughts bequeathed by the Saracenic occupation. He who was not a Christian was a "Moro," and to this day the Jew or the Protestant is a Moor, tarred with the same brush as the turbaned Islamite.
"The Church," concluded Mentor, "is not to blame if it bums incense and assaults Heaven with prayers for such a change of Government as will bring money to its coffers. If the Republic last, the Church will be separated from the State, and every congregation will have to pay its own minister. That would be frank, at all events; but so long as there is a State religion, the ministers of which are supposed to be paid, it is a scandal not to pay them, and their reverences are perfectly right to turn Carlist or Alfonsist."
After these discussions in the reading-room I sometimes felt as if I had been endeavouring to unravel the Schleswig-Holstein tangle. Was I not right in warning off the ladies? Truly, Spanish politics are confusing. My usual reflections upon them resolved themselves into the uneasy convictionthat they were a Lincoln morass overlaid by a London fog, and that it would be a joy to have some thousands of Will-o'-the-Wisp guides prisoned to the chins in the quagmire, and replaced by one benevolent despot bearing the light with strong, sure grasp.
The Carnival—About Kissing Feet—Mummers and Masquers—The Paseo de Recoletos—The Writer is taken for Cluseret—Incongruity in Costume—Shrove Tuesday—Panic on the Prado—A Fancy Ball—The "Entierro de la Sardina"—Lenten Amusements—A Spanish Mystery—"Pasion y Muerte de Jesus"—Of the Stage Stagey—Critical Remarks.
SIMULTANEOUSLYwith the Ministerial crisis we were tortured by the throes of the Carnival, which was a trial too great for a Republic so young. But the weather came to the aid of the powers that were, and prevented the festival from rising to a height of merriment when it might become tumultuous. The opening day was one of leaden skies and moist pavements in the forenoon, of little patches of ultramarine above and little eruptions of noise below in the afternoon. There is one consolation on a wet day—you can conveniently make inspection of the extremities of dear womankind.I no longer elevate my eyebrows at the Spanish formula of compliment to the mistress of one's affections—"I kiss your feet." Anyone could kiss them with pleasure; they are so tiny, shapely, and sylph-like. There surely are the "little mice" of Suckling's ballad! Atalanta must have had ankles like those revealed under the lifted skirts of the doncella yonder, Cinderella such another pair of arched insteps. But one cannot contemplate them for ever, bitten by the statuary's mania for the symmetric though he be.
On the second morning, there was a light grey fog, like the smoke after gunpowder, on the square called "The Gate of the Sun." I have tasted the joys of Carnival elsewhere—at Rome in Papal times and at Paris in Imperial times—but never did the tomfoolery like me less. Muggy weather, miserable Carnival. No showers ofconfetti, no procession of thebœuf graseven. Here and there the orchestras of the theatres, clad in the cast-off finery of the supernumeraries thereof, parade the streets, and make dissonance with their instruments. Very German-bandish this dissonance sounds, with avariety of horror thrown in liberally in the shape of tambourines and triangles. One corps of mumming musicians is dressed as Zouaves; another might be directors of a Funeral Company, so sad their garments; a third is got up in a costume semi-nightshirt, semi-dressing-gown; all send out agents to tout forbacksheesh. That is their great point of resemblance. The masquers are few in the streets, and, such as they are, wear their motley as if for pay, not for pastime. They are of the usual order, Pierrots, Polichinelles, and cavaliers, with no wigs, with powdered wigs, and with curly wigs, and with vizors hideous or ghastly, or simply droll and grotesque. Among the latter are some which might have been designed by Dykwnkyn for a Drury Lane pantomime; but the individual who carried off the palm of burlesque was an equestrian I met in the Plaza Mayor, looking like one of the men in armour of a Lord Mayor's show with bonneted head-gear, astride of a pot-bellied Clydesdale. Perhaps he may have been caricaturing "the ingenious gentleman" of La Mancha. My most grateful anticipation of Spain was, that it wasbehind the age, and was in no hurry to overtake it. But this did not hold good in Madrid, and dear womankind with the tiny feet was the culprit. She disfigured herself at that epoch with an enormous bustle on which a Barbary ape might conveniently rehearse a bolero. Well, we have had our Grecian bends, our crinolines and crinolettes, our pull-backs and Piccadilly limps. Fashion spells despot everywhere, and dear womankind will cheerfully obey its dictates, even though she have to blur her cheeks with patches, distort her spine, or tightlace herself into consumption.
In the afternoon a long procession of carriages (mostly hired) traverses the Calle de Alcalá and the promenade to the left of the fountain where Cybele is sculptured driving a pair of meekest ox-like lions; the folk in the carriages are not wildly joyous in their dissipation, nor are the horses that draw them restive with excitement. Everything is dull, consequently respectable; orderly, consequently dreary. The Foresters'fêteat the Crystal Palace is more hilarious. No shafts of delicate raillery are shot by cherry lips; no peal of silverylaughter rings out. The Carnival is "stale, flat, and unprofitable," except to those mumming musicians who have paid sixteen shillings for the license to beg during the three mock-mirthful days. I survey the scene from a window in the Paseo de Recoletos, and get all my enjoyment out of the cynical remarks of a monstrously fine Burgundian lady, who criticises the dresses of her Spanish sisters as they glide by. The dresses are very tasteless, but the Frenchwoman's remarks are very ill-natured, and ill-nature is gratifying when your neighbour is its object. A friend enters and claps me on the back.
"Do you know, old fellow, that that stormy petrel of the Revolution, Cluseret of the Commune, is said to be in Madrid?"
"Never! What brings him here?"
"Saidto be, was my expression," he added. "As a fact, I don't believe he is here, but they take you for him. That is how the tale of his arrival has got into the papers."
The Burgundian lady turns. "Cluseret!" she ejaculates; "absurd! I have seen Cluseret; he ismuch taller and much handsomer than this gentleman!"
I bowed to hide my face, which was what Mr. Whistler might have called a symphony in black and red, frown and blush. I have since thought what a caustic retort I might have made if I had said politely, "And, it is to be hoped, much more well-bred." But I said nothing, for the same reason that Dr. Johnson gave once to Boswell—"I had nothing ready, sir."
The panorama underneath is duller now; occasionally a foolish horseman canters by, covered as to his person and his charger's quarters with a flowing roquelaure of sheeny green satin; or a black-haired damsel trips it by, with features concealed by sky-blue mask, and proportions by an outer vesture of a painfully bright gamboge colour. I wonder is her hair her own, and are her eyes black. Most likely they are—night eyes are the rule here—the fair (that is the dark) sex are all going to purgatory if the French couplet be authority:—
Again fanciful reflection is broken in upon by the thrumming of guitars, the shrill squeak of fifes, and the eternal whirr and jingle of the tambourines and triangles, and I descend and make my way through the fast-thickening crowds to my hotel. There, where the company, like the waiters, is polyglot; where a noble, white-bearded English gentleman is sandwiched between a little German professor and a Diputado to the Congress, where French journalists sit by young American exquisites, who are picking up notions in Europe, and mere tourists who have come to "do" Spain in thirteen days are listening to the experiences of a mining engineer from the West Riding of Yorkshire, who has been in the country for thirteen years; the gossip, unlike the fun without, is fast and furious. But as it is all of politics, and I gave the reader a dose of that in the last chapter and may have to repeat it anon, I turn to the windows and scan the ever-animated, always-varying picture on the Puerta del Sol. Ladies in veils white and black, as of Genoa and Milan respectively, pass and re-pass, gilt missals in their hands. They will be at the masked ballsto-night, for this, as I have said already, is the home of paradox, where the announcement of the church in which the Quarant'ore, or Forty-hours' Exposition of the Sacrament, is being held, is printed in the same column with the theatrical advertisements. Over the way stand a group in the national "capa." Why do they not wear slouched and plumed beavers? To me a chimney-pot hat surmounting a cloak is as dire an outrage on poetic association as a Venetian bravo with a quizzing-glass. It offends the sense of fitness. What if the Madrileños were to take to the Ulster-coat? It would make a capital Carnival disguise at all events. But the cloak, is it not mysterious, brigandish—tragic, if you will? Mark that loosely-built, tawny man of dare-devil aspect on the edge, bending intently towards the excited speaker in the middle. Something has discomposed him, for his cheeks purple. There is an agitated flutter under the cloak, and its folds are flung back. You expect to be startled by the blade of a stiletto, and out comes a soiled pocket-handkerchief! It is as if Jupiter Tonans were to threaten a thunderbolt and compromise with a sneeze.
The third day of the Carnival, Shrove Tuesday, was all that could be desired, sunny, sprightly, bustling. The streets palpitated with merrymakers walking, riding, or driving, most of them handsomely dressed; the music—good, bad, and indifferent—was unceasing; the legions of roysterers attired themselves in every conceivable vagary of costume, even to the cheap resource of a chintz dressing-gown. They were cheerful, but in a business-like matter-of-fact way, and as they promenaded twirled corncrakes, jingled tin cans, and tootled horns. Few women disgraced themselves by appearing in men's clothes. Madrid is more continent than Paris; and, to its credit be it recorded, there was neither drunkenness nor horse-play. In the afternoon the scene in the Prado was kaleidoscopic in variety and beauty and motion; it had in it the gay element of the true Carnival, and those who had held aloof before or had been deterred from sharing in thefêteby the inauspicious natural weather or by nervousness owing to the unsettled condition of the political weather, came out fresh, frolicsome, and bent on making up forlost time. Some of the dresses were luxurious, and triumphantly bore the test of sunshine, which is inexorable for what is worn or seedy or imitation. And yet there seldom was a time to which the stereotyped figure of speech about dancing on a volcano more strikingly applied. Electricity was in the air; the troops were under arms; the Deputies were consulting under the protection or the threat (as the balance of feeling might incline) of canister-stuffed cannon, and it was quite within the range of the possible that before nightfall the cavalry might be fetlock deep in blood, and the carnage of the Dos de Mayo be repeated—a worse carnage, for the Spaniards who fell then were patriots slain gloriously fighting against the foreigner, and now they would be Spaniards killed by brothers.
The stream of pleasure was in its full force and flow when a strange murmur followed by a succession of slight screams arrested the attention of the merrymakers. Faces were turned inquiringly towards the point whence the sounds came; the faces grew serious as a carriage was noticed breakingfrom the ranks and driving smartly down a side-street, they were overspread with alarm as other carriages filed off, and then, quick as a cloud overcasts the sun, a curtain of gloom fell upon the moving multitude. There was a halt as if by general consent, a dead silence, a thrill of trepidation, and a rapid rush and scurry hither and thither to shelter. Trailing skirts were caught up, vizors were thrown aside, grey-bearded patriarchs tore off their wigs and spectacles, the fiddling and singing came to an abrupt ending, and were replaced by curses and shrieks; all order and courtesy were cast to the four winds of heaven. It was a perfect tragi-comedy; a mixture of the terrible, the risible, the ominous, the rococo. I never saw transformation so sharp. It was as if there was no room for any less ignoble feeling in the lately jocose, bantering throngs than self-preservation. Drivers lashed their horses and mules and galloped off furiously; equestrians careered towards all points of the compass; those on foot bolted into every hall-way that stood ajar, or disappeared down the nearest openings; shrubs and flowers were trampled upon, and in a spanshorter than it takes to recount it, the avenue of the Prado was a desert. It was fierce wholesale scamper and stampede. The roadway and parks were strewn with fans, masks, pocket-handkerchiefs, gloves and slippers; the entire company of masquerading Arabs, Prussian officers, Morris dancers, Inquisitors, and troubadours had taken incontinent flight, most of them breathless and white; the ladies in their varied characters of gipsies, grisettes, Galician nurses, and Court coquettes had all scudded off in such a dismayed flutter that they had forgotten to swoon, and forfeited the finest of opportunities of breaking into hysterics. They were really frightened. I sought refuge (from what I knew not, whether earthquake, hurricane or revolution) in a thick clump of bushes at the side of the Paseo, where I stumbled over a panting make-believe toreador, and a curious wire-woven article of ladies' dress, which latter I appropriated as trophy. By-and-by, as no fresh cry of alarm was raised, the bull-fighter crawled out, and I took heart of grace to return to the centre of the town, where I learned that the scare was groundless.It had its origin in the glitter of the bayonets of some soldiers returning from their duties at the Palace of the Congress. Madrid was timid as a sick girl. It struck me that if there had been genuine cause for the panic, and that a charge had been made or a volley with lead fired, there would have been unequalled scope for a picture of the type of Gérôme's "Duel after the Bal Masqué," but on a more liberal scale—Polichinelle pierced by a bayonet-thrust, the floured face of Pierrot streaked with blood, and poor Jack Pudding sprawling in the death-agonies in the gutter.
The festivities were prolonged to the small hours of the night, or rather of the morning, none the less vigorously for the passing fear-spasm in the Prado; the masked balls at the theatres were packed with guests who enjoyed themselves, or fancied they did, which is as much as one can reasonably expect in this mundane sphere sometimes.
The "Marseillaise" from a vibrating brass band might be heard, nay almost felt, crashing through the glass-doors and bursting in a cataract of sound through the drapery at the entrances of thecafé on the ground-floor of the Fonda de Paris at the hour when honest burgesses should betête-à-têtewith the pillow.
On Ash Wednesday, which rose rainily, there was an augmentation in the average of headaches, and a rise in the rates for apothecary's stuff. The pious revellers went (with an interval for washing and change of clothes) from the ball-room to the churches to receive the ashes. "Remember, man, thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return," says the priest, and smears their foreheads with the cinders of last year's palm-branches. Another custom, peculiar to the date, the "entierro de la sardina," was duly observed by those wicked rogues, the non-pious revellers. The sardina is not the fish, but a portion of the intestines of a pig, which is laid to earth with pseudo-lamentation in token ofcarne vale, farewell to flesh-meat for forty days. With a lugubrious affectation of grief the funeral pageant passed. It was very profane—an undissembled mockery of a religious procession. A banner striped pink and yellow and inscribed "á los Cubanos" was carried in front by a fellow inWest Indian negro dress with blackened face. Next came a troop of blackened acolytes, two by two, and then a canopy such as is borne over the Host, which canopy was held in travesty of homage over a beer-keg. A sacrilegious choir, chanting a parody of a Gregorian hymn, paced behind, and a gigantic blackguard, theserpent du village, supplied a droning accompaniment from a bassoon. A blackened high-priest, with a conical black hat and a cope bee-barred black and yellow, closed the burlesque train and made believe to read a mass-book through his pantomimic goggles. There was an attendant who rang a funeral bell, another who tapped a muffled drum, and a third who swung right under the nostrils of the onlookers a censer containing ground resin made vile to the smell by some fetid compound. Occasionally the profane rascals halted for a pull at a goat-skin of wine.
There are some queer customs, the undeniable relics of paganism, in Spain. On Christmas-eve the streets are paraded by men rattling pots, just as the Romans used to celebrate the row that was made in Olympus to hide the birth of Jupiter fromSaturn. In the Basque provinces they honour the Virgin Mary under the name of Astarte, a clear loan from the worship of Venus. As I am treating of queer customs, it is worth chronicling that the Republicans entered the churches as soon as their favourite Government was proclaimed and frantically rang the bells. A Bishop took care to exorcise the Republican demon next day by carefully sprinkling the bells with holy-water.
For all the Lent, the treacherous and trying weather, the wars and rumours of wars, Madrid enjoyed herself, ate, drank and made merry, flirted and gambled. The Opera, a cosy well-frequented resort of the fashionable set, was open, and gave theCreationandL'Africaine, and the usual repertory of musical masterpieces of which I plead profound technical ignorance redeemed by passionate fondness. The soprano was that plump goddess with the dimpled double chin, fair-haired Marie Sass. The orchestra was one of the finest I had ever heard, and the chorus in personal appearance one of the ugliest I had ever seen, and that, I can assure the reader, is saying much. The Zarzuela,a play-house devoted to opera-bouffe—the sacred lamp of burlesque was not trimmed—presented "Golden Dreams," a beautiful piece with plot and fun not cumbered with that scenic sumptuousness which is trying to edge acting ability off the boards elsewhere.
The respectable theatres in Madrid shut their doors on the Fridays in Lent, and respectable theatre-goers remain at home. It is not the correct thing to be seen pleasure-hunting on a day of mortification and white meats. But actors must live, as well as in London. Those who are connected with high-priced houses and are decently paid can afford to lose one night in the week. But there are poorer followers of the Thespian art who are in very bad case indeed, owing to this tribute to religious scruple. If we are to be virtuous, well and good: but let us be virtuous in earnest. We have bull-fights on the Sundays in Lent. Why may we not enjoy the singing of Marie Sass inNormaon a Lenten Friday? This thin distinction between what is right and what is not—so thin that men of the cold north cannot make it out—comes under the category of those indigenous peculiarities which surpass all understanding. Anyhow, it presses rather heavily on the humble votaries of the sock and buskin who are attached to the middle-class houses, and who are docked of one night's salary in every week of the seven in the penitential season, in order that the proprieties of a public which is not particular to a shade as to how it observes the Sabbath may be respected. The low theatres—the Romea, where the Republic is glorified; the Alhambra, where heels are kicked up and lewd songs are rolled forth; the Capellanes, where monks and nuns are caricatured, have reason on their side, at all events. They dare to be logical in their contempt for the Church, and keep open all the year round, on Friday as on Sunday, in the time of fasting as of feasting.
The Teatro Martin is not a low theatre nor yet is it a high-priced one. The actors there are not rich, but the audience has some pretensions to delicacy of taste. What is the lessee of the Martin to do during the Lent? To rob his treasury of one night's receipts and cheat his patrons of one night'senjoyment? That would be the last crime any spirited and enterprising lessee would dream of committing—if he could avoid it. From this dilemma the gentleman of the Teatro Martin has discovered an escape. He opens his house on Fridays, but he converts it into a temple; he reconciles amusement with religion; he produces a Passion Play! I went to see it for the special reason that it was my privilege once to describe the Passion Play in the Bavarian Highlands, and I was anxious to compare one representation with the other, and, if possible, to renew my emotions of the past.
The house was tolerably full, except the boxes, which were unoccupied, save one by a sedate family party. Devout folk of the Latin race are famous for the interest they take in the spectacular. They admire the pomps of religion; and this Passion Play, which was almost a function, had evidently brought many to the theatre who are seldom seen there on ordinary occasions. I thought I could detect a pious bearing in the pittites. The well-to-do persons—male and female—who sat patientlyon the mouldy benches looked serious, as if they had come to assist at a sacrifice. There were old ladies there, I could almost take my word, who are more often to be encountered, with morocco-bound prayer-books in their shrivelled hands, creeping to early service. The gallery was packed, and the gods, for gods, were gentlemanlike. There was nothing in the aspect of the house meriting description—it was roomy, ill-lit, full of draughts and dust—one of those houses we know so well. The scene-painter, if the act-drop was a fair sample of his powers, was a victim to colour-blindness; the orchestra showed a Republican freedom in its scorn for the trammels of time and tune; but the prompter in his hooded box, full in the middle of the range of footlights, was the feature of the show. He had a very distinct voice—so distinct was it that every sentence he directed to the actors rebounded from the flats, came back in sibilant echo, and ascended to the gods. I have no intention of giving an analysis of the piece; to speak the sad truth, it did not come up to my expectations. Ober-Ammergau spoiled me for exhibitions of thekind. I could not screw up my enthusiasm, tried I ever so hard. That which charmed in Bavaria had no charm in Spain. The stately panorama which was put before the awe-struck spectator in that valley of the Ammer was not visible here. The blue sky overhead and the eternal hills in sight above the walls of the simple wooden structure; the music so tender and solemn; the clear-browed peasants losing their identity in the fervid rendering of their parts; the enraptured attention of the auditory, whose lips moved in prayer sometimes, and whose eyes sometimes brimmed with tears, as if the scenes they watched were real—those were things to be remembered. They were the points that helped to make an impression in Bavaria, that dispelled prejudice and replaced it with a pleased satisfaction which insensibly swelled to admiration; but they were wanting in this stuffy play-house. No illusion was possible. One never lost the consciousness that he was looking on at a stage-play acted for money by indifferent stage-players. There was a smell of paint and tobacco-smoke about. Then there was the voice of that irrepressibleprompter, the shaven faces of the hungry supernumeraries who played the Roman soldiers, the gas-rakes, the shaky wings, the mark of the trap-doors from which devils with a family likeness to the imps of pantomime spring up to-night, and the statue of the Commander may emerge to-morrow night, the scenes that would not run smoothly in the grooves, and the stiff stereotyped exits and entrances. Everything was of the stage, stagey. One could not get rid of the notion that Caiaphas had dined on puchero with its flavour heightened by garlic. It was very palpable that the Apostle Peter wore a wig and a beard of tow. Mary Magdalen had an air of operatic resignation, and was troubled with the arrangement of her drapery. There was a layer of pearl-powder on the Virgin's cheeks.
I shall not bore the reader with an essay on mysteries and miracle-plays; neither, as I have said, shall I attempt to analyse this sacred drama, in seven acts, of "The Passion and Death of Jesus;" but I shall take the liberty of giving an epitome of some notes, pencilled on the spot, in the intervals ofinterruption by that loud prompter. ThePasion y Muerte de Jesus(that is the Spanish title) is written by Don Enrique Zumel, who appears to have fathered as many pieces as Lope de Vega, but whose pieces are not quite so well known. It was brought out for the first time in this self-same Teatro Martin on the 3rd of March, 1871. It is in verse, and has some literary merit. In the main incidents it resembles the Bavarian play, which does not deviate noticeably from the Bible narrative. It is unnecessary, therefore, to go over the incidents of its various acts. The Greek chorus to be remarked at Ober-Ammergau is absent. The tableaux from the Old Testament prefiguring events in the New are absent also. The first Act opens with a dialogue between Magdalen and some women of Jerusalem. The Saviour, with the Apostles, enters on the scene almost immediately after. Magdalen's garments are rich with spangles; her mantle is scarlet; she has flowers in her luxuriant tresses, and looks a vain creature. The Saviour is personified by an actor with a singular likeness to Joseph Mayer, the Bavarian Christus. Pale, clean-chiselledface, long black locks smoothed over, downcast eyes, a meek demeanour generally—the characteristics are identical. The voice of this man, who essayed so awful arôle, was low and sweet; and, to give him his due, he moved as if he was filled with respect for his dangerous part. The Virgin comes on the scene in the same Act. She is clad in blue nun-like raiment. The people who filled up the background wore sandals, and had white towels, swathed in folds like those of the turban, round their raven-black hair. The entry into Jerusalem was shown, the Saviour being mounted on a white ass. The orchestra here woke up, and played a joyous strain to a chorus commencing—
and terminating with a hosannah to the Redeemer. The only anachronisms in dress that impressed me in this first Act were a silk net with which oneyoung person of Jerusalem confined her rebellious hair, and a strip of black velvet which another had fastened round her throat, bringing out the whiteness of her skin by contrast. In the second Act Caiaphas speaks of Jesus as the fomenter of a "thousand conflicts between Church and State." The Last Supper is pictured after Leonardo da Vinci, and Judas comes into relief, a sullen scowler, who overdoes his part thus early. In the garden scene in the third Act the figure of Jesus in prayer is shown with a ray ofluz Dumont, the lime-light of our London stage, playing upon it! I left my seat after this, and loitered outside till the Crucifixion scene was on. At Ammergau it was appallingly impressive; here it was sensational purely. The drama wound up with the bursting open of the sepulchre. I came away free from any desire to witness Don Enrique Zumel's production again. Without absolutely shocking one's feelings on a subject which should be sacred and approached reverently, if at all, his Passion Play offended fine taste throughout because of the obtrusive staginess of its action, get-up, and surroundings. Still theactors were occasionally applauded, and the audience left in a contented mood.
But the provisional rulers took care that those under their guardianship should have stronger pabulum than spoon-meat.
Napoleon I., unless the tale be a legend, used to order a new coat of gilding to be laid on the dome of the Invalides when the people of Paris chafed under his tyranny. That gave them something to talk about—supplied a sensation of twenty-four hours. The Spanish Republican governors are working on the same principle.Panes et circenseswas the charter of the Roman plebs, "pan y toros" is that of the plebs of Madrid. I do not know how it is with the bread, but the rulers let the lieges have bulls galore to occupy their minds. There are grand corridas for professionals and amateurs. Nor is bull-fighting the only pastime provided for the populace; cock-fighting, with game-birds from the Canary Islands, is also carried on every Sunday morning in a pit constructed for the purpose, mains are scientifically fought, and money is prodigally squandered. All countries have their peculiarities.In some, people go racing on the Lord's Day; in others they are content with getting drunk in the bosoms of their families.
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NOTE BY MY VERY LEARNED AND AMIABLE ACCOMPLICE, DR. DANN.—That great writer on Spanish folk-lore, Mesonero Romanos, better known as "El curioso parlante," who flourished some fifty years since, seems utterly ignorant of the record of the "entierro." His account only goes to show that Spain is the most conservative country of Europe. A huge "sardina" placed on the top of a bier is carried by a number of fellows in carnival costume, each of them having on his head a cone of immense height, somewhat resembling the dunce's cap that was formerly such a usual thing in English village-schools. In front, and at the back of the procession, appears a crowd of young men and of girls from the slums of Southern Madrid, in three groups, called "coros," or choirs. There is the "coro de mancebos," or young men's choir; the "coro de doncellas," or girls' choir; and the "coro de inocentes,"or innocents' choir. Thelocus in quois that part of the south of the Spanish capital which extends from the Vistillas de San Francisco to the Church of San Lorenzo; for, in contradistinction to Paris, the South of Madrid is almost exclusively inhabited by what M. Gambetta used to call the new social strata, while Mr. Bright spoke of them many years ago as theresiduum. In connection with the sardina, and rising on the same coffin, a figure of "Uncle Marcos" is carried, somewhat similar in form to the stuffed Guy Fawkeses which are carried about in the streets of London on the 5th of November. When the procession has reached the Puente Toledana, the figure of Uncle Marcos is burnt on a funeral pile, and the sardina is buried in a ditch prepared on purpose. While all this is going on, songs intended to be parodies of the Catholic Church hymns and canticles are chanted by the accompanying choirs, and altogether the performance is, for all practical purposes, a parody of the Church processions so frequent in Spain and all Southern countries. When it is all over, a good many of the actors indulge in libations. Not unfrequentlythe burial of the sardina is followed by a free fight, and half a dozen dead or wounded are the outcome of the battle. Disgusting as the whole performance may appear, more especially the blasphemous simulacre of religious worship, it must be admitted in palliation that the very idea of mocking the rites of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church never so much as enters the minds of the performers, who would repudiate with the utmost indignation the notion of intentionally placing themselves outside the pale of the Church, and violating the "buenas costumbres" by what they are doing.
Another Chat with Mentor—A Startling Solution of the Spanish Question—The Penalties of Popularity—The Republic another Saturn—The New Civil Governor—The Government Bill—Outside the Palace of the Congress—Providential Rain—Wild Rumours—Federal Threats—The Five Civil Guards—Inside the Chamber—The Great Debate—The Two Reports—Compromise—Minor Speechmakers—A Pickwickian Contention—The Division—Victory for the Ministry—The Five Civil Guards Trot to Stables.
ONthe morning of March 8th, I met my Anglo-Spanish Mentor in the reading-room of the hotel. To my usual inquiry as to the condition of health of the Republic, he replied that he thought we were nearing the critical point.
"There is a cataclysm impending," he said. "We have got beyond the stage of changing the names of streets and substituting the Hymn of Riego for the Royal March. Everybody agrees that acoup d'étatis necessary, and may be imminent; we wantan intelligent despotism—but the despot must always be a man of our own party. There is the hitch. Castelar probably may have some amiable hobby, like Lamartine, of 'employment for adults and education for the young.' Whatever be the sequel of the trial of strength, I hope we may have a strong administration, not one like the present, where the Minister of Grace and Justice is all grace and no justice.
"Do you know," he added, after a pause, "I have an idea as to the solution of this Spanish question?"
"What is it, pray?"
"SELLSPAIN TOENGLAND!"
I roared with derisive laughter.
"I am serious," he continued. "This is the age of arbitration. Why not of colossal international barter? We could rule the country as we rule India, set Sikh against Hindoo, and play off Ghoorka against both."
"You do not reckon with Spanish pride," I said.
"Bah! The pride that lowered itself to the acceptance of foreign royalty might condescend to pocket foreign gold."
"When Pedro brought me my chocolate this morning he told me there had been demonstrations in some of the lower quarters."
"Yes; but they are easily accounted for. The populace do not see the impracticable promises of the Republicans realized, and are impatient for the millennium of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with no work and lots to eat superadded. But the demonstration was very trivial, it limited itself to the sticking of a red flag in front of a hall-door. There are wicked slanderers who say that Figueras had something to do with it, and passed the word that the 'people' should bring an outward pressure to bear upon his brethren of the Assembly, so that he might get rid of some of his ungrateful colleagues by the argument, 'See, you are impossible, the people won't have you; better for the sake of order leave, that you may avoid the humility of being sent away.'"
"Surely," I expostulated, "Señor Figueras would not descend to such a base trick of democracy!"
"My innocent friend," said Mentor, "once a man binds himself to what is falsely called the 'people'he has to put up with much inconvenience, swallow his pride, and humour his exacting pet. Figueras knows this already; he has been stopped by groups in the streets at various times, and obliged to amuse them by small harangues, the same as if he were a Punch-and-Judy showman, making his 'pitch' for ha'pence."
"Unpleasant situation," I remarked. "He must weary of that soon."
"Most likely his admirers will weary of him—and then," said Mentor, with a chuckle—"then for a spell of chaos. The Republic, like Saturn, has an ugly propensity for devouring its offspring. The mob fondles Republicanism as its exclusive property, spreads palm-branches under the feet of its prophets one week and stones them the next. Castelar, Figueras, Pi y Margall, are the prophets to-day; they will be victimised in the end. To them will succeed men more violent, who will make larger promises, and then, finally, will spring up a strong reaction and a return to something old-fashioned and stable."
Mentor was a thorough-paced Conservative and apessimist into the bargain. In order to draw him out I pleaded that the Government was doing its best to conciliate all parties. For instance, it had appointed Estévanez, Civil Governor of Madrid.
"Aye," said Mentor, "another evidence of the truth of what I advance. That was done to please the Intransigentes. Estévanez is beloved of the Reds, and took to the hills a few months ago in assertion of Federal Republican principles. He held the rocky mountain pass of Despeñar Perros in Andalusia, at the head of a handful of men, but he boasts that he neither destroyed railways nor cut telegraphic wires, and holds certificates to that effect from the railway companies and the Government. He is an old soldier, a man of energy, and his influence with his party in this province is paramount. If the Constituent Cortes proclaim a moderate or a united Republic he may make himself obstructive. But I must bid you good-day; I am off for my constitutional in the Botanical Gardens."
The reference to the Constituent Cortes reminded me that this was the date appointed for the consideration of the Government Bill for their election,introduced into Congress on the night of the 4th of March. This Bill consisted of eight articles, the most important of which were that the elections should take place on the 10th of April and three following days, and the meeting on the 1st of May; that all Spaniards above the age of twenty should have votes; and that on the suspension of the session of the existing Cortes a permanent committee from their members, with consultative functions, should be appointed for the interregnum. It was felt that this was throwing down the glove, and the lines were now marshalling for the tug of war. The Radicals are disquieted. They know that if they go to the country not one-third of them will be returned, for the reason that whoever holds the Ministry of the Gobernacion, or Interior, in this paradise of universal suffrage can return the nominees of his party, and determine their majorities with mathematical certainty. Ministers act illegally in the article which provides that men of twenty may vote. The young men are the main strength of Republicanism everywhere, and this article at a single arbitrary scratch of the pen addshalf a million electors to the rolls. Hitherto the right of voting was restricted to males who had attained twenty-five years. The Radicals object to this sweeping alteration in the law, made with the distinct object of defeating their chances; and the hatred of those half-million of young men thus sought to be enfranchised by the new Republic will be acquired to the Radicals from the very fact of their opposition.
When the hour for opening the Congress came, the building looked more like a barrack than a House of Parliament. A grim Guardia Civil, in a three-cornered hat, stood sentry, with fixed bayonet, at the side-door in the Calle de Turco, by which the Deputies enter. At every window men in uniform were to be seen; officers with jangling scabbards moved about the lobbies and ante-rooms, instead of the usual moody, sallow, shabby crowd of taciturn waiters on Providence, muffled in mantles and hidden in smoke, who hang about for hours, and occasionally pass mysterious slips of paper by the liveried and silver-laced ushers to Señor Don This or That within.
What can their business be? I often puzzle myself by asking. Have they claims on Government for ancestral property gone down in the Armada? Are they pretenders to the succession in a licence to sell tobacco and salt in Minorca? Or are they simply intriguing for a ticket to the House? The problem waits for solution.
They are not here to-day. In their places are the soldiers who watch over the safety of the representatives of the people. Luckily it is wet, and the crowds outside cower and huddle under a camp of umbrellas. Your persistent drizzle is a terrible enemy to revolution. There is nothing like it for putting a damper on noisy out-of-door agitation. But the occasion is a great one, and though the clouds seem to have been transformed into tanks with bottoms pepper-castored with leaks, and never tire of the weary drip-drip, the citizens of Madrid bravely affront the weather and collect on the sloppy approaches to the Palace of the Congress to discuss the affairs of the commonwealth. They look resolute enough to go under a shower-bath in the interest of their country. Patiently they stand,with knit brows, their soaked mantles clinging to their persons, while the Deputies drive or walk up, and enter to take part in the important discussion at hand—the discussion which is to decide whether there are to be barricades in Madrid and in all the great cities, and some widows the more in Spain within four-and-twenty hours.
Denser grow the throngs and livelier the excitement, for all the rain. Reports the most eccentric and alarming are bandied about. The people have burned down the churches in Malaga; but Malagueño, "as everybody knows," remarks a French journalist, "is the synonym forméchant." In another knot a rumour circulates that a meeting of Radicals had been held the evening previous, at which the German, Austrian, and Italian ambassadors were present, and that they spoke of the necessity of a joint intervention to assist in the restoration of peace. This senseless rumour was believed by some fools, and the Radicals who were supposed to be ready to open the door to the foreigner were cursed and hissed, or howled at, as they stepped into the Palace. Word passes that the Intransigentes arein arms in the lower quarters of the town, and have taken up "strategic points" in view of any emergency that may arise. If the Government is beaten they mean to raise the red flag, to occupy the theatres as they did once before, to turn the Plaza Santa Ana and the Plazuela de Anton Martin into head-quarters, and, if necessary, to march on the Parliament-house and make an example of those traitorous Radicals who would betray the people and bring back the Monarchy. Law-fearing Madrid is in a state of wan terror, and thanks Providence for that thrice-blessed rain. The men who compose the noisy groups belong to the lower classes; they are not very numerous, but they are very determined. The active demonstration is confined to a nucleus of some one hundred and fifty persons. Delegates occasionally arrive from distant parts of the town, whisper to comrades in the mob, and depart. It is known that the troops are confined to barracks, that a hundred picked men of the Guardia Civil have reinforced the garrison of the Palace of Congress, and that Señor Martos has not quitted it since the previous night.
Try and realise to yourself a crowd from Clerkenwell Green surging and yelling angrily in the open space before Westminster Hall, a battalion of the Coldstreams keeping watch and ward on the faithful Commons, and Mr. Speaker, for reasons of personal security, compelled to have a shakedown in the House!
At half-past three o'clock the flag is run up to the head of the staff on the roof, but it droops limp and woebegone in the wet. The Assembly is in session. The waiting crowds increase; the windows commanding a view of the Palace are filled, and the pavements of the streets contiguous are black with anxious loiterers, in spite of the detestable weather. News of what is going on inside the Chamber escapes by driblets; as soon as a Deputy or a reporter comes out he is button-holed and interviewed.
"The Radicals hold firm," says one, and there is a howl of rage, and the chatteringflâneurs, who linger on the pavement at a safe distance, stir their heels with a rare unity of sentiment. "Devil take the hindmost!" is the motto of these dignifiedburgesses of Madrid when a cry of danger is raised; bang go the shutters against the shop-windows in a jiffy.
At one period the attitude of the crowd immediately opposite the entrance of the Palace boded ill; cries of "Viva la República Federal!" and "Death to the Radicals!" were raised, and Señor Estévanez, the Civil Governor of Madrid, was obliged to come out and speak to his pet lambs, and pacify them with the assurance that the Federal Republic was safe. Five mounted Civil Guards took up their stations at the mouth of the Calle de Turco after this, and stood there silent, statue-like, with drawn swords in their gauntleted grip, until day had melted into twilight, and twilight into night. These five cavaliers, in their heavy cloaks, blacker than the darkness around, had really something supernatural in their grisly quietude as they rested stock-still in their saddles. Their mission was ominous of evil; they were there an ugly index of what was feared. Had they found it necessary to clap spur to their horses and plunge upon the mob, I would not have given much for their lives. Thosefive "lost sentinels" were sure to have been picked off before their comrades on foot could have sallied from the adjacent building to their rescue. Sinister-looking fellows, in jackets and fur caps, with rifles slung across their shoulders, were not ensconced in the street-corners in easy range without a purpose.
The scene inside the Chamber gave equal token that a question of vital interest was being debated. The gallery assigned to the public was crammed as closely as the pit of Drury Lane on Boxing Night; the press gallery ran over with reporters; every seat available was full but those reserved for the ambassadors. Their seats were empty; not even the war-worn figure of General Sickles was to be distinguished. Cristinos Martos, looking anxious but firm, was in the presidential chair; and the halberdiers in purple and gold, with their heavy silver maces and nodding white plumes, occupied their accustomed places to the right and left.
The President rings his bell for business. The first operation is to read the minutes of the previous sitting, which are approved. Then one of those obstructive members to be encountered inevery legislative assembly—be it Reichsrath, Rigsdag, Skupstina, or Storthing—rises to take his little innings on some petty topic that concerns none beyond his own small circle. He is quickly bowled out, and the order of the day is arrived at—that for which we are all waiting, that which makes this one of the most serious and important sittings since the abdication of the King. The reading of the reports of the committee was first proceeded with, that of the majority taking precedence. This document was rather long, but may be summarised into a lament that the Government intended to make the permanent committee a purely consultative body; a declaration that the time was unsuitable for an election, civil war being actually carried on in Spain; and a protest that the clause establishing twenty as the age from which the privilege of voting dated was "an abuse and an irregularity." It concluded with a project of law, in a single article, binding the Assembly to convoke the Cortes whenever it considered the condition of the country such as to guarantee freedom of suffrage and the interests of the Republic.
Primo de Rivero's report was then read. He based it on the conviction that the transitory period should be closed in the interest of domestic order, and that the Constituent Cortes would be the true representation of the national will. To effect conciliation, he would submit a bill fixing May 10th as the period of election, June 1st as that of the meeting of the Cortes, and twenty-one as the age at which Spaniards should have power to exercise electoral rights.
The consideration of the report of the minority, which was looked on as an amendment, came first.
The Chief of the Executive Power, Figueras, himself opened the discussion. The Government had presented a bill so framed that they hoped it would satisfy the divers aspirations of the Assembly. They thought they could go no further, but since Primo de Rivero had seen fit to draw up his conciliatory report they had resolved to modify their primitive proposition in certain particulars, such as the definition of the faculties of the permanent committee and the date of the elections. But that was the extreme limit of compromise. They wouldstand or fall by the vote about to be given. If the Chamber gave them its support they would proceed with the rude task of administration, and they were resolved firmly to sustain order, military discipline, and the majesty of the law. Here Señor Figueras branched off into a schoolboy digression as to what the law was, and how it should be administered. Coming to the real point, he said if Primo de Rivero's bill were rejected, the Cabinet would hand in its resignation, and would ask the representatives to name its successors on the spot, for in those critical moments a solution of continuity in power would be attended with grave risks.
Señor Guardia then rose to deny that the existing Chamber had fulfilled its mission, and that the opportune time had arrived for the election of another. The very Government itself had made avowal to that effect. Certain bills remained to be discussed and voted. Besides, had they not other duties of greater necessity? What was the state of the country? An armed absolutism prevailed in some provinces; Catalonia recognised no chiefs butthose of the locality (here there were interruptions). In the cities of the South, the public forces had abandoned their arms to persons more or less authorised in some of them, and in others the partition of sacred property had been announced. In the heart of Castile and Andalusia the ayuntamientos had to resign in the presence of superior force. Under those circumstances no elections could be carried on with liberty. And, as if this were not sufficient, there was an article which added 400,000 electors to the register. This was an aggravation of difficulties when mistrust was supreme everywhere. The majority of the reporting committee (of which he formed part) believed that the initiative of a convocation of the Cortes should come, not from the Government, but from the Chamber. The destruction of the elements which were not represented in the Government was what was sought by this call for a new Chamber.
Primo de Rivero then explained his position, which was curious. He, a member of the Radical party, disagreed with his colleagues; but his motive was the salvation of the Republic. If his bill werenot accepted, the disasters that would fall upon the country would be tremendous and immediate. This plump declaration created what is called "sensation." The General next reviewed the different solutions which offered themselves. A new Cabinet of Republicans of long standing was not to be thought of, and a mixed Cabinet would be a calamity. One other solution remained, the formation of a Cabinet from the Radical majority. With all respect he would ask, Did that majority possess the moral authority to raise the standard of Republicanism? Did they recollect that their former chief, Ruiz Zorilla, called them cowards because they were about to proclaim the Republic? He repudiated the accusation.
Here there was a row, which recalled to mind that famous one between Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Blotton, of Aldgate. Señor Juan Ramon Zorilla rose to defend his absent relative. After a call to order, and a palaver, during which Primo de Rivero explained that he was speaking merely of Señor Zorilla the politician, but that Señor Zorilla personally was all that was honourable and patriotic, the discussion flowed back into its proper channel.
The General frankly admitted that the Radicals lacked moral authority. "Now," he said, "we are Republicans, but a month ago we were Monarchists." He then related with an ingenuousness that was remarkable in a professed friend, all the faults his party had committed, and prophesied that if a Radical Cabinet were formed it would not last three days. Who knows what might occur? Interruptions punctuated the soldier's discourse, but he turned round and told those who did not like what he said, that prudence was better than valour when valour was stupid and made reckless exposure of lives. He wound up by asking the representatives to seek inspiration in their patriotism and love of liberty, and support his bill, which he confessed was his in spirit only, and had not been drawn up by him but by members of the Government.
These opening orations of the champions of the two parties in the committee, the majority of six, and the minority of one, give the pith of the argumentsproandcon. Then followed talkee-talkee by obscurities—speechlets of the maundering school, habitual of nights in St. Stephen's, whenwise men betake themselves to the terrace, and the stenographers yawn and chew their pencils. A Republican editor declared that the Republican press was all that was lovely, and a Deputy from Barcelona affirmed that the city by the Mediterranean was a model of tranquillity (why was there a loud "haw-haw" here?). One of the Zorilla family rose to defend his absent namesake a second time, and Señor Lopez, chairman of the reporting committee, asseverated that the Radicals had no yearning for office, that the Government should be satisfied with an Assembly so liberal and so much inclined to help it, and that if anarchy were to be the issue, the waters of the Jordan would not wash the men who ruled of the responsibility. Then Cristinos Martos descended from his tribune, and said he would accept any arrangement which would secure peace. The crisis had come. The question by which the Ministry had elected to stand or fall was put to the test, and exactly nineteen Radicals, less than a score out of over two hundred, voted in the opposition.
So the Republicans retain their seats and bloodshedis averted. The mercy is due, not to the goodness of the cause, nor to the persuasive pleadings of its advocates, but to the intimidation of the mob. The Radical majority were the judges, and the judges were cowed by the rabble of the streets and their spokesmen in the Chamber. The Radical majority had it in their power to put the Republicans off the coveted blue benches of the Treasury; but the Radical majority, feeling that there were no strong arms outside to back them, "caved in." That is the plain way of putting it. Five members out of every six in the house were Radicals, six out of seven of the sections of the house were Radical. Those sections, or standing committees, are drawn by lot on the first of every month, and all members must belong to one or other of them. Every bill that is presented must be referred to a committee composed of seven members, one selected by each section. Six of the members of the committee to report on the bill of dissolution presented by Señor Figueras were Radicals; one solitary member, General Primo de Rivero, recalled from fighting the Carlists in Guipúzcoa, favoured the Government.The Opposition stood to the Ministry as six to one. And the Opposition being thus strong, the Ministry had beaten it! The wonder ceases when it is recollected that the hands of the majority were tied; every plan was tried to influence them into not ousting the Ministry—coaxing and cajolery, appeals to their love of peace and country, and ultimately threats. As result, when it came to the "who shall?" they did not sustain the convictions they had openly expressed on all previous occasions. Peradventure this was patriotism, peradventure it was prudence.
The debate was over. It was ten o'clock. The crowd raised exultant shouts and dispersed to their homes, to the clubs, or to the coffee-houses, where there was soon a file-fire of hand-claps to summon the waiters and a Babel of voluble jabber. The five ghostly cavaliers outside the Palace of the Congress started to life, sheathed their sabres, caught up their bridles, and returned to their stables.
The Republic had been reprieved. What a sigh of relief San Isidro Labrador, patron of Madrid, must have heaved.
The Inventions of Don Fulano de Tal—Stopping a Train—"A Ver Fine Blaggar"—The Legend of Santa Cruz—Dodging a Warrant—Outlawed—Chased by Gendarmes—A Jack Sheppard Escape—The Cura becomes Cabecilla—Sleeping with an Eye Open—Exploits and Atrocities—Dilettante Carlists in London—The Combat of Monreal—Ibarreta's Relics—A Tale for the Marines—The Carlists Looking-up.
EVERYother day—every other hour, I might almost say—a new rumour was born in Madrid. These rumours were usually figments, always exaggerations. If one were to inquire into their origin Don Fulano de Tal, the Man in the Street, was certain to have assisted asaccoucheur. Alas! truth in Spain is coyest of sparrows, and to be caught must have not a grain but a whole bushel of salt shaken over its tail. Don Carlos was always turning up somewhere like a bad shilling. Were he to be where he was said to be, he must have been a supernaturalDon Carlos—must have inherited the seven-leagued boots of fairy tale, as his brother had the invisible cloak, for he was here, there, everywhere, and nowhere, at one and the same time. But wherever hovered the Pretender, or the "heir presumptuous," as a Spanish acquaintance, not well up in English as "she is spoke," persisted in calling him, or whatever he may have been doing, there could be no doubt that some of his followers were in the field and alarmingly active. On the 13th of March, the capital was furious at the official news that communication with France and the rest of Europe by the north had been cut. Vitoria was the limit of Spain now; beyond it was the troublous No Man's Land, where the legends of Manuel Santa Cruz and his desperadoes abounded. He it was who had ripped up the rails near Tolosa, and waited for the accident which was sure to occur when the first train travelling towards the frontier would arrive. Four inoffensive passengers were hurled into eternity. The excuse for the conduct of this minister of peace was that these trains carried troops. If the railway company would pay him atribute and engage to carry no troops, Santa Cruz, who is accommodating, would let them pass freely. The company was willing, for these interruptions were killing the dividends, but the Government objected. In common justice to the more intelligent members of the party this soldier-priest disgraced, it should be admitted that they cursed him loudly and deeply. His conduct was bringing his order into disrepute. For instance, in Vitoria, near his own hunting-ground, when the Republic was proclaimed, the Civil Governor dropped a hint that it would be necessary to "exterminate the highwaymen of the black soutane." The priests of the town got so frightened that they did not dare to show themselves in the streets. But they were in no danger, though the merciless Manuel was doing what he could to make the priests' garb unpopular. A Carlist paper in Madrid, with some conscience left, had the honesty to say Manuel was not a credit to his cloth, and that Don Carlos did not approve of the many savage acts he had committed. Manuel sent the editor a letter, with his compliments, promising to teach him better mannersthan to speak ill of the absent when he came to Madrid! The general anticipation, based on a fond hope, was that if Manuel ever did come to Madrid, it would be strapped on a hurdle. But he had his admirers, nevertheless. My friend, the Duke de Fitzpepper, swore in his execrable execrating English that he was a "cottam ver fine blaggar—oh, ye-es!tous qu'il y avait de plus crâne, mon cher!" From one of these admirers who knew his family, I obtained an interesting epitome of his career.
Santa Cruz was born at Elduayen in Guipúzcoa in 1842. An aged uncle gave him some lessons in Latin, and placed him in an ecclesiastical seminary, where he seems to have principally devoted himself to the practice of athletic exercises. He came out in 1866 a clerk and a gymnasiarch rolled in one, and was appointed to the pastoral charge of Hernialde, a cluster of houses near Tolosa. He attended zealously to the duties of his ministry, leading a simple, frugal life with his sister; but when stories of the struggles of Zumalacárregui and Gonzales Moreno in the previous Carlist war were recounted by the wide hearth, it was noticed that the priest'seyes blazed like the faggots sputtering in flame-spikes towards the chimney-top. He was a Monarchist of the Basque stamp by race, by education, by conviction. He should have been a warrior, not a preacher of the Gospel; but if the circumstances which produce the man had not arisen, he might have vegetated and died in obscurity in his mountain village. The circumstances arose in August, 1870. A revolt of the four provinces of Alava, Guipúzcoa, and Biscay (the Basques or Vascongadas), and Navarre, was to take place in that month. At the outset it was rendered abortive by the treachery of a Colonel Escoda. It broke out on the 27th of August, and was suppressed on the following day. Santa Cruz, whose opinions were well known to the party, had been asked to watch over a depot of arms which had been collected for the insurgents at Hernialde. His share in the plot was betrayed, and one morning, as he was celebrating Divine Service, his church was entered by a party of soldiers who waited at the foot of the altar until he had finished the ceremony.
"In the name of the law, follow me," said the officer in command; "I have a warrant for your arrest from Madrid."
"Very well," said the Cura; "but surely you will allow me to breakfast first, unless they ordered you to take me captive on an empty stomach."
This was murmured in a tone so dulcet and injured that the officer hastened to assure the clergyman that he might breakfast, and accompanied him to the presbytery.
"Sin ceremonia," said the Cura, "will you condescend to share my meal?"
"Thanks, very much."
The priest entered the house; the soldiers waited outside, and argued that it was an infernal shame and a piece of tyranny on the part of Prim and the rest to have ordered such a harmless, nice man to be clapped into gaol. Presently a peasant with a basket of fruit on his head came out of the house. The soldiers waited long. They waited in vain. The peasant and the priest were one and the same.
For two years Santa Cruz wandered in the mountains and in France, was "on his keeping," asthey say in Munster, but was finally arrested and interned at Nantes, by the French authorities. A characteristic story was related of his arrest. He was stopped on the bridge between St. Jean de Luz and Cibour by two gendarmes.
"Your papers?" demanded one.
"My papers! Wait till I look for them," answered Santa Cruz, not in the least disconcerted.
He fumbled in his pockets, turned them inside out, tapped the lining of his clothes, searched high and low, pretending to be very much astonished that he could not discover the document; and, suddenly, while the gendarmes, thrown off their guard, were speaking to one another, made a spring sideways, and was off like a bolt from a bow, the agents of authority pounding after him in their clumsy jack-boots. The chase lasted an hour, to the intense amusement of all the idlers of the town; but a peasant, not grasping the true state of affairs, clutched the panting Santa Cruz and held him until the arrival of the gendarmes.
In 1872, when Don Carlos again made appeal to arms, Santa Cruz succeeded in evading notice, andcrossing the frontier, attached himself as chaplain to the band of Recondo. The Pretendiente himself entered by the pass of Vera, but was surprised at Oroquieta, in Navarre, by General Moriones, who defeated him on the 4th of May, and withered his hopes for that time. The convention of Amorovieta followed, arms were given up by thousands, and the factions, or partidas, dispersed to their homes. Santa Cruz returned to France. After a week's interval he re-entered Spain, and joined a body of the insurgents who still ranged the hills in Guipúzcoa. One day he missed his companions in a forced march, and fell into an ambuscade.
"I am Santa Cruz," he said to the soldiers, unquailingly, "do what you will with me."
He was pinioned and led to the nearest village.
The commandant of the detachment, one Urdanpilleta, went up to his prisoner and said to him, with an inexcusable pettiness of sarcasm:
"My good lad, you are out of luck. In a few hours you are safe to be shot."
"All right. We shall see about that," stoically answered Santa Cruz.
The priest was led into a large two-storied house, and thrust into a room near the garret, there to enter on his preparation for death. There was a bed in the room, and from the sheets on that bed Santa Cruz made the rosary on which to tell his litany, which was not one for the dying. He tore them up, twisted them, tied them together, and letting himself out of the window as far as his improvised rope would go, dropped into the arms of a couple of friends beneath. Before the alarm could be given he was up to his neck in a marsh, where his head was concealed by a rank growth of rushes. After an enforced bath of twelve hours he sought refuge with a wood-cutter, who helped him to pass over by night into France. The tale of his escape added to his fame. He was no longer a cura, he was a cabecilla—a born leader in partisan warfare. The Carlists still kept the field in Catalonia, but in the north-west all was apparently over. Order reigned as in Warsaw. Nevertheless, it was felt that a spark would rekindle a conflagration. Santa Cruz was the spark.
"If I had only thirty men at my back, I'd liftthe flag again," Santa Cruz was overheard to boast.
The thirty men presented themselves; and, on the 1st of December, 1872, the irrepressible priest, now surnamed the Peter the Hermit of Carlism, recrossed the frontier. Six days afterwards he stopped the mail train a few miles outside San Sebastian, and Madrid learned with stupor that the Carlist insurrection had flared up anew.
"That was virtually the knell of the Savoy dynasty," said my informant, "and Santa Cruz it was who tolled the knell."
This notable individuality must have the rare magnetic power of compelling men to follow and believe in him, and of winning over their fidelity. His band of thirty has now swelled to five hundred, as devoted as ever were the Highlanders of Preston and Falkirk. He believes in his star; and he does not believe in carrying on hostilities with kid-gloves on his hands. Vitriol is more in his line than rose-water. I should very much like to meet Santa Cruz. He is said to be as agile as Mina, a wonderful walker, and to share all the fatiguesand privations of his followers. He accomplished an almost incredible journey across the craggy hills and ravines, from Tafalla in Navarre to the confines of Biscay, in sixteen hours. At sunset, when the halt is called, and the provisions are distributed, the guerrilleros assemble round their chief, who resumes for a time the character of the Cura of Hernialde. Evening devotions are repeated, and prayers are offered for his Majesty King Charles VII., the Much-Desired; for Spain and her rescue from the monster of anarchy; for the dead, and for those who are next to die on the "campo de honor." The devotions ended, the priest again becomes the partisan-chief, and praises or blames his soldiers; and then the guards are set, and the guerrilleros, wrapped in their blankets, take a final pull at the wine-skin, and sink to rest upon the heather. Long after the band has been shrouded in mist lethargic, the figure of Santa Cruz may be seen looming against a rock, upright but for the head, which is supported by a huge gnarled staff. In his hand he grasps a key. When the benumbed or listless fingers part and release that key fourtimes, Santa Cruz gives the rousing signal, the guerrilleros start to their feet, and the line of march is again taken up.
Is it not all delightfully romantic? If the late Miss Jane Porter, who wrote that prized book of truant youth, "The Scottish Chiefs," were only to have encountered this pretty man, she would have swooned with the joy of authorship. Had Harrison Ainsworth but dreamed of such unconventional possibilities, he would never have debased his intellect to the glorification of a vulgar prison-breaker like Jack Sheppard. But the only craftsman of the pen who could have risen to the height of the theme was he who wove the gold-shot tale of "Paul Clifford."
The latest news we hear of the Carlist priest is that a woman was shot by his orders at Escoriaza.[A]On second thought I am not so sure that I shouldvery much like to meet Santa Cruz. And at this very period, while the shrieks of a fusilladed female were ringing in the air, a fussy committee of dilettante Carlists, sitting in London, protested that the sacred cause of legitimacy was advancing by lawful, chivalric, and immaculate means only! From the snug security of their back-parlour they wrote letters to the papers denying the "wanton" destruction of railway-stations by the Carlists. The flames were still undulating over the station of Santa Olla, between Burgos and Pancorbo, while the ink was wet on that inspired refutation! There are factories of falsehood elsewhere than in Spain.
A cabecilla had warned the station-masters in Guipúzcoa that all railway-servants who durst perform their work would be shot, and that all trains which had the hardihood to move would be given over to the flames; and Lizárraga, an ex-field-officer of the regular army, had calmly notified to the alcaldes of the province that he would fine them what would be the equivalent of a hundred pounds sterling with us the first time they failed toadvise him of the movements of troops, and that he would stick them up against a wall and put a bullet through their heads for the second offence. Passports through the Carlist lines, formally drawn up, sealed, and signed, were for sale for ten duros (about two pounds sterling) in bureaux transparently dissembled, and met with ready purchasers. The article was cheap, if only as a curiosity. Here is the textual copy of an announcement inLa Esperanza, a recognised and tolerated Carlist organ of Madrid:
"The direction of the Northern Railway Company having failed to observe the neutrality ordered respecting the conveyance of troops and stores of war, the Carlists, we are assured, cut the line yesterday at four points in the province of Guipúzcoa."
The Republic that permitted a newspaper published under its nose thus to talk of rebels against its authority "ordering" the railway companies not to convey troops was not arbitrary, to my thinking. But Spain is an enigma. An English Government would hardly permit a journal to speak of the operations of a Fenian band in the same terms.