XITHE PRADO

DETAILS FROM “THE SURRENDER OF BREDA.”Velasquez

LITTLE Don Luis the Valencian took the pink from his mouth, when he met Villegas coming up the steps of the Prado Museum. “I was going away,” he said, “but I will turn back with you. Anything for an excuse not to go to work!”

“Work!” Villegas fairly snorted! “You call painting work, when it is the only thing you like to do? Caramba! There are some things in this world hard to understand!” Villegas was disappointed. He had waited an hour at the studio for Luz, who never came for her sitting; this was quite natural the day after the court ball.

The head porter met us at the door; any of the famous painters whose pictures hang in the room of the great portraits might have been glad to have him for a sitter. He was a handsome man of thegrave Castilian type, with a big, square black beard and skin like alabaster. He wore a broadcloth overcoat down to his heels and a gold laced cap.

“These are my friends,” Villegas introduced us. “You will give them any help they may need.”

The porter bowed gravely and we all followed Villegas into the Museum. He had come to make his morning rounds, and little Don Luis offered to be our guide while he looked over his mail.

“I was too discouraged to paint to-day,” said Don Luis, “so I came for help to the great artists, whose work is here. They seem to hold out their hands to me, and say: ‘we have travelled the road you find so hard; we, too, have known discouragement and despair!’ I always go away from the Museum as from the company of my best friends, full of courage and hope.”

“The way I feel, after seeing a play of Shakespeare’s,” murmured Patsy. “Clever work discourages you; great work puts heart into you, makes you feel you can go home and do something as good, that you might even have done that.”

Villegas, who loves the pictures under his care as if they were his children, is not satisfied with the Prado, and is always hoping they may some day have a museum worthy of them.

“The three arts should be united, as they werein Greece,” he said. “Oh, for a building that should be as a perfect casket for the two jewels, painting and sculpture. Other museums may illustrate the history of art better than the Prado, none possesses more masterpieces of painting!”

“He has performed miracles since he became Director,” said Don Luis; “not only in the care and hanging of the pictures, but against the risk of fire. He has put in all the latest fire extinguishing apparatus. He is right, though, we must have a new building, and, it appears to me, he will get it for us!”

The Prado was built for a Natural History Museum, and the light in many rooms, especially on the upper floor, is very bad. Many valuable pictures cannot be shown for want of space, others can hardly be seen for lack of light. In spite of these drawbacks, the Prado is the most delightful Museum I know. It soon became to us, as to Don Luis, a second home. The first impression is of an immense hospitality; there is no entrance fee to pay; the Museum is free to all. Then the guardians are all so kind and, nearly all, so good-looking. The man who takes your umbrella or walking stick treats you with courtesy and respect, not, as in some galleries, as if you were a criminal or a lunatic bent on poking holes in the canvases.... Every museum has its climate or atmosphere; theclimate of the Prado is genial and cordial beyond compare.

The first impression we received of the pictures was a great joy that there are so many surprises among them. A few of the Velasquez and the Murillos we knew already, but as a whole the collection is less familiar than any other I have ever seen. The vast majority of the pictures were new to us. No work of art that has become well known through endless copies and reproductions can make the impression these undreamed-of splendors make. As Patsy said, “they hit you hard like love at first sight!”

Last, but not least, the Prado is comfortable! It has wood floors, and is properly warmed. You can spend a morning there without that fear of catching cold that haunts you in the chill marble-paved galleries of Italy.

In the long hall of the Spanish School, Villegas joined us. We were looking at a portrait of Marianna of Austria, the second wife of Philip IV.

“This is a copy of the Velasquez made by his son-in-law, Maza,” said Don José. “It formerly passed as a replica by Velasquez himself.”

“And how do you know now that it is not?” asked Patsy.

“You shall see.” Don José called an attendant, and ordered that the copy be carried into the

THE TIPPLERS.Velasquez

Velasquez room and placed beside the great original.

“Observe that it lacks the extraordinary silvery tone peculiar to Velasquez and, besides, is too accurate a copy! Velasquez would never have had patience to copy mere accidents of brush-marks, or kinks in the folds of the dress, if he had been copying one of his own pictures. He would preserve the tone, the spirit, the pose of the original, but he would not go seeking to make the same strokes with his brush. The very mechanical accuracy helps to prove this a copy made by a faithful pupil; thus it is!”

The sixty-seven Velasquez pictures are all together in one room. They are admirably hung, in the chronological order they were painted, so that you can follow the painter’s work from the beginning to the end. The impression produced is of a wonderful living autobiography. Every picture is a page on which you may read some momentous event in the artist’s life. You trace his development from the Adoration of the Kings, the earliest picture, to St. Anthony the Abbot visiting St. Paul, perhaps the latest. It is an autobiography that cannot be read at a glance. In that first visit, made in the company of artists to whom the Velasquez room is holy as Mecca to the Mahommedan, I was introduced to the genius who, for the nextsix months, I was to study and try to understand.

“Why did Velasquez paint so many pictures of fools, dwarfs and gabaloonzy men?” Patsy asked. We were looking at the portrait of El Primo, the dwarf, holding in his tiny hands a big book, looking out from under his slouch hat and long feather with the humpback’s sharp, uncanny eyes.

“Because he could always get one of them to sit for him when the royal sitters disappointed him,” sighed Villegas; “they had more time than the courtiers, and were perhaps the most vigorous and characteristic subjects for painting of all the people he lived among.”

We passed on to the idiot Child of Vallecas. The poor, vacant face seems to flicker at you from the canvas, the weak, wasted hands with the pack of cards never took hold of anything, not even life itself, save with a faltering grasp. At first, when you begin to study Velasquez, you feel it monstrous that his genius should have been wasted on such ridiculous deformities; in the end you accept them all, for the sake of the genius that has immortalized them.

“Look at that hand!” said Villegas, as we were standing before the portrait of Montañez, the sculptor. “How it is painted! With nothing, you may say—zip-zap, two strokes of the brush, and it is a

DUKE OF OLIVARES.Velasquez

hand. To create something out of nothing—colossal!”

“That is a good copy,” said J. A canvas, still wet, stood on an easel near the Montañez.

“Ah, yes—you may say so. That is made by an American—a certain Hibson; he has talent if you will; he will arrive! notice what I say, that man will go far.”

In Spanish G is pronounced H. The “Hibson,” of whom Villegas foretold great and serious things, the new star on the artistic horizon, in an earlier incarnation, achieved fame as the creator of the Gibson Girl!

“I saw that effect of sky this morning. Velasquez painted that background on a day like this.”

We were standing before the portrait of the Duke de Olivarez, with the bare blue plains of Castile and the snow-capped Guaderrama behind him. You feel the keen, clear air with the bite of the wind from the snow mountains, as you look at that picture of the Duke on his prancing war-horse of the best Arabo-Velasquez breed!

“Look at that dog! It is nothing, painted with nothing, when you look close at it; take two steps backwards, and it is everything.”

It was the dog in the Meninas, one of the details Villegas never failed to look at as he passed.

“That is a canine dog,” said Patsy. “Dogs inpictures almost always have a human expression. These of Velasquez look as dogs must look to each other; it is as if they were painted by one of themselves!”

The Meninas has a separate room to itself. Look at the picture long enough, and the illusion seizes you that you are really looking into a room of the gloomy old palace of the Alcazar, the Court of Philip IV, where Velasquez lived and worked the greater part of his working life. You can walk into that room where he stands at work before a big canvas, look over his shoulder, see the portrait he is painting of the King and Queen; you can even touch him on the arm that supports his palette.

“He paints pictures no longer,” cried little Don Luis the Valencian. “Like a god he creates a world with light and atmosphere, plains and mountains. Into that world he puts kings and queens, buffoons and beggars.”

“And soldiers and horses!” said Villegas, stopping before the “Surrender of Breda,” a great spacious picture with a gray-blue sky, and room enough in it for all the sublimity of victory, the tragedy of defeat. In the background the distant town of Breda still smokes from the besiegers’ shells. In the nearer distance, marching up the hill, is a company of the victorious soldiers armedwith the long lances that give the picture its nickname. The men’s faces are grave, they show no exultation to the group of the defeated enemy standing opposite to them. In the foreground Justino de Nassau, the defender of Breda, offers the key of the city to the victorious general Spinola. De Nassau’s knee is slightly bent—it is a stubborn knee and hard to bend—as he holds out the key. Spinola has neither hand free to take it; one holds his baton, the other is laid in what seems almost an embrace, on De Nassau’s shoulder. “Take back your key,” he seems to say. “To-day it was our turn to win; to-morrow it may be yours.”

What was it Grant said to Lee about needing the horses for the spring plowing? There you have the magnanimous spirit of Velasquez’s “Surrender of Breda” in a nutshell.

“My friend,” said Villegas to a stout German artist, who was working away in grim earnest at a copy of the “Lances”; “your color is too hot, remember the cool silver-grays; always try for them!”

“Ach Gott, you have said it!” cried the poor man, squinting from his copy to the original; “why could I not myself before have seen it?” Then he broke into profuse thanks to the Herr Director, who hurried on to escape them.

“I have a plan,” said Villegas, “for a newarrangement of this room.” We had passed into the long gallery of the Spanish School, from which the Velasquez room opens. “Here, opposite this entrance, I shall hang the Titian portrait of Charles V on his war-horse; it is too much sacrificed where it is now. Near this I shall hang some Tintorettos and some Grecos. In this way it will be possible to trace the influence of each of these masters on the other: the influence of Titian on Tintoretto, of Tintoretto on Greco, of Greco on Velasquez.”

The head porter, who had come hurrying up to Villegas, now delivered his message.

“They have telephoned from the Palace that the King of Portugal will be at the Museum in half an hour.”

These sudden entrances of royalty upon the scene added enormously to the interest of our life in Madrid. The marriage of the Infanta, the betrothal and the marriage of the King brought more royal visitors to Madrid that season than usual, and they all came to the Prado. The Museum has for them an especial attraction apart from the artistic interest. The Prado contains portraits of the ancestors of most of the royal personages in Europe, and they are naturally interested in seeing their family portraits. The collection begun by Charles V, and constantly added to by his descendants, is essentially a royal collection. Isabel II generously

VENUS AND CUPID.Velasquez

gave the pictures to the Spanish nation. How generously that gift is shared with the artists and art lovers of all nations, every visitor to the Prado knows.

Villegas hurried off to prepare for the visit of Don Carlos, the King of Portugal, and little Don Luis, still glad of an excuse not to go back to work, offered to take me to see Don Carlos the Bohemian. We found him in a big barrack of a lumber-room smelling of paint, turpentine and varnish, at the top of the Prado. He was at work on a copy of the disputed portrait of Don John of Austria. He threw down his palette and ran to meet Don Luis, rumpling up his hair with desperate hands.

“Was I mad to undertake it?” he cried. “It is the fourth Antonio Moro I have copied. Not another, not for a million.”

“Not for a million, no; what couldst thou do with it? But for—well, something else—yes, as many as thy grand duke will find room for in his museum!”

“The work that accursed Fleming put into a picture. I tell thee it is brutal to work so hard; he had the patience of a saint!”

“Or a Coello or a Pantoja. It is not a Moro! Thou hast some patience thyself; it is not bad, thy copy!” Don Luis looked critically at it; “a little crude. How many glazes hast thou given it?”

“Only eight.”

“Ah! thou seest? thou wilt get the tone soon. There is nothing wrong with the drawing; the worst of the work is over with that.”

“Blessed be thy mouth!”

Don John, the Conqueror of Lepanto, is a young man standing with the lion of Alcazaba at his side. He wears a shirt of mail the rings as fine as those of a lady’s purse, and every ring is painted. The fringe of the cushion is painted thread by thread, you can almost count the hairs in the moustache.

“How can you know where to begin?” I asked. The copying of this life-sized full length, painted with the detail of a miniature, seemed a desperate undertaking.

“I know how the devil worked! I studied and studied him till I got his secret; ah, there is no one like him; he is a despair! See, first I draw everything in black, white and gray, down to the last detail, then I get my tone with a series of thin glazes. Each one must be quite hard and dry before I give it the next. It takes a lifetime, you may say!”

A delightful copy of the Velasquez portrait of little Prince Baltasar with the gun and the dog stood against the wall. “Thou hast a good thing there,” said Don Luis; “and once Velasquez was hard for thee to copy!”

DON BALTAZAR CARLOS.Velasquez

“How he baffled me! Now I have learned as much of his secret as a man can learn; rather twenty-five Velasquez than one Moro. This is the last, if I live to finish it!”

I told Don Carlos about the King of Portugal. “He always comes to the Prado when he is in Madrid,” he said. “He is a fair painter himself, for a king. There is a portrait of his worth seeing in the Museum of Modern Arts.”

“I think he once complimented thee on a copy thou wast making?” said Don Luis.

“Perhaps he did,” growled Don Carlos. He smoothed out his towsled hair and went back, grumbling still, though less violently, to his work. Somehow the energy of despair had become the energy of courage; little Don Luis the Valencian with the pink in his mouth had turned the water of drudgery to the wine of work!

Madrid was perpetuallyen fêteduring the visit of the King and Queen of Portugal. We had visions of them flitting by like figures in a panorama, on their way to the bull-fight, driving to the gala performance at the opera, reviewing the troops. The review began with an open-air mass, the salute of the flag by the new recruits, and the defile before the two kings, Don Alfonzo and Don Carlos. The artillery was much applauded, especially the mountain battery, a troop of muleswith cannon on their backs. The cavalry, a fine body of men and horses, galloped by the grand stand at breakneck speed. One company, all mounted on white horses, preceded by two lines of buglers, came flashing past with a splendid dash and brilliancy that pleased Don Carlos, for he clapped his great hands and cried “Bravo.” After the review the two kings rode down the Paseo de la Castellana side by side. Don Carlos, an immense man with a strong likeness to his uncle, Victor Emanuel, was in uniform; he wore the broad blue ribbon of Charles III, and a row of other decorations on his coat. He rode a gigantic sorrel horse. He seemed very popular, for there was a deal of hand clapping and hurrahing as he passed. The young King rode beside him, looking gallant and boyish; he had a happy genial smile for everybody. Queen Amelia, a beautiful woman, built on a generous plan to match Don Carlos, followed in adaumontwith four horses and two postilions. How often I have remembered the answer of a Spanish diplomat to my question that day:

“Is Don Carlos as popular at home as he is in Madrid?”

“I fear not. He spends too much money. If the things were done here that go on in Portugal, Spain would be in revolution from one end to the other.”

Don Luis had more time for Patsy and me in those days than any of our friends. He was always ready to take us to see sights or studios. One day we surprised him in his own studio, an eyry at the top of a tall building. A card pinned to the door by a thumb tack told us where to knock. A little old lady with a white cap tied under her chin opened the door. She had a kind face, wrinkled like the skin of a late russet apple, and eyes like Luis’. She led us along a narrow passage—so low Patsy was forced to stoop—to a little door where she tapped.

“Is it thou, Mama?” called Luis from inside. “Come in, if thou art alone.” When he heard Patsy’s voice he ran to let us in. The studio, an attic with a slanting roof, was filled with piles of canvases stacked against the wall.

“Ay!Virgincita!don’t sit down on the palette,” cried the old lady, “nor on that sofa; this chair is quite safe!”

On an easel stood the picture Luis had been working on, a palace interior. There were flowers, jewels, light, warmth, and atmosphere in the pictured room, above all there was luxury; that was the thing most insisted upon.

“This is the papa, and this is the mama.” Don Luis’ mama in her cotton cap hung over the picture as she described it. “How it is painted,this lace! And the jewels, they shine as if they were real; is it not true?”

When we had admired all the pictures Don Luis would show us, they were not many, he was afraid of boring us, Patsy reminded him of his promise to take us to the Rastro.

“Go thou with them now,” said mama. “He has not been out to-day; he needs the air.” She pushed him from the studio.

“If thou wilt promise not to dust”——

“Ojala!what a son I have! I promise, if thou wilt go, nothing shall be touched. I swear thou shalt find the studio as thou dost leave it.”

The Rastro is a vast rag fair, a city within a city, where the poor of Madrid who cannot afford to buy at first hand may buy whatever they need at second hand.

“We will go first to Las Grandes Americas,” said Don Luis, leading the way into an enormous enclosure surrounded by high brick walls. “This is the quarter of the building materials. Here you can buy doors and windows, girders, ceiling beams, stairs, everything necessary to build a house. Across the way are fittings, fireplaces, stoves, gas fixtures, plumbing. Here you can furnish your house, your studio, even your church!”

If we had been bent on picking up antiquities, we might have found some nice things in the quarterwhere the refuse of the churches is gathered. There was a Madonna dressed in a fine silk robe, standing in a little shrine, a cherub’s head in carved wood, a gilded ciborium, a carved bas-relief of Santa Justa and Santa Rufina, the patrons of Seville.

It was a sharp, clear day, we stopped to warm our hands at a fire of fagots kindled on the bare ground in the middle of an old book stall. A pale, near-sighted priest, on the other side of the fire, stood first on one leg then on the other, drawing up one foot at a time under his gown for warmth. He had his long nose between the leaves of a parchment book, and looked absurdly like a learned crane as he shifted from foot to foot.

The firelight brought out now one name, now another, as the flames flickered and the light played along the backs of the old books. On a sudden the immortal name Don Quixote leapt from the shadow in letters of gold. You can always pick up the best books cheap because, like bread, they are among the necessaries of life.

“Bayard Taylor’s Voyage to Japan! I never knew he went to Japan. It looks so lonely among all these Spanish books, I must rescue it!” said Patsy. Don Luis bought him the volume for threeperros chicos.

“Here’s your Spanish and English dictionary,” said Patsy, who has the scent of a ferret for old books. “How much for the dictionary?” The dealer, a lean, dyspeptic man in black, who looked like his kind the world over,—the old bookman is a type apart,—sold us the dictionary, a large, clean and most precious book, for four pesetas. A shabby photograph album stood on the shelf next the dictionary. As Patsy opened it, a photograph fell from the torn leaves. Don Luis picked it up.

“Pobrecita!” he showed the faded photograph of a young girl in the dress of thirty years ago. He turned it over and read what was written on the back.

“Mi Corazon!”

“What a lovely face!” said Patsy.

“Too lovely to be sold for old paper!” Don Luis crushed the photograph in his hand, threw it on the fire, and watched it burn till nothing was left but blackened cardboard.

In an old print shop, among heaps of dusty engravings, stood a picture of a Roman model in aciociarashirt. The canvas had a hole knocked in it and lacked a frame.

“Manuel’s Rosina!” sighed Don Luis! “Painted the second year we were at the Spanish Academy in Rome. He died last summer and all his things were sold for his widow!”

“Come away,” I cried, “it has grown cold!”

On our way from the Rastro to the Tower of Babel we passed through the Pasajé del Alhambra. Villegas and J. were just leaving the studio, so we all walked home together. It was the hour at which the old General and his wife (the couple who always watched for Villegas as he passed their house on his way to and from his work) usually started for their afternoon drive. The proud porter stood at the gate in his best uniform, with all the General’s coats-of-arms and his wife’s woven into the yellow galloon trimmings. A carriage with two men in livery drove up to the door. A young woman came out of the house, followed by three flossy white poodles, their topknots tied up with strawberry and buff,—the General’s colors.

“We call her the dog governess,” J. explained.

“You are to take the dogs out, Tomaso,” she said; “nobody will drive to-day.Theyare both ill; I am going for a walk.”

Tomaso, the coachman looked exactly like the eldest poodle; he glanced scornfully over his shoulder at the dogs sitting up grandly, with their dear little paws in air. Their manners showed a martinet’s training. The governess held up a warning finger.

“Sit up, Prim,” she said. Prim gave a reassuring bark, and the General’s carriage drove solemnlythrough the big bronze gates, on the way to the Park of the Buen Retiro.

“How horrible to have to drive every day!” said Patsy, “as if it was not enough to have to eat and sleep away so much time. If anything is to be exercised, rather my body than my horses!”

“Se sabé!” Villegas agreed.

“The General was well till he was put on the retired list,” said Don Luis. “People say he is only ill because he is idle.”

“Moral, don’t let yourself be put on the retired list,” said Patsy.

“What a great, big, beautiful profession is art!” cried Villegas; “a man is not retired till he goes blind or loses his wits! Titian was at work on a picture when he died, at ninety-nine. If the pest had not carried him off, he would have been alive now, is it thus?”

“Claro!” Don Luis agreed. “The artist’s is the only calling for a man of sense and imagination, except, of course,” with a bow to Patsy, “the writer’s.”

“For us,” said Patsy, “the race-course is never closed. Heat after heat may be lost, the Great Futurity Stakes always remain open! Don Luis knows his picture may end up with a hole knocked through it in the Rastro, but he hopes, in his heartbelieves, that it will one day hang in the Prado. And, who knows? a generation or two from now, some traveller may pick up my book in Las Grandes Americas for threeperros chicos!”

“TO-DAY is thefiestaof San Antonio the Abbot,” said Pedra, when she came in to light the fire. “The Señora should go to see the blessing of the animals at his church.”

Fasts, feasts, everything connected with the Church has far greater importance in Madrid than in Rome. One gets some idea here of what the power of the church was in Italy before 1870. Pedra, who was very devout, never let me forget a saint’s day. It was like living in ancient Rome, this strict observance of the days offestandne fest.

“Then this must be your mother’sfiesta, her name is Antonina,” I said.

“No, Señora. There are two San Antonios and two religions; the patron of my mother is San Antonio of Padua,—see, here is his picture; hisfiestacomes in June.” A photograph of Murillo’s Vision of Saint Anthony hung on the wall.

“How can you tell the difference between the two?”

DETAIL FROM “MOSES.”Murillo

“But it is so easy! San Antonio the Abbot is an old man with a beard; he is always represented with a pig; he carries a bell. It is said that whenever he rings his bell all the animals kneel down. San Antonio of Padua is young, and has no beard. It is he who grants so many favors. To him I burned the candle when the Señora lost her brooch; she found it the day after, she remembers.”

Don Jaime, old pagan, took me to see the blessing of the animals. He brought me a little image of the saint with a pig following at his heels, as a dog follows.

The Abbot was very wise, Jaime explained; he knew, good man, that in case of hunger, pig is better eating than dog. In Madrid people are rather indifferent to him. All the Antonios the Don knew claim San Antonio of Padua for patron because he is more aristocratic. Only the peasants will have the Abbot for their patron, because he takes care of their animals.

As we drew near the church, we met a great number of horses, mules and donkeys on their way to be blessed. A white horse with thepaso castellano, a beautiful silky mane braided with bright ribbons and a pretty silk head-stall, was so exactly like the horse the young dealer from Ronda showed at the Seville fair that I half believed it to be the same animal. The man who led him wore Andalusiandress, and a carnation behind the ear. Man and horse picked their way through the crowd of loafers, women, children and sweetmeat-sellers, to the church. A priest soon came out followed by an acolyte all in scarlet like an embryo cardinal, and from the church steps the priest sprinkled the horse with holy water, the acolyte swung his silver censer, the incense rose in a blue cloud. From a side window a sacristan passed the young man a bag of fodder that had been blessed, and with the payment of a little money, the ceremony was over.

The church was full of kneeling people; the altars were ablaze with candles. I wished to go in to see the Goya, a picture of the Last Communion of Saint Jerome.

Don Jaime said I had better see it another time; to-day there were too many people. There was some small-pox about—not enough to be nervous over—but to avoid contagion it was well to keep out of the churches. If there is a desperately sick child in the house, of course one goes continually from the bedside of the child to the church and prays for its recovery. The old grandmother, or the little children who can do nothing to help, can at least spend the morning in the church, out of harm’s way, praying for it!

At dinner Antonina, a fairy of five who lived next door, brought in a plate ofrosquitas de SanAntonio, delicious little crisp cakes baked only this day in all the year. Jaime, who had come in while we were still at table, ate one of the cakes as a reward for having been to church.

“In England,” the Don remembered, “they eat hot cross buns on Good Friday and pancakes on Shrove Tuesday; they have forgotten therosquitasof Saint Anthony and thetortasof San José.”

On the nineteenth of March, thefiestaof San José and of all his namesakes, I asked Pedra if we should have one of the tarts of St. Joseph for dinner.

“In all Madrid there is no house so poor that thetortaof San José will not be eaten to-day. He is the patron of the church, and as such we all must venerate him.” It was a busy day for Don José Villegas; a flood of visitors, cards, letters, telegrams and presents poured through the Tower of Babel from daylight till midnight. He sat in his study busy writing notes of congratulation and sending despatches to all the other Josés of his acquaintance. I looked over the cards; there were the names of statesmen, artists, poets, singers, musicians and bull-fighters, all linked together into a sort of fraternity, because they bore in common the name of good Saint Joseph.

In almost every circumstance of life or death, the Church plays a leading part. The wife of afriend of Don Jaime died while we were in Madrid, and the Don arranged that I should see the funeral procession and one of the many services. The cortége was headed by four men dressed in white broadcloth short clothes and Louis-Seize coats, white wigs, silk stockings and three cornered hats; each carried a long white staff. The hearse was a gorgeous white affair, drawn by four white horses with sweeping ostrich plumes. It was preceded and followed by a large company of priests, monks and choristers carrying wax candles and chanting a miserere. The mourners followed on foot. More than a week after the lady’s death I went with Jaime and his sister Candalaria to the house of mourning. In the private chapel we listened to a long service lasting over an hour. The chaplain of the family officiated, reciting the rosary, the litany and many prayers. This was the last and ninth day of these services. When it was over, I went home, Don Jaime and Candalaria remaining behind to speak with the mourners. Afterwards they told me something of the visit. Candalaria found the ladies of the family in one room surrounded by a crowd of women friends dressed in mourning.

“They all talked at once,” said Candalaria, “saying the same thing over and over again. ‘Poor soul! So young to die! So good, so devout! What will her husband do without her?’”

The Don had found the widower in another room with his men friends about him. He told the Don that his greatest grief was that his wife had died suddenly, without having time to make a confession or receive the sacraments. The Don wondered what possible sin she could have had on her soul. Everybody said, and he believed, that the dead woman was very nearly a saint.

Candalaria—her name means Candlemas—is a Majorcan. When I asked Don Jaime to tell me something about the island of Majorca where she lives, he said: “In Majorca all properties is oranges. It has a fine weather as well.” I said it must be a pleasant place to live.

“Candalaria she finds it so. She is bery clever, she plays piano and biolin.” Jaime always assumed b and v to be interchangeable in English as they so often are in Spanish. “Her husband is topographic engineer. Candalaria helps him to draw the geographic carts.”

Don Jaime’s sister is married to an officer of engineers; she draws so nicely that she often helps her husband in making his army maps. She is a small, energetic woman with consuming eyes, fiery, energetic, practical, everything Don Jaime is not. She had come to Madrid to see her brother and the carnival. Jaime introduced us to her, and during her stay, we were often together.

“In your country, Señora,” Candalaria said when we first met, “you have the largest of everything of the world. Is it rivers? The Mississippi. Is it a cataract? Niagara. Is it mountains? The Andes. Your fortunes are also the largest. Where we count in millions ofreals, you count in millions ofduros.”

It was Candalaria who presented me to Doña Emilia Pardo de Bazan, one of the leading Spanish novelists, a gray-haired woman with a powerful face. Doña Pardo Bazan spoke with me about the position of women in Spain.

“I look for nothing from the women of my country,” she said; “whatever is done to improve their position must be done by men. Our laws are good. Women have a right to enter some of the universities and some of the professions, but they take no advantages of these privileges. It is the fear of ridicule that keeps them back.”

I told her that we used to hear a great deal about the fear of ridicule in the old days at home, and that it had been proved a bugbear. She went on to say that she had been asked to help form a woman’s club and had refused; she knew it would be of no use, because it would be laughed at.

At the reception where I met Doña Pardo Bazan I was introduced to a pretty Marquesa Fulano and her prettier daughter. “Tell me,” I said to theMarquesa, “the title of Doña Pardo Bazan’s most important book.”

“I do not know it,” was the answer; “she writes for gentlemen, not for ladies. I will enquire, if, among the many books she has written, there is one that you could read.”

Though I never saw the Marquesa again, I readLa Tribuna, one of the writer’s strongest novels, and I know the Marquesa and I should not agree about what books a woman may with advantage read. I know, too, that everything is to be looked for from the women of Spain, for whom Doña Pardo Bazan—I have heard her called the foremost literary woman in Europe—has done so much.

I asked Jaime how many children Candalaria had.

“Eleven,” he said; “that gives me eleven to remember in my will. To whom God sends no children, the devil sends nephews and nieces.”

The carnival Candalaria had timed her visit for, was well worth seeing. It was a famous year in Spain for pageants of all sorts. The King’s engagement and approaching marriage put everybody in a good-natured, money-spending mood. Great enthusiasm was expressed for what was always spoken of as “the English alliance.” Whenever the King gave his ministers the slip, and ran off inhis automobile to see the Princess Ena at San Sebastián, everybody was delighted.

Carnival began the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The chief feature was a parade of cars, or floats, competing for prizes offered by the municipality. The parade took place in the splendid avenue that, under various names, runs through the new quarter of Madrid from north to south.

Lucia, Patsy and I started from the Tower of Babel soon after three o’clock. We had not driven far, when we caught sight of Villegas in the crowd at the corner.

“I knew he was dying to come with us all the time,” murmured Patsy; “in spite of what he said.”

“Angoscia disappointed me; they are all mad;” sighed Villegas, as he climbed into the carriage.

“That is well,” said Lucia. “Thou hadst need of a holiday; thou hast not taken a day of repose this year.”

“Though the premium is offered for the best car, the best car will not get the premium, thou wilt see.” Jaime called to Villegas from his cab, following at a foot-pace, along the Castellana.

“Se sabé!” Villegas agreed. The “best car” came creaking towards us, a vast float drawn by four gray oxen with gilded horns and gold-embroidered head-dresses. Two Catalan peasants

DETAIL FROM “MOSES.”Murillo

walked beside, driving the oxen: they wore wide sombreros, and brightmantasfolded over the shoulder. The car was an excellent representation of the House of Congress, with its Greek façade, white columns, timpanum, and bronze lions on either side the door. Behind the columns was a brazen pot filled with men dressed as locusts. The car was greeted with roars of laughter and applause.

“Thou seest?” said Jaime to Villegas. “The government devours the country like locusts! It is true! We have the best people in the world, and the worst government!”

“Bravo!El Congreso!” yelled the people in the carriages. “Muy bien!” The crowd that lined the sidewalks answered with cries of “Magnifico!Bravo!El carro satirico!”

Jaime was right, the prize was not awarded to the Congreso, but to the parrots. A mammoth cage in the middle of a float with a big sham parrot hanging on a ring and all around the cage a group ofseñoritasandcaballerosdressed to look like parrots with green velvet coats, gray satin vests, red velvet caps and big beaks.

“It almost deserves the prize, only the Congreso should have had it!” said Patsy.

As the Government appoints the judges, that was hardly to be expected. The second prize wasawarded to a wagon-load of toy soldiers in French uniform. They stood stiff as wooden dolls, till you looked close and saw, under the soldiers’ caps, the faces of pretty girls and laughing lads.

“Seville, the Feria, Concepcion!” cried Patsy; “this is magic!”

It was little short of it. On the float coming towards us was the patio of an Andalusian house with Moorish columns andazulejos, from which amayaand amayolooked out on the crowd. Themayawore a black chenille overdress with a yellow satin skirt and a rose in her hair like Concepcion.

Down the middle of the Paseo de la Castellana, the most fashionable part of the route, a line of gaily decorated tribunes had been built; these were filled with well-dressed people.

“That is the tribune of La Pena, the fashionable club in the Alcalá,” Patsy said. “The next is the Press Club. This is the Artists’ Club, and this last is the tribune of the French Colony.”

The crowd of men, women and children in the stands were armed with flowers, huge sacks of confetti, and rolls of colored paper ribbons, which unwind when they are thrown, like rockets or lassos. In a white carriage drawn by four silver-gray mules with postilions and outriders, sat two beauties dressed in silver. Passing in the other direction was a car with a representation of Carthage. TheCarthaginians were splendidly dressed. As car and carriage met, a pair of dark Carthaginian men lifted a bag of violet confetti and poured it down on the white carriage, so that we saw the beauties through a purple haze. The effect of the changing colors was dazzling. Violet, declared at Paristhecolor of the season, predominated over all others.

“This,” said Patsy, “is like walking through a gallery of living impressionist pictures.”

“Maestro!Ay Maestro!” we were passing the tribune of the Artists’ Club, when, bifferty! a long yellow streamer coiled about Villegas’ neck and flew out behind. Soon the landeau was hung in a maze of paper ribbons, every color of the rainbow, tangling in the wheels, wound round the hubs, filling the carriage, half strangling us. A fine victoria with a harlequin and a mask in pink satin, stopped close to us. A servant was sent to our carriage and presented Lucia with a pretty porcelainebonbonnièreof caramels. It was growing late and people began to be hungry. The flowers were exhausted; chocolates and candies hailed into the carriage. In the cab behind, Candelaria unpacked a box of sandwiches, a bottle and two glasses.

“Un poco de ginevra de campana?” said Don Jaime, offering a glass to Patsy.

“Luz, Luz, Luz!” The cry came from a box of caramels filled with youngcaballerosdone up like bonbons in pink paper. Luz, lovely as daybreak, smiled as her carriage passed the caramels; we saw her through a storm of rosy confetti. We drove down for a last turn to the end of the Castellana.

The sunset was pink, gold and violet, to match the prevailing tone of the carnival. Against the sky the Guaderramas stood out boldly with the eternal white confetti on their summits. Our carriage halted by the statue of Isabel the Catholic, sitting on her horse between her good and her evil genius, Columbus standing at her bridle and just behind her the cowled, sinister figure of Torquemada.

“Don Alfonzo!” The young King in his automobile flew by, a dent in his bowler hat, his coat covered with confetti. He threw a bunch of roses to aseñoritadressed like a strawberry, sitting in a basket of fruit, the other strawberries all answered with double handful of pinkish confetti, and cries of “muy bien!” He was supposed to be incognito and was throwing flowers and confetti just like any other jolly boy of nineteen. Of course everybody recognized him, but the fiction of the incognito was strictly respected, which seemed very sensible. It must be supposed that he needsa little fun for his soul’s sake, like the rest of us. He got his full share that afternoon.

Last of all we drove through the Alcalá, Madrid’s main artery, to the Puerta del Sol, the city’s mighty heart. The rest of Madrid sometimes sleeps a little; here the life blood pulses ceaselessly to and fro.

“I have been in the Puerta del Sol at every hour of the twenty-four,” said Patsy, “and I have never found it empty.”

The streets were guarded by the Ramonones,—mounted police, polite, energetic, keeping an order that was wonderful, considering the vast crowd, and was most of all due to the crowd’s desire that order should be kept.

It was growing dark, the electric lamps twinkled out of the lavender mist. Just ahead of us, on the prize-winning car of the parrots, they were burning red Bengal lights. At the corner of the dark street where we must turn to reach home, a fine carriage, full of elegant maskers, passed us. A Pierrot in green satin stood on one step flirting with a Turkish lady, a contrabandista on the other whispered to an Andaluz. As we drove by in our modest carriage, the red Bengal lights of the parrots lit up Don José’s face. From the grand carriage came the cry:

“Villegas! gloria de la patria!”

“They are all mad!” said Villegas; “vamos!it’s time to go home.”

Ash Wednesday morning the streets were full of sweepers trying to get rid of the green, pink and red papers, the trampled débris of the last three days’ frolic. We met Luz coming out of San Isidro Real. She was all in black, wearing the mantilla. On her forehead the priest had traced a cross of ashes. The church was filled with fashionably dressed men and women, many of whom we had seen the day before at the carnival. Each came out into the sunlight with the cross of dust and ashes on the forehead, in token of the day of mourning. In the stable-yard behind the church we saw the ruins of the second prize winner, the toy soldier cart. The little sentry box hung in the right place, the stiff green trees, the dummy soldiers in their smart French uniforms stuck up oddly from the cart. The merry group of live soldiers, the pretty girls and saucy boys were scattered; perhaps some of them were in the church. As we stood watching the wreck of the prize winner, men began to take the car to pieces and to pull off the remaining decorations.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” said Patsy; “I’m for the Prado and glories that do not pass so quickly.”

OUR winter in Madrid wore pleasantly away; we basked in the Sun of To-day, gave hardly a thought to the Shadow of Yesterday. Fate wove the thread of our existence into her tapestry of life in the Spanish capital in the year 1906; a many-toned fabric with touches of gold and silver, sinister crimson and sombre black. Now that the web is finished and hung up in the hall of memory, I see that in the earlier part rose color is the predominating tone.

“It’s as good for a nation as it is for a person, after they have been in mourning, to come out into the world again and take an interest in other people’s affairs,” said Patsy. “The Conference, whatever it may do for Morocco, is being very good for Spain.”

The two absorbing topics of conversation were the Algeciras Conference and the King’s marriage. From our friends in the diplomatic world we heard a deal of talk about what was going on atAlgeciras, where the representatives of thirteen Powers were discussing the vexed questions of the State Bank of Morocco which it was proposed to establish under European control, the policing of the unhappy country by France and Spain, the administration of customs, and the various reforms proposed to the Sultan. On all sides we heard compliments for our representative, Mr. Henry White,par excellencethe peacemaker of the Conference. I was told by a distinguished diplomat that Mr. White’s exquisite tact and good feeling “saved the situation more than once.”[3]Besides keeping the peace, the American delegate put in a good word for the Jews, asking that they might have religious tolerance in Morocco. His plea was seconded by Sir Arthur Nicholson, the English delegate, and the Duke of Almodovar who, ignoring the little detail of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, reminded the delegates that his country had an especial interest in the Hebrews of Morocco, who still spoke the Castilian language, and were the descendants of Spanish Jews. The English, seconded by the Americans, made a plea for the gradual abolition of slavery in Morocco, against the public sale of men and women in the slave markets of the interior, and for the improvement of the prisons. It was pleasant to see England and the United States aiding and abetting each other in all these humane efforts.

The Moroccan delegate, Sid Hach el Mokri, Ancient Inspector of Weights and Measures at Fez, and his colleague did little but protest against the reforms the Powers proposed to institute at the expense of Morocco and under the direction of the Diplomatic Corps at Tangiers. Hach el Mokri cried out that he was there to see Morocco’s income increased, not decreased, and that many of the proposed reforms had not been included in the programme of the Conference. Patsy, who had seen Sid Mokri and made an excellent photograph of the old man in his white bournous, with his long white beard and piercing eyes, had a sneaking sympathy for him.

“After all, the world will be a tame place when there are telephones and electric cars everywhere,” he said. “If Morocco does not want to be civilized our way, or any other way, why should she be?” The Powers are cutting and carving the revenues, the commerce, the future of that unfortunate country as if they were masters of the situation. They are a long way from it! Before France gets the little Germany means to let her have, she must pay dear for it, even if England stands by to see fair play.

I had a sudden vision of the garden in Tangiers and the strange old man who had talked with me of Moroccan affairs. I seemed to hear his brooding voice utter, as if in prophecy, “Keep your ear to the ground; the end of Islam is not yet!”

Our Spanish friends were naturally even more interested in Don Alfonzo’s affairs than in those of the Sultan of Morocco. It was wonderful how the courtship of one pair of lovers made a whole nation in love with life! There was a delicate thrill of expectation in the air. Spain drank deep of the three great cordials, youth, hope and love, forgot the old pain in the new rapture. Every detail of the King’s wooing was eagerly discussed. The news that the Princess Ena had been received into the Church of Rome and renounced the errors of the Protestant faith was a “world event.” Her decision to take the names, Victoria Eugenie, gave great satisfaction. It was rumored that the Empress Eugenie had given her a wedding present of a millionpesetas, and would make the future Queen of Spain her heir. Older people recalled the poor young Prince Imperial’s early attachment to Princess Beatrice, Princess Ena’s mother.

“The Empress was a Spaniard,” Candalaria reminded me; “a Montijo of Malaga. My parents knew the family. It is quite natural she should wish her money to come back to Spain. Myfather was at the funeral of her son, the Prince Imperial. He saw the great English Queen, Victoria, and her daughter, Princess Beatrice, when they drove over to Chiselhurst to lay a golden laurel wreath on the coffin of the young Prince Napoleon IV, as they called him, killed in the Zulu war, fighting for the English.”

We had all become so absorbed in the pleasant social life of Madrid, so taken up with current matters of public and private interest, that the many journeys we had planned were put off and put off. Had it not been for a chance question of Patsy’s, we might never even have seen Toledo, we were living—except for those golden hours in the Prado—so completely in To-day. One brilliant March afternoon Don Jaime greeted me at the door of the Museum with his cheery “Good day, Missis.” The Don liked to go with us to the Prado; he was interested in Patsy’s art education and, if neither Villegas nor Don Luis were present, would hold forth on the merits of the pictures.

“Good afternoon, Don,” said Patsy; “what’s the news?”

“There are very few news. You receive some lollipops?” The Don’s intercourse with English-speaking people, broken off when he left school, led him to suppose that to be happy they must be continually fed with lollipops.

“Nuns of Concepcion Convent has secret of preparing those sweets, same like Benedictines’ liquor secret.”

Knowing his poverty, I was troubled by the little presents he was forever making one or other of us, of which Patsy’s lollipops were an example.

“It’s his way of keeping his end up,” Patsy maintained. “The Don expects to die rich, to leave his family rolling in money. He has an invention for a flying machine half worked out. On his paternalheredad—a piece of waste land in the Sierra Rondina—there’s a rich iron mine, and a spring of sparkling mineral water, better, he says, than apollinaris. The joke of it all is, I believe what he says is perfectly true. He will never ‘realize’ on spring or mine, though perhaps Candalaria’s eleven may!”

“You look festive this morning, Don; where did that sporty rose come from?” Patsy asked. The Don always had a flower in his buttonhole, though he often had not a dollar in his pocket.

“It is monthly roses,” said the Don, settling the bud in his coat; “they give every moon. Let us now to the parlor of the great Velasquez.”

We always began with the Velasquez room, studying some one picture, and passing the rest in review. Don Jaime professed great admiration for the portrait of the Fool of Coria, one of thehombres de placer—literally, men of pleasure—of the court. The fool is seated on a stone, with a gourd on either side; his hands rest idly on his knee. It is a wonderfully pathetic picture, with a heartache in it for those who have some knowledge of those weakest of our brothers, the feeble-minded.

“How dreary Philip’s court must have been,” sighed Patsy, “if that pitiful creature could add to its gaiety.”

“Claro,” said Don Jaime, “but,Canastos!It is a most fine portrait. Look again, you will see in the face the idiotness of that man.”

Canastos, baskets, was the Don’s favorite oath; it was the only exclamation of impatience either he or Candalaria had ever heard their mother use. That morning the Don insisted on our looking more carefully at Ribera’s pictures than suited Patsy. The Don himself felt little sympathy with them, but, as a Spaniard, it was his duty to interest us in all the well-known painters of the Spanish school. Ribera—we knew him better by his Italian nickname, Spagnoletto, little Spaniard—the Don said, painted for the Church. He was in no sense a court painter, was probably prejudiced against all court people on account of Don John of Austria’s unhandsome treatment of his daughter in their unfortunate love affair. The Church at that time was under the sway of the Inquisition,where we must lay the blame, if the Ribera room was, as Patsy insisted, a little like the chamber of horrors.

“This painter,” said Don Jaime, “lived in one epoca of inquisition and hell influences. In all his paintings are seen foreheads full of wrinkles for pain, eyes terrified by the fear, and naked flesh teared, or sullen martyrs, saints and gloomy friars.”

“Why couldn’t he always paint like that?” said Patsy, pausing before a fine poetic Magdalen. “The drawing is as good, the modelling as astonishing, the color as rich as in those morbid cruel pictures. The mission of art is to inspire, not to terrify; you can never make me like Ribera, Don.”

The Don himself was more depressed than any of us by what he had seen. He mopped his bald ivory poll with his silk handkerchief—it was scented with orris—and sighed as we left the room:

“Everything it is so truthful, so to make fear, that everybody feel a relief, a joy of living, when he is gone from that parlor.”

“Now let’s go and play with the Venetians, as a reward of merit,” said Patsy. “I have not seen those lovely Titians for a week.” Patsy’s beloved Venetians can be studied better in the Prado than anywhere outside of Venice. The Don, filled witha sudden access of zeal for the Spanish school, would not let us go until we had given some time to the work of El Greco.

“Here are seven paintings of the lifes of saints by El Greco,” he said. “Every one so thin and transparent and of so greenish tones that they looks more than saints, like spirits who took the human form, notwithstanding they keep their impalpables. The intelligent people say that in this consist the worth of this painter, because he translated on the cloth theasceticismoof hisepoca.”

“You will never convince me that Greco is one of the world’s great painters, however important he may have been to the development of the Spanish school,” said Patsy. “A man who paints people eight feet high, who makes his angels goblins, his saints lunatics, is not sane; and without sanity there can be no great art.”

“You must go to Toledo,” said Don Luis, who had joined us, “before you can judge El Greco. You see his sacred pictures at a great disadvantage in a museum. They need the dim religious light of the churches or monasteries, for which they were painted. Only the portraits look well here; those, you must admit, are among the great portraits of the world.”

Patsy was not quite ready to agree to this yet, Don Jaime meanwhile acknowledged that fashionin art is as capricious as it is in dress; perhaps the people who have made El Greco the fashion, not to say the rage of the moment, claimed too much for him. In spite of this, like Don Luis, Jaime considered El Greco among the first of portrait painters.

“Speaking of fashion in dress,” said Patsy, stopping before an anonymous portrait of a lady in a yellow turban, “at what period did they wear that extraordinary headgear?”

“It must have been in the time of King Wamba,” laughed Don Luis, as much as to say, “before the flood.”

The name of King Wamba was like the kiss of the faithful hound on the cheek of the enchanted prince. Patsy awoke from the enchantment of To-day and remembered Yesterday, remembered Wamba and Wamba’s capital, Toledo, remembered that all the records of that wonderful life of many yesterdays we call history was waiting for him to read, not three hours away from Madrid.

“I would not go to Toledo for the sake of El Greco,” Patsy declared, “but for King Wamba’s sake, and to buy a Toledo blade, I would go twice as far!”

So our trip to Toledo—one of the best of our Spanish adventures—came about. We cancelled all engagements, gave up seats for the opera, andthe very next day started with little Don Luis for Toledo. The train took us past a small hillock, on which stands a church marking the exact geographical centre of Spain. Toledo is a walled town, built, like Rome, on seven hills. It stands high above the plain, surrounded on three sides by the Tagus, a rushing yellow river (Martial says its sands are of gold) that girdles the city, and keeps thevegaaround it a lovely green oasis in the arid Castilian plain. The road from the station passes through a rocky gorge and leads to the imposing bridge of Alcantara. From here the view of the stern fortress city is superb. We drove round the walls (Wamba’s walls) and saw the towers, the splendid gates, with the portcullis in more than one still perfect; and finally climbed the height, to the commanding ruin of the Alcazar.

The hill of the Alcazar dominates Toledo, as the Acropolis dominates Athens. The Alcazar is an immense square building, with four towers surmounted by pointed roofs. Time, the supreme colorist, has laid on his matchless glazes of sun and shadow; the darker parts are rich saffron, the lightest, mellow gold. Seen from the distance, it is a broad imposing mass, simple, strong, overpowering all other architectural features of the city by its size and its situation. When you enter the splendid ruin, and stand in the patio with its fine doublearcade of Corinthian columns, you are reminded of the courtyard of the Farnese palace in Rome, designed by Michaelangelo.

“If we could know the history of this old ruin,” said Patsy, “we should know the history of Toledo. Here, where we stand, on the very highest point of this granite rock, the Romans built theircastellum. From its ruins rose the Visigoths’ citadel, and, still later, the Moors’ Alcazar! The word means the palace of Cæsar: that shows the Moors did not forget! Kaiser means Cæsar, too; how many other things did the great Julius give his name to? I wonder. Think of the people who have lived between these four walls, and have looked out upon this glorious view! The Cid, Ferdinand and Isabel, Charles V and Philip II, just to mention a few stars.”

As in some families the youngest child who can speak “asks the blessing,” it fell to Patsy, youngest and most ardent of the party, to impart all inevitable information. The plan worked well, in spite of J.’s occasional restive “Use your eyes!” It was never necessary to tellhimwhat to look at.

“That,” said Patsy, map in hand, pointing to the lower levels of the town, “is the Bridge of Alcantara, literally the bridge of the bridge.”

The great bridge leaps boldly across the river, supported by one large and one small arch. There

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