Spanish Highways and Byways Part 4

"Thee, boy. When I pa.s.sed over this road last, thou wert begging at the windows, to my shame if not to thine. Tut, tut! Go thy ways. Look for work, work, work."

"Work, sir?"

"Work, boy. And when thou hast found it, love it, and do it with a will. Learn to read and write. Wash thy face and change thy customs, and when thou art richer than I, then will I give thee a _peseta_."

Mendicancy is bred of ignorance, and in the seventeen and a half millions that make up the population of Spain, more than twelve millions do not read nor write.

Seville sight-seeing is no brief matter. You must climb the Giralda, walk in the parks, view the yellowed fragments of the ancient city wall, visit the tobacco factory, shop in _Las Sierpes_, buy pottery in Triana, see the gypsy dances in the cafes, attend the Thursday rag-fair, do reverence to the Columbus ma.n.u.scripts in the _Biblioteca Columbina_, look up the haunts of Don Juan, Figaro, Pedro the Cruel, and explore the curious "House of Pilate," which, tradition says, was built by a pilgrim n.o.ble after the Jerusalem pattern. You must lose your heart to the Alcazar, the Alhambra of Seville, a storied palace embowered in fountain-freshened gardens of palm and magnolia, oranges and cypresses, rose and myrtle, with shadowy arcades leading to marble baths and arabesqued pavilions. You must follow Murillo from gallery to gallery, from church to church, above all, from the _Hospital de la Caridad_, where hang six of his greatest compositions, to the _Museo Provincial_, where over a score of the Master's sacred works, lovely Virgins, longing saints, deep-eyed Christ-Childs, rain their sweet influence. And first, last, and always, there is the cathedral. We had been stunned at Burgos, blind to all save the Moorish features of Cordova, almost untouched by the cold splendors of Granada, but to Seville, as later to Toledo, we surrendered utterly. Beauty, mystery, sublimity--these are Seville cathedral. Five centuries have gone to the rearing and enriching of those solemn aisles and awful choir. The colossal structure, second in size only to St. Peter's, is a majesty before which Luther himself might well have trembled. Within a Spanish cathedral one begins to understand the mighty hold of Roman Catholicism on Spain. "I love," says Alarcon, whose jest and earnest are as closely twined as fibres of the same heart, "the clouds of incense which rise to the cupola of the Catholic temple, amid the harmonies of the holy organ. (For this I am not a Protestant.)" And elsewhere, writing of his childhood, he speaks of receiving in the cathedral of Guadix all his first impressions of artistic beauty,--beauty of architecture, music, painting, processional splendors, tissue of gold and silver, cunning embroideries and jewel-work, his first sense, in short, of poetry. And all these impressions were inextricably blent with his first yearnings of holy aspiration, his first pa.s.sion of mystical devotion. But not even Seville cathedral could win over our full sympathy. Too heavy were the faces of the priests who "sang the gori gori," too selfish that wigged and jointed doll, "Our Lady of Kings," with her sixty gorgeous mantles, a few of which would have clothed all the poor of Andalusia.

Who shall draw the line between faith and superst.i.tion?

But let not the tourist suppose he can escape his tyrant Baedeker even at the top of the Giralda. There are excursions that must be taken to points of interest outside the city. Most imperative of all is the trip to the ruined Roman amphitheatre of Italica, guarded by the mighty names of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius. Off we start, a dozen strong, in a great, open carriage, all the women-folk with fans and veils and with flowers in the hair. We rattle past the cathedral, over the bridge to Triana and out into the sweet-breathed country, pa.s.sing many a picturesque group on the road,--these two peasants, for example, with their yellow-handled knives thrust into scarlet girdles, tossing dice under a fig tree. Our meditations among the crumbling blocks of that savage play-house would perhaps interest the reader less than our luncheon. Such Andalusian dainties as we swallowed,--cold soups like melted salads, home-made fig marmalade, cinnamon pastes of which the gypsies know the secret, and sugared chestnuts overflowed by a marvellous syrup wherein could be detected flavors of lemon peel, orange peel, and a medley of spices! In that scene of ancient bloodshed, of the lion's wrath and the martyr's anguish, we ate, drank, and were merry, but our banquet tasted of ghosts.

VI

Pa.s.sION WEEK IN SEVILLE

"All that was gracious was bestowed by the Virgin, and she was the giver of all that human creatures could ask for. G.o.d frowned, while she smiled; G.o.d chastised, but she forgave; this last notion was by no means a strange one. It is accepted with almost absolute faith among the laboring cla.s.ses of the rural parts of Spain."--GALDoS: _Marianela_.

Holy week throngs Seville to overflowing. The devout no longer scourge themselves in public, sprinkling the pavements with their blood, but Spaniards flock from all Andalusia, from Madrid, and even from the northern provinces to the sunny city on the storied Guadalquivir.

Hotel charges run from twelve dollars a day up to incredible figures; a mere bed in a lodging house costs its three dollars, four dollars, or five dollars a night, and fortunate are those who enjoy the hospitality of a private home.

The ceremonies opened Sunday morning with the procession of palms. We had been told by our cathedral guide the day before that this procession would take place at seven or half-past seven at the latest, and had asked the maid to call us at half-past six. As the chiming bells should have warned us, her knock was an hour tardy, but when, breakfastless and eager, we reached the cathedral a few minutes after eight, there was as yet no sign of a procession. Ma.s.s was being said in the Sagrario and in several chapels, and the morning light poured in through the rich-colored windows upon groups of kneeling figures before every shrine. The women wore black mantillas, for, although this most graceful of headdresses is losing credit on the fas.h.i.+onable promenades of Seville, and is almost never seen in open carriages, Holy Week demands it of all the faithful.

We asked a white-robed young chorister when the procession would form.

He answered with encouraging precision, "In twenty minutes." We roamed about for a half hour or more through those majestic s.p.a.ces, beneath those soaring arches, aspiration wrought in stone, until by chance in that s.h.i.+fting mult.i.tude we came face to face with our guide of the day before. We asked how soon the procession would form. He said, "In twenty minutes," and we went home for coffee.

When we returned the procession was streaming out of the cathedral into the street of the _Gran Capitan_. It was simple and all the more attractive for that simplicity. The colors of standards and vestments were mainly purple and gold, and the long, yellow fronds of palm, blown by the fresh breeze from the river, gleamed brighter than the sheen of candle or of mitre. Turning the corner, the procession, now facing the beautiful Giralda, entered by the ample Door of Pardon, still incrusted with its Arabic decorations, into the Court of Oranges, whose ripe fruit gave new touches of gold to the picture.

Venders of palm were stationed in every sheltered corner, selling their wares, more than twice the height of a man, at fifteen cents the frond, while boys, darting about with armfuls of olive, were glad to take a cent the branch, and not have the best of their leafy store filched from them by sly old women, more intent, like the rest of us, on getting a blessing than deserving it.

Through the mult.i.tude the glittering palms and purple robes swept on back into the cathedral, where the silent and remote archbishop, an image of gold in his splendid apparel, shed his benediction not only over the proud palms, but over every spray of "little gray leaves,"

like those of Gethsemane. These blessed palms, sprinkled with holy water and wafting strange fragrances of incense, would be carried home and kept in myriad balconies all the year through, to protect the house from "the all-dreaded thunder-stone."

That Sunday afternoon at five o'clock we were leaning out expectantly from our host's best balcony. With the constant Spanish courtesy, he had betaken himself, with the children of the household, to a less commanding balcony below, and his eldest son had considerately withdrawn, accompanied by his fiancee, to a mere speck of a balcony above. This left a dozen of us, Spanish, English, and American, to enjoy as good a view as the city afforded of the processional tableaux.

The oblong _Plaza de la Const.i.tucion_, the scene in days gone by of many a tournament, _auto de fe_, and bull-fight, is bounded on one side by the ornate Renaissance facade of the city hall, and on the other, in part, by the plain front of the court-house, before which criminals used to be done to death. Private dwellings, with their tiers of balconies, one of which had fallen to our happy lot, cross the wider end of the _plaza_, while the other opens into the brilliant street of _Las Sierpes_, too narrow for carriages, but boasting the gayest shop windows and merriest cafes of all the town.

The _plaza_, always animated, fairly rippled with excitement this Palm Sunday afternoon. The grand stand, erected in front of the city hall, was filled, although many of the camp-chairs and benches placed in thick-set rows on the farther side of the line of march were not yet rented. Thursday and Friday are the days that draw the mult.i.tudes. The crowd was bright with uniforms, most conspicuous being the spruce white-edged, three-cornered hats and dark-blue, red-faced coats of the civil guard. Venders of peanuts, peanut candy, macaroons, caramels, and all manner of _dulces_ swung their baskets from one sweet-toothed Spaniard to another, while wisely the water-seller went in their wake, with the artistic yellow jar over his shoulder. One young pedler was doing a flouris.h.i.+ng business in crabs, the customers receiving these delicacies in outstretched pocket handkerchiefs.

Busy as our eyes were kept, we were able to lend ear to the explanations of our Spanish friends, who told us that the church dignitaries, after the procession of palms, took no official part in the shows of Pa.s.sion Week, although many of the clergy belonged, as individuals, to the religious brotherhoods concerned. The church reserves its street displays for Corpus Christi. These brotherhoods, societies of ancient origin, and connected with some church or chapel, own dramatic properties often of great intrinsic value and considerable antiquity.

For days before Holy Week one may see the members busy in the churches at the task of arranging groups of sacred figures, vested as richly as possible in garments of silk and velvet, with ornaments of jewels and gold, on platforms so heavy that twenty-five men, at the least, are needed to carry each. These litters are escorted through the princ.i.p.al streets and squares of the city by their respective societies, each brotherhood having its distinctive dress. It is customary for every _cofradia_ to present two pageants--the first in honor of Christ; the second, and more important, in honor of Mary, to whom chivalrous Spain has always rendered supreme homage; but sometimes the two tableaux are combined into one.

After long watching and waiting we saw, far down _Las Sierpes_, the coming of the first procession. A line of police marched in advance to clear the road. Then appeared a loosely ordered company of fantastic figures in blue capes and blue peaked caps, absurdly high and reaching down to the shoulder, with holes cut for the eyes. From beneath the capes flowed white frocks, and the gloves and sandals were white.

These "Nazarenes," who looked like a survival of the Carnival, conducted in silence a litter upon which was erected an image of the crucified Christ, with face uplifted as if in prayer.

The pageant halted before the doors of the city hall to greet the Alcalde, who rose from his red velvet chair and bared his head. Men uncovered, and people stood all along the route, but acclamations were reserved for Our Lady of the Star. Her attendant troop was dressed like the preceding, with a star embroidered in white on the shoulder of the blue tunic. Her litter was ablaze with candles and laden with flowers; her outsweeping train was upborne by four little pages, and a bra.s.s band followed her with unceasing music.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FILLING THE WATER-JARS]

Sunset colors were in the sky before the procession of the second brotherhood arrived. At last, far down the _Sierpes_, the dusk was dotted with the gleam of many tapers, and above these, most impressive in the dim distance, glimmered a white figure high upon the cross. As the pageant drew near, waves of incense rolled out upon the air. The crash of trumpets and deep boom of drums announced that Our Lady of the Angels was advancing upon the same platform with her Son, for music in these Pa.s.sion Week processions is always a sign of the presence of the Virgin. The brothers of this retinue wore black, save that their peaked caps were purple.

As twilight gathered, a company of strange dark shapes bore past in solemn hush the Most Holy Christ of the Waters. The Saviour hung upon the cross, an angel receiving in a golden cup the blood from his wounded side. Then her great banner of white and blue heralded the approach of Our Lady of the Utter Grief, who pa.s.sed with her accustomed pomp of lights and music, holding to her eyes a handkerchief said to be of the most exquisite lace.

Night had fallen when, at eight o'clock, a maid left on vigil called us all from the dinner table to see the beautiful procession of white-robed figures conducting Our Father Jesus of the Silence. The figure of Christ, resplendent in gold and purple, stood before Herod, whose mail-clad soldiers guarded the prisoner. The Roman costumes were so well copied, and all the postures and groupings so startlingly natural, that _vivas_ went up all along the crowded square. As the banner of the Virgin saluted the Alcalde, her attendants let fall their long white trains, which swept out quite six yards behind, reaching from one brother to the next and yielding a wonderfully fine effect in the slow march. Our Lady of the Bitterness, toward whom leaned the tender look of St. John, was robed in superb brocade, so precious that her train, which stood stiffly out behind, was guarded by a soldier with drawn sword.

This closed the ceremonies of Palm Sunday, and the throng, catching one from another the blithe, sweet Andalusian melodies, went singing softly through the darkness on their various ways.

After Palm Sunday a secular quiet fell upon Seville, not broken until Wednesday. At five o'clock this March afternoon it was still so hot that few people were rash enough to move about without the shelter of parasols. Sevillian priests, sombre-robed as they were, sauntered cheerily across the _plaza_ under sunshades of the gayest hues, orange, green, azure, red, and usually all at once, but the shamefaced Englishmen flapped up broad umbrellas of an uncompromising black.

There was a breezy flutter of fans on the grand stand, the water-sellers had to fill their jars again and again, and the mult.i.tude of smokers, puffing at their paper cigarettes to cool themselves, really brought on a premature twilight.

It was nearly seven before a score of gendarmes, marching abreast, cleared the way for the procession. Then appeared, in the usual guise, some twenty feet apart, two files of those strange shapes, with high, peaked caps, whose visors descended to the breast, slowly advancing, with an interval of about six feet from man to man. Their caps and frocks were black, but the long capes glowed a vivid red. They carried the customary lighted tapers, so tall that, when rested on the ground, they reach to the shoulder. Midway between the files walked a cross-bearer, followed by a Nazarene, who uplifted the standard of St. Andrew's Cross in red on a black ground. Bearers of other insignia of the order preceded the great litter, on which, under a golden palm tree, was represented by life-size effigies the arrest of Christ among His Disciples, St. Andrew having the foremost place. The second pageant presented by this brotherhood was accompanied by bevies of white-robed boys swinging censers and chanting anthems. Then came, in effulgence of light, the Most Holy Virgin, escorted, as if she were the earthly Queen of Spain, by a detachment of the Civil Guard, whose white tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and gold belts gleamed in the candle rays.

The remaining three _cofradias_ that had part in the Wednesday ceremonies exhibited but one pageant each. A troop in black and gold conducted a Calvary, with Mary Mother and Mary Magdalene both kneeling at the foot of the cross, robed in the richest velvet. Figures in white, with stripes of red, came after, with a yet more costly Calvary. The well-carved crucifix rose from a gilded mound, and Our Mother of Healing wore a gold crown of exceeding price. But the third Calvary, all wrought in black and gold, the colors of the brotherhood, which were repeated in standard and costume, won the plaudits of the evening. Here Longinus, the Roman centurion, mounted on a spirited horse, was in the act of piercing with his lance the Saviour's side.

Amid _vivas_ and _bravos_ this Pa.s.sion picture pa.s.sed, like its predecessors, in clouds of incense and peals of solemn music.

On Thursday the wearing of black was almost universal. We rummaged our shawl straps for some poor equivalent of the Spanish black silks and black mantillas. The Civil Guard was more superb than ever in full-dress uniform, with red vests and white trousers. No sound of wheels was suffered within the city limits, and late arrivals had to commit their luggage to a porter and follow him on foot.

At three o'clock, in the Sagrario of the cathedral, the archbishop washed the feet of thirteen old paupers, who sat in two confronting rows, looking neat as wax and happy as honey, each dressed in a brand-new suit, with a long-fringed damask towel over his shoulder.

Their old blood had been warmed by the archbishop's own wine, for they had just come from luncheon in the ecclesiastical palace, where they had been served by the highest dignitaries of the church and the proudest n.o.bles of the city. The function of foot was.h.i.+ng was not taken too seriously. The fat canons smiled good-humoredly on their archbishop, as his group of attendants lowered him to his knees and lifted him again before every old man in turn, and the acolytes nudged one another with boyish mirth over the rheumatic, embarra.s.sed efforts of the beneficiaries to put on their stockings.

A Franciscan friar mounted the pulpit, however, and turned the congregation, thickly sprinkled with English visitors, serious enough by a succinct and fiery sermon, saying, in a nutsh.e.l.l, that love is the glory of the religious life, but is the fruit only of Catholicism, for nowhere, though one searches the world over, can there be found a work of mercy--hospital, asylum, endowed school, charity of any sort or kind--due to Protestantism. And the old paupers, glancing down at their new suits and feeling the glow of their banquet, were glad to the tips of their purified toes that their lots had been cast in Catholic Spain.

By six o'clock the squares and streets along the processional route were thronged again, although our Spanish friends a.s.sured us that the numbers were less than usual. The war feeling kept the Americans and, to some extent, the English away, while many of the Spanish of the provinces, who were accustomed to take their annual outing in Seville during the _Semana Santa_, were held at home this year by poverty or mourning.

The first two pageants of the afternoon, those of the bull-fighters and the cigarette-makers, were awaited with especial eagerness. For these Seville brotherhoods, more than thirty in all, still maintain something of the mediaeval structure of the guilds. Just as in England and France, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, or thereabouts, organized companies of craftsmen used to present in Pa.s.sion Week successive scenes from the life of Christ, these Spanish _cofradias_ to-day maintain such general lines of division in performing a similar function. Yet any Catholic Sevillian may, if he chooses, secure admission to any of these societies, irrespective of his occupation. The young _caballero_ who chanced to be our prime source of information this Thursday afternoon was himself of a prominent family, a protege of the archbishop, and a student of law, yet he belonged to the brotherhood of Fruit Venders, although his devotion seemed a little languid, and he had excused himself on this occasion from the long march in the breathless Nazarene garb.

Not all the brothers feel bound to perform this penitential service every Pa.s.sion Week, and, indeed, not all the brotherhoods. Several of the most elaborate pageants were missing from the ranks this year.

Such omissions are not as disastrous to the processional effect as they would have been in England, for example, some six centuries ago.

Then the gilded and tapestried platforms, set on wheels, which the processions conducted through the streets, were really stages, and at the halting places the best actors of each guild played upon its particular platform an appointed scene from the sacred drama. The sequence of events was duly observed, and the spectator, standing in market-place or at street corner, while one theatre after another rolled by him, saw acted out with much finery of wardrobe and ingenuity of machinery, with tragic dialogue and declamation, relieved by comic interludes, all the Bible story, from the revolt of Lucifer to the Day of Judgment. But modern Spain, abandoning the acting and recitation and subst.i.tuting puppets for living men, has let slip the dramatic sequence, so that a few pageants less means only so much abatement in the general splendor of the spectacle.

The bull-fighters of Andalusia are eminently religious and are said, likewise, to be remarkable for their domestic virtues. All their manly fury is launched against the bull, and they have only gentleness left for wives and children. I have heard no better argument for the bull ring. At all events, these _toreros_, marching soberly in black, with yellow belts, escorted with well-ordered solemnity an image of the crucified Christ, followed by a queenly effigy of Our Lady of Refuge, erect behind terraced ranks of candles on a flower-strewn litter, under a costly canopy of black velvet embroidered with gold. The cigarette-makers came after with their two pageants, Christ fastened to the pillar, and Our Lady of Victory.

It was, as usual, the second upon which the main expense had been lavished. A great company of acolytes, richly clad and swinging censers of pure silver, went in advance of the Virgin, and three bands of music followed her with continuous acclaim, while a regiment of soldiers attended as a guard of honor. Immediately in front of the _paso_ went, surrounded by officers and aides, General Ochando, his head uncovered and his breast glittering with decorations, for the young king of Spain is a member of this _cofradia_, and had sent the distinguished military governor of the Provinces, who has a palace in Seville, to represent him. Especial enthusiasm was called out by this image of Mary, for the cigarette-makers had just presented her with a new mantle at a cost of nine thousand dollars. The brothers were willingly aided by the seven thousand women who work in the immense tobacco factory, the average contribution of each donor being two _centimos_ (two-fifths of a cent) a week during the preceding year. No wonder that the Virgin seemed to stand proudly upon her silvered pedestal, her gorgeous new mantle streaming out until it almost touched the head of a white-vested girl who walked barefoot close behind the litter, so fulfilling a vow made in extremity of illness.

Black and white were the banners and costumes of the third procession, very effective through the deepening dusk. Their leading pageant was a Gethsemane, famous for the beauty of the carving. Christ is represented in prayer before an angel, who bears in one hand the cross and in the other the cup of bitterness, while Peter, James, and John are sleeping near their Master. These Pa.s.sion groups are, with a few exceptions of still earlier date, works of the seventeenth century, the glorious period of Spanish art, the day of Murillo and Velazquez.

The most and best are from the hand of the Sevillian Montanes, of chief repute in the Spanish school of polychrome sculpture, but this Gethsemane was carved by his imitator, Roldan, whose daughter, La Roldana, is accredited with the figure of the angel and with the reliefs that adorn the pedestal.

Another Virgin, who, like all the rest, seemed a scintillation of gold and jewels, swept by, and a new troop of Nazarenes, this time in purple and white, pa.s.sed with two august pageants,--the Descent from the Cross and the Fifth Anguish of Mary. Then came two files of ash-colored figures, who marshalled, between their rows of starry tapers, each taper bending toward its opposite, a vivid presentation of the Crowning with Thorns; and, after this, their Mary of the Valley, noted for the gracious sweetness of her countenance. This image is held to be one of Montanes's masterpieces in wood-carving.

Five processions had now pa.s.sed, with their two pageants each, and the hour was late, but we could not leave the balcony for anything so commonplace as dinner. Far down the street of _Las Sierpes_ waved a river of lights, announcing the advent of the most ancient of all the Sevillian brotherhoods, Jesus of the Pa.s.sion. The crowded _plaza_ rose in reverence as the Crucifixion _paso_ was borne by, and Our Lady of Mercy, too magnificent for her name, was greeted with rapturous outcries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OFF FOR THE WAR]

Just how and when and where something in the way of food was taken, I hardly know, but as this, the last of the Thursday evening processions, pa.s.sed in music out of the _plaza_, a few of us made speed by a deserted side street to the cathedral. We were too late for the _Miserere_, which was just closing in that surprising hubbub, the stamping of feet and beating of canes and chairs against the floor, by which Spanish piety is wont to "punish Judas." But we took our station near by the entrance to the Royal Chapel, wherein had been erected the grand Holy Week monument, in white and gold, shaped like a temple, and s.h.i.+ning with innumerable silver lamps and taper lights.