A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Part 6

"Said Karl: 'That horn is full of breath!'

Said Naimes: ''Tis Roland who travaileth,'"

--and the Emperor instantly gave the command to turn and rush to the rescue.

But the battle had gone too far. Again and again the little band of Franks clove its way into the enemy; the latter wavered, retreated, fell by hundreds, and came back in thousands. Roland's tears fell fast over his dead companions:

"'Land of France, thou art soothly fair!

To-day thou liest bereaved and bare.

It was all for me your lives ye gave, And I was helpless to shield or save.'"

The last Frankish man-at-arms at length fell; only the three foremost paladins remained of all the host. But the Saracens dared no longer to approach them; they hurled their lances from afar. Spent and faint and bleeding, the three still stood out, but the death-wound of Oliver finally came; his vision swam, he swayed blindly on his horse. There is no more touching and beautiful incident in the whole range of song than this of his death:

"His eyes from bleeding are dimmed and dark, Nor mortal near or far can mark; And when his comrade beside him pressed, Fiercely he smote on his golden crest; Down to the nasal the helm he shred,-- But pa.s.sed no further nor pierced his head.

Roland marveled at such a blow, And thus bespake him, soft and low: 'Hast thou done it, my comrade, wittingly?

Roland, who loves thee so dear, am I; Thou hast no quarrel with me to seek?'

Oliver answered: 'I hear thee speak, But I see thee not. G.o.d seeth thee.

Have I struck thee, brother? Forgive it me.'

'I am not hurt, O Olivier, And in sight of G.o.d I forgive thee here.'

Then each to each his head hath laid, And in love like this was their parting made."

And now but Roland and the Archbishop were left,--the former on foot, his charger dead. Wounded and gasping, they rushed forward upon the enemy; the sword-arm of the Moorish king was cut from his side, his son fell dead before him. The Moors quailed; their lances fell in storms upon the heroes. Suddenly a long, far sound was heard; it was of the trumpets of Charlemagne's returning army rushing to the rescue but still miles and hours away. The Saracens turned at the very sound; a final lance-shower, and they fled; the two held the pa.s.s of Roncesvalles, unconquered,--but dying.

For it was too late.

The Archbishop had sunk to the ground, gasping,--lifeless. Roland, stricken himself, placed his companion gently on the gra.s.s:

"He took the fair white hands outspread, Crossed and clasped them upon his breast."

Then with his remaining strength, he sought one by one for the corpses of the other ten paladins; one by one he brought them to the feet of the dead prelate and laid them before the august body,--Oliver's corpse last and dearest of all. There he might leave them, the solemn a.s.sembly of the peers. It was his last task. His wound too was mortal; his time had come to join them.

"In vigor and pathos," justly observes the review before mentioned, "this poem rises to the end. There are few things in poetry more simply grand than the death of Roland. He moves feebly back to the adjoining limit-line of Spain,--the land which his well-loved master has conquered,--and a bow-shot beyond it, and then drops to the ground:"

"That death was on him he knew full well; Down from his head to his heart it fell.

On the gra.s.s beneath a pine tree's shade, With face to earth, his form he laid; Beneath him placed he his horn and sword, And turned his face to the heathen horde Thus hath he done the sooth to show That Karl and his warriors all may know That the gentle Count a conqueror died.

'_Mea culpa_,' full oft he cried, And for all his sins, unto G.o.d above In sign of penance he raised his glove.

"He did his right-hand glove uplift; Saint Gabriel took from his hand the gift.

--Then drooped his head upon his breast, And with clasped hands he went to rest."

There is indeed little in epic poetry to surpa.s.s the high simplicity of this loving portrayal of a hero's death.

It is the climax of the poem. The Emperor's army burst upon the scene, frantic with anxiety; but no eye was open to give them greeting. Roland was dead with his slaughtered rear-guard, and lying with his face to the foe. For three days the sun stayed its motion, at Charlemagne's frenzied pet.i.tion, and the Moors were chased and cut to pieces, Saragossa taken,--a full and furious vengeance exacted. The whole army mourned for their companions; holy rites attended their stately burial; Ganelon was tried, condemned, torn to pieces by wild horses. But the joy of the Franks, their hero, their idol, was gone forever from them; retribution, even the bitterest, could count for little against the pa.s.sing of that peerless spirit.

A pathetic meeting was afterward the old Emperor's with Alva, the affianced of Roland:

"'Where is my Roland, sire,' she cried, 'Who vowed to take me for his bride?'"

Brokenly at length he told her of the news. A moment she gazed at him unseeing:

"'G.o.d and his angels forbid, that I Should live on earth if Roland die!'

Pale grew her cheek,--she sank amain Down at the feet of Charlemagne."

So let us leave this tender poem, tender unwontedly among its times; an epic which sincerely merits a vogue more near to its value.

CHAPTER V.

THE CITY OF THE ARROW-PIERCED SAINT;

We glide smoothly away from St. Jean de Luz and its legends, by the unlegendary railroad. The track curves southward, with frequent views of the coast, and it will be but a few minutes before we shall be in Spain.

We instinctively feel for the rea.s.suring rustle of our pa.s.sports, duly _vised_ at Bordeaux. The low mountain that overhangs Fuenterrabia, one of the nearest Spanish towns, comes closer, and soon the train whistles shrilly into the long station at Hendaye, the last French village, in great repute for its delicious cordial. It is on the edge of the Bida.s.soa, a placid, shallow river which here lazily acts as the international boundary. Irun, the first town of the peninsula, is across the bridge, and after a short delay the train crosses,--and we instantly feel a hundred miles nearer to the Escorial, a hundred years nearer to Philip and the _auto-da-fe_.

The change of nationality at these frontier towns is always distinct and surprising, and more so than elsewhere here in Irun. Within three minutes we have in every sense pa.s.sed from France into Spain. Language not only, but the type of face and dress, have altered in a flash. We are not conscious, however, of any increased governmental surveillance; pa.s.sports are not asked for at all, and the customs-official gives but a light inspection to trunk and satchels.

But he is in considerable perplexity over the camera. This he is scrutinizing very suspiciously. We a.s.sume that a true Greek compound should pa.s.s current everywhere, if given a proper local termination, and so confidently hazard, "_photo-grafia_."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I still believe that the word was skilfully and philologically evolved, but it seems to fail of its effect. We repeat it, with appropriate gestures; the official looks puzzled but not enlightened. He inspects the lens, the bellows, the slides. We fear for the negatives and the unexposed plates. Prompt action is needed, for already his hand is approaching them; and boldly withdrawing the closed plate-holders from the camera we defiantly pocket them before his eyes.

A short, clicking sound caused by the act of withdrawal gives the inspector an idea. He looks up hopefully.

"_Telegrafo_?" he asks.

We nod with vigor and even more hopefully, and are inspired to add:

"_Si, senor, telegrafo! Americano; caramba!_"

This has the desired effect. The mystery is explained. The government's hand is stayed, its doubt vanishes; the precious scroll of chalk is made, and the plates are saved to darkness and to good works.

It is necessary to change cars at Irun. Trains cannot possibly go through, owing to a difference in gauge,--a difference purposely devised by moody Spain, in order to impede hostile invasion. There is also a wait of an hour. The Spaniard does not a.s.sent to the equation between time and money. The lunch at the buffet in the station is ceremonious and calm; the successive courses are gravely served at its naperied tables with the same deliberation, the same care and attention to detail, as at a hotel. It is but a short journey to San Sebastian, and in half an hour after leaving Irun we are at our destination.

II.

San Sebastian is both a city unto itself, and a summer resort unto others. As to the latter, it is among the most popular watering-places in Spain, and is styled "the Brighton of Madrid." As to the former, it is a home for twenty thousand human beings of its own; it earns a sufficing competence, chiefly in exchanges with its surrounding province; and it has a monopoly of centralization over a wide region, for no other important Spanish city lies nearer than Pampeluna or Burgos. Burgos is not actually so very remote,--only a short hundred and fifty miles beyond; and we had spoken of a visit to its renowned cathedral. But we had not reckoned with Spanish railway speed; it was found that the time required solely to go and come would be nearly fifteen hours! Unvisited, we saw, must remain the cathedral within which the hot-headed Protestant missionary blew out the sacred light that had burned for three hundred years. Owing to the Hispanian misconception of horological values, Burgos is practically, if not actually, exceedingly remote from San Sebastian.

The latter, however, is so fortunately close to the edge of France that those who come as near as Biarritz or Pau should a.s.suredly make this brief dip over the border.

San Sebastian is strictly new; its predecessors have been burned five times, one upon the other, the last being brought to ashes by the soldiers of Wellington; and it is liable to be burned again whenever France and Spain begin to fight again across it. It is an excellent model for that worthy fowl, the phoenix, for it has risen with undismayed cheerfulness from each holocaust. The present representative is in three segments. The city itself is composed of two, and the citadel makes a fairly important third. From a military point of view, the citadel was once counted first, and the city itself made an unimportant third,--with no second. But modern gunnery has changed that estimate.

Of the two parts of the city proper, one is national, the other international; they do not unite, but adjoin, welded by a central promenade, the _Alameda_. Each is distinct, and has little to do with the life of the other. The native population centres wholly in the west half; we drift first over to this, in our afternoon walk, and scan its appearance and people with inquisitive though decorous interest. This section, comprising much of what was the old town, has evidently aimed to reproduce it; it has been rebuilt with persistent regard to the former munic.i.p.al type, and shows to-day a curious combination of bright, new and well constructed tenements, built on a dark, old and ill instructed plan. The streets are left narrow,--very narrow. The black doorways and halls, as we peer in, in pa.s.sing, are cramped and forbidding; the projecting balconies approach each other overhead, and the oblong yellow buildings themselves rise to overshadowing height.

Like soldiers on dress parade they stand, relentlessly regular and uniform, block after block, and their walled lanes, straight and similar and uncharacteristic, cross and weave themselves into a stiff, right-angled check, exasperating and profitless, unrelieved by a hint at variation of outline, by a picturesque eave or gable, or a single artistic "bit;"