Gatherings From Spain Part 16

[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL REMEDIES FOR THE BODY.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

Spanish Spiritual Remedies for the Body--Miraculous Relics--Sanative Oils--Philosophy of Relic Remedies--Midwifery and the Cinta of Tortosa--Bull of Crusade.

The Reverend Dr. Fernando Castillo, an esteemed Spanish author and teacher, remarks, in his luminous Life of St. Domenick, that Spain has been so bountifully provided by heaven with fine climate, soil, and extra number of saints, that his countrymen are p.r.o.ne to be idle and to neglect such rare advantages. Certainly they may not dig and delve so deeply as is done in lands less favoured, but the reproach of omitting to call on Hercules to do their work, or of not making the most of Santiago in any bodily dilemma, is a somewhat too severe reproach: nowhere in case of sickness have the saving virtues of relics, and the adjurations of holy monks, been more implicitly relied on.

[Sidenote: MIRACULOUS SANATIVE OILS.]

[Sidenote: COSTUME OF CONVALESCENTS.]

As our learned readers well know, the medical practice of the ancients was, as that of the Orientals still is, more peculiar than scientific.

When disease was thought to be a divine punishment for sin, it was held to be wicked to resist by calling in human aid: thus Asa was blamed, and thus Moslems and Spaniards resign themselves to their fate, distrusting, and very properly, their medical men: "Am I a G.o.d, to kill or make alive?" In the large towns, in these days of progress, some patients may "suffer a recovery" according to European practice; but in the country and remote villages,--and we speak from repeated personal experience,--the good old reliance on relics and charms is far from exploded; and however Dr. Sangrado and Philip III., whose decrees on medical matters yet adorn the Spanish statutes at large, deplore the introduction of perplexing chemistry, mineral therapeuticals still remain a considerable dead letter, as the church has transferred the efficacy of faith from spiritual to temporal concerns, and gun-shot wounds. Even Ponz, the Lysons of Spain, and before the Inquisition was abolished, ventured to express surprise at the number of images ascribed to St. Luke, who, says he, was not a sculptor, but a physician, whence possibly their sanative influence. The old Iberians were great herbalist doctors; thus those who had a certain plant in their houses, were protected, as a blessed palm branch now wards off lightning. They had also a drink made of a hundred herbs, and hence called _centum herbae_, a _bebida de cien herbas_, which, like Morison's vegetable pills, cured every possible disease, and was so palatable that it was drunk at banquets, which modern physic is not; moreover, according to Pliny, they cured the gout with flour, and relieved elongated uvulas by hanging purslain round the patient's throat. So now the _curas y curanderos_, country curates and quacks, furnish charms and incantations, just as Ulysses stopped his bleeding by cantation: a medal of Santiago cures the ague, a handkerchief of the Virgin the ophthalmia, a bone of San Magin answers all the purposes of mercury, a sc.r.a.p of San Frutos supplied at Segovia the loss of common sense; the Virgin of Ona destroyed worms in royal Infantes, and her sash at Tortosa delivers royal Infantas. Every Murcian peasant believes that no disease can affect him or his cattle, if he touches them with the cross of Caravaca, which angels brought from heaven and placed on a red cow. When we were last at Manresa, the worthy man who showed the cave in which Loyola the founder of the Jesuits did penance for a year, increased an honest livelihood by the sale of its pulverized stones, that were swallowed by the faithful in cases in which an English doctor would prescribe Dover's or James's powders. Every province, not to say parish, has its own tutelar saint and relic, which are much honoured and resorted to in their local jurisdiction, and very little thought of out of it, their power to cure having been apparently granted to them by Santiago, as a commission to commit is by Queen Victoria to a magistrate, whose authority does not extend beyond the county bounds. Zaragoza was admirably provided: a portion of the liver of Santa Engracia was anciently resorted to, in cases where blue pill would be beneficial; the oil of her lamps, which never smoked the ceilings, cured _lamparones_, or tumours in the neck, while that which burnt before the _Virgen del Pilar_, or the image of the Virgin which came down from heaven on a pillar, restored lost legs; Cardinal de Retz mentions in his Memoirs having seen a man whose wooden subst.i.tutes became needless when the originals grew again on being rubbed with it; and this portent was long celebrated by the Dean and Chapter, as well it deserved, by an especial holiday, for Maca.s.sar oil cannot do much more.

This graven image is at this moment the object of popular adoration, and disputes even with the worship of tobacco and money: countless are the mendicants, the halt, blind, and the lame, who cl.u.s.ter around her shrine, as the equally afflicted ancients, with whom physicians were in vain, did around that of Minerva; and it must be confessed that the cures worked are almost incredible.

It may be said that all this is a raking up of remnants of mediaeval superst.i.tion and darkness, and it is probable that the medical men in Madrid and the larger towns, and especially those who have studied at Paris, do not place implicit confidence in these spiritual, nor indeed in any other purely Spanish remedies; but their tried medicinal properties are set forth at length in scores of Spanish county and other histories which we have the felicity to possess, all of which have pa.s.sed the scrutinizing ordeal of clerical censors, and have been approved of as containing nothing contrary to the creed of the Church of Rome or good customs; nor can it be permitted that a church which professes to be always one, the same, and the only true one, should at its own convenience "turn its back on itself," and deny its own drugs and doctrines. Nothing is set down here which was not perfectly notorious under the reign of Ferdinand VII.; and whatever the doctors of physic or theology may now disbelieve in Spain, more reliance is still placed, in the rural districts, where foreign civilization has not penetrated, on miracles than on medicines.

We have often and often seen little children in the streets dressed like Franciscan monks--Cupids in cowls--whose pious parents had vowed to clothe them in the robes of this order, provided its sainted founder preserved their darlings during measles or dent.i.tion. Nothing was more common than that women, nay, ladies in good society, should appear for a year in a particular religious dress, called _el habito_, or with some religious badge on their sleeves in token of similar deliverance.

[Sidenote: CURE OF SOULS.]

One instance in our time amused all the tertulias of Seville, who maliciously attributed the sudden relief which a fair high-born unmarried invalid experienced from an apparent dropsical complaint to causes not altogether supernatural; _Pues, Don Ricardo_, "and so, Master Richard," would her friends of the same age and rank often say, "you are a stranger; go and ask dearest _Esperanza_ why she wears the Virgin of Carmel; come back and let us know her story, and we will tell you the real truth." _Vaya! vaya! Don Ricardo, usted es muy majadero_,--"Go to, Master Richard, your Grace is an immense bore," replied the penitent, if she suspected the authors and motive of the emba.s.sy.

The pious in antiquity raised temples to Minerva medica or Esculapius, as Spaniards do altars to _Na. Senora de los Remedios_, our Lady of the Remedies, and to San Roque, whose intervention renders "sound as a roach," a proverb devised in his honour by our ancestors, who, before the Reformation, trusted likewise to him; and both thought, if Cicero is to be credited, that these tutelars did _at least_ as much as the doctor. Alas! for the patient credulity of mankind, which still gulps down such medicinal quackery as all this, and which long will continue to do so even were one of the dead to rise from the grave, to deprecate the absurd treatment by which he and so many have been sacrificed.

However, by way of compensation, the saving the _soul_ has been made just as primary a consideration in Spain as the curing the _body_ has been in England. These relics, charms, and amulets represent our patent medicines; and the wonder is how any one in Great Britain can be condemned to death in this world, or how any one in the Peninsula can be doomed to perdition in the next: possibly the panaceas are in neither case quite specific. Be that as it may, how numerous and well-appointed are the churches and convents there, compared to the hospitals; how amply provided the relic-magazine with bones and spells, when compared to the anatomical museums and chemists' shops; again, what a flock of holy pract.i.tioners come forth _after_ a Spaniard has been stabbed, starved, or executed, not one of whom would have stirred a step to save an army of his countrymen when alive; and what coppers are now collected to pay ma.s.ses to get his soul out of purgatory!

[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY OF RELICS.]

Beware, nevertheless, gentle Protestant reader, of dying in Spain, except in Cadiz or Malaga, where, if you are curious in Christian burial, there is snug lying for heretics; and for your life avoid being even sick at Madrid, since if once handed over to the faculty make thy last testament forthwith, as, if the judgment pa.s.sed on their own doctors by Spaniards be true, Esculapius cannot save thee from the crows: avoid the Spanish doctors therefore like mad dogs, and throw their physic after them.

The ma.s.ses and many in Spain have their own tutelars and refuges for the dest.i.tute; the kings and queens--whom G.o.d preserve!--have their own especial patroness by prerogative, in the image of the Virgin of Atocha at Madrid, which they and the rest of the royal family visit every Sunday in the year when in royal health. No sooner was the sovereign taken dangerously ill, and the court physicians at a loss what to do, as sometimes is the case even in Madrid, than the image used to be brought to his bedside; witness the case of Philip III., thus described by Ba.s.sompierre in his dispatch:--"Les medecins en desesperent depuis ce matin que l'on a commence a user des _remedes spirituels_, et faire transporter au palais _l'image_ de N. D. de Athoche." The patient died three days after the image was sent for.

[Sidenote: SPANISH MIDWIFERY.]

Although neither priest nor physician might credit the sanative properties of rags and relics, they gladly called them in, for if the case then went wrong, how could mortal man be expected to succeed when the supernatural remedy had failed? All inquests in awkward cases are hushed up by ascribing the death to the visitation of G.o.d. Again, if a relic does not always cure it rarely kills, as calomel has been known to do. This interruptive principle, one distinct from human remedies, is admitted by the church in the prayers for sick persons; and where faith is sincere, even relics must offer a powerful moral medical cordial, by acting on the imagination, and giving confidence to the patient. This chance is denied to the poor Protestant, nay, even to a newly-converted tractarian, for truly, to believe in the efficacy of a monkish bone, the lesson must have been learnt in the nursery. Their subst.i.tute in Lutheran lands, in partibus infidelium, is found in laudanum, news, and gossip; the latter being the grand specific by which Sir Henry kept scores of dowagers alive, to the despair of jointure-paying sons, from marquises down to baronets; and how much real comfort is conveyed by the gentle whisper, "Your ladyship cannot conceive what an interest his or her Royal Highness the ---- takes in your ladyship's convalescence!"

The _form_ of the moral restorative will vary according to climate, creeds, manners, &c.; it is to the _substance_ alone that the philosophical physician will look. That chord must be touched, be it what it may, to which the pulse of the patient will respond; nor, provided he is recovered, do the means much signify.

One word only on Spanish midwifery. There is a dislike to male accoucheurs, and the midwife, or _comadre_, generally brings the Spaniard into the world by the efforts of nature and the aid of _manteca de puerco_, or hogs' lard, a launching appropriate enough to a babe, who, if it survives to years of discretion, will a.s.suredly love bacon.

The newly-born is then wrapped up, like an Egyptian mummy, and is carefully protected from fresh air, soap, and water; an amulet is then hung round its neck to disarm the evil eye, or some badge of the Virgin is to ensure good luck: thus the young idea is taught from the cradle, what errors are to be avoided and what safeguards are to be clung to, lessons which are seldom forgotten in after-life. Without entering further into baby details, the scanty population of the Peninsula may in some measure be thus accounted for. Parturition also is frequently fatal; in ordinary cases the midwife does very well, but when a difficulty arises she loses her head and patient. It is in these trying moments, as in the critical operations of the kitchen, that a male artiste is preferable.

[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL AIDS TO ACCOUCHEMENT.]

The Queens and Infantas of Spain have additional advantages. The palladium of the city of Tortosa is the _cinta_[11] or girdle, which the Virgin, accompanied by St. Peter and St. Paul, brought herself from heaven to a priest of the cathedral in 1178; an event in honour of which a ma.s.s is still said every second Sunday in October. The gracious gift was declared authentic in 1617, by Paul V., and to justify his infallibility it works every sort of miracle, especially in obstetric cases; it is also brought out to defend the town on all occasions of public calamity, but failed in the case of Suchet's attack. This girdle, more wonderful than the cestus of Venus, was conveyed in 1822, by Ferdinand VII.'s command, in solemn procession to Aranjuez, in order to facilitate the accouchement of the two Infantas, and as Lucina when duly invoked favoured women in travail, so their Royal Highnesses were happily delivered, and one of the babes then born, is the husband of Isabel II. For humbler Castilian women, when pregnant, a spiritual remedy was provided by the canons of Toledo, who took the liveliest interest in many of the cases. The grand entrance to the cathedral had thirteen steps, and all females who ascended and descended them ensured an early and easy time of it. No wonder therefore, when these steps were reduced to the number of seven, that the greatest possible opposition should have been made by the fair s.e.x, married and unmarried. All these things of Spain are rather Oriental; and to this day the Barbary Moors have a cannon at Tangiers by which a Christian ship was sunk, and across this their women sit to obtain an easy delivery. In all ages and countries where the science of midwifery has made small progress, it is natural that some spiritual a.s.sistance should be contrived for perils of such inevitable recurrence as childbirth. The panacea in Italy was the girdle of St. Margaret, which became the type of this _Cinta_ of Tortosa, and it was resorted to by the monks in all cases of difficult parturition. It was supposed to benefit the s.e.x, because when the devil wished to eat up St. Margaret, the Virgin bound him with her sash, and he became tame as a lamb. This sash brought forth sashes also, and in the 17th century had multiplied so exceedingly, that a traveller affirmed "if all were joined together, they would reach all down Cheapside;" but the natural history of relics is too well known to be enlarged upon.

[Sidenote: BULL OF CRUSADE.]

Any account of Spanish doctors without a death, would be dull as a blank day with fox-hounds, although the medical man, differing from the sportsman, dislikes being in at it. He, the moment the fatal sisters three are running into their game, slips out, and leaves the last act to the clergyman: hence the Spanish saying, "When the priest begins, the physician ends." It is related in the history of Don Quixote, that no sooner did the barber feel the poor knight's wrist, than he advised him to attend to his soul and send for his confessor; and now, when a Castilian hidalgo takes to his bed, his friends pursue much the same course, nor does the catastrophe often differ. Lord Bacon, great in wise saws and instances, prayed that his death might come from Spain, because then it would be long on the journey; but he was not aware that the gentlemen in black formed an exception to the proverbial procrastination and dilatoriness of their fellow countrymen. As patients are soon dispatched, the law[12] of the land subjects every physician to a fine of ten thousand maravedis, who fails after his first visit to prescribe confession; the chief object in sickness being, as the preamble states, to cure the soul; and so it is in Italy, where Gregory XVI. issued in 1845 three decrees; one to forbid railroads, another to prohibit scientific meetings, and a third to order all medical men to cease to attend invalids who had not sent for the priest and communicated after the third visit. In Spain, the first question asked in our time of the sick man was, not whether he truly repented of his sins, but whether he had got the Bull; and if the reply was in the negative, or his old nurse had omitted to send out and buy one, the last sacraments were denied to the dying wretch.

[Sidenote: NECESSITY OF THE BULL.]

One Word on this wonderful Bull, that disarms death of its sting, and which, although few of our readers may ever have heard of it, plays a far more important part in the Peninsula than the quadruped does in the arena. Fastings are nowhere more strictly enjoined than here, where Lent represents the Ramadan of the Moslem. The denials have been mitigated to those faithful who have good appet.i.tes, by the paternal indulgence of their holy father at Rome, who, in consideration that it was necessary to keep the Spanish crusaders in fighting condition in order more effectually to crush the infidel, conceded to Saint Ferdinand the permission that his army might eat meat rations during Lent, provided there were any, for, to the credit of Spanish commissariats in general, few troops fast more regularly and religiously. The auspicious day on which the arrival is proclaimed of this welcome bull that announces dinner, is celebrated by bells merry as at a marriage feast; in the provincial cities mayors and corporations go to cathedral in what is called state, to the wonder of the mob and amus.e.m.e.nt of their betters at the resurrection of quiz coaches, the robes, maces, and obsolete trappings, by which these shadows of a former power and dignity hope to mark individual and collective insignificancy. A copy of this precious Bull cannot of course be had for nothing, and as it must be paid for, and in ready money, it forms one of the certain branches of public income. Although the proceeds ought to be expended on crusading purposes, Ferdinand VII., the Catholic King, and the only sovereign in possession of such a revenue, never contributed one mite towards the Christian Greeks in their recent struggle against the Turkish unbelievers.

[Sidenote: DEATH-BED IN SPAIN]

These bulls, or rather paper-money notes, are prepared with the greatest precautions, and const.i.tuted one of the most profitable articles of Spanish manufacture; a maritime war with England was dreaded, not so much from regard to the fasting transatlantic souls, as from the fear of losing, as Dr. Robertson has shown, the sundry millions of dollars and silver dross remitted from America in exchange for these spiritual treasures. They were printed at Seville, at the Dominican convent, the _Porta cli_; but Soult, who now it appears is turning devotee, burnt down this gate of heaven, with its pa.s.sports, and the presses. The bulls are only good for the year during which they are issued; after twelve months they become stale and unprofitable. There is then, says Blanco White, and truly, for we have often seen it, "a prodigious hurry to obtain new ones by all those who wish well to their souls, and do not overlook the ease and comfort of their stomachs." A fresh one must be annually taken out, like a game-certificate, before Spaniards venture to sport with flesh or fowl, and they have reason to be thankful that it does not cost three pounds odd: for the sum of _dos reales_, or less than sixpence, man, woman, and child may obtain the benefit of clergy and cookery; but evil betides the uncertificated poacher, treadmills for life are a farce, perdition catches his soul. His certificate is demanded by the keeper of conscience when he is caught in the trap of sickness, and if without one, his conviction is certain; he cannot plead ignorance of the law, for a postscript and condition is affixed to all notices of jubilees, indulgences, and other purgatorial benefits, which are fixed on the church doors; and the language is as courteous and peremptory as in our popular a.s.sessed tax-paper--"Se _ha_ de tener la bula:" you _must_ have the bull; if you expect to derive any relief from these relaxations in purgatory, which all Spaniards most particularly do: hence the common phrase used by any one, when committing some little peccadillo in other matters, _tengo mi bula para todo_--I have got my bull, my licence to do any thing. The possession of this doc.u.ment acts on all fleshly comforts like soda on indigestion, indeed it neutralizes everything except heresy. As it is cheap, a Protestant resident, albeit he may not quite believe in its saving effects, will do well to purchase one for the sake of the peace of mind of his weaker brethren, for in this religion of forms and outer observances, more horror is felt by rigid Spaniards, at seeing an Englishman eating meat during a fast, than if he had broken all the ten commandments. The sums levied from the nation for these bulls is very large, although they are diminished before finally paid into the exchequer; some of the honey gathered by so many bees will stick to their wings, and the place of chief commissioner of the Bula is a better thing than that in the Excise or Customs of unbelieving countries.

To return to the dying man: if he has the bull, the host is brought to him with great pomp; the procession is attended by crowds who bear crosses, lighted candles, bells and incense; and as the chamber is thrown open to the public, the ceremony is accompanied by mult.i.tudes of idlers. The spectacle is always imposing, as it must be, considering that the incarnate Deity is believed to be present. It is particularly striking on Easter Sunday, when the host is taken to all the sick who have been unable to communicate in the parish church. Then the priest walks either under a gorgeous canopy, or is mounted in the finest carriage in the town; and while all as he pa.s.ses kneel to the wafer which he bears, he chuckles internally at his own reality of power over his prostrate subjects; the line of streets are gaily decorated as for the triumphal procession of a king: the windows are hung with velvets and tapestries, and the balconies filled with the fair s.e.x arrayed in their best, who shower sweet flowers down on the procession just at the moment of its pa.s.sage, and sweeter smiles during all the rest of the morning on their lovers below, whose more than divided adoration is engrossed by female divinities.

[Sidenote: BURIAL DRESSES.]

To die without confession and communication is to a Spaniard the most poignant of calamities, as he cannot be saved while he is taught that there is in these acts a preserving virtue of their own, independent of any exertions on his part. The host is given when human hopes are at an end, and the heat, noise, confusion, and excitement, seldom fail to kill the already exhausted patient. Then when life's idle business at a gasp is o'er, the body is laid out in a _capilla ardiente_, or an apartment prepared as a chapel, by taking out the furniture; where the family is rich, a room on the ground floor is selected, in which a regular altar is dressed up, and rows of large candles lighted placed around the body; the public is then allowed to enter, even in the case of the sovereign: thus we beheld Ferdinand VII. laid out dead and full dressed with his hat on his head, and his stick in his hand. This public exhibition is a sort of coroner's inquest; formerly, as we have often seen, the body was clad in a monk's dress, with the feet naked and the hands clasped over the breast; the sepulchral shadow then thrown over the dead and placid features by the cowl, seldom failed to raise a solemn undefinable feeling in the hearts of spectators, speaking, as it did, a language to the living which could not be misunderstood.

The woollen dresses of the mendicant orders were by far the most popular, from the idea that, when old, they had become too saturated with the odour of sanct.i.ty for the vile nostrils of the evil one; and as a tattered dress often brought more than half-a-dozen new ones, the sale of these old clothes was a benefit alike to the pious vendor and purchaser; those of St. Francis were preferred, because at his triennial visits to purgatory, he knows his own, and takes them back with him to heaven; hence Milton peopled his shadowy limbo with wolves in sheep's clothing:--

---- "who, to be sure of Paradise, Dying put on the robes of Dominick, Or in Franciscan think to pa.s.s unseen."

[Sidenote: BURIAL PLACES.]

Women in our time were often laid out in nuns' dresses, wearing also the scapulary of the Virgin of Carmel, which she gave to Simon Stock, with the a.s.surance that none who died with it on, should ever suffer eternal torments. The general adoption of these grave fashions induced an accurate foreigner to remark, that no one ever died in Spain except nuns and monks. In this hot country, burial goes hand in hand with death, and it is absolutely necessary from the rapidity with which putrefaction comes on. The last offices are performed in somewhat an indecent manner: formerly the interment took place in churches, or in the yards near them, a custom which from hygeian reasons is now prohibited. Public cemeteries, which give at least 4 per cent. interest, have been erected outside the towns, in which long lines of catacombs gape greedily for those occupants who can pay for them, while a wide ditch is opened every day for those who cannot. In this _campo santo_, or holy field, death levels all ranks, which seems hard on those great families who have built and endowed chapels to secure a burial among their ancestors. They however raised no objections to the change of law, nor have ever much troubled themselves about the dilapidated sepulchres and crumbling effigies of their "grandsires cut in alabaster;" the real opposition arose from the priests, who lost their fees, and thereupon a.s.sured their flocks, that a future resurrection was anything but certain to bodies committed into such new-fangled depositories.

Be that as it may, the corpse in its slight coffin is carried out, followed by the male relations, and is then put into its niche without further form or prayer. Ladies who die soon after marriage, and before the bridal hours have danced their measure, are sometimes buried in their wedding dresses, and covered with flowers, the dying injunctions of Shakspere's Queen Catherine:--

"When I am dead, good wench, Let me be used with honour; strew me o'er With maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave."

At such funerals the coffin is opened in the catacomb, to gratify the indecent curiosity of the crowd; the dress is next day discussed all over the town, and the _entierro_ or funeral is p.r.o.nounced to be _muy lucido_ or very brilliant; but life in Spain is a jest, and these things show it. The place a.s.signed for children who die under seven years of age lies apart from that of the adults; their early death is held in Spain to be rather a matter of congratulation than of grief, since those whom the G.o.ds love die young; their epitaphs tell a mixed tale of joy and sorrow. _El parvulo fue arrebatado a la gloria_, the little one was s.n.a.t.c.hed up into Paradise:--

"There is beyond the sky a heaven of joy and love, And holy children, when they die, go to that world above."

[Sidenote: BURIAL OF THE POOR.]

Yet nature will not be put aside, and many a mother have we seen, loitering alone near the graves, adorning them with roses and plucking up weeds which have no business to grow there; the little corpses are carried to the tomb by little children of the same age, clad in white, and are strewed with flowers short-lived as themselves, sweets to the sweet. The parents return home yearning after the lost child--its cradle is empty, its piteous moan is heard no more, its playthings remain where it left them, and recall the cruel gap which grief cannot fill up, although it

"Stuffs out its vacant garments with its form."

The bodies of the lower orders, dressed in their ordinary attire, are borne to their long home by four men, as is described by Martial; "no useless coffins enclose their b.r.e.a.s.t.s," they are carried forth as was the widow's son at Nain. And often have we seen the frightful death-tray standing upright at the doors of the humble dead, with a human outline marked on the wood by the death-damp of a hundred previous burdens. Such bodies are cast into the trench like those of dogs, and often naked, as the survivors or s.e.xtons strip them even of their rags. Those poorer still, who cannot afford to pay the trifling fee, sometimes during the night, suspend the bodies of their children in baskets, near the cemetery porch. We once beheld a cloaked Spaniard pacing mournfully in the burial-ground of Seville, who, when the public trench was opened, drew from beneath the folds the body of his dead child, cast it in and disappeared. Thus half the world lives without knowing how the other half dies.

[Sidenote: FUNERAL SERVICE.]

In the upper ranks the etiquette of the funeral commences after the reality is over. The first necessary step is within three days to pay a visit of condolence to the family; this is called _para dar el pesame_.

The relations are all a.s.sembled in the best room, and seated on chairs placed at the head, the women at one end and the men at another. When a condoling lady and gentleman enter, she proceeds to shake hands with all the other ladies one after another, and then seats herself in the next vacant chair; the gentleman bows to each of the men as he pa.s.ses, who rise and return it, a grave dumb-show of profound affliction being kept up by all. On reaching the chief mourners, they are addressed by each condoler with this phrase, "_Acompano a usted en su sentimiento_;" "I share in the affliction of your grace;" the company meanwhile remain silent as an a.s.semblage of undertakers. After sitting among them the proper time, each retires with much the same form.

In a few days afterwards a printed letter is sent round in the name of all the surviving relations to announce the death to the friends of the family, and to beg the favour of attendance at the funeral service: these invitations are all headed with a cross (+), which is called _El Cristus_. Before the invasion of the enemy, who not only destroyed the walls of convents, but sapped religious belief also, very many books were printed, and private letters written, with this sign prefixed. In our time sundry medical men at Seville always headed with it their prescriptions, the Cardinal Archbishop having granted a certain number of years' release from purgatory to all who sanctified with this mark their recipes even of senna and rhubarb. Under this cross, in the invitation, are placed the letters R. I. P. A., which signify "Requiescat in pace. Amen." At the appointed hour the mourners meet in the _casa mortuaria_, or the house of death, and proceed together to church. All are dressed in full black, and before the progress of paletots and civilization, wore no cloaks: this, as it rendered each man of them more uncomfortable than St. Bartholomew was without his skin, was considered an offering of genuine grief to the manes of the deceased. Uncloaking in Spain is, be it remembered, a mark of respect, and is equivalent to our taking off the hat. When the company arrives at church, they are received by the ministers, and the ceremony is very solemnly performed before a catafalque covered with a pall, which is placed before the altar, and is brilliantly lighted up with wax candles.

As soon as the service is concluded, all advance and bow to the chief mourners, who are seated apart, and thus the tragedy concludes. Parents do not put on mourning for their children, which is a remnant of the patriarchal and Roman superiority of the head of the family, for whom, however, when dead, all the other members pay the most observant respect. The forms and number of days of mourning are most nicely laid down, and are most rigidly observed, even by distant relations, who refrain from all kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts:--