Gatherings From Spain Part 17

"None bear about the mockery of woe To public dances or to private show."

[Sidenote: ALL SOULS' DAY.]

We well remember the death of a kind and venerable Marquesa at Seville just before the carnival, whose chief grief at dying, was the thought of the number of young ladies who would thus be deprived of their b.a.l.l.s and masquerades; many, anxious and obliging, were the inquiries sent after her health, and more even were the daily prayers offered up to the Virgin, for the prolongation of her precious existence, could it be only for a few weeks.

November drear, brings in other solemnities connected with the dead, and in harmony with the fall of the sear and yellow leaves, to which Homer compares the races of mortal men. The night before the first of November--our All Hallow-e'en--is kept in Spain as a vigil or wake; it is the fated hour of love divinations and mysteries; then anxious maidens used to sit at their balconies to see the image of their destined husbands pa.s.s or not pa.s.s by. November the first is dedicated to the sainted dead, and November the second to all souls: it is termed in Spanish _el dia de los difuntos_, the day of the dead, and is most scrupulously observed by all who have lost during the past year some friend, some relation--how few have not! The dawn is ushered in by mournful bells, which recall the memory of those who cannot come back at the summons; the cemeteries are then visited; at Seville, long processions of sable-clad females, bearing chased lamps on staves, walk slowly round and round, chaunting melancholy dirges, returning when it gets dusk in a long line of glittering lights. The graves during the day are visited by those who take a sad interest in their occupants, and lamps and flower garlands are suspended as memorials of affection, and holy water is sprinkled, every drop of which puts out some of the fires of purgatory. These picturesque proceedings at once resemble the _Eed es Segheer_ of modern Cairo, the _feralia_ of the Romans, the ?ees?a of the Greeks: here are the flower offerings of Electra, the _funes a.s.sensi_, the funeral torches of pagan mourners, which have vainly been prohibited to Christian Spaniards by their early Council of Illiberis.

In Navarre, and in the north-west of Spain, bread and wheat offerings called _robos_ are made, which are the doles or gifts offered for the souls' rest of the deceased by the pious of ancient Rome.

[Sidenote: PURGATORY.]

As on this day the cemetery becomes the public attraction, it too often looks rather a joyous fashionable promenade, than a sad and religious performance. The levity of mere strangers and the mob, contrasts strangely with the sorrow of real mourners. But life in this world presses on death, and the gay treads on the heels of pathos; the spot is crowded with mendicants, who appeal to the order of the day, and importune every tender recollection, by begging for the sake of the lamented dead. Outside the dreary walls all is vitality and mirth; a noisy sale goes on of cakes, nuts, and sweetmeats, a crash of horses and carriages, a din and flow of bad language from those who look after them, which must vex the repose of the _benditas animas_, or the blessed souls in purgatory, for whom otherwise all cla.s.ses of Spaniards manifest the fondest affection and interest.

[Sidenote: PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND.]

Such is the manner in which the body of a most orthodox Catholic Castilian is committed to the earth; his soul, if it goes to purgatory, is considered and called blessed by antic.i.p.ation, as the admittance into Paradise is certain, at the expiration of the term of penal transportation, that is, "when the foul crimes done in the days of nature are burnt and purged away," as the ghost in Hamlet says, who had not forgotten his Virgil. If the scholar objects to a Spanish clergyman, that the whole thing is Pagan, he will be told that he may go farther and fare worse. In the case of a true Roman Catholic, this term of hard labour may be much shortened, since that can be done by ma.s.ses, any number of which will be said, if first paid for. The vicar of St. Peter holds the keys, which always unlock the gate to those who offer the golden gift by which Charon was bribed by aeneas; thus, to a judicious rich man, nothing, supposing that he believes the Pope _versus_ the Bible, is so easy as to get at once into Heaven; nor are the poor quite neglected, as any one may learn who will read the extraordinary number of days' redemption which may be obtained at every altar in Spain by the performance of the most trumpery routine. The only wonder is how any one of the faithful should ever fail to secure his delivery from this spiritual Botany Bay without going there at all, or, at least, only for the form's sake. It was calculated by an accurate and laborious German, that an active man, by spending three shillings in coach-hire, might obtain in an hour, by visiting different privileged altars during the Holy week, 29,639 years, nine months, thirteen days, three minutes and a half diminution of purgatorial punishment. This merciful reprieve was offered by Spanish priests in South America, on a grander style, on one commensurate with that colossal continent; for a single ma.s.s at the San Francisco in Mexico, the Pope and prelates granted 32,310 years, ten days, and six hours indulgence. As a means of raising money, says our Mexican authority, "I would not give this simple inst.i.tution of ma.s.ses for the benefit of souls, for the power of taxation possessed by any government; since no tax-gatherer is required; the payments are enforced by the best feelings, for who would not pay to get a parent's or friend's soul from the fire?" Purgatory has thus been a Golconda mine of gold to his Holiness, as even the poorest have a chance, since charitable persons can deliver blank souls by taking out a _habeas animam_ writ, that is, by paying the priest for a ma.s.s. The especial days are marked in the almanac, and known to every waiter at the inn; moreover, notice is put on the church door, _Hoy se saca anima_, "this day you can get out a soul." They are generally left in their warm quarters in winter, and taken out in the spring.

Alas for poor Protestants, who, by non-payment of St. Peter's pence, have added an additional act of heresy, and the worst of all, the one which Rome never pardons. These defaulters can only hope to be saved by faith, and its fruits, good works; they must repent, must quit their long-cherished sins, and lead a new life; for them there is no rope of St. Francis to pull them out, if once in the pit; no rosary of St.

Domenick to remove them, quick, presto, begone, from torment to happiness. Outside the pale of the Vatican, their souls have no chance, and inside the frontiers of Spain their bodies have scarcely a better prospect, should they die in that orthodox land. There the greatest liberal barely tolerates any burial at all of their black-blooded heretical carca.s.ses, as no corn will grow near them. Until within a very few years at seaport towns, their bodies used to be put in a hole in the sands, and beyond low water mark; nay, even this concession to the infidel offended the semi-Moro fishermen, who true believers and persecutors feared that their soles might be poisoned: not that either sailor or priest ever exhibited any fear of taking British current coin, all cash that comes into their nets being most Catholic, so says the proverb, _El dinero es muy Catolico_.

[Sidenote: LUTHERAN BURIAL.]

[Sidenote: CEMETERY AT MALAGA.]

Matters connected with the grave have been placed, as regards Protestants, on a much more pleasant footing within these last few years; and it may be a consolation to invalids, who are sent to Spain for change of climate, and who are particular, to know, in case of accidents, that Protestant burial-grounds are now permitted at Cadiz, Malaga, and in a few other places. The history of the permission is curious, and has never, to the best of our belief, been told. In the days of Philip II. Lutherans were counted in many degrees worse than dogs; when caught alive, they were burnt by the holy tribunal; and when dead, were cast out on the dunghill. Even when our poltroon James I.

sent, in 1622, his ill-judged olive-bearing mission, by which Spain was saved from utter humiliation, Mr. Hole, the secretary of the amba.s.sador, Lord Digby, having died at Santander, the body was not allowed to be buried at all; it was put into a sh.e.l.l, and sunk in the sea; but no sooner was his lordship gone, than "the fishermen," we quote from Somers' tracts, "fearing that they should catch no fish as long as the coffin of a heretic lay in their waters," fished it up, "and the corpse of our countryman and brother was thrown above ground, to be devoured by the fowls of the air." In the treaty of 1630, the 31st Article provided for the disposal of the goods of those Englishmen who might die in Spain, but not for their bodies. "These," says a commentator of Rymer, "must be left stinking above ground, to the end that the dogs may be sure to find them." When Mr. Washington, page to Charles I., died at Madrid, at the time his master was there, Howell, who was present, relates that it was only as an especial favour to the suitor of the Spanish Infanta that the body was allowed to be interred in the garden of the emba.s.sy, under a fig-tree. A few years afterwards, 1650, Ascham, the envoy of Cromwell, was a.s.sa.s.sinated, and his corpse put, without any rites, into a hole; but the Protector was not a man to be trifled with, and knew well how to deal with a Spanish government, always a craven and bully, from whom nothing ever is to be obtained by concession and gentleness, which is considered as weakness, while everything is to be extorted from its _fears_. He that very year _commanded_ a treaty to be prepared for the proper burial of his subjects, to which the bl.u.s.tering Spaniard immediately a.s.sented. This provision was stipulated into the treaty of Charles II. in 1664, and was conceded and ratified again in 1667 to Sir Richard Fanshawe.

No step, however, appears to have been taken before 1796, when Lord Bute purchased a spot of ground for the burial of Englishmen outside the Alcala-gate, at Madrid. During the war, when all Spain was a churchyard to our countrymen, this bit of land was taken possession of by a worthy Madrilenian, not for his place of sepulture, but for good and profitable cultivation. In 1831 Mr. Addington caused some researches to be made, and the original conveyance was found in the _Contaduria de Hypothecas_, the registry of deeds and mortgages which backward Spain possesses, and which advanced England does not. The intruder was ejected after some struggling on his part. Before Lord Bute's time the English had been buried at night and without ceremonies, in the garden of the convent _de los Recoletos_; and, as Lord Bute's new bit of ground was extensive and valuable, the pious monks wished to give up the English corner in their garden, in exchange for it; but the transfer was prevented by the recent law which forbade all burial in cities. The field purchased by Lord Bute is now unenclosed and uncultivated; fortunately it has not been much wanted, only fifteen Protestants having died at Madrid during the last thirty years. In November, 1831, Ferdinand VII. finally settled this grave question by a decree, in which he granted permission for the erection of a Protestant burial-ground in all towns where a British consul or agent should reside, subject to most _degrading_ conditions.

The first cemetery set apart in Spain, in virtue of this gracious decree from a man replaced on his throne by the death of 30,000 Englishmen, was the work of Mr. Mark, our consul at Malaga; he enclosed a spot of ground to the east of that city, and placed a tablet over the entrance, recording the royal permission, and above that a cross. Thus he appealed to the dominant feelings of Spaniards, to their loyalty and religion.

The Malagenians were amazed when they beheld this emblem of Christianity raised over the last home of Lutheran dogs, and exclaimed, "So even these Jews make use of the cross!" The term Jew, it must be remembered, is the acme of Spanish loathing and vituperation. The first body interred in it was that of Mr. Boyd, who was shot by the b.l.o.o.d.y Moreno, with the poor dupe Torrijos and the rest of his rebel companions.

[Sidenote: THE SPANISH FIGARO.]

CHAPTER XIX.

The Spanish Figaro--Mustachios--Whiskers--Beards--Bleeding--Heraldic Blood--Blue, Red, and Black Blood--Figaro's Shop--The Baratero--Shaving and Toothdrawing.

Few who love Don Quixote, will deem any notice on the Peninsular surgeon complete in which the barber is not mentioned, even be it in a postscript. Although the names of both these learned professors have long been nearly synonymous in Spain, the barber is much to be preferred, inasmuch as his cuts are less dangerous, and his conversation is more agreeable. He with the curate formed the quiet society of the Knight of La Mancha, as the apothecary and vicar used to make that of most of our country squires of England. Let, therefore, every Adonis of France, now bearded as a pard although young, nay, let each and all of our fair readers, albeit equally exempt from the pains and penalties of daily shaving, make instantly, on reaching sunny Seville, a pilgrimage to the shrine of San Figaro. His shop--apocryphal it is to be feared as other legendary localities--lies near the cathedral, and is a no less established lion than the house of Dulcinea is at Toboso, or the prison tower of Gil Blas is at Segovia. Such is the magic power of genius.

Cervantes and Le Sage have given form, fixture, and local habitation to the airy nothings of their fancy's creations, while Mozart and Rossini, by filling the world with melody, have bidden the banks of the Guadalquivir re-echo to their sweet inventions.

[Sidenote: SPANISH MUSTACHIOS.]

To those even who have no music in their souls, the movement from doctors to barbers is harmonious in a land where beards were long honoured as the type of valour and chivalry, and where shaving took the precedence of surgery; and even to this day, _la tienda de barbero_, the shop of the man of the razor, is better supplied than many a Spanish hospital both with patients and cutting instruments. One word first on the black whiskers of tawny Spain. These _patillas_, as they are now termed, must be distinguished from the ancient mustachio, the _mostacho_, a very cla.s.sical but almost obsolete word, which the scholars of Salamanca have derived from ?st??, the upper lip.

Their present and usual name is _Bigote_, which is also of foreign etymology, being the Spanish corruption of the German oath _bey gott_, and formed under the following circ.u.mstances: for nicknames, which stick like burrs, often survive the history of their origin. The free-riding followers of Charles V., who wore these tremendous appendages of manhood, swore like troopers, and gave themselves infinite airs, to the more infinite disgust of their Spanish comrades, who have a tolerable good opinion of themselves, and a first-rate hatred of all their foreign allies. These strange mustachios caught their eyes, as the stranger sounds which proceeded from beneath them did their ears. Having a quick sense of the ridiculous, and a most Oriental and schoolboy knack at a nickname, they thereupon gave the sound to the substance, and called the redoubtable garnish of hair, _bigotes_. This process in the formation of phrases is familiar to philologists, who know that an essential part often is taken for the whole. For example, a hat, in common Spanish parlance, is equivalent to a grandee, as with us the woolsack is to a Lord Chancellor. It is natural that unscholastic soldiers, when dealing with languages which they do not understand, should fix on their enemies, as a term of reproach, those words which, from hearing used the most often, they imagine must const.i.tute the foundation of the hostile grammar. Thus our troops called the Spaniards _los Carajos_, from their terrible oaths and terrible runnings away. So the clever French designated as _les G.o.dams_, those "stupid" fellows in red jackets who never could be made to know when they were beaten, but continued to make use of that significant phrase in reference to their victors, until they politely showed them the shortest way home over the Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: THE BEARD.]

The real Spanish mustachio, as worn by the real Don Whiskerandoses, men with shorter cloaks and purses than beards and rapiers, have long been cut off, like the pig-tails of our monarchs and cabinet ministers. Yet their merits are embalmed in metaphors more enduring than that masterpiece in bronze with which Mr. Wyatt, full of Phidias, has adorned King George's back and Charing Cross. Thus _hombre de mucho bigote_, a man of much moustache, means, in Spanish, a personage of considerable pretension, a fine, liberal fellow, and anything, in short, but a bigot in wine, women, or theology. The Spanish original realities, like the pig-tails of Great Britain, have also been immortalised by fine art, and inimitably painted by Velazquez. Under his life-conferring brush they required no twisting with hot irons. Curling from very ire and martial instinct, they were called _bigotes a la Fernandina_, and their rapid growth was attributed to the eternal cannon smoke of the enemy, into which nothing could prevent their valorous wearers from poking their faces. This luxuriance has diminished in these degenerate times, unless Napier's 'History of the Peninsular War' be, as the Spaniards say, written in a spirit of envy and jealousy against their heroic armies, which alone trampled on the invincible eagles of Austerlitz.

As among the Egyptian G.o.ds and priests, rank was indicated by the cut of the beard, so in Spain the military civil and clerical shapes were carefully defined. The Charley, or Imperial, as we term the little tuft in the middle of the under lip, a word by the way which is derivable either from our Charles or from his namesake emperor, was called in Spain _El perrillo_, "the little dog," the terminating tail being omitted, which however becoming in the animal and bronzes, shocked Castilian euphuism.

[Sidenote: THE BIGOTE.]

In the mediaeval periods of Spain's greatness the beard and not the whisker was the real thing; and as among the Orientals and ancients, it was at once the mark of wisdom and of soldiership; to cut it off was an insult and injury scarcely less than decapitation; nay, this nicety of honour survived the grave. The seated corpse of the Cid, so tells his history, knocked down a Jew who ventured to take the dead lion by his beard, which, as all natural philosophers know, has an independent vitality, and grows whether its master be alive or dead, be willing or unwilling. When the insolent Gauls pulled these flowing ornaments of the aged Roman senators, they, who with unmoved dignity had seen Marshal Brennus steal their plate and pictures, could not brook that last and greatest outrage. In process of time and fashion the beards of Spain fell off, and being only worn by mendicant monks and he-goats, were considered ungentlemanlike, and were subst.i.tuted among cavaliers by the Italian mostachio; the seat of Spanish honour was then placed under the nose, that sensitive sentinel. The renowned Duke of Alva being of course in want of money, once offered one of his bigotes as a pledge for a loan, and one only was considered to be a sufficient security by the Rothschilds of the day, who remembered the hair-breadth escape of their ancestor too well to laugh at anything connected with a hero's beard; _nous avons change tout cela_. The united Hebrews of Paris and London would not now advance a stiver for every particular hair on the bodies of Narvaez and Espartero, not even if the moustache reglementaire of Montpensier, and a bushel of Bourbon beards, warranted legitimate, were added.

The use of the _bigote_ in Spain is legally confined to the military, most of whose generals--their name is legion--are tenderly chary of their Charlies, dreading razors no less than swords; when the Infante Don Carlos escaped from England, the only real difficulty was in getting him to cut off his moustache; he would almost sooner have lost his head, like his royal English _tocayo_ or omonyme. Elizabeth's gallant Drake, when he burnt Philip's fleet at Cadiz, simply called his Nelsonic touch "singeing the King of Spain's whiskers." Zurbano the other day thought it punishment enough for any Basque traitors to cut off their _bigotes_, and turn them loose, like rats without tails, _pour encourager les autres_. It is indeed a privation. Thus Majaval, the pirate murderer, who by the glorious uncertainty of English law was not hanged at Exeter, offered his prison beard, when he reached Barcelona, to the delivering Virgin. Many Spanish civilians and shopkeepers, in imitation of the transpyrenean _Calicots_, men who wear moustachios on their lips in peace, and spectacles on their noses in war, so constantly let them grow, that Ferdinand VII. fulminated a royal decree, which was to cut them off from the face of the Peninsula, as the Porte is docking his true believers. Such is the progress of young and beardless civilization. The attempt to shorten the cloaks of Madrid nearly cost Charles III. his crown, and this cropping mandate of his beloved grandson was obeyed as Spanish decrees generally are, for a month all but twenty-nine days. These decrees, like solemn treaties, charters, stock-certificates, and so forth, being mostly used to light cigars; now-a-days that the Moro-Spaniard is aping the true Parisian polish, the national countenance is somewhat put out of face, to the serious sorrow and disparagement of poor Figaro.

[Sidenote: SPANISH BLEEDING.]

As for his house and home none can fail finding it out; no cicerone is wanted, for the outside is distinguished from afar by the emblems of his time-honoured profession: first and foremost hangs a bright glittering metal Mambrino-helmet basin, with a neat semicircular opening cut out of the rim, into which the throat of the patient is let during the operation of lathering, which is always done with the hand and most copiously; near it are suspended huge grinders, which in an English museum would pa.s.s for the teeth of elephants, and for those of Saint Christopher in Spanish churches, where comparative anatomy is scouted as heretical in the matter of relics; strange to say, and no Spanish theologian could ever satisfy us why, this saint is not the "especial advocate" against the toothache; here Santa Apollonia is the soothing patroness. Near these molars are displayed awful phlebotomical symbols, and rude representations of bloodlettings; for in Spain, in church and out, painting does the work of printing to the many who can see, but cannot read. The barber's pole, with its painted bandage riband, the support by which the arm was kept extended, is wanting to the threshold of the Figaros of Spain, very much because bleeding is generally performed in the foot, in order that the equilibrium of the whole circulation may be maintained. The painting usually presents a female foot, which being an object, and not unreasonably, of great devotion in Spain, is selected by the artist; tradition also influences the choice, for the dark s.e.x were wont formerly to be bled regularly as calves are still, to obtain whiteness of flesh and fairness of complexion: as it was usual on each occasion that the lover should restore the exhausted patient by a present, the purses of gallants kept pace with the venous depletion of their mistresses. The _Sangrados_ of Spain, professional as well as unprofessional, have long been addicted to the shedding of innocent blood; indeed, no people in the world are more curious about the pedigree purity of their own blood, nor less particular about pouring it out like water, whether from their own veins or those of others. One word on this vital fluid with which unhappy Spain is too often watered during her intestine disorders.

[Sidenote: HERALDIC BLOOD.]

If the Iberian anatomists did not discover its circulation, the heralds have "tricked" out its blazoning, as we do our admirals, with all the nicety of armorial coloring. _Blue blood, Sangre azul_, is the ichor of demiG.o.ds which flows in the arteries of the grandees and highest n.o.bility, each of whose pride is to be

"A true Hidalgo, free from every stain Of Moor or Jewish blood,"

[Sidenote: FIGARO'S SHOP.]

a boast which like some others of theirs wants confirmation, as it is in the power of one woman to taint the blood of Charlemagne; and nature, which cannot be written down by Debretts, has stamped on their countenances the marks of hybrid origin, and particularly from these very and most abhorred stocks; it is from this tint of celestial azure that the term _sangre su_ is given in Spain to the elect and best set of earth, the _haute volee_, who soar above vulgar humanity. _Red_ blood flows in the veins of poor gentlemen and younger brothers, and is just tolerated by all, except judicious mothers, whose daughters are marriageable. _Blood_, simple blood, is the puddle which paints the cheek of the plebeian and roturier; it has, or ought to possess, a perfect incompatibility with the better coloured fluid, and an oil and vinegar property of non-amalgamation. There is more difference, as Salario says, between such bloods, than there is between red wine and Rhenish. These and other dreams are, it is to be feared, the fond metaphors of heralds. The rosy stream in mockery of _rouge_ croix and _blue_ dragons flows inversely and perversely: in the arteries of the l.u.s.ty muleteer it is the lava blood of health and vigour; in the monkey marquis and baboon baron it stagnates in the dull lethargy of a blue collapse. Their n.o.ble ichor is virtually more impoverished than their nominal rent-roll, since the operation of transmission of wholesome blood from young veins into a worn-out frame, which is so much practised elsewhere, is too nice for the _Sangre su_ and _Sangrados_ of Spain; the thin fluid is never enriched with the calipash heiress of an alderman, nor is the decayed genealogical stock renewed by the golden graft of a banker's only daughter. The insignificant grandees of Spain quietly permitted Christina to barter away their country's liberties; but when her children by the base-born Munoz came betwixt them and their n.o.bility, then alone did they remonstrate. Indifferent to the degradation of the throne, they were tremblingly alive to the punctilios of their own order. Those Peninsular ladies who are blues, by blood not socks, are equally fastidious in the serious matter of its admixture even by Hymen: one of them, it is said, having chanced in a moment of weakness to mingle her azure with something brownish, alleged in excuse that she had done so for her character's sake. "_Que disparate, mi Senora._" "What nonsense, my lady!" was her fair confidante's reply; "ten b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would have less discoloured your blood, than one legitimate child the issue of such a misalliance."

To stick, however, to our colours; _black blood_ is the vile Stygean pitch which is found in the carca.s.ses of Jews, Gentiles, Moors, Lutherans, and other combustible heretics, with whose bodies the holy tribunal made bonfires for the good of their souls. Nay, in the case of the Hebrew this black blood is also thought to stink, whence Jews were called by learned Latinists _putos_, quia putant; and certainly at Gibraltar an unsavoury odour seems to be gentilitious in the children of Israel, not however to unorthodox and unheraldic nostrils a jot more so, than in the believing Spanish monk. Recently the colour _black_ has been a.s.signed to the blood of political opponents, and a copious "_shedding of vile black blood_" has been the regular panacea of every military Sangrado. How extremes meet! Thus, this aristocracy of colour, in despotical old Spain, which lies in the veins, is placed on the skin in new republican America. Where is the free and easy Yankee would recognise a brother, in a black?

[Sidenote: THE BARATERO.]

To return to Figaro. There is no mistaking his shop; for independently of the external manifestations of the fine arts practised within, his threshold is the lounge of all idlers, as well as of those who are anxious to relieve their chins of the thick stubble of a three days'

growth. The house of the barber has, since the days of Solomon and Horace, been the mart of news and gossip,--of epigram and satire, as Pasquino the tailor's was at Rome. It is the club of the lower orders, who here take up a position, and listen, cloaked as Romans, to some reader of the official Gazette, which, with a cigar, indicates modern civilization, and soothes him with empty vapour. Here, again, is the mint of scandal, and all who have lived intimately with Spaniards, know how invariably every one stabs his neighbour behind his back with words, the lower orders occasionally using knives sharper even than their tongues. Here, again, resort gamblers, who, seated on the ground with cards more begrimed than the earth, pursue their fierce game as eager as if existence was at stake; for there is generally some well-known c.o.c.k of the walk, a bully, or _guapo_, who will come up and lay his hand on the cards, and say, "No one shall play with any cards but with mine"--_aqui no se juega sino con mis barajas_. If the parties are cowed, they give him a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him--_Aqui no se cobra el barato sino con un punal de Albacete_--"You get no change here except out of an Albacete knife." If the defiance be accepted, _Vamos alla_ is the answer--"Let's go to it." There's an end then of the cards, all flock to the more interesting _ecarte_; instances have occurred, where Greek meets Greek, of their tying the two advanced feet together, and yet remaining fencing with knife and cloak for a quarter of an hour before the blow be dealt. The knife is held firmly, the thumb is pressed straight on the blade, and calculated either for the cut or thrust.

The term _Barato_ strictly means the present which is given to waiters who bring a new pack of cards. The origin is Arabic, _Baara_, "a _voluntary_ gift;" in the corruption of the _Baratero_, it has become an involuntary one. Our legal term _Barratry_ is derived from the mediaeval _Barrateria_, which signified cheating or foul play. Cervantes well knew that _Baratar_ in old Spanish meant to exchange unfairly, to thimble-rig, to sell anything under its real value, and therefore gave the name of _Barrateria_ to Sancho's sham government. The _Baratero_ is quite a thing of Spain, where personal prowess is cherished, and there is one in every regiment, ship, prison, and even among galley-slaves.

[Sidenote: FIGARO'S SHOP.]

The interior of the barber's shop is equally a _cosa de Espana_. Her neighbour may boast to lead Europe in hair-dressing and clipping poodles, but Figaro snaps his fingers at her civilization, and no cat's ears and tail can be closer shaved than his one's are. The walls of his operating room are neatly lathered with white-wash; on a peg hangs his brown cloak and conical hat; his shelves are decorated with clay-painted figures of picturesque rascals, arrayed in all their Andalucian toggery--bandits, bull-fighters, and smugglers, who, especially the latter, are more universally popular than all or any long-tail-coated chancellors of exchequers. The walls are enlivened with rude prints of fandango dancings, miracles, and bull-fights, in which the Spanish vulgar delight, as ours do in racing and ring notabilities. Nor is a portrait of his _querida_, his black-eyed sweetheart, often wanting.

Near these, for religion mixes itself with everything of Spain, are images of the Virgin, patron saints, with stoups for holy water, and little cups in which lighted wicks burn floating on green oil; and formerly no barber prepared for an operation, whether on veins, teeth, or beards, without first making the sign of a cross. Thus hallowed, his implements of art are duly arranged in order; his gla.s.s, soap, towels, and leather strap, and guitar, which indeed, with the razor, const.i.tutes the genus barber. "These worthies," said Don Quixote, "are all either _guitarristas o copleros_; they are either makers of couplets, or accompany other songsters with catgut." Hence Quevedo, in his 'Pigsties of Satan,' punishes unrighteous Figaros, by hanging up near them a guitar, which tantalizes their touch, and moves away when they wish to take it down.

[Sidenote: SPANISH SHAVING.]

Few Spaniards ever shave themselves; it is too mechanical, so they prefer, like the Orientals, a "razor that is hired," and as that must be paid for, scarcely any go to the expensive luxury of an every-day shave.

Indeed, Don Quixote advised Sancho, when nominated a governor, to shave at least every other day if he wished to look like a gentleman. The peculiar sallowness of a Spaniard's face is heightened by the contrast of a sable bristle. Figaro himself is dressed much after the fashion in which he appears on transpyrenean stages; he, on true Galenic principles, takes care not to alarm his patients by a lugubrious costume. There is nothing black, or appertaining to the grave about him; he is all tags, ta.s.sels, colour, and embroidery, quips and quirks; he is never still; always in a bustle, he is lying and lathering, cutting chins and capers, here, there, and everywhere. _Figaro la, Figaro qua._ If he has a moment free from taking off beards and making paper cigars, he whips down his guitar and sings the last seguidilla; thus he drives away dull care, who hates the sound of merry music, and no wonder; the operator performs his professional duties much more skilfully than the rival surgeon, nor does he bungle at any little extraneous _amateur_ commissions; and there are more real performances enacted by the barbers in Seville itself, than in a dozen European opera houses.

These Figaros, says their proverb, are either mad or garrulous, _Barberos, o locos, o parleros_. Hence, when the Andalucian autocrat, Adrian, when asked how he liked to be shaved, replied "Silently."

Humbler mortals must submit to let Figaro have his wicked way in talk; for when a man is fixed in his operating chair, with his jaws lathered, and his nose between a finger and a thumb, there is not much conversational fair play or reciprocity. The Spanish barber is said to learn to shave on the orphan's head, and nothing, according to one described by Martial, escaped except a single wary he-goat. The experiments tried on the veins and teeth of aching humanity, are sometimes ludicrous--at others serious, as we know to our cost, having been silly enough to leave behind in Spain two of our wise teeth as relics, tokens, and trophies of Figaro's unrelenting prowess. We cannot but remember such things were, and were dearer, than the pearls in Cleopatra's ears, which she melted in her gazpachos. "A mouth without molars," said Don Quixote to Sancho, "is worse than a mill without grinding-stones;" and the Don was right.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO OBSERVE IN SPAIN.]