Heroic Spain Part 14

The following day was Sunday, with a sacred concert of stringed instruments in the Cathedral, a good Gothic church, noticeably rich in sepulchers. In one chapel especially, that dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury by an English bishop who accompanied Queen Eleanor to Spain, when you stand among the tombs of those warriors, bishops, and knights of Santiago, you feel the thrill of the past. Cardinal Mendoza, "Tertius Rex," was at one time bishop of this Cathedral, having for vicar-general the priest Ximenez: Don Quixote's friend, the delightful _cura_, was "_hombre docto graduado en Siguenza_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL OF SINGuENZA]

The chill, little city was far from stimulating; at another time it may appear differently, impressions are so dependent on weather and health.

The peasants wrapped in their blankets had a beggarly aspect after the dandy _majo_ of Andalusia. I daresay were Seville three thousand feet above the sea, the bolero would be worn less jauntily. The Cathedral visited, there was little to detain us, so we bade a ready farewell to glacial sheets and ice-crusted water pitchers to continue the route to Aragon, west past Medinaceli, where a Roman arch stood boldly on the edge of its hill.

The semi-royal family of Cerda, Dukes of Medinaceli, has possessions all over the country: forests near Avila, the _Casa de Pilatos_ in Seville, lands near Cordova, a castle at Zafra, and vast tracts in Catalonia. It descends from Alfonso _el Sabio_, whose eldest son, called _la Cerda_, from a tuft of hair on his face, was married to a daughter of St. Louis of France, and left two infant sons, who were dispossessed by their uncle, Sancho _el Bravo_. For generations they continued to put forward their claims on every fresh coronation.

After entering Aragon the climate grew warmer. We were descending gradually, and soon fruit trees in blossom, and vineyards, appeared among the broken, irregular hills. Calatayud, birthplace of the Roman poet Martial, was extremely picturesque, with castle and steeples. The long hours of the journey were whiled away watching the Sunday crowds in the stations, many of the men and women in the astonishingly original costume of the province. By the time we had reached Saragossa we had descended to about five hundred feet alt.i.tude, and it was pleasantly warm.

The capital of Aragon is commonplace in appearance, flat, modern, and prosperous. The noisy electric cars and the bustling streets made it an abrupt change from the small Castilian cities just left. As always, our first walk was to the Cathedral--Saragossa has two, and the chapter lives for six months in each alternately. The _Seo_ is an ancient and beautiful structure, the _Pilar_ is a tawdry, cold-hearted object, such as the eighteenth century knew how to produce, a mixture of the styles of Herrera and Churriguera. It is a pity that one of the most revered shrines in Spain should be housed in such vulgarity. Outside, seen from the bridge over the Ebro, the many domes of different sizes, covered with glazed tiles of green, yellow, and white, are not bad, but within is a soul-distressing ma.s.s of plaster walls, and ceilings of Sa.s.soferrato-blue. The High Altar, however, has a treasure, the celebrated alabaster _retablo_ of Damian Forment, one of the best of national sculptors, who worked between the Gothic and Renaissance periods, and who was helped to ease of expression by Berruguete, lately returned from Italy.

The holy of holies of this new Cathedral is, of course, the chapel of the _Pilar_, and about it are always gathered devotional crowds. To a Spaniard it is naturally a sacred spot, a.s.sociated as it is with his earliest memories; there is not a hut in all Aragon that has not an image of the _Pilar_ Madonna; but to the Catholic of another land, who never heard of this cult till coming to Spain, it is impossible to feel the same devotion, especially when it is surrounded with such bad taste.

I tried to arouse imagination by recalling what the _Pilar_ had meant for this city in its hours of danger, how during the siege of 1808 they kept up courage by exclaiming, "The holy _Virgen del Pilar_ is still with us!": one of the witticisms of the siege was:

"La Virgen del Pilar dice, Que no quiere ser francesa."

Just as in Andalusia the chief e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n is "_Ave Maria Purisima!_"

and in the mountains of the north, "_Nuestra Senora de Nieve!_" so in Aragon, "_Virgen Mia del Pilar!_" springs to the lips in time of joy or trouble. However, emotion cannot be summoned on command, and I left Saragossa unmoved by her special shrine of devotion. Had it been in the solemn old Cathedral, sympathy had come more readily. The _Seo_, like most Spanish churches, is spoiled outside by restoration, but within it is not unworthy of the coronations and councils held there. Ferdinand _el Catolico_ was baptized at its font; and near the altar is buried the heart of Velasquez's handsome little Don Baltazar Carlos, who died of the plague at seventeen. The church is high and square, like a hall; it is rich in mediaeval tombs, Moorish ceilings, pictures, and jewels. Some truly glorious fourteenth century tapestries were still hanging in place after the Easter festivals, on the day of our visit; and as a council was to be held in the church on the following day, a row of gold busts of saints, Gothic relic holders, stood on the altar. The sacristy was a treasure house, from its floor of Valencian tiles to its vestments heavy with real pearls. The enthusiasm of the priest who showed us the Cathedral told of the personal pride most of his countrymen feel in the house of G.o.d; again, as at Burgos, I felt that these people considered their churches as much their abode as their own simple homes, that one supplemented the other, and hence much of the contentment of their frugal lives.[36]

We were stupid enough to go hunting for the leaning tower of Saragossa, not knowing that it had come down in 1893, and the search led us through the narrow streets of the older town, where the mansions of dull, small bricks, as a rule, have been turned into stables and warehouses, like the former palaces of Barcelona. Outside the city, flat on the plain, stands what was once the Moorish, later the Christian, palace, the Aljuferia, now serving as barracks, in which are embedded a few good remains, such as a small mosque and a n.o.ble hall of Isabella's time, with that suggestive date, 1492,--Granada and America.

On our first arrival at the hotel in Saragossa, they had informed us we could stay but a few days, as the centenary celebration of May 2d, 1808, was approaching, and every hotel room was engaged. The town so hum-drum to-day has a stirring history to look back on. In modern times she has stood a siege as heroic as any in the Netherlands, but Spain has lacked a Motley to make her popular. I can only repeat, justice has never been done to the outburst of patriotism which began in Madrid with the _Dos de Mayo_, 1808. Murat's savage slaughter on that May day made the whole of Spain rise in almost simultaneous defense, to the astonishment and admiration of Europe. Saragossa chose for her leader against the invader the young Count Palafox, a.s.sisted by the priest Santiago Sas, and by Tio Jorge ("Uncle George") with two peasant lieutenants. The French closed in round the city, but the victory of Bailen in the south raised this first siege.

Then in December of 1808 four French marshals with twenty thousand men again surrounded Saragossa, and it must not be overlooked that, built on the plain, she had slight natural means of defense. "War to the knife"

was the historic answer of the town when called on to surrender, and the bones of over forty thousand citizens at the end of the siege bore testimony to the boast. To embarra.s.s the enemy they cut down the olive plantations around the city, thus destroying with unselfish courage the revenue of a generation, for it takes some twenty years for the olive tree to bear fruit. They sacrificed all personal rights to private property by breaking down the part.i.tions from house to house till every block was turned into a well-defended fortress. Organized by the intelligent Countess of Burita, the women enrolled themselves in companies to serve in the hospitals and to carry food and ammunition to the fighters; a girl of the people, Ajustina of Aragon, whom Byron immortalized as the Maid of Saragossa, worked the gun of an artillery-man through a fiery a.s.sault. Ajustina lived for fifty years after her famous day, always showing the same vigorous equilibrium of character; though Ferdinand VII rewarded her with the commission of an officer, she seldom made use of the uniform of her rank nor let adulation change the humble course of her life. The siege lasted up to the end of February. In the beginning of that month the daily deaths were five hundred, the living were not able to bury the dead, and a pest soon bred; the atmosphere was such that the slightest wound gangrened.

Sir John Carr, who visited Spain the year of the siege, heard detailed accounts from officers who had taken part in it: "The smoke of gunpowder kept the city in twilight darkness, horribly illumined by the fire that issued from the cannon of the enemy. In the intervals which succeeded these discharges, women and children were beheld in the street writhing in the agonies of death, yet scarcely a sigh or moan was heard. Priests were seen, as they were rushing to meet the foe, to kneel by the side of the dying, and dropping their sabers, to take the cross from their bosoms and administer the consolations of their religion, during which they exhibited the same calmness usually displayed in the chambers of sickness." Even after the French had forced an entrance into the city, there continued for weeks a room to room struggle: "Each house has to be taken separately," Marshall Lannes wrote to Napoleon, "it is a war that horrifies." "At length the city demolished, the inhabitants worn out by disease, fighting and famine, the besieged were obliged with broken hearts to surrender, February 21, 1809, after having covered themselves with glory during one of the most memorable sieges in the annals of war, which lasted sixty-three days." (_Travels in Spain_, Sir John Carr K.C.). Truly can the _testarudo aragones_ of Iberian blood boast of the t.i.tle of his capital, _siempre heroica_!

The Aragonese is manly, enduring, and stubborn; the special laws of this independent province, the _Fueros_, are worth close study from those interested in the gradual steps of man's self-government; under an ostensible monarchy they gave republican inst.i.tutions. This is an address to the King: "We, who count for as much as you and have more power than you, we elect you king in order that you may guard our privileges and liberties; and not otherwise." Nice language for a Hapsburg or a Bourbon to hear! Aragon was united early, by a royal marriage, to Catalonia, and a few centuries later Ferdinand's union with Isabella bound both provinces to Castile, Ferdinand also conquering Navarre; it was under the first of the Bourbon kings, Philip V, that Aragon lost her treasured _Fueros_.

We saw nothing of the neighboring Navarre, and I cannot say we saw much of st.u.r.dy Aragon, since Saragossa was the only stopping-place, but a long day on the train going south gave us a fair idea of its general character. And constantly through the day rose the remembrance that it was here in this kingdom happened the delightful d.u.c.h.ess adventure.

Never has the scene been equaled,--that witty, high-bred lady and _hermano Sancho_ of the adorable plat.i.tudes and proverbs--("_Sesenta mil satanases te lleven a ti y a tus refranes_"! even the patient Don exclaimed)--brother Sancho quite unembarra.s.sed--was he not a _cristiano viejo_?--stooping to kiss her dainty hand.

The landscape of the province was rather desolate, though relieved from monotony by the snow-covered wall of the Pyrenees that continued unbroken in the distance to our left. The Spanish side of the great range of mountains is abrupt in comparison with the French slopes, which are gay with fashionable spas, and fertile with slow, winding rivers, such as the Garonne. In Spain the rivers descend with such rapidity that they pour away their life-giving waters in prodigal spring floods, and during the rest of the year the land suffers from drought; there is a saying here that it is easier to mix mortar with wine than with water.

It happened that on our train was a band of young soldiers returning to their homes after their military service, as irrepressible as escaped young colts. Such songs and merriment! Such family scenes at each station! Mothers and little sisters, blushing cousins and neighbors had flocked down from the villages on the Pyrenees slopes to welcome them. A touch of nature makes the world akin; we found ourselves waving, too, as the train drew away, leaving the returned lad in the midst of his rejoicing family. At the fortress-crowned town of Monzon we saw the last of our happy fellow travelers. There a young soldier led his comrades to be presented to a majestic old man with a plaid shawl flung over his shoulder like a toga, and the son's expression of pride in the n.o.ble patriarch was a thing not soon forgotten. In Spain few journeys lack a primary human interest, something to give food to heart or soul.

MINOR CITIES OF CATALONIA

Romanesque is the Trappist of architecture, ... on its knees in the dust, singing with lowered head in a plaintive voice the psalms of penitence.... This mystic Romanesque suggests the idea of a robust faith, a manly patience, a piety as secure as its walls. It is the true architecture of the cloister.... There is fear of sin in these ma.s.sive vaults and fear of a G.o.d whose rigours never slackened till the coming of the Son. Gothic on the contrary is less fearful, the lowered eyes are lifted, the sepulchral voices grow angelic....

Romanesque allegorizes the Old Testament, and Gothic the New.--J.-K. HUYSMANS.

In his valuable book on Spanish churches, Street is justly enthusiastic over the form that Gothic architecture took in the province of Catalonia, and especially over the now unused Cathedral of Lerida, which he calls the finest and purest early-pointed church in Europe. It was such praise that induced us to stop over in the dull, little city, crowned by the hill where the ancient Cathedral stands. Its history of ten sieges, and Velasquez's "Philip IV on horseback entering Lerida in triumph," somehow had suggested a grandiose impression that is far from lived up to by the modern town.

A pause of three hours between trains seemed to give ample time to see the Cathedral, but the scramble into which the visit to Lerida degenerated was proof that no limited period is ample time in this country of leisurely ease. Could we have gone direct to the citadel, all had been well, but as the hill is now a fort, with the old church turned into a dormitory for soldiers, much red tape was required to visit it.

We hurried along the interminable crowded street that stretches beside the river, asking right and left for the office of the military governor. Wrongly directed, we burst into the somnolent quarters of the city authorities and made our request for a permit. With a slow dignity that no flurried haste could move, the provincial governor sent us to the private house of the military big-wig. There a precious half hour went by in the drawing-room with his handsome wife, who did not seem sorry to break the monotony of her exile by the strangers' visit. In came the genial governor waving the permit backward and forward for the ink to dry, and another half hour of social chatting went by, the very ink of Spain being gifted with dignified slowness. A soldier was put at our disposal to serve as guide, a young man as tranquil as his superior, for we climbed the hill at a snail's pace, and once inside the fort were stopped here and there by sentries who, letter by letter, it seemed to our impatience, spelled out the written paper. When finally we stood before the Cathedral, the soldier escort told us we must pause there while he went to seek the commandant of the fort. Precious minute after minute went by, till at last, the clock telling us we must soon be starting back to the station, we took the bull by the horns and entered the church without further delay.

A strange spectacle presented itself. In every direction were ranged cots, clothes hung about and washing troughs added to the confusion. The beautiful old church had been floored half way up its piers and down these improvised rooms we could see other rows of narrow beds. It was so cluttered that I could hardly get oriented; where was the nave? which were the transepts? We could see that the capitols of the pillars were grandly carved, that here was the beautiful clearness of form, the n.o.ble solidity of early Gothic, but the confusion of the soldiers' dormitory made it impossible to study the church with any satisfaction. Except for the architect, Lerida to-day hardly repays a visit. The soldiers stood round in astonishment at such unexpected visitors, so we were soon glad to confine our examination to the exterior portals and the tower.

Just as we were on the point of leaving, the commandant appeared, shook us warmly by the hand and prepared to take us over the fort. Like the military governor and his wife, he beamed with the interest of something new; the cordiality of all was perfect, but nothing, nothing, could hurry them. We explained that we had come to see the church alone, that our time unfortunately was limited, and we must now leave to catch the train for Poblet. He took a disappointed and bewildered farewell; up on his citadel in the land of pause and leisure such new-world notions of speed were disconcerting. With a hasty look at the n.o.blest early-pointed church in Europe, a grateful handshake to the colonel, we hurried down the precipitous hill and jumped on the train just as it was moving out, our valises being flung in to us desperately at the final moment.

Soon the broken, fertile hills of the province of Catalonia closed in around us, and the country grew so charming that we were glad to have planned to pa.s.s a night near Poblet. From the train we saw the prominent brown ma.s.s of the monastery buildings, but, of course, we ran on some miles before stopping in a station. There we found a Catalan cart, two-wheeled with a barrel vaulted awning, and drove to the primitive hotel at Espluga. The landlord offered us his cart to drive out to Poblet, two miles away, but the b.u.mps and ruts of the road from the station made us prefer to walk. The ill-kept roads and the not wholly cultivated fields told clearly that the industrial monks were no longer masters of the valley.

Poblet stood for monastic pride, only n.o.bles entered as monks, the mitered abbot was a count-palatine and ruled the peasantry as their feudal lord; the revenues were enormous, but as Benedictines are invariably cultivated men, they were spent on ancient ma.n.u.scripts, and in the ceaseless energy of building. When the mob came from the neighboring towns in 1835 to sack the convent, they shattered the very treasure they sought. In their blind ignorance they did not know that chiseled alabaster, wrought doors and windows, and carven cloisters, represented the hidden gold they were seeking. This uprising in Spain against the monasteries, the "_pecado de sangre_," was a political more than a religious affair; in the first Carlist war, the countryside here was Const.i.tutional, while the monks of Poblet were firm for the Pretender Don Carlos. The havoc the mob wrought is heart-rending; and yet though empty and partly destroyed, Poblet is still one of the finest things in the Peninsula.

On our way out to it we happened to take a wrong turning, which fortunately led us to encircle the walled-in ma.s.s of buildings before entering, and gave us some idea of their great extent. It was a veritable town; there were hospices for visitors, hospitals, a king's palace, an abbot's palace, a village of workshops for the artisans, since in every age the monks had been builders. Every style was represented, each stage of Romanesque and Gothic; Poblet is indeed to-day one of the best places in Europe to study architecture, and the guardian told us that students from every country flock here in the summer time. Artists too are a familiar sight sketching the beautiful vistas, the arched library, the pillared _sala capitular_ where effigies of the abbots lie so haughtily that one can almost understand the fury of the rabble, the imposing length and strength of the novices'

dormitory where swallows now flit, the pure early Gothic of King Martin's palace, the odd little _glorieta_ of the chief cloister.

Pleasant quarters can be found in the caretaker's house, which is more convenient than living at Espluga down the valley. We wandered for hours through courtyards and cloisters that show the subtly simple proportions of Catalan art. The church of the monastery was built during that rare moment when Romanesque turned to pointed work; it is very narrow and severe and impressive. The once superb alabaster _retablo_ is mutilated, and the tombs of the Aragonese kings are scattered. The bones of Jaime _el Conquistador_ are now in Tarragona Cathedral. Poblet served as the Escorial of the rulers of Aragon and Catalonia, and is many times more worth visiting than Philip II's rigid pile in Castile. I strongly urge everyone who goes to Spain to turn aside from the beaten path to see this unrivaled Cistercian monastery, which it is no exaggeration to say is one of the most artistic groups of buildings in the world. The evening of our visit the sunset glorified the pretty rural valley whose brooks bounded merrily down the hillside. "Laugh of the mountain, lyre of bird and tree," Lope de Vega calls the gurgling, clear waters.

We took a long hour to loiter back to Espluga, accompanied by a racy old character, Sabina, and her tourist donkey. The peasants returning from cutting wood up in the mountains above us gave a new greeting, "_Santas Noches_," reminiscent, no doubt, of the former masters of the valley.

Then the following day we took the train south of Tarragona, to the "Little Rome" that is the reputed birthplace of Pontius Pilate, of which Martial sang, and where Augustus Caesar wintered. The landscape was a delight, showing the most unrivaled cultivation of soil I have ever seen, flowering orchards, fields of wheat and poppies, the very vineyards that Pliny has described; the sensation of the earth's lavish bounty, of the fecundity of the sun and the intoxication of growing things was overwhelming. And a week before we had been freezing in Siguenza!

On the train was an amusing company. Some dozen people came to one of the stations en route to escort an alert, keen-eyed little bishop, who mounted nimbly among us. Everyone bent to kiss his episcopal ring, and even when some shrewd business men entered the carriage later, and saw that a bishop was its occupant, they too knelt to kiss his hand in salutation, republican Catalans though they were. I could not take my eyes off the delightful little prelate, so happily unconscious of his purple satin skull cap with its St. Patrick's green rosette on top, and his equally vivid green woolen gloves. Then when we reached Tarragona, down he stepped briskly, and instead of entering an episcopal carriage as we expected, he got into a public diligence and drove off like a true democratic Spaniard.

The Mediterranean at Tarragona was brilliantly, startlingly blue. As it burst on us in its sun dazzling wonder it seemed as if the bleak high table-land of the country behind was a nightmare of the imagination.

Surely a whole continent must separate such luxury and such aridness.

We wandered about the white, glaring city, glad to bask in warm sun and drink in the salt air, happy too to be back again by the inland sea that has known the great nations of the earth, to be part again of the marvelous belt of ancient civilization that encircles its blue water.

Tarragona was surrounded by cyclopean walls, the huge boulders of Rome below, and the smaller mediaeval stones above. The blinding sun made the Cathedral so dark that it was long before we could see our way about. It is solemn and very earnest, with a fortress-like apse, and with cloisters the most perfect in the country. The doorways and capitols are so curiously carved that they merit detail study. The Roman urns, a Moorish prayer niche, and so on, down through the centuries, showed again how clearly architecture in Spain tells her history. The chief _retablo_ is of extreme beauty, with large statues and smaller scenes combined harmoniously; in it the restraint that distinguishes the Catalan school is very apparent.

On leaving Tarragona, the railway followed the coast for some time, then to our disappointment branched inland to loop round to Barcelona.

When we realized that we could have taken the line that runs the whole way by the sea, we were annoyed at our mistake, though later we were grateful to it, for the inland route gave a n.o.ble view of Montserrat, that astonishing serrated ridge of gray rock, a cragged comb of stone, geologically a puzzle of formation, which abruptly rises out of the plain. For an hour the train drew nearer and nearer to it, so we got an admirable view. Our proposed ascent of the mountain was never to take place, and this was to be our only glimpse of the shrine to which thousands of pilgrims flock each year, where St. Ignatius Loyola sought counsel and made his vigil of the armor. When Barcelona was reached the illness which had been fastening itself closer since the unfortunate drive to Alcantara declared itself unmistakably, and many proposed excursions, such as Montserrat, Manresa, Ripoll, with its unique portal, had to be foregone. To leave a country with some of its best things unvisited is an open invitation to return,--which theory may be good philosophy, but is not wholly adequate in stifling regrets.

BARCELONA

"He who loves not, lives not."

RAMoN LULL.

"Solemn the lift of high-embowered roof, The cl.u.s.tered stems that spread in boughs disleaved, Through which the organ blew a dream of storm That shut the heart up in tranquillity."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

I wonder if, to the reader, when hearing the name Barcelona there rises one sovereign picture,--Isabella and Ferdinand's reception of Columbus on his return from the New World. It may have been some print seen in childhood that impressed itself indelibly on my imagination, but always with the name Barcelona I seemed to see _los Reyes Catolicos_ seated on their throne listening to the man whose genius was so well bodied forth in his face and bearing. Around stood gentle-eyed natives of the Antilles, with their ornaments of pearls and gold, lures that were to rouse the rapacity which exterminated those Arcadian peoples, and to break the heart of their great discoverer. Heart-break and defeat lay in the future, this was an hour of enthusiastic hope. When Columbus had finished his peroration, the Queen and the court fell on their knees in a spontaneous burst of exaltation, and together intoned that king's hymn of victory, the _Te Deum_.

It was the unknown Barcelona that called up this scene of Spain's heroic hour; the city as it is to-day has blurred and dimmed the picture. There is a striking statue of Columbus on a column that faces the harbor, but it is not of him nor of his patrons that you think here. The Castle of Segovia, the walls of Avila or Toledo, the Alhambra hill, Seville's Alcazar, these are romantic spots that make

"the high past appear Affably real and near, For all its grandiose air caught from the mien of kings";

but I defy the imaginative lover of old times to call up the romantic in the modern capital of Catalonia; seething with industrial life, with revolutionary new ideas, she is too aggressive and prosperous for sentimental regrets.