Part 4 (1/2)
”Thee, boy. When I pa.s.sed over this road last, thou wert begging at the windows, to my shame if not to thine. Tut, tut! Go thy ways. Look for work, work, work.”
”Work, sir?”
”Work, boy. And when thou hast found it, love it, and do it with a will. Learn to read and write. Wash thy face and change thy customs, and when thou art richer than I, then will I give thee a _peseta_.”
Mendicancy is bred of ignorance, and in the seventeen and a half millions that make up the population of Spain, more than twelve millions do not read nor write.
Seville sight-seeing is no brief matter. You must climb the Giralda, walk in the parks, view the yellowed fragments of the ancient city wall, visit the tobacco factory, shop in _Las Sierpes_, buy pottery in Triana, see the gypsy dances in the cafes, attend the Thursday rag-fair, do reverence to the Columbus ma.n.u.scripts in the _Biblioteca Columbina_, look up the haunts of Don Juan, Figaro, Pedro the Cruel, and explore the curious ”House of Pilate,” which, tradition says, was built by a pilgrim n.o.ble after the Jerusalem pattern. You must lose your heart to the Alcazar, the Alhambra of Seville, a storied palace embowered in fountain-freshened gardens of palm and magnolia, oranges and cypresses, rose and myrtle, with shadowy arcades leading to marble baths and arabesqued pavilions. You must follow Murillo from gallery to gallery, from church to church, above all, from the _Hospital de la Caridad_, where hang six of his greatest compositions, to the _Museo Provincial_, where over a score of the Master's sacred works, lovely Virgins, longing saints, deep-eyed Christ-Childs, rain their sweet influence. And first, last, and always, there is the cathedral. We had been stunned at Burgos, blind to all save the Moorish features of Cordova, almost untouched by the cold splendors of Granada, but to Seville, as later to Toledo, we surrendered utterly. Beauty, mystery, sublimity--these are Seville cathedral. Five centuries have gone to the rearing and enriching of those solemn aisles and awful choir. The colossal structure, second in size only to St. Peter's, is a majesty before which Luther himself might well have trembled. Within a Spanish cathedral one begins to understand the mighty hold of Roman Catholicism on Spain. ”I love,” says Alarcon, whose jest and earnest are as closely twined as fibres of the same heart, ”the clouds of incense which rise to the cupola of the Catholic temple, amid the harmonies of the holy organ. (For this I am not a Protestant.)” And elsewhere, writing of his childhood, he speaks of receiving in the cathedral of Guadix all his first impressions of artistic beauty,--beauty of architecture, music, painting, processional splendors, tissue of gold and silver, cunning embroideries and jewel-work, his first sense, in short, of poetry. And all these impressions were inextricably blent with his first yearnings of holy aspiration, his first pa.s.sion of mystical devotion. But not even Seville cathedral could win over our full sympathy. Too heavy were the faces of the priests who ”sang the gori gori,” too selfish that wigged and jointed doll, ”Our Lady of Kings,” with her sixty gorgeous mantles, a few of which would have clothed all the poor of Andalusia.
Who shall draw the line between faith and superst.i.tion?
But let not the tourist suppose he can escape his tyrant Baedeker even at the top of the Giralda. There are excursions that must be taken to points of interest outside the city. Most imperative of all is the trip to the ruined Roman amphitheatre of Italica, guarded by the mighty names of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius. Off we start, a dozen strong, in a great, open carriage, all the women-folk with fans and veils and with flowers in the hair. We rattle past the cathedral, over the bridge to Triana and out into the sweet-breathed country, pa.s.sing many a picturesque group on the road,--these two peasants, for example, with their yellow-handled knives thrust into scarlet girdles, tossing dice under a fig tree. Our meditations among the crumbling blocks of that savage play-house would perhaps interest the reader less than our luncheon. Such Andalusian dainties as we swallowed,--cold soups like melted salads, home-made fig marmalade, cinnamon pastes of which the gypsies know the secret, and sugared chestnuts overflowed by a marvellous syrup wherein could be detected flavors of lemon peel, orange peel, and a medley of spices! In that scene of ancient bloodshed, of the lion's wrath and the martyr's anguish, we ate, drank, and were merry, but our banquet tasted of ghosts.
VI
Pa.s.sION WEEK IN SEVILLE
”All that was gracious was bestowed by the Virgin, and she was the giver of all that human creatures could ask for. G.o.d frowned, while she smiled; G.o.d chastised, but she forgave; this last notion was by no means a strange one. It is accepted with almost absolute faith among the laboring cla.s.ses of the rural parts of Spain.”--GALDoS: _Marianela_.
Holy week throngs Seville to overflowing. The devout no longer scourge themselves in public, sprinkling the pavements with their blood, but Spaniards flock from all Andalusia, from Madrid, and even from the northern provinces to the sunny city on the storied Guadalquivir.
Hotel charges run from twelve dollars a day up to incredible figures; a mere bed in a lodging house costs its three dollars, four dollars, or five dollars a night, and fortunate are those who enjoy the hospitality of a private home.
The ceremonies opened Sunday morning with the procession of palms. We had been told by our cathedral guide the day before that this procession would take place at seven or half-past seven at the latest, and had asked the maid to call us at half-past six. As the chiming bells should have warned us, her knock was an hour tardy, but when, breakfastless and eager, we reached the cathedral a few minutes after eight, there was as yet no sign of a procession. Ma.s.s was being said in the Sagrario and in several chapels, and the morning light poured in through the rich-colored windows upon groups of kneeling figures before every shrine. The women wore black mantillas, for, although this most graceful of headdresses is losing credit on the fas.h.i.+onable promenades of Seville, and is almost never seen in open carriages, Holy Week demands it of all the faithful.
We asked a white-robed young chorister when the procession would form.
He answered with encouraging precision, ”In twenty minutes.” We roamed about for a half hour or more through those majestic s.p.a.ces, beneath those soaring arches, aspiration wrought in stone, until by chance in that s.h.i.+fting mult.i.tude we came face to face with our guide of the day before. We asked how soon the procession would form. He said, ”In twenty minutes,” and we went home for coffee.
When we returned the procession was streaming out of the cathedral into the street of the _Gran Capitan_. It was simple and all the more attractive for that simplicity. The colors of standards and vestments were mainly purple and gold, and the long, yellow fronds of palm, blown by the fresh breeze from the river, gleamed brighter than the sheen of candle or of mitre. Turning the corner, the procession, now facing the beautiful Giralda, entered by the ample Door of Pardon, still incrusted with its Arabic decorations, into the Court of Oranges, whose ripe fruit gave new touches of gold to the picture.
Venders of palm were stationed in every sheltered corner, selling their wares, more than twice the height of a man, at fifteen cents the frond, while boys, darting about with armfuls of olive, were glad to take a cent the branch, and not have the best of their leafy store filched from them by sly old women, more intent, like the rest of us, on getting a blessing than deserving it.
Through the mult.i.tude the glittering palms and purple robes swept on back into the cathedral, where the silent and remote archbishop, an image of gold in his splendid apparel, shed his benediction not only over the proud palms, but over every spray of ”little gray leaves,”
like those of Gethsemane. These blessed palms, sprinkled with holy water and wafting strange fragrances of incense, would be carried home and kept in myriad balconies all the year through, to protect the house from ”the all-dreaded thunder-stone.”
That Sunday afternoon at five o'clock we were leaning out expectantly from our host's best balcony. With the constant Spanish courtesy, he had betaken himself, with the children of the household, to a less commanding balcony below, and his eldest son had considerately withdrawn, accompanied by his fiancee, to a mere speck of a balcony above. This left a dozen of us, Spanish, English, and American, to enjoy as good a view as the city afforded of the processional tableaux.
The oblong _Plaza de la Const.i.tucion_, the scene in days gone by of many a tournament, _auto de fe_, and bull-fight, is bounded on one side by the ornate Renaissance facade of the city hall, and on the other, in part, by the plain front of the court-house, before which criminals used to be done to death. Private dwellings, with their tiers of balconies, one of which had fallen to our happy lot, cross the wider end of the _plaza_, while the other opens into the brilliant street of _Las Sierpes_, too narrow for carriages, but boasting the gayest shop windows and merriest cafes of all the town.
The _plaza_, always animated, fairly rippled with excitement this Palm Sunday afternoon. The grand stand, erected in front of the city hall, was filled, although many of the camp-chairs and benches placed in thick-set rows on the farther side of the line of march were not yet rented. Thursday and Friday are the days that draw the mult.i.tudes. The crowd was bright with uniforms, most conspicuous being the spruce white-edged, three-cornered hats and dark-blue, red-faced coats of the civil guard. Venders of peanuts, peanut candy, macaroons, caramels, and all manner of _dulces_ swung their baskets from one sweet-toothed Spaniard to another, while wisely the water-seller went in their wake, with the artistic yellow jar over his shoulder. One young pedler was doing a flouris.h.i.+ng business in crabs, the customers receiving these delicacies in outstretched pocket handkerchiefs.
Busy as our eyes were kept, we were able to lend ear to the explanations of our Spanish friends, who told us that the church dignitaries, after the procession of palms, took no official part in the shows of Pa.s.sion Week, although many of the clergy belonged, as individuals, to the religious brotherhoods concerned. The church reserves its street displays for Corpus Christi. These brotherhoods, societies of ancient origin, and connected with some church or chapel, own dramatic properties often of great intrinsic value and considerable antiquity.
For days before Holy Week one may see the members busy in the churches at the task of arranging groups of sacred figures, vested as richly as possible in garments of silk and velvet, with ornaments of jewels and gold, on platforms so heavy that twenty-five men, at the least, are needed to carry each. These litters are escorted through the princ.i.p.al streets and squares of the city by their respective societies, each brotherhood having its distinctive dress. It is customary for every _cofradia_ to present two pageants--the first in honor of Christ; the second, and more important, in honor of Mary, to whom chivalrous Spain has always rendered supreme homage; but sometimes the two tableaux are combined into one.
After long watching and waiting we saw, far down _Las Sierpes_, the coming of the first procession. A line of police marched in advance to clear the road. Then appeared a loosely ordered company of fantastic figures in blue capes and blue peaked caps, absurdly high and reaching down to the shoulder, with holes cut for the eyes. From beneath the capes flowed white frocks, and the gloves and sandals were white.
These ”Nazarenes,” who looked like a survival of the Carnival, conducted in silence a litter upon which was erected an image of the crucified Christ, with face uplifted as if in prayer.
The pageant halted before the doors of the city hall to greet the Alcalde, who rose from his red velvet chair and bared his head. Men uncovered, and people stood all along the route, but acclamations were reserved for Our Lady of the Star. Her attendant troop was dressed like the preceding, with a star embroidered in white on the shoulder of the blue tunic. Her litter was ablaze with candles and laden with flowers; her outsweeping train was upborne by four little pages, and a bra.s.s band followed her with unceasing music.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FILLING THE WATER-JARS]