Part 5 (1/2)
Within this monument the Host, commonly spoken of in Spain as _Su Majestad_, had been solemnly placed the night before, much as the mediaeval church used to lay the crucifix, with requiems, under the High Altar on Good Friday, and joyously bring it forth again Easter morning. But Spanish Catholicism is strangely indifferent to dates, burying the Host on Wednesday and celebrating the Resurrection Sat.u.r.day.
All day long the Royal Chapel had been filled with relays upon relays of kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers, and the hush there had been so profound that the hum of the tourist-haunted nave and the tumult of the streets seemed faint and foreign to the hearing, like sounds a universe away.
Before this chapel entrance all the pageants, as they were borne in silence through the cathedral, paused and did homage to the Host.
Having outstripped the procession, we had arrived in season to witness three of these salutations. The Nazarenes, in pa.s.sing, fell upon their knees in the light of the great, gleaming monument, and each of the heavy platforms was slowly swung about so that it faced this symbol of Christ's sepulchre.
Yet there was something besides devotion in the cathedral. As the crowd pressed close, we felt, more than once, a fumbling at our pockets, and the little artist lost her purse. The rest of us comforted her by saying over and over that she ought to have known better than to bring it, and by severally relating how cautious we had been on our own accounts.
It was hard upon eleven when we returned to the house, but the streets were all alive with people. I went to the balcony at midnight, and again at the stroke of one, and both times looked down upon a _plaza_ crossed and recrossed in all directions by talkative, eager groups.
Many of these restless promenaders had been able to get no lodgings, and were walking to keep warm. The pressure upon the hotels was so great that one desperate stranger this Thursday night paid twenty dollars for a cot from ten o'clock till two, and private hospitality was taxed to a degree that nothing but Spanish courtesy and good-nature could ever have endured. In the house which harbored us, for instance, we were all fitted in as compactly as the pieces of a puzzle, when the unexpected friends began to arrive.
On Wednesday there appeared from the far north a man and wife, acquaintances of ten years back. Our host and hostess greeted this surprise party with Andalusian suns.h.i.+ne in their faces, and yielded up their own room. Thursday morning there walked gayly in one of the son's university cla.s.smates from Madrid. Don Pepe embraced him like a brother, and surrendered the sofa, which was all he had left to give.
And this Thursday midnight, as a crowning touch, three more chums of college days came clattering at the bell. Their welcome was as cordial as if the household were pining for society. The tired maids, laughing gleefully over the predicament, contributed their own mattresses and pillows, and made up beds on the study floor, where Don Pepe camped out with his comrades, to rise with a headache that lasted for days after.
By two o'clock I had taken my station on the balcony for an all-night vigil. The most of the family bore me company for the cogent reason that they had nowhere to sleep, but the other guests of the house held out for only an hour or two, and then went blinking to their repose.
My memory of the night is strangely divided between the dreamlike, unearthly pomps and splendors streaming through the square below and the kindly, cheery people who came and went about me. The senora, still fresh and charming, although she has wept the deaths of fourteen out of her nineteen children, was merrily relating, with weary head against her husband's shoulder, her almost insuperable difficulties in the way of furnis.h.i.+ng her table. The milkman roundly declared that if she wanted a double quant.i.ty of the precious fluid (and goat's milk at that), she must make it up with water. There was no meat to be had in the Catholic city during these holy days, and even her baker had forsaken his oven and gone off to see the sights. And the black-bearded senor, who, like his wife, had not been in bed for forty odd hours, laughed at her and comforted her, puffed harder than ever at his cigarette, and roguishly quoted the saying, ”He whom G.o.d loves has a house in Seville.”
By two o'clock the seats on the grand stand were filling fast, the _plaza_ hummed with excitement, the balconies resounded with song and laughter, and the strong electric lights in front of the city hall cast a hard, white brilliance over all the scene. The frying of _calientes_, an Andalusian version of twisted doughnuts, was in savory progress here and there on the outskirts of the throng, and our ever thoughtful hostess did not fail to keep her balcony well supplied with these crisp dainties.
The twinkling of taper lights, so warm and yellow under those pallid globes of electric glare, appeared while people were still hurrying to their places; but hundreds upon hundreds of black and gold figures had paced by before the first of their _pasos_ came into view. For these processions of the dawn, _de madrugada_, call out great numbers of the devout, who would thus keep the last watch with their Lord. The clocks struck three as the leading pageant, a very ancient image of Christ, bearing a silver-mounted cross of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, halted before the Alcalde. A white banner wrought with gold heralded the Virgin, who rose, in glistening attire, from a golden lake of lights.
The wealthy _cofradia_ of San Lorenzo followed in their costly habits of black velvet. They, too, conducted a pageant of Christ bearing His cross, one of the most beautiful groups of Montanes, the pedestal adorned with angels in relief. To the Christ, falling on the Via Dolorosa, the brotherhood, with the usual disregard of historic propriety, had given a royal mantle of ermine, embroidered with gold and pearls. A large company of black-clad women, carrying candles, walked behind the _paso_, on their penitential march of some eight hours. Many of them were ladies delicately bred, whose diamonds sparkled on the breast of the approaching Mary. For the Sevillian senoras are accustomed to lend their most valuable gems to their favorite Virgins for the _Semana Santa_, and San Lorenzo's Lady of Grief is said to have worn this night the worth of millions. She pa.s.sed amid a great attendant throng, in such clouds of incense that the eye could barely catch the s.h.i.+mmer of her silver pedestal, the gleam of the golden broideries that almost hid the velvet of her mantle, and the flashes and jets of light that shot from the incredible treasure of jewels that she wore.
The third troop of Nazarenes, robed in white and violet, bore for banner a white cross upon a violet ground. Their Christ-pageant pictured Pilate in his judgment seat in the act of condemning the Son of G.o.d to death. Jesus, guarded by armed soldiers, calmly confronts the troubled judge, at whose knee wait two little pages with a basin of water and towels.
And now came one of the most gorgeous features of the Holy Week processions--a legion of Roman soldiers, attired as never Roman soldiers were, in gold greaves and crimson tunics, with towering snow-white plumes. But a splendid show they made as, marching to drum and fife, they filed down _Las Sierpes_ and stretched ”in never ending line” across the _plaza_. Our most Holy Mary of Hope, who followed, wearing a fair white tunic and a gold-embroidered mantle of green, the color of the hopeful season, drowned the memory of that stern military music in a silver concert of flutes.
After this sumptuous display, the fourth band of Nazarenes, gliding through the _plaza_ between night and day in their garb of black and white, could arouse but little enthusiasm, although their Crucifixion was one of the most artistic, and their Lady of the Presentation had her poorest garment of fine satin.
A pearly l.u.s.tre was stealing through the sky, and the chill in the air was thinning the rows of spectators on the grand stand, when mysterious, dim-white shapes, like ghosts, bore by in utter silence a pageant of Christ fainting beneath the burden of the cross. But soon the clamor of drums and fifes ushered in another long array of Roman soldiers, a rainbow host in red and pink and blue, crimson plumes alternating with white, and golden s.h.i.+elds with silver. The electric lights, globed high overhead, took one look at this fantastic cavalcade and went out with a gasp.
It was now clear day. Canaries began to sing in their cages, and parrots to scream for chocolate. Sleepy-eyed servant-maids appeared on the balconies, and market women, leading green-laden donkeys, peered forth from the side streets into the square. The morning light made havoc with the glamour of the pageants. Something frank and practical in the suns.h.i.+ne stripped those candle-lighted litters of their dignity. Busy people dodged through the procession lines, and one Nazarene after another might be seen slipping out of the ranks and hurrying awkwardly, in his c.u.mbersome dress, with the half-burned taper under his arm, to the refuge of his own mosquito-netting and orange tree. The tired crowd grew critical and irreverent, and openly railed upon the Virgin of this ghostly _cofradia_ because her velvet mantle was comparatively plain. ”Bah! how poor it is! Are we to sit here all the night for such stingy shows as that?”
But the last brotherhood in the _madrugada_ processions had, with their white frocks and blue caps and capes, suited themselves to the colors of the day. The stumbling children, blind with sleep, whom fathers were already leading off the square, turned back for a drowsy gaze at the resplendent tunic of the Christ in the Via Dolorosa _paso_, a tunic claimed to be the richest of all the garments worn by the effigies of Jesus. So lovely was this trooping company in their tints of sky and cloud, bearing a great blue banner and a s.h.i.+ning ivory cross, that they brought order and decorum with them.
The division that escorted the Virgin marched on with especial steadiness, not a peaked cap drooping, nor a boyish acolyte faltering under the weight of his tall gilded censer. This most Holy Mary of Anguish, whose litter and canopy were all of white and gold, swept by in triumphal peals of music while the clocks were striking six. In some mental confusion, I said good night to the people I left on the balcony, and good morning to the people I met on the stairs, and ate my breakfast before I went to bed.
It seemed as if human nature could bear no more; the eyes ached with seeing, and phantasmal processions went sweeping through our dreams; yet Friday afternoon at five o'clock found our balcony, like all the rest, full to overflowing. Some twenty thousand people were ma.s.sed in the _plaza_, and it was estimated that over one hundred thousand waited along the line of march. Our Spanish entertainers, still unrefreshed by any chance for sleep, were as gayly and punctiliously attentive to their guests as ever, from our gallant host, who presented the ladies with fragrant bouquets of roses and orange blossoms, to the little pet of the household, who at the most engrossing moments in the ceremonial would slip away from her privileged stand on a footstool against the railing to summon any member of the party who might be missing the spectacle.
The Spanish colors floated out from city hall and court-house, but the great concourse below was all in hues of mourning, the black mantillas often falling over dresses of plain purple. The senoritas in the balconies had subst.i.tuted knots of black ribbon for the customary flowers in the hair. Jet tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs abounded, and the waving fans were black.
The coming procession, we were a.s.sured on every hand, would be the most solemn of all and the most sumptuous. The habits of the Nazarenes would be of satin, silk, and velvet. The images of Christ and the Virgin would be attired with all possible magnificence of damask and ermine, gold and jewels. Brotherhood would vie with brotherhood in splendor, and one prodigy of luxury would succeed another.
The leading company, whose far-trailing robes carpeted the street with fine black velvet, stood for the olive industry. This _cofradia_ had been poor and unimportant for generations, but in recent years a devoted brother, a manufacturer of olive packing-barrels, had poured forth his acc.u.mulated fortune upon the society, with the result that their _pasos_ are now second in ostentation and expense to none. The donor, long since too feeble to bear his taper in the line, lives in humble obscurity, but his old heart swells with joy this great day of the year when he sees, following the elaborate carving of the Crucifixion, the dazzling chariot of Our Lady of Solitude. Upon her mantle, which enjoys the proud distinction of being the very costliest of all, he has lavished twenty thousand dollars. Longer by a yard than any of the others, it was yet unable to find place for all the gold which the zealous Nazarene had given for it, and the residue was bestowed about the pedestal and canopy. The _paso_ is so heavy with gold that it requires a double force of men to carry it; but each of these hidden bearers, getting air as best he can through a silver breathing-tube, is sure of a dollar for his recompense as well as two gla.s.ses of good wine.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GRANADA. LOOKING TOWARD THE DARRO]
All the adornment of the litter is of pure gold, and such wealth of jewels glinted from the Virgin's glorious raiment that a triple force of Civil Guards was detailed for her protection. Her ardent wors.h.i.+pper has denied her nothing. The very columns that uphold her canopy are exquisite in carving, and it is his yearly pride to see that her clouds of incense are the thickest, and her train of musicians the most extended, in all that glittering line.