Part 16 (1/2)
The Government, which had finally a.s.sumed the charges and care of the obsequies, had been remiss in not providing lines of soldiers to hold an open way for the cortege. As it was, the procession could hardly struggle through the ma.s.s of humanity that choked the street. A solitary rider, mounted, like Death, on a white horse, went in advance, threatening the people with his sword. A division of the Civil Guard followed, erect and magnificent as ever, their gold bands glittering across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but their utmost efforts could not effectually beat back the crowd. Men scoffed at the drawn blades and pushed against the horses with both hands. The empty ”coach of respect,” black as night, its sable horses tossing high white plumes, pressed after, and then came some half dozen carriages overflowing with wreaths and palms, and all that wealth of floral gifts. The crowd caught at the floating purple ribbons, and called aloud the names upon the cards; a monster design, with velvet canopy, from the well-known daily, _El Liberal_, a beautiful crown from the widow of Canovas, and, later in the procession, alone upon the coffin, a nosegay of roses and lilies, brought in the morning by a child of four, a little ”daughter of the people,” and bearing the roughly written words, ”Glory to Castelar!--A workingman.”
The train of mourners, impeded as it was by the mult.i.tude, seemed endless. After the representatives of certain charities there walked, in gala uniform, white-headed veterans of war. A great company of students followed, their young faces serious and calm in that tempting hurly-burly of the street, and after them an overwhelming throng of delegates from all manner of commercial and craft unions. Even the press wondered that Castelar's death should move so profoundly the trading and laboring cla.s.ses, almost every store and workshop in Madrid closing for the afternoon. Then came the Republican committees, and behind them the representatives of countless literary, scientific, and artistic a.s.sociations.
At this point in the procession a place had been made for all or any who might wish, as individuals, to follow Castelar to the tomb. Some fifteen hundred had availed themselves of the opportunity--a motley fellows.h.i.+p. The gentlemen preceding, those who had come as delegates from the industrial and learned bodies of all Spain, wore almost without exception the correct black coat and tall silk hat, and paced, when they could, with a steady dignity, or halted, when they must, with a grave patience, that did more to quiet the unruly host of spectators than all the angry charges of the police. But the fifteen hundred showed the popular variety of costume--capes and blouses, broad white hats and the artisan's colored cap. Some of them were smoking, an indecorum which, by a self-denial that counts for much with Spaniards, nowhere else appeared in the long array.
But whatever might be the deficiencies of dress or bearing, here, one felt, was the genuine sorrow, here were the men who believed in Castelar and longed to do him honor. The impulsive onlookers responded to this impression, and more than one rude fellow, who had been skylarking a minute before, elbowed his way into the troop and fell soberly into such step as there was. Music would have worked wonders with that disorderly scene, but the bugles and cornets were all in the far rear. The representatives of the provinces, as they struggled by, were hailed with jokes and personalities. The chanting group of clergy, uplifting the same ebony cross that they had borne for Canovas, did not entirely hush the crowd, nor did even the black-plumed hea.r.s.e itself, with its solemn burden. For close after came, bearing tapers, a group of political note, closed by Sagasta and Campos, and then the chiefs of army and navy, including Blanco and Weyler. Behind these walked the city fathers, the senators, the diplomats, ex-ministers,--among them Romero, Robledo,--then the archbishop, and, finally, Silvela, with his colleagues.
The procession was closed by a military display and a line of empty coaches, sent, according to Spanish custom, as a mark of respect. The coach sent by Congress, a patriotic blaze of red and yellow, with coachman and footman in red coats and yellow trousers, and horses decked with red and yellow plumes, looked as if it had started for the circus and had missed its way.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD-FAs.h.i.+ONED BULL-FIGHT]
The sight of the politicians seemed to serve as spark to the Republican fuel. Even while the hea.r.s.e was pa.s.sing somebody shouted, ”Long live Castelar!” but the crowd corrected the cry to ”Long live the glorious memory of Castelar!” Then came a heterogeneous uproar: ”Death to the friars!” ”Long live the Republican Union!” ”Down with Reaction!” ”Down with the Jesuits!” ”Down with Polavieja!” ”Down with the Government!” ”Up with the Republic!” ”Long live Spain!” ”Long live the army!” ”Long live Weyler!”
A woman was run over in the confusion and a man was trampled, but the procession, aided as much as possible by the Civil Guards and the police, slowly worked its way through the _Alcala_ to the _Puerta del Sol_, where the people poured upon it like an avalanche, with ever louder cries against ministry and clergy, until the scene in front of the Government Building suggested something very like a mob. Silvela bore his silvered head erect and exerted a prudent forbearance. But few arrests were made, and the military force that sallied out from the Government Building merely stood in the gates to awe the rioters.
After an hour and a quarter the transit of the square was effected.
The disturbances were renewed in the _Calle Mayor_ with such violence that the ministers were advised to withdraw, but they only entered the funeral coaches, and, the Guards exerting themselves to the utmost, a degree of order was at last secured. While the cortege was descending the difficult hill of La Vega, the Queen, standing in one of the palace balconies, opera gla.s.s in hand, sent a messenger for a report of the state of affairs in her capital, and was visited and rea.s.sured by a member of the Government.
After this stormy journey the cemetery of San Isidro was reached at nightfall, and the silent orator laid to rest in the patio of _Santa Maria de la Cabeza_, beside his beloved sister, Concha Castelar. Even here Republican _vivas_ were raised, and again, later in the evening, before the house of Weyler, who appeared upon the balcony in answer to repeated calls. This general, more popular with Spaniards than with us, discreetly absented himself on Tuesday from the high ma.s.s chanted for Castelar in the Church of _San Francisco el Grande_, where there was an imposing display of uniforms and decorations.
While the people still talked of their lost leader and proposed monuments and medals in his honor, the Government held firmly on its course. The Royal Progress for the opening of the Cortes on the following Friday was a suggestive contrast to the procession of Monday. Soldiers lined the curbstones all the way from the Royal Palace to the Congress Hall, bands were posted at intervals, the royal escort, splendidly mounted and equipped, was in itself a formidable force, while additional troops, in gala dress, paraded all the city.
The balconies along the royal route were handsomely draped, but the people looked on at the gorgeous array of coaches, gilded and emblazoned, each drawn by six or eight choice horses, with sumptuous plumes and trappings, and attended by a story-book pomp of quaintly attired postilions, coachmen, and outriders, in a silence that was variously explained to me as indicating respect, hostility, indifference.
I heard no _vivas_ and saw no hats raised even for the affable Infanta Isabel, riding alone in the tortoise-sh.e.l.l carriage, nor for the Princess of Asturias, girlishly attractive in rose color and white, nor for the bright-faced young King, ready with his military salute as he pa.s.sed the foreign emba.s.sies, nor for the stately Regent, robed as richly as if she were on her way to read a gladder message than that which the opposition journals indignantly declared ”no message, but a pious prayer of resignation.”
And while Madrid jarred and wrangled, the flowers brought by the little daughter of the workingman drooped on the marble slab above Castelar's repose.
XVII
THE IMMEMORIAL FAs.h.i.+ON
”For as many auchours affirme (and mannes accions declare) that man is but his mynde; so it is to bee daily tride, that the bodie is but a mixture of compoundes, knitte together like a fardell of fleashe, and bondell of bones, and united as a heavie lumpe of Leade (without the mynde) in the sillie substance of a shadowe.”--THOMAS CHURCHILL, GENTLEMAN.
My Spanish hostess, brightest and prettiest of little ladies despite the weight of sorrow upon sorrow, came tripping into my room one afternoon with her black eyes starry bright under the lace mantilla.
”And where have you been to get so nicely rested?”
”To a _duelo_.”
I turned the word over in my mind. _Duelo?_ Surely that must mean the mourning at a house of death, when the men have gone forth to church and the burial, and the women remain behind to weep together, or one of those tearful _At Homes_ kept, day after day, until the ma.s.s, by the ladies of the afflicted household for their condoling friends. But such a smiling little senora! I hardly knew what degree of sympathy befitted the occasion.
”Were you acquainted with the--the person?”
”No, I had never seen him. He had been an officer in the Philippines many years, and came home very ill, fifteen days since. I wept because I knew his mother, but I wept much. Women, at least here in Spain, have always cause enough for tears. I thought of my own matters, and had a long, long cry. That is why I feel better. There is so little time to cry at home. I must see about the dinner now.”
And she rustled out again, leaving me to meditate on Spanish originality, even in grief.
In any country the usages of death are no less significant than the usages of life. That grim necropolis of Glasgow, with its few shy gowans under its lowering sky, those tender, turf-folded, church-shadowed graveyards of rural England, those trains of mourners, men by themselves and women by themselves, walking behind the bier in mid-street through the mud and rain of wintry Paris to the bedizened Pere Lachaise or Montparna.s.se--such sights interpret a nation as truly as its art and history; but the burial customs of Spain, especially distinctive, are, like most things Spanish, contradictory and baffling to the tourist view. ”La Tierra de Vice Versa” is not a country that he who runs may read.
The popular verses and maxims treat of death with due Castilian solemnity and an always unflinching, if often ironic, recognition of the mortal fact. ”When the house is finished,” says the proverb, ”the hea.r.s.e is at the door.” Yet this Spanish hea.r.s.e is one of the gayest vehicles since Cinderella's coach. If the groundwork is black, there is abundant relief in mountings of brilliant yellow, but the funeral carriage is often cream-white, flourished over with fantastic designs in the bluest of blue or the pinkest of pink. Coffins, too, may be gaudy as candy-boxes. The first coffin we saw in Spain was bright lilac, a baby's casket, placed on gilt trestles in the centre of a great chill church, with chanting priests sprinkling holy water about it to frighten off the demons, and a crowd of black-bearded men waiting to follow it to the grave. Such a little coffin and not a woman near! The poor mother was decently at home, weeping in the midst of a circle of relatives and neighbors, and counting it among her comforts that the family had so many masculine friends to walk in the funeral procession and show sympathy with the household grief. There would be, on the ninth day after and, for several years to come, on the anniversary of the death, as many ma.s.ses as could be afforded said in the parish church, when, again, the friends would make it a point of duty to attend.