Part 18 (1/2)
There were no first-cla.s.s carriages, it appeared, upon the Corpus train, and my round-trip ticket, second cla.s.s, cost only a dollar, leaving me with an embarra.s.sment of riches. Pursing the slip of pasteboard which, to my disgust, was stamped in vermilion letters _Corrida de Toros_, I sped me to the train, where every seat appeared to be taken, although it lacked twenty minutes of the advertised time for departure; but a bald-headed philanthropist called out from a carriage window that they still had room for one. Gratefully climbing up, I found myself in the society of a family party, off for Toledo to celebrate the saint-day of their hazel-eyed eight-year-old by that treat of treats, a child's first bull-fight. When they learned that I was tamely proposing to keep Corpus Christi by seeing the procession and not by ”a.s.sisting at the function of bulls,” their faces clouded; but they decided to make allowance for my foreign idiosyncrasies.
The train, besieged by a mult.i.tude of ticket-holders for whom there were no places, was nearly an hour late in getting off. The ladies dozed and chattered; the gentlemen smoked and dozed; little Hazel-eyes constantly drew pictures of bulls with a wet finger on the window gla.s.s. Reminded again by my handbag literature that Toledo is a nest of thieves, I would gladly have put away my extra money, but there was never a moment when all the gentlemen were asleep at once.
It was after ten when we reached our destination, the boy wild with rapture because we had actually seen a pasture of grazing bulls. A swarm of noisy, scrambling, savage-looking humanity hailed the arrival of the train, and I had hardly made my way even to the platform before I felt an ominous twitch at my pocket. The light-fingered art must have degenerated in Toledo since the day of that clever cutpurse of the ”Exemplary Tales.” Turning sharply, I confronted a group of my fellow-wors.h.i.+ppers, who, shawled and sashed and daggered, looked as if they had been expressly gotten up for stage bandits. From the s.h.a.ggy pates, topped by gaudy, twisted handkerchiefs--a headdress not so strange in a city whose stone walls looked for centuries on Moorish turbans--to the bright-edged, stealthy hemp sandals, these were pickpockets to rejoice a kodak. Their black eyes twinkled at me with wicked triumph, while it flashed across my mind that my old hero, the Cid, was probably much of their aspect, and certainly gained his living in very similar ways. There were a full score of these picturesque plunderers, and not a person of the nineteenth century in sight. Since there was nothing to do, I did it, and giving them a parting glance of moral disapproval, to which several of the sauciest responded by blithely touching their forelocks, I pursued my pilgrim course, purged of vainglory. At all events, I was delivered from temptation as to a questionable _peseta_ in my purse--my pretty Paris purse!--and I should not be obliged to travel again on that odious bull-fight ticket.
We were having ”fool weather,” blowing now hot, now cold, but as at this moment the air was cool, and every possible vehicle seemed packed, thatched, fringed with clinging pa.s.sengers, I decided, not seeking further reasons, to walk up to the town. And what a town it is! Who could remember dollars? So far from being decently depressed, I was almost glad to have lost something in this colossal monument of losses. It seemed to make connection.
Between deep, rocky, precipitous banks, strongly flows the golden ”king of rivers, the venerable Tajo,” almost encircling the granite pedestal of the city and spanned by ancient bridges of ma.s.sy stone, with battlemented, Virgin-niched, fierce old gates. And above, upon its rugged height, crumbling hourly into the gritty dust that stings the eye and sc.r.a.pes beneath the foot, lies in swirls on floor and pavement, blows on every breeze and sifts through hair and clothing, is the proud, sullen, forsaken fortress of ”imperial Toledo.” Still it is a vision of turrets, domes, and spires, fretwork, b.u.t.tresses, facades, but all so desolate, so dreary, isolated in that parched landscape as it is isolated in the living world, that one approaches with strangely blended feelings of awe, repugnance, and delight.
On we go over the Bridge of Alcantara, wrought aeons since by a gang of angry t.i.tans--the guidebooks erroneously attribute it to the Moors and Alfonso the Learned--with a shuddering glance out toward the ruins of feudal castles, here a battlemented keep set with mighty towers, there a great, squat, frowning ma.s.s of stone, the very sight of which might have crushed a prisoner's heart. Up, straight up, into the grim, gray, labyrinthine city, whose zigzag streets, often narrowing until two laden donkeys, meeting, cannot pa.s.s, so twist and turn that it is impossible on entering one to guess at what point of the compa.s.s we will come out. These crooked ways, paved with ”agony stones,” are lined with tall, dark, inhospitable house fronts, whose few windows are heavily grated, and whose huge doors, bristling with iron bosses, are furnished with fantastic knockers and a whole a.r.s.enal of bolts and chains.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KING OF THE GYPSIES]
Gloomy as these ponderous structures are, every step discloses a novelty of beauty,--a chiselled angel, poised for flight, chased escutcheons, bas-reliefs, toothed arches, medallions, weather-eaten groups of saints and apostles gossiping in their scalloped niches about the degeneracy of the times. The Moors, whose architecture, says Becquer, seems the dream of a Moslem warrior sleeping after battle in the shadow of a palm, have left their mark throughout Toledo in the airy elegance of the traceries magically copied from cobwebs and the Milky Way. That tragic race, the Jews, have stamped on the walls of long-desecrated synagogues their own mysterious emblems. And Goths and Christian knights have wrought their very likenesses into the stern, helmeted heads that peer out from the capitals of marvellous columns amid the stone grapes and pomegranates most fit for their heroic nourishment. But all is in decay. Here stands a broken-sceptred statue turning its royal back on a ragged vender of toasted _garbanzos_. Even the image of Wamba has lost its royal nose.
You may traverse whispering cloisters heaped with fallen crosses, with truant tombstones, and severed heads and limbs of august prophets.
Cast aside in dusky vaults lie broken shafts of rose-tinted marbles and fragments of rare carving in whose hollows the birds of the air once built their nests. Through the tangle of flowers and shrubbery that chokes the patios gleam the rims of alabaster urns and basins of jasper fountains. Such radiant wings and faces as still flash out from frieze and arch and column, such laughing looks, fresh with a dewy brightness, as if youth and springtime were enchanted in the stone!
And what supreme grace and truth of artistry in all this bewildering detail! On some far-off day of the golden age, when ivory and agate were as wax, when cedar and larch wood yielded like their own soft leaves, the magician must have pressed upon them the olive leaf, the acacia spray, the baby's foot, that have left these perfect traces.
And how did mortal hand ever achieve the intricate, curling, unfolding, blossoming marvel of those capitals? And who save kings, Wambas and Rodericks, Sanchos, Alfonsos, and Fernandos, should mount these magnificent stairways? And what have those staring stone faces above that antique doorway looked upon to turn them haggard with horror? City of ghosts! The flesh begins to creep. But here, happily, we are arrived in the _Plaza de Zocodover_, where Lazarillo de Tormes used to display his talents as town crier, and in this long-memoried market-place, with its arcaded sides and trampled green, may pause to take our bearings.
Evidently the procession is to pa.s.s here, for the balconies, still displaying the yellow fronds of Palm Sunday, are hung with all manner of draperies--clear blue, orange with silver fringes, red with violet bars, white with saffron scallops. Freed from sordid cares about my pocket, I give myself for a little to the spell of that strange scene.
Beyond rise the rich-hued towers of the Alcazar, on the site where Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, the Cid, and an ill.u.s.trious line of Spanish monarchs have fortified themselves in turn; but Time at last is conqueror, and one visits the dismantled castle only to forget all about it in the grandeur of the view. From the east side of the _Zocodover_ soars the arch on whose summit used to stand the _Santisimo Cristo del Sangre_, before whom the Corpus train did reverence. And here in the centre blazed that momentous bonfire which was to settle the strife between the old Toledan liturgy and the new ritual of Rome; but the impartial elements honored both the Prayer Books placed upon the f.a.gots, the wind wafting to a place of safety the Roman breviary, while the flames drew back from the other, with the result that the primitive rite is still preserved in an especial chapel of the cathedral.
A glorious _plaza_, famed by Cervantes, loved by Lope de Vega, but now how dim and shabby! On the house-fronts once so gayly colored, the greens have faded to yellows, the reds to pinks, and the pinks to browns. The awning spread along the route of the procession is fairly checkered with a miscellany of patches. I pa.s.s the compliments of the day with a smiling peasant woman, whose husband, a striking color-scheme in maroon blanket, azure trousers, russet stockings, and soiled gray sandals, offers me his seat on the stone bench beside her.
But I am bound on my errand, and they bid me ”Go with G.o.d.” I select a trusty face in a shop doorway and ask if I can rent standing room in the balcony above. Mine honest friend puts his price a trifle high to give him a margin for the expected bargaining, but I scorn to haggle on a day when I am short of money, and merely stipulate, with true Spanish propriety, that no gentlemen shall be admitted. This makes an excellent impression on the proprietor, who shows me up a winding stair with almost oppressive politeness. A little company of ladies, with lace mantillas drooping from their graceful heads, welcome me with that courteous cordiality which imparts to the slightest intercourse with the Spanish people (barring pickpockets) a flavor of fine pleasure. Because I am the last arrival and have the least claim, they insist on giving me the best place on the best balcony and are untiring in their explanations of all there is to be seen.
The procession is already pa.s.sing--civil guards, buglers, drummers, flower wreaths borne aloft, crosses of silver and crosses of gold, silken standards wrought with cunning embroideries. But now there come a sudden darkness, a gust of wind, and dash of rain. The ranks of _cofradias_ try in vain to keep their candles burning, the pupils from the colleges of the friars, with s.h.i.+ning medals hung by green cords about their necks, peep roguishly back at the purple-stoled dignitary in a white wig, over whom an anxious friend from the street is trying to hold an umbrella. The Jesuit _seminaristas_ bear themselves more decorously, the tonsures gleaming like silver coins on their young heads. The canons lift their red robes from the wet, and even bishops make some furtive efforts to protect their gold-threaded chasubles.
Meanwhile the people, that spectral throng of witches, serfs, feudal retainers, and left-overs from the Arabian Nights, press closer and closer, audaciously wrapping themselves from the rain in the rich old tapestries of France and Flanders, which have been hung along both sides of the route from a queer framework of emerald-bright poles and bars. The dark, wild, superst.i.tious faces, ma.s.sed and huddled together, peer out more uncannywise than ever from under these precious stuffs which brisk soldiers, with green feather brushes in their caps, as if to enable them to dust themselves off at short notice, are already taking down.
All the church bells of the city are chiming solemnly, and the splendid _custodia_, ”the most beautiful piece of plate in the world,”
a treasure of filigree gold and jewels, enshrining the Host, draws near. It is preceded by a bevy of lovely children, not dressed, as at Granada, to represent angels, but as knights of chivalry. Their dainty suits of red and blue, slashed and puffed and trimmed with lace, flash through the silvery mist of rain. Motherly voices from the balconies call to them to carry their creamy caps upside down to s.h.i.+eld the cl.u.s.tered plumes. Their little white sandals and gaiters splash merrily through the mud.
A flamingo gleam across the slanting rain announces Cardinal Sancha, behind whom acolytes uplift a thronelike chair of crimson velvet and gold. Then follow ranks of taper-bearing soldiers, and my friends in the balcony call proudly down to different officers, a son, a husband, a blus.h.i.+ng _novio_, whom they present to me then and there. The officers bow up and I bow down, while at this very moment comes that tinkling of silver bells which would, I had supposed, strike all Catholic Spaniards to their knees. It is perhaps too much to expect the people below to kneel in the puddles, but the vivacious chatter in the balconies never ceases, and the ladies beside me do not even cross themselves.
The parade proceeds, a gorgeous group in wine-colored costume carrying great silver maces before the civic representation. The governor of the province is pointed out to me as a count of high degree, but in the instant when my awed glance falls upon him he gives a monstrous gape unbecoming even to n.o.bility. The last of the spruce cadets, who close the line, have hardly pa.s.sed when the thrifty housewife beseeches our aid in taking in out of the rain her scarlet balcony hanging, which proves to be the canopy of her best bed. But the sun is s.h.i.+ning forth again when I return to the street to follow the procession into the cathedral.
Already this gleam of fair weather has filled the _Calle de Comercio_ with festive senoritas, arrayed in white mantillas and Manila shawls in honor of the bull-fight. Shops have been promptly opened for a holiday sale of the Toledo specialties--arabesqued swords and daggers, every variety of Damascened wares, and marchpane in form of mimic hams, fish, and serpents. The Toledo steel was famous in Shakespeare's day, even in the mouths of rustic dandies, whose geographical education had been neglected. When the clever rogue, Brainworm, in one of Jonson's comedies, would sell Stephen, the ”country gull,” a cheap rapier, he urges, ”'Tis a most pure Toledo,” and Stephen replies according to his folly, ”I had rather it were a Spaniard.” But onward is the glorious church, with its symmetric tower, whose spire wears a threefold crown of thorns. The exterior walls are hung, on this one day of the year, with wondrous tapestries that Queen Isabella knew. An army of beggars obstructs the crowd, which presses in, wave upon wave, through the deep, rich portals in whose ornamentation whole lifetimes have carved themselves away.
Within this sublime temple, unsurpa.s.sed in Gothic art, where every pavement slab is worn by knees more than by footsteps, where every starry window has thrown its jewel lights on generations of believers, one would almost choose to dwell forever. One looks half enviously at rec.u.mbent alabaster bishops and kneeling marble knights, even at dim grotesques, who have rested in the heart of that grave beauty, in that atmosphere of prayer and chant, so long. Let these stone figures troop out into the troubled streets and toil awhile, and give the rest of us a chance to dream. But the mult.i.tude, which has knelt devoutly while _Su Majestad_ was being borne into the _Capilla Mayor_, comes pouring down the nave to salute the stone on which--ah me!--on which the Virgin set her blessed foot December 18, 666, when she alighted in Toledo cathedral to present the champion of the Immaculate Conception, St. Ildefonso, with a chasuble of celestial tissue. The gilded, turreted shrine containing that consecrated block towers almost to the height of the nave. A grating guards it from the devout, who can only touch it with their finger tips, which then they kiss. Hundreds, with reverend looks, stand waiting their turn--children, peasants, bull-fighters, decorated officers, refined ladies, men of cultured faces. The sound of kissing comes thick and fast. Heresy begins to beat in my blood.
Not all that heavenward reach of columns and arches, not that mult.i.tudinous charm of art, can rid the imagination of a granite weight. I escape for a while to the purer church without, with its window-gold of suns.h.i.+ne and lapis-lazuli roof. When the mighty magnet draws me back again, those majestic aisles are empty, save for a tired sacristan or two, and the silence is broken only by a monotone of alternate chanting, from where, in the _Capilla Mayor_, two priests keep watch with _El Senor_.
”He will be here all the afternoon,” says the sacristan, ”and nothing can be shown; but if you will come back to-morrow I will arrange for you to see even Our Lady's robes and gems.”
Come back! I felt myself graying to a shadow already. Of course I longed to see again that marvellous woodwork of the choir stalls, with all the conquest of Granada carved amid columns of jasper and under alabaster canopies, but I was smothered in a mult.i.tude of ghosts. They crowded from every side,--nuns, monks, soldiers, tyrants, magnificent archbishops, the martyred Leocadia, pa.s.sionate Roderick, weeping Florinda, grim Count Julian, ”my Cid,” Pedro the Cruel, those five thousand Christian n.o.bles and burghers of Toledo, slain, one by one, at the treacherous feast of Abderrahman, those hordes of flaming Jews writhing amid the Inquisition f.a.gots. I had kept my Corpus. I had seen the greatest of all _autos sacramentales_, Calderon's masterpiece, ”Life is a Dream.”
”On a single one of the Virgin's gold-wrought mantles,” coaxed the sacristan, ”are eighty-five thousand large pearls and as many sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds. I will arrange for you to see everything, when Our Lord is gone away.”
But no. I am a little particular about treasures. Since Toledo has lost the emerald table of King Solomon and that wondrous copy of the Psalms written upon gold leaf in a fluid made of melted rubies, I will not trouble the seven canons to unlock the seven doors of the cathedral sacristy. Let the Madonna enjoy her wealth alone. I have _pesetas_ enough for my ticket to Madrid.