Spanish Highways and Byways Part 14

XIV

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

"Here you have them, the two Spains, unlike, antagonistic, squared for conflict."

--_Vida Nueva._

The world-old struggle between conservatism and advance is at its most dramatic point in Spain. The united forces of clericalism and militarism work for the continuance of ancient inst.i.tutions, methods, ideas, and those leaders who do battle in the name of liberalism are too often nothing more than selfish politicians. But with all these odds against progress, it is making way. The ma.s.s of the people, kept so long in the darkness of ignorance and superst.i.tion, are looking toward the light. During my last week in Madrid I chanced upon two extreme expressions of these warring principles. The first was a royal and religious ceremony, the second a monster ma.s.s meeting,--the one intent on cheris.h.i.+ng the past, the other clamoring at the gates of the future.

I was looking over the _Imparcial_ as I took my coffee one morning, when my eye fell on an item to the effect that there would be _capilla publica en Palacio_ at ten o'clock. A traveller learns to jump at opportunity. Public service in the royal chapel promised to be of interest, and half-past nine found me waiting, with a miscellaneous company of gentles and tatterdemalions, natives and foreigners, on the palace side of the _Plaza de Armas_, the expectant throng streaming far down the paved and covered way. We were well marshalled by soldiers, who kept the crowd in form of a long troop, and banded this by military lines, with gleaming bayonets. These bands, but a few feet apart, were effectual in preventing crowding and disorder, and when at last the doors were thrown open, a double rank of soldiers closed in before the portal as often as the entering file showed any tendency to press and hurry, and thus pa.s.sed us through by small divisions, so that there was no unseemly struggling on the succession of bare, plain stairways that led to the upper galleries.

For "public service in the royal chapel," I was now to discover, does not mean that the public is admitted to the chapel itself. This is small, but very Spanish, with profusion of gilding, imposing altar, and frescoed saints, the characteristic splendor being tempered with a no less characteristic gloom, an effect enhanced by austere columns of gray marble. On days of public service, which are usually high feast days, three long galleries, forming three sides of a great quadrangle, are traversed by the court in pa.s.sing from the royal rooms to the chapel door, and it is to these galleries only that the public is admitted. On such occasions the gallery walls are hung with richly colored tapestries from the magnificent collection of eight hundred pieces that enriches the royal _Tapiceria_.

The instant I crossed the threshold these tapestries blazed upon the eye, so dazzling in their beauty that it was difficult to grasp the general situation. Civil Guards, in gala uniform, each armed with a pike taller than himself, were stationed at intervals of about six feet all along these tapestried walls, holding the carpeted way open for the pa.s.sage of the royal and ecclesiastical party. The public hastened to fill in the s.p.a.ces left between the guards, so that when the dignitaries paced the length of the three galleries, they walked between continuous human lines of mingled soldiery and spectators. We were of various ages, sizes, colors, and quite as picturesque, take it all in all, as the slowly stepping group on which our eyes were focussed.

A division of the royal escort, marching with drawn swords, preceded the Queen Regent, a slight and elegant figure in white and heliotrope, her mantilla pinned with diamonds. She walked in royal solitude, with a bearing of majesty and grace, but her face had a hard and almost sour look, which of itself might account for her unpopularity. The King and the younger Infanta did not take part in the day's ceremony, but the Princess of Asturias followed her mother, a fresh-faced girl, charmingly dressed in white and blue, with pearls and turquoises. A respectful step or two in the rear of her niece, yet at her side rather than behind, came in rich green silk adorned with emeralds the stout, gray-puffed, easy-going Infanta Isabel, her broad, florid face beaming with affability. The guards had pa.s.sed stern word down the line for all hats to be off, but there was no sign of greeting, so far as I saw, from the spectators to the royal party, except as now and then some happy Spaniard bowed him to the dust in acknowledgment of a nod, as familiar as a wink, from this popular Infanta.

The occasion of this stately function was the elevation of the Papal Nuncio to the rank of cardinal. He pa.s.sed in all priestly magnificence of vestments and jewels, his red hat borne before him on a cus.h.i.+on. He was attended by the chief clerics of Court and capital, but even these gorgeous personages were outshone by the military and naval officers, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s were a mosaic of medals, and whose headgear such erections of vainglory as to hush the crested c.o.c.katoo with shame. The Gentlemen of the Palace, too, were such peac.o.c.ks in their glittering coats of many colors, their plumes and sashes, gold lace and silver lace, that the plump Ladies in Waiting, for all their pride of velvet, satin, and brocade, looked like mere hens in the wake of strutting chanticleers.

The American mind is ill prepared to do homage to the dress parades of European courts, and I laid by the memory to laugh over when I should have reached a place and hour where laughter would be inoffensive. As the Diplomatic Corps, in its varied costumes, came trooping on, twice a whisper ran along the gazing lines. "The Turk!" and the traditional enemy of Spain limped smilingly past, a bent, shrewd-faced old Mussulman, whose Oriental finery was topped by the red fez. "The Yankee!" and Spain's latest adversary strode by in the person of the newly arrived United States Minister, decorously arrayed in dress suit and a Catholic expression.

The chapel doors closed on this haughty train, and we, the invited public, cheerily proceeded to pa.s.s a social hour or two in chat and promenade and in contemplation of the tapestries. Even the Civil Guards unbent, dancing their babies, lending their pikes to delighted urchins, and raising forbidden curtains to give their womenkind furtive peeps into the royal apartments. Most astonis.h.i.+ng was the maltreatment of those priceless tapestries. Small boys, unrebuked, played at hide and seek under the heavy folds, old men traced the patterns with h.o.r.n.y fingers, and the roughest fellows from the streets lounged stupidly against them, rubbing dirty-jacketed shoulders over the superb coloring. The most splendid series displayed was from a master-loom of the Netherlands, ill.u.s.trating the conquest of Tunis by Charles V--marvellously vivid scenes, where one beholds the spread of mighty camps, the battle shock of great armies and navies, and, like shrill chords of pain in some wild harmony, the countless individual tragedies of war. The scimitar of the Turk flashes down on the Spanish neck, while the upturned eyes are still too fierce for terror; the turbaned chief leans from his gold-wrought saddle to scan the severed heads that two blood-stained sons of the prophet are emulously holding up to his survey, hoping to recognize in those ghastly faces enemies of rank; white-robed women on the strand, their little ones clinging to their knees, reach arms of helpless anguish toward the smitten galley of their lords, who are leaping into the waves for refuge from the Christian cannonade.

I wondered how the Turkish Minister liked those tapestries, as his stooped-back Excellency pa.s.sed in conference with a Chinese mandarin, who must have studied his costume from a teacup. For we had all been hustled into rows again to make that human lane through which the Royalties and the Reverends returned from their devotions. I was facing a quaint old tapestry of Christ enthroned in glory, with the beasts of the Apocalypse climbing over Him like pet kittens, and this so distracted my attention that I omitted to ask the amiable Infanta Isabel, who would, I am sure, have told anybody anything, what had taken place. But I read it all in the _Epocha_ that evening--how her Majesty with her own august hands had fitted the red hat to the Nuncio's tonsured head, and how the new-made cardinal had addressed her in a grateful oration, praising her virtues as manifested in "the double character of queen and mother, an example rich in those peculiar gifts by which your Royal Grace has won the veneration and love of the n.o.ble and chivalrous Spanish people, the especial affection of the Father of the Faithful, and the respect and sympathy of all the world." For her and for the youthful monarch of Spain he invoked the favor of Heaven, and uttered a fervent hope that the cup of bitterness which this most Catholic nation had bowed herself to drink might be blessed to her in a renewal of strength and a reconquest of her ancient preeminence among the peoples of the earth.

The most significant expression of "new Spain" that I encountered in Madrid was a ma.s.s meeting--a rare and novel feature in Spanish public life. I blundered upon it as foolishly as one well could. The second day of July was the first anniversary of the founding of a daring Madrid weekly, the _Vida Nueva_, to which, attracted by its literary values, as well as its political courage, I had subscribed. The sheet is usually issued Sunday, but as I was on the point of going out one Sat.u.r.day afternoon my _Vida Nueva_ arrived, accompanied by two non-committal tickets. They gave entrance to the _Fronton Central_, "only that and nothing more." I called one of the pretty senoritas of the household into council, and she sagely decided that these were tickets to _pelota_, the Basque ball game, played in one or another of the various Madrid halls almost every summer afternoon. It seemed a little too considerate in the _Vida Nueva_ to provide for the recreation of its subscribers, but I was growing accustomed to surprises of Spanish courtesy, and tucked the tickets away in a safe corner. The folded newspaper rustled and whispered, and finally fluttered to my feet, but I was eager to be off, and, after the blind fas.h.i.+on of mortals, put it by.

It was my privilege to dine that day with two compatriots, and one of these, who knows and loves Spain better than many Spaniards do, began at once to tell me of that most unusual occurrence, a Madrid ma.s.s meeting, to take place this very evening. Of course we resolved to go, although my friend's husband was not in the city, and no other escort would countenance so harebrained an expedition. For the street to which this valiant lady led the way was choked with a flood of men surging toward an open door. The hall for the "meeting," a word which the Spanish language has fully adopted, was the _Fronton Central_, and admission was by ticket. Light dawned on my dim wits, and, while my two companions, with dignified and tranquil mien, stood themselves up against the outer wall, I besought a leisurely cabman, who insisted on waiting to pick up a little ragam.u.f.fin clamoring for a ride, to drive me in hot haste to my domicile. Here I searched out the tickets, put away only too carefully, and took a fleeting glance at the _Vida Nueva_, which urged all "men of heart" to celebrate the eve of its anniversary by their presence at this ma.s.s meeting.

I had not realized that there were so many men of heart in Madrid. The street on my return was worse than before. The cabman objected strenuously to leaving us in these tempestuous surroundings, and, since there were only two tickets, we two elders of the trio agreed that the American girl was all too young for such an escapade, and forthwith despatched her, under his fatherly care, to the hotel. Then came the tug of war. We saw men fighting fiercely about the door, we heard the loud bandying of angry words, we were warned again and again that we could never get through the jam, we were told that, tickets or no tickets, ladies would not, could not, and should not be admitted; it was darkly hinted that, before the evening was over, there would be wild and b.l.o.o.d.y work within those walls. But we noticed a few other women in the throng, and decided, from moment to moment, to wait a little longer, and see what happened next. Meanwhile, we were almost unjostled in the midst of that excited, struggling crowd, often catching the words: "Stand back there! Don't press on the ladies!

Leave room!" And when it came to the final dash we had well-nigh a clear pa.s.sage. Our tickets gave access only to the floor of a big, oblong hall, closely packed with a standing ma.s.s of some ten thousand men; but a debonair personage in authority conducted us, with more chivalry than justice, to the reserved boxes in the gallery, where we occupied perfect seats,--for which other people probably held tickets,--in the front row, overlooking all the house.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIA SANTISIMA]

So much for Spanish indulgence to audacious womenfolk. But as to the meeting itself, what was it all about? In Spain one word suffices for an answer. _Montjuich_ has become a Liberal rallying cry, although the movement is not bound in by party lines. It is the Dreyfus _affaire_ in a Spanish edition. The _Castello de Montjuich_ is a strong fortress, with large magazines and quarters for ten thousand soldiers.

It is built on a commanding height, the old Mountain of the Jews, just outside Barcelona, and has again and again suffered bombardment and storm. But in this latest a.s.sault on Montjuich the weapons are words that burn and pens keener than swords. It was on the seventh of June, 1896, that the famous bomb was exploded in Barcelona. It was taken for an Anarchist outrage, and over two hundred men, including teachers, writers, and labor leaders, were arrested on suspicion. Nearly two months pa.s.sed, and, despite the offer of tempting rewards, no trace of the culprits had been found. In the Fortress of Montjuich the guards deputed to watch the prisoners, acting more or less under superior authority, which itself may have been influenced by Jesuit suggestion, began on the fourth of August to inflict tortures upon the accused for the purpose of extracting evidence. The trials were by military procedure, power sat in the seat of justice, and innocent men, it is believed, were condemned on the strength of those forced confessions--mere a.s.sents, wrung from them by bodily agony, to whatever their guards might dictate. But many persisted in denial, and in course of time a number were released, maimed, in certain cases, for life. Others were shot, and a score still lay in prison. The fortress dungeons are deep and dark, but little by little the cries and groans of the "martyrs of Montjuich" penetrated the dull stone and sounded throughout Spain.

On the fourteenth of May, last year, the _Vida Nueva_, this bold young periodical in the van of the Liberal cause, brought out an ill.u.s.trated number devoted to "The Torments of Montjuich." Other periodicals sprang to its support and kept the Government busy with denunciations, while they vehemently called for a revision of the judicial process, with the hope of releasing the men still under sentence and clearing the names of those who had perished. Ma.s.s meetings to urge such revision, which could be accorded only by vote of the Cortes, were held in Barcelona, Saragossa, Valencia, Santander, and other princ.i.p.al cities, all demanding revision in the sacred names of patriotism, humanity, and justice.

Our Madrid ma.s.s meeting was of chief consequence in impressing the Government with the weight of popular opinion. The swaying mult.i.tude was called to order at quarter of ten by Senor Ca.n.a.lejas, who introduced a notable array of speakers. There were representatives of labor, of republicanism, of the press, a Catalan charged with a greeting from Barcelona, the champion of Spanish Socialism, Pablo Iglesias by name, and great men of the nation, Azcarate, Moret, and Salmeron. Spanish eloquence at its best thrills the blood to wine, and the swift succession of orators, fourteen all told, played on the vast audience like master artists on a murmurous organ. Yet there was no disorder. A generous and grateful hearing was accorded the Count of Las Almenas, who frankly declared himself a conservative in politics and an apostolic Roman Catholic in religion, but in the name of both these creeds a lover of justice and humanity. Since for these he ever held himself ready to do battle in the Cortes, he gave the meeting his pledge that he would support Azcarate in the motion for revision.

But the wrath and grief of the audience could hardly be controlled when one of the released prisoners took the platform to recount the horrors of Montjuich. He told of dungeons with earth floor and one grated window, of savage guards determined to gain the crosses and pensions promised to those who should extract evidence. He told how the helpless captives, weakened by confinement, were tortured with cords, whips, sleeplessness, hunger, and thirst. Bound as they were, water was held before their parched mouths, with the sinister words, "Confess what we bid you, and you shall drink." When the famished men begged for food, they were answered with the lash, or, more fiendishly, with shreds of salt codfish, which increased their thirst a hundred fold. One man in his desperation sprang to the lamp and quaffed the dirty oil. They licked the moisture from their dungeon walls. They thrust white tongues through the grating to catch the drops of rain. Soon the guards proceeded to more violent torments, wrenching, burning, and probing the quivering flesh with a devilish ingenuity of torture, making a derisive sport of their atrocious work.

One of the victims went mad while undergoing torture by compression of the head. Others, on hearing the coming steps of the guards, strove to escape their cruel hands by suicide. One drank a bowl of disinfectant found in his cell, one beat his forehead against the wall, one strove to drive a rusted nail into his heart.

It was a frightful tale to hear. I looked across the hall to where a Spanish flag was hung. Yellow wax is funeral wax, and Alarcon, who sees in yellow a symbol of death and of decay, laments that it is the color of half the Spanish banner. "_Ay de la bandera espanola!_" But surely there is hope for Spain, while she has sons who, in grasp of a military tyranny which has rendered such crimes possible, contend in open field for the overthrow of the "black Spain" of the Inquisition, and still bear heart of hope for a white, regenerated Spain, where religion shall include the love of man.

XV

THE PATRON SAINT OF MADRID

"Labre, cultive, cogi Con piedad, con fe, con celo, Tierras, virtudes y cielo."

Spain seems actually skied over with the wings of guardian angels. The traditional tutelar of the nation, Santiago, counts for less, especially in the south and centre of the Peninsula, than might be expected, and was long since officially superseded by the Virgin; but cities, hamlets, families, individuals, all have their protecting saints. Some are martyrs, some bishops, some apostles, while Cordova rests secure beneath the s.h.i.+ning plumes of the angel Raphael. Towns and townlets hold festivals for their celestial patrons, honoring them with fairs, horse-races, processions, dances, and whatsoever else may be appropriate to the season and characteristic of the locality, as ball games, bull-fights, or even a miracle play. Only Seville, mirth-loving Seville, who makes holiday on the slightest provocation, can never invite her two beautiful guardians, Santa Justa and Santa Rufina, to a jubilee. These holy maidens used to keep a pottery booth in Triana, now the gypsy quarter of the city, where, refusing to wors.h.i.+p the Roman Venus, they won the crown of martyrdom. But their industrious habits cling to them still, and, by night and by day, while the centuries pa.s.s, they uphold the Giralda. An anointed vision, like Murillo's, may see their graceful forms hovering in mid-air on either side of the famous tower, which their strong brown arms hold firm even in tempests. If the ladies should let go, the Giralda would fall, and so the Sevillians are driven to the ungallant course of ignoring these really useful patrons and gadding off to adjacent towns whose saints are at leisure to be entertained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SPANISH MONK]

By the eternal contradiction that prevails in all things Spanish, it has come to pa.s.s that Madrid, the elegant capital and royal residence, is under the guardians.h.i.+p of a peasant saint. Here, in the eleventh century, Isidro was born, say the priests, of poor but Catholic parents. If not precisely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, he was next door to that humble estate, being a digger of wells and cellars. He dug with such piety that G.o.d aided him by miracles, causing troublesome rocks to melt like wax at the touch of his spade, and springs of healing water to leap in the pits of his fas.h.i.+oning. He was a tiller of the ground, besides, a hireling farm servant, whose agricultural methods, though seemingly irregular, caused his master's granaries to overflow. As he went to the fields in the fresh spring mornings, the young Isidro would scatter handfuls of seed for the birds, saying, "Eat, G.o.d's little birds, for when our Lord looks forth in dawn, He looks upon us all." And as he dropped the wheat and barley in the furrows, ever he murmured, "This for G.o.d, and this for us; this for the birds, and this for the ants." "For the ants, too?" mockingly asked the rustics who planted beside him, but Isidro steadfastly replied, "For the ants, too, since they are G.o.d's ants, and His royal bounty is for all His household." No wonder that the Almighty had Isidro's fields in special charge, sending sun and rain in due season that the harvest might suffice for every claimant. Such divine care was the more necessary, because this dreamy plough-boy spent most of his time in the churches, or on his knees in the shadow of the fruit trees, until his profane companions called him Lazybones.

Isidro was no effective patron of Madrid as yet, but ran away from the Moors, when they invaded the city, finding farm service in a neighboring village. Here he married a maiden whose lovely soul, according to Lope de Vega, shone through her guileless face like a painting through its gla.s.s. She was no less devout than her husband, and went every evening to trim the altar in a lonely shrine of the Virgin. There was a stream to be crossed on the way, and in times of freshet Our Lady would appear in person and lead her by the hand over the tops of the waves. Such dainty stepping as it must have been! And once, when Isidro accompanied his wife, they both crossed in a boat suddenly improvised from her mantilla, which was not a thread the worse for the experience.

The miracle-working power that developed in San Isidro was first exercised, as became a farmer, on suffering beasts and bad weather.

His early influence over water grew more and more p.r.o.nounced, rain refres.h.i.+ng the thirsty fields at his bidding, and medicinal fountains gus.h.i.+ng from rocks at the stroke of his hoe. And when, one suns.h.i.+ny morning, his wife let their baby boy slip from her arms into the depths of the well and ran in distress to her husband, the saint, who for once was working on the farm, did not scold her, as the priestly authors seem to think would have been the natural course, but calmly said, "My sister, what is there to cry about?" And when, after a season of prayer, these exemplary parents proceeded to the well, its waters had risen to the brink, lifting the little John, as on a silver-tissue cus.h.i.+on, safe to their embrace. Isidro still retained his youthful peculiarities as a laborer, often praying all day long in the churches, while his yoke of oxen did the ploughing just as well without him. On one occasion, when he arrived too late for ma.s.s, the gates of heaven opened to his vision, as he knelt before the closed church door, and he was permitted to witness a celestial ma.s.s, where Christ was both priest and wafer, with choirs of angels chanting the holy service. Even his charities cost him little, for when the _olla_ of vegetables and fish, that his wife made every Sat.u.r.day for the poor, had all been eaten, a word from Isidro was enough to replenish the pot. If he emptied his sack of corn on the snow for a flock of hungry pigeons, the sack was full when he reached the mill; and when he threshed his master's wheat a second and a third time for the beggars, the very chaff turned into golden grain.

His best quality, which almost makes his cult desirable in Spain, continued to be his love for animals, especially for birds. These sang their sweetest songs as he pa.s.sed by, and often flew down from the poplar branches to brush their little wings against his blouse. And he, who had raised his master's daughter from the dead, did not disdain to work miracles of healing and of life on maltreated horses.

Madrid would do well to give her guardian saint a season ticket to the bull-ring. Even the despised and cudgelled a.s.s had a share in his protection. A sacrilegious wolf that thought to make a meal of Isidro's donkey, left to graze outside a church where the saint had gone to pray, was struck dead--perhaps by the donkey's heels. This kindly rustic, who had separated from his wife for greater sanct.i.ty, died on St. Andrew's Day and was buried in the cemetery of St.

Andrew's Church in Madrid. Such sepulture was not to his liking, and twice his ghost appeared to ask that the body might be removed to the church, as was presently done, all the bells of St. Andrew's ringing of their own accord to give it welcome. The tomb immediately began to work miracles, and Isidro became such a favorite with the people that when, in 1212, a shepherd guided Alfonso VIII, lost with his vanguard in the wild pa.s.ses of the Sierra Morena, to the great battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, where the armies of the Holy Cross broke forever the dominion of the Moors in Central Spain, nothing would do but the story that this shepherd was Isidro himself. Above the tomb of the saint a chapel was erected, perhaps by Alfonso, perhaps by _Isabel la Catolica_. There seems to be a conflict of authorities here, but all testimonies agree that the angels used to come down and sing in the chapel Sat.u.r.day afternoons.

Madrid formally accepted Isidro as patron in the summer of 1232, when the labors of the husbandmen, on the point of peris.h.i.+ng from drought, were saved by the body of the Holy Peasant, which, borne in priestly procession, called down floods of rain; but it was not until the times of Philip III, some four centuries later, that the actual canonization of Isidro was granted by Rome. On May 15, 1620, the _Plaza Mayor_, that handsome square which has been the theatre of so many tournaments, executions, and _autos de fe_, the scene, two years later, of the beatification of Loyola, was inaugurated by a splendid festival in honor of San Isidro. From that day to this his wors.h.i.+p has not waned. The miracle-working bones, which were carried to the bitter death-bed of Philip III, and comforted the pa.s.sing of the great and generous spirit of Charles III, are still held to be more potent than physicians. Churches, oratories, and chapels have been built to him all over the Peninsula, the Franciscan Friars founded a convent of San Isidro in Rome, and his name is a part of our new geography lesson in the Antilles and the Philippines. Only four years ago his urn was borne in penitential procession through Madrid, with double supplications for rain on the parched country, and for a swift and happy ending of the Cuban war. All priestly, military, civic, and governmental pomp went to make up that stately escort, the ladies of Madrid showering the train as it pa.s.sed beneath their balconies with flowers, poems, and _confetti_. The saint did what he could. The procession had been so skilfully timed that the rains began that very night, but the Cuban war was a matter out of his province. His dealings had always been with water, not with blood.

There is significance in this devotion of proud Castile to San Isidro.

Spain is essentially as democratic as America. Her proverbs tell the story: "Many a man gets to heaven in tow breeches;" "Do what your master bids you, and sit down with him at table;" "n.o.body is born learned, and even bishops are made of men;" "Since I am a man I may come to be Pope;" "The corpse of the Pope takes no more ground than that of the sacristan;" "Every man is the son of his own works."

"Said the leaf to the flower: 'O fie!

You put on airs indeed!

But we sprang, both you and I, From the selfsame little brown seed.'"

Pedler, porter, beggar treat you as social equals and expect a full return of courtesy. It is told in Madrid how a great diplomatic personage not long ago was eating his picnic luncheon in a hired carriage. The driver, lunching also, leaned back from his seat, clinked gla.s.ses, and drank the gentleman's health. The dignitary glared with astonishment and wrath. "Man! I am the Imperial Amba.s.sador of Nation So-and-So." "What of it?" returned the driver, taking another bite of his peppery Spanish sausage; "I am the Head Hostler of Stables Such-and-Such."

Again and again, in recent times as in ancient, have the rank and file of the Spanish nation a.s.serted their dignity of manhood. An edict of Charles III, forbidding the Madrilenos to m.u.f.fle themselves in their beloved long cloaks and hide their faces under their big slouch hats, raised a furious riot in the capital. Should a king dictate the fas.h.i.+on of a man's garments? And when the stupid weakness of Charles IV and the baseness of his son Fernando had delivered Spain over to Napoleon, when French armies held her fortresses, and Murat, with twenty-five thousand troops, ruled Madrid by logic of steel and iron, it was the Spanish people who, from Asturias to Andalusia, sprang to the defence of a country abandoned by princes, councils, and grandees. The Spanish people, not the Spanish n.o.bles, preserved the independence of the nation and actually broke the career of the Corsican conqueror. The Italian king, Amadeo, so much better than his fortunes, was welcomed at Valencia in 1871 with simple verses, spoken by a child, that breathe even from their opening stanza this native spirit of democracy:--

"The High Lord of the Heavens Created men one day, All mortal and all equal, All shapen out of clay; For G.o.d recked not of nations, Of white and black and brown, But on His human children Impartially looked down."

It is not then so strange as it appears at first hearing that a Piers Plowman should be patron of Madrid.

From Alfonso VIII to Alfonso XIII, a matter of some seven centuries, Isidro has been in high repute with royalty. The "Catholic Kings" made him rich gifts; Philip II, bigot of bigots, cherished an especial veneration for the ghostly protector who had brought his delicate childhood safely through smallpox and epileptic seizures; the pa.s.sion-wasted Philip IV did him public homage; Charles the Bewitched made a solemn progress to his shrine to thank him for recovery from illness; even the bright young Bourbon, Philip V, had scarcely arrived in Madrid before he hastened to wors.h.i.+p the efficacious body of San Isidro. The urn has been opened at intervals to give their successive Majesties of Spain the grewsome joy of gazing on the bones, and it has been the peculiar privilege of Spanish queens, on such occasions, to renew the costly cerements. The devotion of the present regent to these relics keeps pace with that of her predecessors.

Where royalty leads, aristocracy is swift to follow, and Isidro has a gorgeous wardrobe of embroidered standards, palls, canopies, burial cloths, and everything that a skeleton could require, but "for a' that and a' that" the laboring people of Castile never forget that the Canonized Farmer especially belongs to them. His fortnight-long _fiesta_ is the May outing of the rustic population all about Madrid.

We will start on this pilgrimage from the _Puerta del Sol_, because everything in Madrid starts from the _Puerta del Sol_. From this great open parallelogram in the centre of the city, surrounded by lofty hotels and Government buildings, bordered with shops and cafes, brightened with fountains, thronged with trams, carriages, people, always humming with voices, always surging with movement, run ten of the princ.i.p.al streets of the capital. The _Alcala_, most fas.h.i.+onable of promenades, and _San Jeronimo_, beloved of wealthy shoppers, conduct to the n.o.ble reaches of parks and _paseos_ in the east; the handsome _Arenal_ and historic _Calle Mayor_ lead west to the royal palace, with its extensive gardens known as the _Campo del Moro_; _Montera_, with two less elegant avenues, points to the north, where one may find the university, the Protestant churches, and the tragic site of the _Quemadero_; and three corresponding streets open the way to the south, with its factories, hospitals, old churches, and world-famed _Rastro_, or rag fair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SEVILLE STREET]

But during the early days of the _Romeria_, which begins on May 15, all the throbbing tide of life pours toward the southwest, for the goal of the pilgrimage, the Hermitage of San Isidro, built over one of his miraculous wells by the empress of Charles I, in grat.i.tude for a cure experienced by her august husband after drinking of the waters, stands on the farther bank of the Manzanares. The trams, literally heaped with clinging humanity, pa.s.s out by the _Calle Mayor_ and cross the _Plaza Mayor_. The innumerable 'buses and cabs make a shorter cut, but all varieties of vehicle are soon wedged together in the broad thoroughfare of Toledo. Here we pa.s.s the big granite church of San Isidro el Real, once in possession of the Jesuits, but on their expulsion from Spain, in 1767, consecrated to the Santo Labrador. His body was borne thither, with all solemn ceremonial, from the chapel in St. Andrew's; and his poor wife, who had also been sainted, by a courteous Spanish afterthought, under the attractive t.i.tle of _Maria de la Cabeza_, Mary of the Head, was allowed to lay her celebrated skull beneath the same roof,--a greater liberty than he had permitted her during the latter half of their earthly lives. The Madrid Cathedral, hard by the royal palace, is still in slow process of building, the work being hampered and delayed for lack of funds, although her Majesty sets a devout example by contributing $300 a month. Meanwhile, San Isidro el Real serves as the cathedral church of the diocese.