Spanish Highways and Byways Part 16

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.

The daily papers abound in these notices, printed in a variety of types, so as to cover from two to ten square inches, heavily bordered with black, and surmounted, in case of adults, with crosses, and with cherubs' heads for children. I take up a copy of _La Epocha_ and read the following, under a cross: "Third Anniversary. Senorita Dona Francisca Fulana y Tal died the twenty-sixth of June, 1896, at twenty-one years of age. R. I. P. Her disconsolate mother and the rest of the family ask their friends and all pious persons to be so good as to commend her to G.o.d. All the ma.s.ses celebrated to-morrow morning in the Church of San Pascual will be applied to the everlasting rest of the soul of the said senorita. Indulgences are granted in the usual form." It is the third anniversary, too, of a t.i.tled lady, whose "husband, brothers, brothers-in-law, nephews, uncles, cousins, and all who inherit under her will" have ordered ma.s.ses in two churches for the entire day to-morrow, and announce, moreover, that the ecclesiastical authorities grant "one hundred and forty days of indulgence to all the faithful for each ma.s.s that they hear, sacred communion that they devote, or portion of a rosary that they pray for the soul of this most n.o.ble lady."

In the case of another lady of high degree, who died yesterday, "having received the Blessed Sacraments and the benediction of his Holiness," the Nuncio concedes one hundred days of indulgence, the Archbishop of Burgos eighty, and the Bishops of Madrid, Alcala, Cartagena, Leon, and Santander forty each; while a marquis who died a year ago, "Knight of the Ill.u.s.trious Order of the Golden Fleece," is to have ma.s.ses said for his soul in seven churches, not only all through to-morrow, but for the two days following.

May all these rest in peace, and all who mourn for them be comforted!

Yet thought drifts away to the poor and lowly, whose grief cannot find solace in procuring this costly intercession of the Church for the souls they love. It seems hard that the inequalities of life should thus reach out into death and purgatory. We used, during our sojourn in Granada, to meet many pathetic little processions on "The Way of the Dead." Over this hollow road, almost a ravine, the fortress walls, with their crumbling towers, keep guard on the one side, and the terraced gardens of the _Generalife_, with their grand old cypresses, on the other. And here, almost every hour of the day, is climbing a company of four rough men, carrying on their shoulders a cheap coffin, which perhaps a husband follows, or a white-haired father, or, hand in hand, bewildered orphan boys. The road is so steep that often the bearers set their burden down in the shadow of the bank-side, and fling themselves at full length on the ground beside it, thriftily pa.s.sing from man to man the slow-burning wax match for their paper cigarettes. I remember more than one such smoking group, with a solitary mourner, hat in hand and eyes on the coffin, yet he, too, with cigarette in mouth, standing patiently by. All who pa.s.s make the sign of the cross, and even the rudest peasant uncovers his head. Very shortly the bearers may be seen again, coming down the hill at a merry pace, the empty box, with its loose, rattling lid, tilted over the shoulder now of one, now of another; for the children of poverty, who had not chambers of their own nor the dignity of solitude in life, lie huddled in a common pit after death, without coffin-planks to sever dust from dust.

A century ago it was usual to robe the dead in monastic garb, especially in the habit of St. Francis or of the Virgin of Carmen, and within the present generation bodies were borne to the grave on open biers, the bystanders saluting, and bidding them farewell and quiet rest:--

"'Duerme in paz!' dicen los buenos.

'Adios!' dicen los demas."

But now the closed coffin of many colors is in vogue. In the Santiago market we met a cheerful dame with one of these balanced on her head, crying for a purchaser, and up the broad flights of steps to the Bilbao cemetery we saw a stolid-faced young peasant-woman swinging along with a child's white coffin, apparently heavy with the weight of death, poised on the glossy black coils of hair, about which she had twisted a carmine handkerchief.

Very strange is the look of a Spanish cemetery, with its ranges of high, deep walls, wherein the coffins are thrust end-wise, each above each, to the alt.i.tude of perhaps a dozen layers. These cells are sometimes purchased outright, sometimes rented for ten years, or five, or one. When the friends of the quiet tenant pay his dues no longer, forth he goes to the general ditch, _osario comun_, and leaves his room for another. Such wall graves are characteristically Spanish, this mode of burial in the Peninsula being of long antiquity. Yet the rich prefer their own pantheons, sculptured like little chapels, or their own vaults, over which rise tall marbles of every device, the shaft, the pyramid, the broken column; while a poor family, or two or three neighboring households, often make s.h.i.+ft to pay for one large earth grave, in which their dead may at least find themselves among kith and kin. Spanish cemeteries are truly silent cities, with streets upon streets enclosed between these solemn walls, which open out, at intervals, now for the ornamented patios of the rich, now for the dreary squares peopled by the poor. Here in a most aristocratic quarter, shaded by willows, set with marbles, paved with flower beds, sleeps a duke in stately pantheon, which is carved all over with angels, texts, and sacred symbols, still leaving room for medallions boasting his ancestral dignities. A double row of lamps, with gilded, fantastically moulded stands, and with dangling crystals of all colors, leads to the ma.s.sive iron door. What enemy has he now to guard against with that array of bolts and bars? Here are a poet's palms petrified to granite, and here a monument all m.u.f.fled in fresh flowers. Here the magnificent bronze figure of a knight, with sword half drawn, keeps watch beside a tomb, while the grave beyond a rose bush guards as well. And here an imaged Sandalphon holds out open hands, this legend written across his marble scarf, "The tear falleth; the flower fadeth; but G.o.d treasureth the prayer."

There is a certain high-bred reserve about these costly sepulchres, but turning to the walls one comes so face to face with grief as to experience a sense of intrusion. Each cell shows on its sealed door of slate or other stone the name and age of its occupant, and perhaps a sentiment, lettered in gilt or black, as these: "We bear our loss--G.o.d knows how heavily." "Son of my soul." "For thee, that land of larger love; for me, until I find thee there, only the valley of sorrow and the hard hill of hope."

Most of the cells have, too, a gla.s.sed or grated recess in front of this inscription wall, holding tributes or memorials--dried flowers, colored images of saints and angels, crucifixes, and the like.

Sometimes the resurrection symbol of the b.u.t.terfly appears. In the little cemetery at Vigo we noticed that the flower-vases were in form of great blue b.u.t.terflies with scarlet splashes on their wings.

Sometimes there are locks of hair, personal trinkets, and often card or cabinet photographs, whose living look startles the beholder. Out from a wreath of yellow immortelles peeps the plump smile of an old gentleman in modern dress coat; a coquettish lady in tiara and earrings laughs from behind her fan; and a grove of paper shrubbery, where tissue fairies dressed in rose petals dance on the blossoms, half hides the eager face of a Spanish mids.h.i.+pman. Where the photographs have faded and dimmed with time, the effect is less incongruous, if not less pathetic.

The niches of children contain the gayest possible little figures.

Here are china angels in blue frocks, with pink sleeves and saffron pantalets, pink-tipped plumes, and even pink bows in their goldy hair.

Here is a company of tiny Hamlets, quaint dollikins set up in a circle about a small green grave, each with finger on lip, "The rest is silence." Here are two elegant and lazy cherubs, their alabaster chubbiness comfortably bestowed in toy chairs of crimson velvet on each side of an ivory crucifix. And here is a Bethlehem, and here a Calvary, and here the Good Shepherd bearing the lamb in His bosom; and here, in simple, but artistic wood carving, the Christ with open arms, calling to a child on sick-bed to come unto Him, while the mother, prostrate before the holy feet, kisses their shadow. One cannot look for long. It is well to lift the eyes from the niche graves of Granada to the glory of the Sierra Nevada that soars beyond, and turn from the patios of San Isidro to the cheerful picture of Madrid across the Manzanares, even though, prominent in the vista, rises the cupola of _San Francisco el Grande_. This is the National Pantheon, and within, beneath the frescoed dome, all aglow with blue and gold, ma.s.ses are chanted for the dead whom Spain decrees to honor, as, so recently, for Castelar.

Near this church a viaduct, seventy-five feet high, crosses the _Calle de Segovia_; and, despite the tall crooked railings and a constant police patrol, Madrilenos bent on suicide often succeed in leaping over and bruising out their breath on the stones of the street below.

It is a desperate exit. The Seine and Thames lure their daily victims with murmuring sound and the soft, enfolding look of water, but Spaniards who spring from this fatal viaduct see beneath them only the cruel pavement. That life should be harder than stone! And yet the best vigilance of Madrid cannot prevent fresh bloodstains on the _Calle de Segovia_.

Near the cemetery of San Isidro, across the Manzanares, are two other large Catholic burial grounds, and the _Cementerio Ingles_.

"But murderers, atheists, and Protestants are buried way off in the east," said the pretty Spanish girl beside me.

"Oh, let's go there!" I responded, with heretic enthusiasm; but I had reckoned without the cabman, who promptly and emphatically protested.

"That's not a pleasant place for ladies to see. You would better drive in the _Prado_ and _Recoletos_, or in the _Buen Retiro_."

We told him laughingly that he was speaking against his own interests, for the Civil Cemetery was much farther off than the parks. He consulted his dignity and decided to laugh in return.

"It is not of the _pesetas_ I think first when I am driving ladies.

But" (with suave indulgence) "you shall go just where you like."

So in kindness he gathered up his reins and away we clattered sheer across the city. Presently we had left the fountain-cooled squares and animated streets behind, had pa.s.sed even the ugly, sinister _Plaza de Toros_, and outstripped the trolley track; but still the road stretched on, enlivened only by herds of goats and an occasional _venta_, where drivers of mule trains were pausing to wet their dusty throats. We met few vehicles now save the gay-colored hea.r.s.es, and few people except groups of returning mourners, walking in bewildered wise, with stumbling feet.