Spanish Highways and Byways Part 18

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.

XIX

THE TERCENTENARY OF VELaZQUEZ

"It is a sombre and a weeping sky That lowers above thee now, unhappy Spain; Thy 'scutcheon proud is dashed with dimming rain; Uncertain is thy path and deep thy sigh.

All that is mortal pa.s.ses; glories die; This hour thy destiny allots thee pain; But for the worker of thy woes remain Those retributions slowly forged on high.

"Put thou thy hope in G.o.d; what once thou wert Thou yet shalt be by labor of thy sons Patient and true, with purpose to atone; And though the laurels of the loud-voiced guns Are not with us to-day, this balms our hurt-- Cervantes and Velazquez are our own."

--DUKE OF RIVAS: _For the Tercentenary_.

The celebration, as planned, was comparatively simple, but enthusiasm grew with what it fed upon. The Knights of Santiago held the first place upon the programme, for into that high and exclusive order the artist had won entry by special grace of Philip IV. Even Spain has been affected by the modern movement for the destruction of traditions, and certain erudite meddlers, who have been delving in the State archives, declare that there is no truth in the following story, which, nevertheless, everybody has to tell.

The legend runs that Velazquez became a knight of St. James by a royal compliment to the painter of _Las Meninas_. This picture, which seems no picture, but life itself, eternizes a single instant of time in the palace of Philip IV, that one instant before the fingers of the little Infanta have curved about the cup presented by her kneeling maid, before the great, tawny, half-awakened hound has decided to growl remonstrance under the teasing foot of the dwarf, before the reflected faces of king and queen have glided from the mirror, that fleeting instant while yet the courtier, pa.s.sing down the gallery into the garden, turns on the threshold for a farewell smile, while yet the green velvet sleeve of the second dwarf, ugliest of all pet monsters, brushes the fair silken skirts of the daintiest of ladies-in-waiting, while yet the artist, so much more royal than royalty, flashes his dark-eyed glance upon the charming group.

But if Velazquez looks prouder than a king, Philip proved himself here no uninspired painter. Asked if he found the work complete, the monarch shook his head, and, catching up the brush, marked the red cross of St. James on the pictured breast of the artist. So says the old wives' tale. At all events, in this way or another, the honor was conferred, with the result that on the three hundredth birthday of Velazquez, June 6, 1899, dukes and counts and marquises flocked to the Church of _Las Senoras Comendadoras_, where the antique Gregorian ma.s.s was chanted for the repose of their comrade's soul.

By the latest theology, the "Master of all Good Workmen" would not have waited for this ill.u.s.trious requiem before admitting the painter to "an aeon or two" of rest, but the Knights of Santiago have not yet accepted Kipling as their Pope.

On the afternoon of the same day the _Sala de Velazquez_ was inaugurated in the _Museo del Prado_, taking, with additions, the room formerly known as the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_, long the _Salon Carre_ of Madrid, where Raphaels, t.i.tians, Del Sartos, Durers, Van Dycks, Correggios, and Rembrandts kept the Spanish Masters company.

Portico and halls were adorned in honor of the occasion; the bust of Velazquez, embowered in laurels, myrtles, and roses, was placed midway in the Long Gallery, fronting the door of his own demesne; but the crown of the _fiesta_ consisted in the new and far superior arrangement of his pictures. The royal family and chief n.o.bility, the Ministers of Government, the Diplomatic Corps, and delegations of foreign artists made a brilliant gathering. The address, p.r.o.nounced by an eminent critic, reviewed what are known as the three styles of Velazquez. Never was art lecture more fortunate, for this _Museo_, holding as it does more than half the extant works of the great realist, with nearly all his masterpieces, enabled the speaker to ill.u.s.trate every point from the original paintings. A rain of aristocratic poems followed, for a Spaniard is a lyrist born, and turns from prose to verse as easily as he changes his cuffs. As Monipodio says, in one of Cervantes' "Exemplary Tales": "A man has but to roll up his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, set well to work, and he may turn off a couple of thousand verses in the snapping of a pair of scissors."

These Dukes of Parna.s.sus and Counts of Helicon did homage to the painter in graceful stanzas, not without many an allusion to Spain's troubled present. If only, as one sonneteer suggested, the soldiers of _Las Lanzas_ had marched out from their great gilt frame and gone against the foe! A programme of old-time music was rendered, and therewith the _Sala de Velazquez_ was declared open.

To this, as to all galleries and monuments under State control, the public was invited free of charge for the week to come. The response was appreciative, gentility, soldiery, ragam.u.f.fins, bevies of schoolgirls with notebooks, and families of foreigners with opera gla.s.ses grouping themselves in picturesque variety, day after day, before the art treasures of Madrid, while beggars sat in joyful squads on the steps of the museums, collecting the fees which the doorkeepers refused.

During these seven days, artistic and social festivals in honor of Velazquez abounded, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain. Palma must needs get up, with photographs and the like, a Velazquez exposition, and Seville, insisting on her mother rights, must arrange a belated funeral, with ma.s.s and sermon and a tomb of laurels and flowers, surmounted by brushes, palette, and the cloak and helmet of the Order of Santiago. In the capital the _Circulo de Bellas Artes_ sumptuously breakfasted the artists from abroad. The dainties were spiced with speeches, guitars, ballet, gypsy songs and dances, congratulatory telegrams, and a letter posted from Parna.s.sus by Don Diego himself. Two valuable new books on Velazquez suddenly appeared in the shop windows, and such periodicals as _La Il.u.s.tracion_, _Blanco y Negro_, _La Vida Literaria_, and _El Nuevo Mundo_ vied with one another in ill.u.s.trated numbers, while even the one-cent dailies came out with specials devoted to Velazquez biography and criticism. The Academy of San Fernando rendered a musical programme of Velazquez date, the Queen Regent issued five hundred invitations to an orchestral concert in the Royal Palace, and there was talk, which failed to fructify, of a grand masquerade ball, where the costumes should be copied from the Velazquez paintings and the dances should be those stepped by the court of Philip IV.

The closing ceremony of the week was the unveiling of the new statue of Velazquez. Paris owes to Fremiot an equestrian statue of the painter, who, like Shakespeare in his Paris statue, is made to look very like a Frenchman, but the horse is of the most spirited Spanish type. A younger Velazquez may be seen in Seville, at home among the orange trees, and the _Palacio de la Biblioteca y Museos Nacionales_ in Madrid shows a statue from the hand of Garcia. Still another, an arrogant, striding figure, was standing in the studio of Benlliure, ready for its journey to the Paris exposition. The tercentenary statue, by Marinas, is also true to that haughty look of Velazquez. It represents him seated, brush and palette in hand, the winds lifting from his ears those long, cl.u.s.tering falls of hair, as if to let him hear the praises of posterity. Little he cares for praises! That artist's look sees nothing but his task.

The unveiling took place late on Wednesday afternoon, in front of the _Museo del Prado_, where the statue stands. A turquoise sky and a light breeze put all the world in happy humor. The long facade of the _Museo_ was hung with beautiful tapestries. Handsome medallions bore the names of painters a.s.sociated in one way or another with Velazquez--Herrera el Viejo, his first master in Seville; Pacheco, his second Sevillian teacher and his father-in-law; Luis Tristan of Toledo, for whom he had an enthusiastic admiration; El Greco, that startling mannerist, whose penetrating portraiture of faces, even whose extraordinary effects in coloring were not without influence on the younger man; Zurbaran, his almost exact contemporary, enamored no less than Velazquez himself of the new realism emanating from the great and terrible Ribera; Murillo, whose developing genius the favored Court painter, too high-hearted for envy, protected and encouraged, and Alonzo Cano, the impetuous artist of Granada, to whom, too, Velazquez was friend and benefactor.

Spanish colors and escutcheons were everywhere. In decorated tribunes sat the royal family and the choicest of Madrid society, with the members of the _Circulo de Bellas Artes_, who were the hosts of the day, and with distinguished guests from the provinces and abroad.

Romero Robledo, as President of the Society of Fine Arts, welcomed the Queen, closing his brief address with the following words: "Never, senora, will your exalted sentiments be able to blend with those of the Spanish people in n.o.bler hour than this, commemorating him who is forever a living national glory and who receives enthusiastic testimony of admiration from all the civilized world." Their Majesties drew upon the cords, the two silken banners parted, and the statue was revealed to the applauding mult.i.tude. While the royal group congratulated the sculptor, the amba.s.sadors of Austria and Germany laid magnificent wreaths, fas.h.i.+oned with a due regard to the colors of their respective nations, at the feet of Velazquez. The eminent French artists, Carolus Duran and Jean Paul Laurens, bore a crown from France and delighted the audience by declaring that "the painter of the Spanish king was himself the king of painters." Nothing since the war had gladdened Spain more than the presence and praises of these two famous Parisians; the reverence of Madrid for Paris is profound. The tributes of Rome and London excited far less enthusiasm. Still more wreaths, and more and more, were deposited by a procession of delegates from the art societies of all Spain, headed by Seville, the bands playing merrily meanwhile, until that stately form of bronze seemed to rise from out a hill of laurels, ribbons, and flowers.

This is the first Velazquez celebration which has had universal recognition. The painter was hardly known to Europe at large until the day of Fernando VII, who was induced by his art-loving wife, Isabel of Braganza, to send the pictures from the royal palaces, all those acc.u.mulated treasures of the Austrian monarchs, to the empty building, designed for a natural history museum, in the _Prado_. This long, low edifice is now one of the most glorious shrines of art in the world.

It is a collection of masterpieces, showing the splendors that are rather than the processes by which they came to be. There is only one Fra Angelico, but there are ten Raphaels and four times as many t.i.tians. In the Netherlands, no less than in Italy, the Spanish sway gathered rich spoils. There are a score of Van Dycks, threescore of those precious little canvases by Teniers, while as for Rubens, he blazes in some sixty-four Christian saints, heathen G.o.ddesses, and human sinners, all with a strong family resemblance. But although the Italian and Flemish schools are so magnificently represented, the wealth of Spanish painting is what overwhelms the visitor. Here are four rooms filled with the works of Goya--whose bones, by the way, arrived in Madrid from France for final sepulture a few days before the celebration. Little more heed was paid to this advent than to that of the United States amba.s.sador, who, it may be noted, was not presented to the Queen until the Velazquez jubilee was well over. But as for Goya, this unnoised entry was appropriate enough, for he, whom De Amicis has called "the last flame-colored flash of Spanish genius,"

used, during his later life, to make the long journey from Bordeaux to Madrid every week for no other purpose than to gloat upon the Sunday bull-fight, coming and going without speech or handshake, only a pair of fierce, bloodthirsty eyes. This fiery Aragonese painted bull-fights, battles, executions, and Inquisition tortures with blacks that make one shudder and reds that make one sick. He painted the brutal side of pleasure as well as of pain, filling broad canvases with dancing, feasting peasants--canvases that smell of wine and garlic, and all but send out a roar of drunken song and laughter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GYPSY TENANTS OF AN ARAB PALACE]

Goya lived in the day of Charles IV, whose court painter he was, and against whom this natural caricaturist must have borne a special grudge, so sarcastic are his portraits of the royal family; but his genius is allied to that of Velazquez's powerful contemporary, Ribera.

The _Museo del Prado_ has abundant material for a Ribera _sala_, since it possesses no less than fifty-eight of his works, but the official put in charge of it would probably go mad. The paintings are mercifully scattered and, well for such of us as may be disposed to flight, can be recognized from afar by their dusks and pallors--ascetic faces gleaming out from sable backgrounds, wasted limbs of naked saints tracing livid lines in the gloom of caverns, and, against an atmosphere dark as the frown of G.o.d, the ghastly flesh of tortured martyrs, and dead Christs drooping stiffly to the linen winding-sheet.

One is appalled at the entrance of the Long Gallery by the two vast, confronting canvases of Prometheus, less a t.i.tan than a convulsion of t.i.tanic agony, and of Ixion, crushed not only beneath the wheel, but under that cold, tremendous blackness of h.e.l.l made actual. Far down one side of the hall they stretch, those paintings upon paintings of torment, emaciation, the half-crazed visionary, and the revolting corpse. But there is no escape from Ribera, he who

"tainted His brush with all the blood of all the sainted."