I HEARD two horrid stories at Granada, which I would not repeat except that I feel some of their truth. We were walking in the town one day, and observing an unusual air of stir and excitement, asked a stander-by what it meant.

The person in question told us that a certain SeÑor, Don So-and-so, had just died, and that as he was a great enemy to the Liberal party, and a great tyrant, there was rejoicing among the people. We were interested in the matter, and talked of it afterwards to an old Granadino, whose acquaintance we had made during our stay, and he more than confirmed the report.

“He was a bad man,” he said, “but of the sangre azul (blue blood), a thorough aristocrat, and very powerful. I could tell you stories of what he did that you would not believe. Oh! the people who have blue blood in their veins can do anything in Spain, I assure you. It is a cosa de EspaÑa. Now just listen to a thing this SeÑor Don L—— did not more than nine years ago. A poor honest man known to me, was taken up accused of committing a theft. He belonged to the Liberal party, and was hated by the blue blood. Well, this man, who is just dead, had him brought into the Plaza de Toos, and tied him up to one of the posts by the hands. ‘Did you or did you not commit this theft?’ he asked. ‘SeÑor, I know nothing of it. I am as innocent as a child,’” Then this SeÑor Don —— ordered his man to hammer on to the prisoner’s hands with an iron hammer.

“‘Did you or did you not commit this theft?’ he was asked again by the great gentleman of the blue blood. ‘SeÑor, I have said I am innocent.’ Again the hammer fell on the poor man’s hands, and again and again, till the bones were broken, and he still denying the deed. At last, finding him so obstinate, they let him go back to prison, where he was kept for weeks. When he came out I saw with my own eyes the ruin they had made of his poor hands.”

“But that is as bad as the Inquisition,” I said, horrified.

The old man, with a good deal of Spanish punctiliousness, had a touch of Moorish resignation, or what might better be called perhaps fatalism. “We have had to bear such things. I can tell you what happened to me in my youth, when there was still more difference between the law for the blue blood and the white.[13] I am of the white of course, no Don or Caballero, but a humble SeÑor, of little account. I was a dealer in pigs, SeÑoras; and I sold a fine lot of pigs to a certain aristocratic gentleman whom I will call Don Serafin. Don Serafin agreed to buy my pigs for five hundred dollars, paying half the sum down, and giving me a written document engaging to pay the other at the end of three months. My beautiful pigs went, and the three months passed. No money from Don Serafin. As I did not wish to appear impertinent, (being of the white blood, therefore, nobody, you know, SeÑoras) I waited patiently till three months more had slipped away. Then I waited on Don Serafin, and respectfully demanded my money. ‘I owe him money!’ cried the great man to his servants, ‘turn the impertinent fellow away, Es un mentira. He lies.’

“I saw that nothing remained for me but to sue him for my money, which I did. On the day appointed, we appeared before the Alcalde, who received Don Serafin with bows and scrapes, gave him the seat of honour, begged to know to what chance he was indebted for the pleasure of seeing him, and so on. ‘Why, it is that fellow there,’ said Don Serafin, ‘who has brought me here with a cooked-up story about some pigs, Es un mentira. I never bought his pigs, or if I did, paid for them long ago. Don’t believe a word of it.’ The Alcalde then turned to me, who stood by, hat in hand, like a criminal. ‘Speak out, hombre,’ he said, sternly, ‘of what do you accuse his grace, Don Serafin de So and so and So and so’ (the blue-blooded race have very long titles, you know). ‘SeÑor,’ I said, still standing, ‘I sold Don Serafin a lot of beautiful pigs, and he agreed to give five hundred dollars for them, paying half the sum down and the other at the end of three months. SeÑor, I have never received the last half of the money.’ The Alcalde turned to Don Serafin, smiling sweetly; ‘Senor Don Serafin, you hear what this fellow says—is it true or not?’

“‘Es un mentira, a pack of lies and nothing more,’ again answered his grace Don Serafin; ‘don’t believe half a syllable of the story.’

“The Alcalde looked at me with a scowl as if he could devour me.

“‘How dare you accuse a gentleman of such a thing? Get along with you, you lying rogue.’

“I then with great humility brought out the paper signed by Don Serafin himself, in which the money was promised at a certain date. ‘SeÑor,’ I said, ‘your grace will recognise this writing. The money is a large sum to a poor man like me; I hope you will pay it at once.’

“The Alcalde looked at the paper and was obliged to admit my claim. But he still smiled sweetly on Don Serafin, and looked as fiercely at me as if I were robbing them both.

“Don Serafin tossed back the paper scornfully, and with it a note for fifty dollars. ‘You shall have the rest in two months’ time,’ he said, ‘will that satisfy you?’

“‘Pardon me, your grace,’ I said, ‘but I am a poor man and I want the money. It seems, I dare say, but a mere trifle to you, it is a little fortune to me. Please pay me my two hundred and fifty dollars.’

“Don Serafin looked at the Alcalde, making a sign. The Alcalde was silent. ‘You fellow, to dictate to me in that way; take the fifty dollars and be thankful to the Virgin; or leave them if you please, I don’t care.’

“I turned to the Alcalde and humbly asked his intercession; but it was quite clear I had little enough to expect of him. He seemed to think I was mighty lucky to get anything at all; so, after standing in the presence of the great man till I was ready to drop, I took the fifty dollars and went away.”

“And did you ever get the remaining two hundred dollars?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“No, Signorita, not I. I got a part, ten dollars one month, ten another, and so on, but never the whole. Es una cosa de EspaÑa. We of the white blood must submit to those of the blue.”

These stories are both worth something as testimony of things as they are, or very lately were, in Spain, and we heard others which I remember less clearly.

There are a great many gipsies at Granada still, and, though they have lost their prestige for romance and daring, a good deal of interest is attached to them. They seem now to be held as very inoffensive sort of people, are miserably poor, dirty, and live troglodyte fashion, in caves hollowed in the hill-side. The King of the Gipsies, or El Capitan as he is called, is a fine musician, and we invited him to come up to the hotel one evening and play to us. Captain Antonio’s company is not to be had for the asking. He is, or affects to be, a little shy, wants coaxing and persuading, will not play except before a large audience; and, as Bensaken said to us, “He is a great man in his way, and you couldn’t offer him less than two dollars.”

After disappointing us on several occasions, Captain Antonio came. He had pleaded a sore finger as excuse for his delay, but I am inclined to think that he waited in expectation of a larger audience and more dollars; for the arrival of an American family healed the Captain’s finger miraculously fast. It was sore in the morning, very bad indeed! and, lo and behold! in the evening it was quite well; but let that pass—Captain Antonio’s music made us very forgiving.

He came in—a tall, superbly built man in the prime of life, with a tawny skin, eyes of extraordinary brilliancy, receding jaws, and very low brow, long narrow throat, and altogether, of an Egyptian, ancient look, as if he had been one of the old Nile gods come to life.

He bowed graciously, threw off his Spanish cloak, for the gitanos, like all the rest of the world, are growing conventional now, losing costume and characteristics every day; and commenced tuning his guitar.

It was a wretchedly poor instrument, and we began to wonder what sort of torments were about to be inflicted on us, when, on a sudden, the tuning ceased and the music seized hold of us like galvanism. For it was such music as one had never dreamed of before. His fingers but touch the chords, and all at once your breath is taken away, your blood is warmed as if by strong wine, your brain whirls, your eyes see visions, your ears hear marvellous voices, your senses are all mastered by a power that seems to shake the very spheres.

You see the strangest forms and faces, imp, devil, witch, and wizard; you hear a jargon of voices, in love, in anger, in war, in worship, in joy, in despair. Beautiful gitanos come in the charmed circle, join hands, dance for a moment and vanish, or it is filled by a gipsy camp—the fires are blazing, you see men and women feasting, singing, making love, when, all at once, a cry of alarm is heard, and the scene is changed to bloodshed and horrors. Every phase of savage life is brought before your eyes and made real, as if you were tasting it in the flesh. You are indeed for the nonce a gipsy, and know what the gipsy’s world is, above, below, in heaven and in hell; your pulses are quickened to gipsy pitch, you are ready to make love and war, to heal and slay, to wander to the world’s end, to be outlawed and hunted down, to dare and do anything for the sake of the sweet, untrammelled life of the tent, the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery love.

All at once the gipsy stopped, and the spell was broken. We had never been gipsies, after all; the camp-fires burning under the dark night, the flashing knives, the peaceful dance, the happy loves, the vagabond wanderings over plain and mountain, the midnight encounter,—all these had been but shadows evoked by Captain Antonio’s guitar, and we were a company of ladies and gentlemen, whose utmost vagabondage had not exceeded boiling a pic-nic kettle in Epsom Forest, or, more likely, taking tea on our own lawns. We felt thankful to SeÑor Antonio for having given us so full an experience of wild life in the space of a few minutes. I cannot say how real it had all seemed. We had wandered with him over so many southern lands, had bivouacked under such fiery suns, that I looked at a fair-haired English lady present, almost with a feeling of wonder to see her hair still golden and her cheeks still rosy.

The gipsy captain received our expressed thanks, as I thought, indifferently, but looked into our faces as if he would read our real criticisms there. Whether he approved either of them or of us, it were quite impossible to say; he had a face as unreadable as a bit of hieroglyphic writing, except that whilst playing, a strange fiery light shone in his eyes, as if he were himself possessed by the devilry of his music.

When he had rested a little and drunk a copita, or thimbleful of brandy, we asked him for a sacred song, and he said he would play us a Christmas hymn. What a change! It was as touching and sweet a melody as any of our Christmas carols, and quite as solemn.

By-and-by some one proposed a dance. Would Captain Antonio oblige us by a bolero or fandango? Most readily, he answered, but he must have a partner; of course,—so we went down into the kitchen, and, after much pressing, up came the daughters of the house, Pepita and little Pepita, Maria, and a friend as young and pretty and playful as themselves. The brother, our little waiter, threw aside his napkin and took up the gipsy’s guitar as naturally as if he had been a musician by profession; one of the young ladies, after a little coyness, consented to become Captain Antonio’s partner, and the dance commenced,—that musical, monotonous dance, so popular among the pleasure-loving Andalusians. But to gain a thorough idea of a gipsy dance, you must get up what is called a funcion,—rather a costly affair; that is to say, you must invite a troop of gipsies, who will not come to dance and sing and play to you without being well paid. Captain Antonio every one should hear and see; he is quite a genius, and if enticed to London or Paris, would create a sensation. We said to him,—

“You should purchase a better guitar, SeÑor Antonio, and go to London. You would come home a rich man.”

He smiled, showing his glittering white teeth and shook his head:—

“I have a wife and five children, SeÑora,” he replied; “London is too far off.”

And he did not like the disparagement of his guitar, I think, for he took it up and tuned it in a caressing sort of way, as if it were a living pet we had been slighting.

There is nothing of romance left to the gipsies in Spain now but their costume, even that fast disappearing, and their music. When Borrow wrote of them more than sixty years ago, he speaks of the happy effects of Charles the Third’s edicts, which, by admitting the gipsies into the pale of civilised society, has done more than the fierce persecutions of his predecessors to assimilate this savage race with others. Ferdinand and Isabella and the Philips, did their utmost to put down what they called the Egyptians, publishing edict after edict against them, but in vain. Whilst they were a proscribed caste, whilst the very privilege of sanctuary was denied them, whilst they were hunted down and persecuted by fire and sword, the Egyptians, or Gitanos, flourished and had their palmy days; murdering, stealing, cheating, telling fortunes, hating the Busnees, and all who were not Romanys, to their heart’s content. Gitanisimo—that is to say, quoting Borrow, gipsy villany of every description, flourished till Gitanisimo was declared to be no more. Charles the Third, in 1733, published a humane edict in which he declared the gipsies capable of following any career of arts and sciences, and altogether ignored that they were a separate people, amenable to separate laws. What was the consequence? The law of Carlos Tercero has superseded gipsy law, say the gipsies a little regretfully. Gitanisimo, or gipsydom, if not wholly transformed, has been modified. The gipsies no longer wander about living by murder and theft. The women still tell fortunes, and the men, as dealers in horses and mules, are not to be trusted, but they are everywhere spoken of as a poor and harmless set of people; and though the instinct of caste is just as strong as ever among themselves, they are no longer feared or hated. At the time Borrow wrote the gipsies in Spain numbered 40,000 souls; at the commencement of the present century they numbered only 20,000, so that the race here, as elsewhere, seems dying out, or, at any rate, greatly decreasing. Indeed, nothing else could have been expected of them. Wild animals from African deserts are not more out of place, caged in English gardens, than these kings and queens of savagedom compelled to sleep under a roof, and to consider killing as murder. But their dancing and music are worthy of a less lawless and terrible race, and are cosas de EspaÑa, not to be missed by any travellers.

In the afternoon we drove to the Albaycin, or old town, in search of pottery. The views from this part of Granada are very fine, but the inhabitants are so unused to the sight of travellers, and are such strange, half-civilised beings, that you are hardly able to see anything. We alighted in one place to walk a few yards, and in a moment, as wasps gather round a fallen peach, we were surrounded by a youthful rabble who looked at us suspiciously, and not content with that, caught hold of our clothes, begged from us, laughed at us—all but tore us to pieces. We had left our coachman behind, as we had come by a way not carrossable, in order to see a view, and our poor old guide was wholly inefficient to keep off the tribe of persecutors. Two or three big gipsyish girls of twelve or thirteen, caught hold of his coat, and I expected to see his pockets attacked every moment. The noise and noisomeness of this dirty, unkempt mob of juveniles no words can describe. Bensaken’s mild reproof, “Are not these seÑoras like other seÑoras? why do you behave so rudely to them?” had no effect. We lost temper, shook our umbrellas threateningly, scolded, and pushed on, never waiting to see the view, and only too glad to close the carriage-door on the merciless, miserable little rabble. Any Englishwoman venturing alone in the streets of the Albaycin would have reason to regret such a piece of audacity as long as she lived. I believe she would be pelted with mud and stones. Nothing is too bad to expect from those awful children. What are the priests after, that they are left in such a state of savagedom?

But the Albaycin has pleasanter aspects. Bensaken now took us to a little spot far away from the scene of our persecution, and we soon found ourselves in a scene so peaceful, so poetic, and so lovely, that the ugly dream faded away from our memories. It was the potter’s house we had come to see. The outer walls were whitewashed and bare, after the fashion of Moorish houses, but no sooner was the threshold passed than all was life and colour.

Picture to yourselves a sunny little court with a fountain in the midst, pots of flowers here and there, dogs basking in the sun, pigeons fluttering over head, and rows of lustrous pottery, blue, green, yellow, and brown, placed against the walls, or heaped up in the corners. We entered a little sitting-room and were made welcome by the whole family. There was a grandmother, an aunt, a cousin, and I do not know how many more, but I am only concerned with the young potter and his mother. The first was a lad of nineteen, with quite an artist’s face, sensitive, refined, full of happy expression; the second was a handsome, portly creature, a regular type of the Andalusian matron, and as ready to sing or dance a bolero, as the youngest of her daughters.

We were enchanted with the pottery, which is often rude in shape and colouring, but never without a certain childish grace and feeling for art. Some of the designs are wonderfully good, bold, simple, and unique, whilst the coloured patterns often testify a richness of fancy and comprehension of decorative art, quite astonishing in artists so untaught. The prevailing colour is dark rich blue, reminding one of old Wedgwood, and there is always a liberality of imagination both in shape and ornament; no vases or dishes are alike either in the one respect or the other. But, alas! cheap as this quaint pottery is, and plentiful as it would be if appreciated, the manufactures of France and England are taking its place, and by-and-by travellers will have to look far and wide for specimens of it.

The boy seemed delighted at our appreciation of his work, and took us into his atelier. It reminded us of the prophet who said, “I went down into the potter’s house, and he wrought a work on the wheels,” the place was so primitive and Eastern. The young potter sat down at his work, and fashioned a dish for us; then he took up one already “tried in the fire,” and showed us his manner of colouring. It was quite beautiful to see the dexterity with which he worked, and the fondness with which he regarded his work. We tried our hand and found the matter not so easy as it had appeared.

When we had seen enough and made our purchases, noticing a guitar that lay near, we asked for some music. The request was granted smilingly. Our young potter sat down and played a fandango, his mother and one of the younger women dancing for us. They were all so kindly pleasant, and so amused at being able to amuse us.

We bade these nice people adieu with some regret, and hoped that all other travellers would be guided by some lucky star to their pretty Moorish “potter’s house.” It was pretty enough to make us forget all other diabolical spirits haunting the Albaycin, or old town of Granada.

In the modern town, there is little to be seen excepting a very beautiful old Moorish passage, with horse-shoe arches, sculptured friezes, and delicate marble columns. Of course, this will soon be a thing of tradition only, but whilst it lasts, it is perfectly Eastern and very picturesque. I went out shopping several times, though it requires an effort to quit the fairy-like region of the Alhambra, and descend into such dingy, ill-paved, smelling streets.

One morning, to our infinite consternation, we found that we had come to an end of our books. We looked into each other’s faces with dismay, and turned over our treasures again and again. Yes, it was but too true. We had read Ford from beginning to end, we had read Don Quixote, we had read our beloved Street, our Stirling, our Borrow, our one volume of Wordsworth, our guides and geographies, our Vie de Cervantes, again and again; and last, but not least, our Benjamin of books, viz., Owen Jones’ Handbook to the Alhambra. We had even devoured with avidity some odd chapters of French novels, given for translation into Spanish, in a little book recommended to me by my Spanish master in Madrid. And as to newspapers, a number of the Petit Journal would have been a mine of wealth to us, in this intellectual desert. We had purchased a stray copy of a Granada paper, grandiosely called, El Triumfo Granadino, and found it a very poor affair indeed, made up of gossip, poor jokes, advertisements, and feuilleton.

We were confidently assured that there were books in plenty to be obtained in the town, English, French, or in Spanish, so I set off in the search, Bensaken accompanying me.

“Mind,” said my friend, “and bring home something light, witty, and entertaining. A good French novel or two, or one of the last Tauchnitz editions.”

I promised to do my best, but experience proved that there was no judgment to be exercised in the matter. It was simply a case of Hobson’s choice. There was only one bookseller’s shop, and in that bookseller’s shop was only one book—that is to say, available book. The bookseller, a very nonchalant person indeed, smoked a cigarette, and chatted with a neighbour, whilst I investigated his stock in trade.

On the first shelf stood a row of school-books and penny parts of cheap illustrated editions of Cervantes, Paul de Koch, Eugene Sue, and Gil Blas; on the second, were a few novels of Alex. Dumas, fils, in the well-known green covers, at a franc each; on the third, were, firstly, Victor Hugo’s Travailleurs de Mer; secondly, an odd volume of Byron; thirdly, the American edition of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra; fourthly, an English story, called Once and Again, published by Tauchnitz. The first-named books we had, of course, read; but oh! how greedily I seized upon that little English story, and carried it home with me! How we gloried in the possession of it, and glowed over the love-story of it! The book was by no means stirring as a story, or first-rate as a work of art, but we had been living without novels for months past, and it was like being made quite youthful again. If ever it be my fate to meet the author of that little story in the flesh, I mean to thank her for the pleasure she gave us in a bookless “city of Tarshish.”