IT was day when one of my companions shouted “Caballero!” in my ear.—“Are we at Madrid?” I asked as I awoke.—“Not yet,” was the answer, “but look!” I turned toward the country and saw, half a mile away on the side of a high mountain, the convent of the Escurial illuminated by the first rays of the sun. “The grandest of the grand things on the earth”—as it has been called by an illustrious traveller—did not seem to me at first sight that immense edifice which the Spaniards consider “the eighth wonder of the world.” However, I uttered my “Oh!” like the other travellers who then saw it for the first time, reserving all my admiration for the day when I should see it near at hand. From the Escurial to Madrid the railroad crosses a barren plain which reminds one of the country around Rome.

“Have you never seen Madrid?” asked my neighbor. I replied that I had not.

“Impossible!” exclaimed the good Spaniard, turning to look at me with a air of curiosity, as though he was saying to himself, “Let us see what sort of a creature a man is who never saw Madrid.” Then he began to enumerate the grand things that I should see: “What walks! what cafÉs! what theatres! what women! If one has a hundred thousand dollars to spend, there is nothing better than Madrid; it is a great monster that lives on fortunes. If I were in your place, I should take pleasure in thrusting my fortune also down its throat.”

I felt for my flabby pocket-book and murmured, “Poor monster!”

“Here we are!” cried the Spaniard. “Look!”

I put my head out of the window.

“That is the royal palace.”

I saw an immense pile on an eminence, but shut my eyes quickly, for the sun was shining in my face. Everybody got out, and then commenced the customary bustling

which almost always shuts out the first view of the city. The train stopped, and I alighted to find myself in a square full of coupÉs surrounded by a clamorous crowd. A hundred hands are extended for my valise, a hundred mouths shout in my ear; it is a devilish pack of porters, cabbies, cicerones, hotel-clerks, guards, and boys. I elbow my way through them, jump on an omnibus full of people, and am off. We go down an avenue, cross a great square, turn into a long straight street, and arrive at the Puerta del Sol.

It is a stupendous sight! A semicircular square of vast extent, surrounded by high buildings, at the mouth of ten great streets like so many torrents, from every one of which pours a continuous roaring flood of people and of vehicles. Everything one sees is in proportion to the immensity of the place: sidewalks as wide as streets, cafÉs as wide as squares, a fountain the size of a lake—on every side a dense, rapidly-shifting crowd, a discordant roar, a subtle air of cheerfulness and gaiety in the faces, the gestures, and the colors, which makes one feel that neither the people nor the city is entirely strange, and gives one an insane desire to join in the uproar, to salute everybody, to run here and there, as if one were revisiting those sights and people rather than seeing them for the first time. I enter a hotel, and leave it immediately, and begin to wander at random through the city. There are no grand palaces, no ancient monuments of art, but wide, clean, cheerful streets, flanked by houses painted in lively colors, and interrupted by open squares of a thousand different forms, as though they have been dropped here and there by chance, and in every square there is a garden, a fountain, and a statuette. Some streets run up hill in such a manner that on turning into them one sees the sky at the end, and one imagines that they open into the country, but when one has reached the top another long street stretches off as far as one can see.

Every little while there are crossways where five, six, and even eight streets meet, and here there is a continuous stream of carriages and people passing each other. The walls are covered for long spaces with show-bills and placards; in the shops there is an incessant coming and going; the cafÉs are crowded; everywhere there is the rush of a great city. AlcalÁ (Castle) Street, so wide that it looks like a rectangular square, cuts Madrid in half from the Puerta del Sol eastward, and ends in a vast park which extends all along one side of the city and contains gardens, promenades, open squares, theatres, bull-rings, triumphal arches, museums, palaces, and fountains.

I jumped into a carriage, saying to the driver, “Where you will.” Past the statue of Murillo, up AlcalÁ Street, down the Street of the Turk, where General Prim was assassinated; across the square of the Cortes, where stands the statue of Miguel Cervantes; through the Plaza Mayor, where blazed the fires lighted by the Inquisition; and then back again, past the house of Lope de Vega, out into the vast Plaza del Oriente, which stretches in front of the royal palace, where towers the equestrian statue of Philip IV. in the midst of an oval garden surrounded by forty colossal statues—climbing up toward the centre of the city, across other wide streets and cheerful squares, and crossways thronged with people, until finally I return to the hotel, declaring that Madrid is rich, grand, gay, populous, and attractive, and that I am going to see it all, and stay and enjoy it so long as my account-book and the mildness of the season will permit.

In the course of a few days a good friend found me a casa de huÉspedes, a guest-house, and I installed myself there. These guest-houses are nothing else than the homes of families who give board and lodging to students, artists, and foreigners at prices which vary, understand, according to the manner in which you choose to eat and sleep, but which are always lower than the hotel rates, with the inestimable advantage of breathing the air of home-life, forming friendships, and being treated as a member of the family rather than as a boarder. The mistress of the house was a pleasant lady on the hither side of fifty, the widow of a painter who had studied at Rome, Florence, and Naples, and who had all his life cherished a grateful and affectionate remembrance of Italy. She too, as was natural, displayed a very lively sympathy toward our country, and manifested it by joining me every day at dinner, when she would recount the life, death, and miraculous doings of all her relatives and friends, as though I was the only confidant she had in Madrid. I met few Spaniards who spoke so rapidly, so frankly, and with such an easy flow of phrases, bon-mots, similes, proverbs, and expressions. At first this disconcerted me, for I understood little and was every moment obliged to ask her to repeat; nor was I always able to make myself understood. In a word, it was impressed upon me that in studying the language of the books I had wasted a great deal of time in storing my memory with words and phrases which are seldom used in ordinary conversation, while, on the other hand, I had neglected very many other forms of speech which are indispensable. I was obliged, therefore, to begin again, to rally my forces, to make notes, and, above all, to keep my ear always on the qui vive, so that I might profit as much as possible by the speech of the people. And I was convinced of this fact: that one may live for ten, thirty, or forty years in a foreign city, but unless one makes an effort at once, unless one devotes considerable time to study, unless one is always standing, as Giusti said, “with one’s eyes wide open,” one will either never learn to speak the language or will speak it incorrectly. At Madrid I was acquainted with some old Italians who had lived in Spain from their earliest youth, and yet they spoke wretched Spanish. Indeed, it is not an easy language, even for us Italians, or, to speak more clearly, it presents the great difficulty of easy languages, for it is not allowable to speak them poorly, and yet by so doing one can make one’s self understood. The Italian who wishes to speak Spanish in conversation with cultured people, where every one would understand him if he spoke French, must justify his audacity by speaking with facility and grace.

Now, the Spanish language, precisely because it is more closely allied to the Italian than to the French, is also more difficult to speak rapidly, and, for the same reason, more difficult to speak by ear, without making awkward mistakes, because, for example, it is much easier to say propre, mortuaire, delice (the French words) without danger of letting slip the Italian proprio, mortuairo, delizia, than it is to say the Spanish propio, mortuorio, delicia. One falls back into Italian unconsciously—inverts the syntax every moment, and always has one’s own language in one’s ear or on one’s tongue, so that one keeps stammering, confusing words, and betraying one’s self.

Neither is the pronunciation of Spanish less difficult than that of French. The Moorish, although easy to pronounce, is very difficult when two j’s occur in a word or several of them in a clause. The y, which is pronounced as stutterers pronounce s, can only be acquired by patient effort, for it is a sound which at first proves very unpleasant, and many who are familiar with the sound do not like to hear it. But if there is a city in Europe where one is able to acquire the language of a country thoroughly, that city is Madrid, and the same thing may be said of Toledo, Valladolid, and Burgos. The people speak as the scholars write: the differences in the pronunciation of the cultured classes and the people of the town are very slight.

And, even leaving these four cities out of the question, the Spanish language is much more used and much more common, and consequently much more vigorous and forcible, in the daily press, on the stage, and in the popular literature than is the case with the Italian language. There are in Spain the Valencian, the Catalan, the Galician, and the Murcian dialects and the very ancient language of the Basque provinces. But Spanish is spoken in the two Castiles, in Arragon, in Estremadura, and in Andalusia; that is, in the five great provinces. The squib enjoyed at Saragossa is enjoyed at Seville also; the popular phrase which makes a hit in the theatres of Salamanca produces the same effect in the theatres of Granada. They say that the Spanish of to-day is not at all the language of Cervantes, Quevedo, and Lope de Vega; that the French have corrupted it; that if Charles V. should come to life again, he would no longer call it “the language to speak with God;” and that Sancho Panza would not be understood and enjoyed. Alas! he who has frequented the little cook-shops and the low-rates theatre of the suburbs unwillingly acquiesces in this sentence.

To pass from the tongue to the palate, one needs a little good-will to accustom one’s self to certain sauces, gravies, and poor soups of the Spanish cuisine, but I accustomed myself to them. The French, who are as fussy in the matter of eating as spoiled children, invoke the wrath of Heaven upon it. Dumas says that in Spain he has suffered from hunger. In a book on Spain which was lately before my eyes it was stated that the Spanish live only on honey, fungi, eggs, and snails. But this is all stuff and nonsense. The same might be said of our cooking. I have known many Spaniards whose stomachs were turned by the sight of maccaroni and gravy. They make most too many potpies, they do not know how to use fat, and they season a little too highly, but hardly enough to take away Dumas’s appetite, and, among other things, they are master-hands at sweets.

Then their puchero, the national dish, eaten every day by everybody in every place—I speak the truth, I ate it like an out-and-out glutton,—the puchero is to the culinary art what the anthology is to literature, a little of the best of everything. A good piece of boiled beef forms the nucleus of the dish, and around this a wing of a fowl, a slice of chorizo (sausage), lard, herbs, and bacon, and, above and below and in all the interstices, garbanzos. Epicures pronounce the name of garbanzos with reverence. They are a sort of chick-pea, very large, very tender, and very succulent—peas, an extravagant man might say, that have fallen down from some world where a vegetation equal to ours is made fruitful by a stronger sun. Such is the ordinary puchero. But every family modifies it according to its purse. The poor are content with meat and garbanzos. The rich add a hundred exquisite tidbits. After all, it is a dinner rather than a dish, and very many eat nothing else.

A good puchero and a bottle of Val de PeÑas are enough to satisfy any one. I say nothing of the oranges, the Malaga grapes, asparagus, artichokes, and every sort of vegetable and fruit, which, as every one knows, are very fine and good in Spain. Nevertheless, the Spanish are small eaters, and because the pepper and highly-seasoned sauces and salt meats predominate in their cuisine, because they eat chorizos (sausages), which, as they say, levantan las piedras, or rather burn their intestines, they drink very little wine. After the fruit, instead of beginning to sip a good bottle, they usually take a cup of coffee and milk, and they rarely drink wine in the morning. At the table d’hote in the hotels I have never seen a Spaniard empty a bottle, while I, who emptied mine, was stared at in astonishment, as though I was a scandalous beast. One rarely meets a drunken man in a Spanish city, even on a holiday, and on this account, when one considers their hot blood and the very free use they make of knives and daggers, there occur fewer fights which lead to death or bloodshed than is generally believed outside of Spain.

As I had found board and lodging, there remained nothing else for me to do but wander through the city with the Guidebook in my pocket and a tres-cuartos cigar in my mouth—“an occupation easy and straightforward.”

During the first days I could not keep away from the plaza of the Puerta del Sol. I would stay there hour after hour, and was so amused by it that I could willingly have spent days there. The square is worthy of its fame, not so much for its size and beauty as for the people, the life, the variety of scene which it presents at every hour of the day. It is not a square like other squares: it is at once a great reception-hall, a promenade, a theatre, an academy, a garden, a parade-ground, and a bazaar. From the peep of day until after midnight it contains one stationary crowd, and another crowd that comes and goes through the ten great streets which meet there, and all the while a procession and intermingling of carriages which make one’s head whirl. Business-men congregate there; there gather the demagogues who have nothing to do, unemployed clerks, old pensioners, and young dandies; there they talk business and politics, make love, promenade, read the papers, dun their debtors, search for their friends, hatch plots against the ministry, coin the false reports which make the round of Spain, and weave the scandalous chronicle of the city.

On the sidewalks, which are wide enough to hold four carriages abreast, one is obliged to force one’s way. In a space no larger than a flagstone you see a civil guard, a matchseller, a broker, a beggar, and a soldier, all in a bunch. Troops of scholars pass servants, generals, ministers, peasants, toreros, and gentlemen. Ruined spendthrifts ask for alms in a whisper, so as not to be discovered; lewd wretches look at you with questioning eyes; women lightly nudge you on the elbow; on every side there are hats in the air, smiles, shaking of hands, cheery greetings, cries of “Largo!” from the laden porters and from the hawkers with their wares hanging about their necks; the shouts of newsboys, the shrill cry of the water-carrier, the tooting of the coach-horns, the cracking of whips, the clank of swords, the tinkling of guitars, and the songs of blind beggars. There regiments pass with bands of music; the king passes; the square is sprinkled with great jets of water, which cross in the air; men go by carrying placards to advertise the shows; swarms of gamins with their arms full of extra editions; then an army of government clerks; the bands of music pass again; lights appear in the shops; the crowd grows denser; the blows on the elbow become more frequent; the voices grow louder; the uproar and commotion increase. It is not the activity of a busy people: it is the vivacity of a high-spirited race; it is a Carnival gaiety, an idleness that cannot rest and overflows in a feverish desire for pleasure, which seizes one and holds him fast or drives him around like a reel and forbids him to leave the square—a curiosity which never wearies, a happy desire to be amused, to think of nothing, to talk small talk, to stroll about and laugh. Such is the famous plaza of the Puerta del Sol.

An hour spent there is enough to make one familiar with the people of Madrid in their various aspects. The common people dress like those of our great cities; the upper classes, when they lay aside the cloak which is worn in winter, are attired in the Parisian mode; and from the duke to the clerk, from the stripling to the tottering old man, they are all neat and tastefully dressed, bepowdered and perfumed, as though they had just stepped out of a toilet-room. In this respect they resemble the Neapolitans with their fine heads of black hair, their carefully-trimmed beards, and their feminine hands and feet. One rarely sees a low hat: they all wear high hats. Then there are canes, chains, ornaments, pins and ribbons in their buttonholes by the thousand.

Except on certain holidays the ladies also dress like the French. The women of the middle classes still wear the mantilla, but the ancient satin shoes, the peineta, the bright colors—the national costume, in a word—have disappeared. They are, however, the same little women, so praised for their large eyes, their tiny hands, and small feet, with jet-black hair, a skin that is rather fair than dark, well formed, of good carriage, active, and vivacious.

In order to view the fair sex of Madrid one should go to the promenade of the Prado, which is to Madrid what the Cascine are to Florence.

The Prado, to be precise, is a very wide avenue, of no great length, flanked by smaller avenues which run toward the eastern part of the city. It lies beside the famous gardens of Buen Retiro, and is closed at both ends by two enormous stone vases, the one surmounted by a colossal Cybele sitting on a shell and drawn by sea-horses; the other, by a Neptune of equal size, both of them crowned with copious fountains, whose waters interlace and fall gracefully with a pleasant murmur.

This great avenue, lined along the sides with thousands of chairs and hundreds of benches, where men sell water and oranges, is the most frequented part of the Prado, and is called the Salon del Prado. But the walk extends beyond the fountain of Neptune: there are other avenues, other fountains, and other statues, and one may walk among the trees and fountains as far as Our Lady of Atocha, the famous church loaded with gifts by Isabella II. after the outrage of February 2, 1852, and where King Amadeus went to visit the body of General Prim. From that point there is an extended view of a vast tract of the desert plain around Madrid and of the snowy summits of the Guadarrama. But the Prado is the most

famous, not the most beautiful nor the largest, promenade in the city. Beyond the Salon, toward the fountain of Cybele, the promenade of Recoletos extends for almost two miles, flanked on the right by the large, cheerful town of Salamanca, the home of the rich, of the deputies, and the poets, and on the left by a long chain of small palaces, villas, theatres, and new buildings painted in vivid colors. It is not a single promenade: there are ten avenues, one beside another, and each more beautiful than the last—streets for driving, streets for riding, walks for persons who like a crowd, and walks for those who prefer to be alone, divided from each other by endless hedges of myrtle, bordered and broken by gardens and groves, in which appear statues and fountains, and little footpaths which cross each other. On fÊte-days one may there enjoy a charming spectacle. From one end of the avenues to the other pass two processions of people, carriages, and horsemen, going in opposite directions.

In the Prado one can scarcely walk. The gardens are crowded by thousands of boys; the theatres are full of music; every one hears the murmur of fountains, the swish of skirts, the shouting of children, and the cantering of horses. It is not only the movement and the gaiety of a promenade: it is the pomp, the uproar, the confusion, the feverish delight of a fÊte. The city is deserted during those hours. At dusk the whole of that immense crowd turns back into the great AlcalÁ Street, and then from the fountain of Cybele, as far as the Puerta del Sol, one sees only a sea of heads, furrowed by a line of carriages as far as the eyes can reach.

For promenades—and, in fact, for theatres and spectacular exhibitions—Madrid is, without doubt, one of the first cities of the world. Besides the great opera-house, which is very large and rich, besides the theatre for comedy, the theatre of the Zarzuela, the Madrid circus—all of which are first class in point of size, appointments, and attendance—there is a circle of smaller theatres for dramatic companies, for equestrian exhibitions, musical organizations, and vaudevilles—parlor theatres, theatres with boxes and galleries, theatres, big and little, for high and low, to suit all purses and all tastes, and for all hours of the night; and there is not one among so many that is not crowded at every performance.

Then there are the cock-pits, the bull-rings, the popular balls, and the games. Some days there are as many as twenty different entertainments, commencing at noon and continuing almost to dawn. The opera, of which the Spanish are passionately fond, is always magnificent, not only at the time of the Carnival, but at all seasons. While I was at Madrid, Fricci sang at the Zarzuela and Stagno at the circus; both were supported by very able artists, with excellent orchestra and splendid stage-setting.

The most celebrated singers in the world make an effort to sing in the capital of Spain, for artists are there sought after and fÊted. The passion for music is the only one which is able to hold its own against the passion for bull-fights. Comedy is in great vogue also. L’Hatzembuch, Breton de los Herreros, Tamayo, Ventura, D’Ayala, GutiÉrrez, and a great many other dramatic writers, some living and some dead, who are known even beyond Spain, have enriched the modern stage by a large number of comedies, which, although they do not bear that strong national stamp which has immortalized the dramatic works of the great century of Spanish literature, are nevertheless full of life, wit, and cleverness, without the unwholesome tendency of the French comedy. But, although they perform modern comedies, they are not unmindful of the old. On the anniversaries of Lope de Vega, CalderÓn, Morito, Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Francesco de Rojas, and the other great lights of the Spanish theatre their masterpieces are performed with solemn pomp. The actors, however, do not seem able to satisfy the authors, and show the defects of our own actors—too much action, ranting, and excessive sobbing. Many even prefer our actors, because they find in them a greater variety of cadence and inflection. Besides tragedy and comedy, they perform a dramatic composition that is thoroughly Spanish—the zainete, of which Ramon de la Cruz was the master. It is a sort of farce which in great part consists of tableaux of Andalusian costumes, with national and popular characters, and actors who imitate the dress, speech, and customs of the period in an admirable manner. The comedies are all published, and are eagerly read even by the lowest classes, and the names of the authors are very popular. Dramatic literature, in a word, remains to-day, as it was in former times, the richest and most general.

There is also a great passion for the zarzuela, which is usually represented in the theatre to which it has given the name, and is a composition midway between comedy and melodrama, between opera and vaudeville, with an easy interchange of prose and verse, of recitation and singing, of the serious and burlesque—a composition exclusively Spanish and very delightful. In some theatres they perform political comedies, a mixture of song and prose after the style of Scalvini’s “reviews;” satirical farces to take off the questions of the day; a sort of sacred tableaux, with scenes from the Passion of Our Lord, during Holy Week; and balls and dances and pantomimes of every sort.

In the small theatres they give three or four performances a night, one after the other, and new spectators come in for each performance. At the famous Capellanes Theatre every night in the year they dance a can-can, scandalous beyond the wildest imagination, and there crowd the dissolute young men, the fast women, and the old libertines with wrinkled noses, armed with monocles, spectacles, opera-glasses, and every sort of optical instrument which helps to bring nearer the forms advertised on the stage, as Aleardi says.

After the theatres are closed one finds all the cafÉs crowded, the city illuminated, the streets filled with countless carriages, just as in the early evening. One feels a little sad on coming out of a theatre in a foreign country, there are so many beautiful creatures, and not one of them deigns to bestow so much as a glance upon one. But an Italian finds one comfort in Madrid. The actors almost always sing Italian operas, and they sing in Italian, and so, as you return to your lodging, you hear them humming in the words of your own language the airs which you have known from infancy. You hear a palpito here, a fiero genitor there, a tremenda vendetta yonder; and these words are like the greetings of a friendly people. But to reach your house what a thick hedge of petticoats you must climb over! The palm is given to Paris, and doubtless she deserves it, but Madrid is not to be laughed at. What boldness! what words of fire! what imperious provocations! Finally, you arrive before your house to find that you have no door-key.

“Do not be disturbed,” says the first citizen you meet. “Do you see that lantern at the foot of the street? The man who carries it is a sereno, and the serenos have keys for all the houses.” Then you cry “Sereno!” at the top of your voice, and the lantern approaches, and a man with an enormous bunch of keys in his hands gives you a searching glance, opens the door, lights you to the second story, and bids you good-night. So it is every night; for a franc a month you escape the annoyance of carrying the door-key in your pocket. The sereno is a public officer, and there is one in every street, and each of them has a whistle. If the house takes fire or thieves force your lock, you have only to throw up a window and cry, “Sereno! help!” The sereno who is in the street sounds his whistle, the serenos of the neighboring streets whistle, and in a few moments all the serenos in the district run to your assistance. At whatever hour of the night you awake you hear the voice of the sereno announcing the time, or if it is fine weather, or if it is raining or going to rain. How many things he knows! and how many he never tells! this nocturnal sentinel. How many whispered farewells he hears from the lips of lovers! How many little letters flutter from the windows before his eyes! how many little keys fall on the pavement! and how many hands wave mysteriously in the air! Muffled lovers glide through narrow doorways, and lighted windows are suddenly darkened, and black shadows vanish along the walls at the first streaks of dawn.

I have spoken only of the theatres; at Madrid there is a concert, one may safely say, every day. There are concerts in the theatres, concerts in the academy halls, concerts in the streets, and then a company of strolling musicians who deafen you at all hours of the day. After all this one has a right to ask why it is that a people so infatuated with music that it seems as necessary, so to speak, as the air they breathe, have never produced any great master of the art. The Spanish will not be comforted.

One could cover many pages if he were to describe the fine suburbs of Madrid, the gates, the parks beyond the city, the squares, the historic streets; and, if nothing were willingly to be omitted, the splendid cafÉs, the “Imperial” in the square of the Puerto del Sol and the Fornos in AlcalÁ Street, two vast saloons, in which, if the tables were removed, a company of dragoons could be drilled, and the innumerable other cafÉs which one finds at every step, where two hundred dancers could be easily accommodated; the magnificent shops which occupy the entire ground-floor of vast buildings, and among them the great Havana tobacco warehouse (a meeting-place for gentlemen), filled with cigars, little and big, round, flat, pointed, and twisted, winding like snakes, bent like bows, hook-shaped, of every shape, for every taste, and at every price, enough to content the maddest fancy of a smoker and to stupefy the entire population of a city; spacious markets; the grand royal palace, in which the Quirinal and the Pitti Palace might hide without fear of discovery; the great street Atocha, which crosses the city; the immense garden of Buen Retiro, with its great lake, with its hills crowned with Moorish domes, and its thousands of rare birds.... But, worthy of attention above everything else, the museums of armor and painting, and the Naval Museum, to each of which one might easily dedicate a volume.

The armory of Madrid is one of the most beautiful in the world. As you enter the vast hall your heart gives a leap, your blood tingles, and you stand still on the threshold like one demented. A complete army of cavalry in full armor, with drawn swords and lances in rest, gleaming and terrible, rushes toward you like a legion of spectres. It is an army of emperors, kings, and dukes, clad in the most splendid armor that has ever left the hands of man, upon which pours a flood of light from eighteen enormous windows, producing a marvellous play and flashing of light, dancing sunbeams, and dazzling colors. The walls are covered with cuirasses, swords, halberds, jousting-spears, huge blunderbusses, and enormous lances which reach from the floor to the ceiling. Banners of all the armies of the world hang from the ceiling—trophies of Lepanto, of San Quintino, of the War of Independence, of the wars of Africa, Cuba, and Mexico. On every side there is a profusion of glorious standards, of illustrious arms, of marvellous works of art, of effigies, emblems, and immortal names.

One does not know what first to admire. One runs first here, then there, looking at everything and seeing nothing, and becomes tired before one has really begun. In the middle of the hall is the equestrian armor, the cavaliers and their horses, drawn up in line by threes and by twos, and all wheeling just like a squadron on the march. Among the arms one at first sight discovers those of Philip II., of Charles V., Philibert Emmanuel, and Christopher Columbus. Here and there, on pedestals, one sees helmets, casques, morions, gorgets, and shields which belonged to kings of Arragon, Castile, and Navarre, adorned with very fine reliefs in silver representing battles, mythological subjects, symbolic figures, trophies, grotesques, and garlands: some of these are works of the greatest power, the workmanship of the most famous artists of Europe; others are uncouth in form, with excessive ornament, with crests, visors, and colossal top-pieces. Then there are the little helmets and cuirasses of princes, swords and shields the gifts of popes and monarchs. In the midst of the knightly armor one sees statues dressed in the fantastic costumes of the American Indians, of Africans, and of Chinese, with feathers and bells, bows and quivers; then, too, horrible warmasks and the dresses of mandarins of gold woven with silk. Along the walls is other armor—the arms of the marquis de Pescara, of the poet Garcilasso de la Vega, of the marquis de Santa Cruz, the gigantic armor of John Frederick, the magnanimous duke of Saxony, and scattered here and there are Arabian, Persian, and Moorish banners falling to decay.

In the glass cases there is a collection of swords which make your blood run cold when you hear the names of those who wielded them—the sword of the prince de Conde, the sword of Isabella the Catholic, the sword of Philip II., the sword of Hernando Cortez, of the count-duke d’Olivares, of John of Austria, of Gonzalez of Cordova, of Pizarro; the sword of the Cid, and, a little farther along, the helmet of King Boabdil of Granada, the shield of Francis I., and the camp-chair of Charles V. In a corner of the hall are arranged the trophies of the Ottoman armies—helmets studded with gems, spurs, gilded stirrups, the collars of slaves, daggers, scimitars in velvet sheaths, with rings of gold, embroidered and inlaid with pearl; the spoils of Ali Pacha, who was slain on the flag-ship at the battle of Lepanto, his caftan brocaded with gold and silver, his girdle, sandals, and shields, the spoils of his sons, and the banners stripped from the galleys. On another side are votive crowns, crosses, and the necklaces of Gothic princes. In another room are articles taken from the Indians of Mariveles, the Moors of Cagyan and Mindanao, and the savages of the most remote islands of Oceanica; collars of snail-shells, stone pipes, wooden idols, reed flutes; ornaments made of the claws of insects; slaves’ garments made of palm-leaves with characters scribbled on them to serve as fetiches; poisoned arrows and axes of the executioners. And then, wherever one turns, there are royal saddles, coats of mail, culverins, historic drums, shoulder-belts, inscriptions, memorials and images of every time and every land, from the fall of the Goths to the battle of Tetuan, from Mexico to China—a storehouse of treasures and of masterpieces from which one goes out amazed and exhausted, to return to consciousness as if it were a dream, with one’s memory weary and confused.

If a great Italian poet shall one day wish to sing the discovery of the New World, nowhere will he be able to find so powerful an inspiration as in the Naval Museum of Madrid, because in no other place will he feel so profoundly the original air of the American wilderness and the subtle presence of Columbus. There is a room called the “Cabinet of Discoveries:” the poet on entering this room, if he really has the soul of a poet, will reverently uncover his head. Wherever one’s glance falls in the room one sees an image which stirs his blood. One is no longer in Europe nor in the century; one is in the America of the fifteenth century; one breathes that air, one sees those places, and lives that life. In the middle is a high trophy of the arms taken from the Indians of the newly-discovered land—shields covered with the skins of wild beasts, arrows of cane with feathered notches, wooden swords with sheaths woven of twigs, with hilts ornamented with horsehair, and scalp-locks falling in long streamers; clubs, spears, enormous axes, great swords with teeth like those of a saw, shapeless sceptres, gigantic quivers, garments of monkey-skin, dirks of kings and executioners, arms of the savages from Cuba, Mexico, New Caledonia, the Carolinas, and the most distant islands of the Pacific—black, uncouth, and horrible, suggesting to the imagination confused visions of terrible struggles in the mysterious shadows of the virgin forest, in an endless labyrinth of unknown trees. Among the spoils of the savage world are pictures and memorials of the Conquerors: here the portrait of Columbus, there that of Pizarro, farther on that of Hernando Cortez; on one of the walls the map of America by Juan de la Cosa, drawn during the second voyage of the Genoese upon an ample canvas dotted with figures, colors, and signs which were intended to direct expeditions into the interior of the country. Near the map is a bit of the tree under which the conqueror of Mexico lay on that famous “night of sorrow” after he had opened a passage through the immense army that awaited his coming in the valley of Otumba; also a vase turned from the trunk of the tree near which the celebrated Captain Cook died; models of the canoes, boats, and rafts used by the natives; a circle of portraits of illustrious navigators, in the middle of which is a large painting of the three ships of Christopher Columbus, the NiÑa, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, at the moment when America was discovered, with all the sailors standing on the decks waving their arms and cheering lustily, greeting the new land and giving thanks to God. There is no word which expresses the emotion which one feels at the sight of that spectacle, no tear worth that which then trembles on the eyelash, no soul that does not at that moment feel itself ennobled.

The other rooms, of which there are ten, are also full of precious objects. In the room next to the Cabinet of Discoveries there are collected the relics of the battle of Trafalgar—the painting of the Holy Trinity which was in the cabin of the “Royal Trinidad,” and which was rescued by the English a few minutes before the ship went to the bottom; the hat and sword of Frederick de Gravina, the admiral of the Spanish fleet, who was killed that day; a large model of the Santa Anna, one of the few ships that escaped from the battle; banners and portraits of admirals, and paintings which depict episodes of that tremendous struggle. And besides the relics of Trafalgar there are many other things which affect the mind no less powerfully, as a chalice of wood from the tree called ceiba, in whose shade was celebrated the first mass at Havana, on the 19th of March, 1519; Captain Cook’s cane; idols of the savages; flint chisels with which the Indians of Porto Rico fashioned their idols before the discovery of the island. And beyond this there is another great room where, on entering, one finds one’s self in the midst of a fleet of galleys, caravels, feluccas, brigantines, sloops, and frigates—ships of all seas and of all ages, armed, gayly decked, and provisioned, so that they need only a wind to put to sea and scatter to all parts of the world. In the other rooms there is an exhibition of machinery, ordnance, and naval armor; paintings which represent all the maritime exploits of the Spanish people; more portraits of admirals, navigators, and mariners; trophies from Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, crowded and piled one above another, so that one must pass them on the run to see everything before nightfall. On coming out of the Naval Museum it seems as if you are just returning from a voyage around the world, so much have you lived in those few hours.

There is also at Madrid a large museum of artillery, an immense museum of the industrial arts, a fine archeological museum, a remarkable museum of natural history, as well as a thousand other things that are worth seeing; but it is necessary, however, to sacrifice the description of them for the marvellous Museum of the Fine Arts.

The day on which one enters for the first time a museum like that of Madrid forms a landmark in a man’s life. It is an important event, like marriage, the birth of a child, or the entrance upon an inheritance; for one feels the effect of it to the end of one’s life. And this is true because a museum like that of Madrid or that of Florence or that of Rome is a world: a day passed within its walls is a year of life: a year of life stirred by all the passions which are able to animate one in real life: love, religion, patriotism, glory; a year of life in the enjoyment it gives, in the instruction it imparts, in the thoughts it suggests, in the pleasure to be derived from its memory in the future; a year of life in which one reads a thousand volumes, feels a thousand sensations, and meets with a thousand adventures. These thoughts were in my mind as I approached with rapid steps the Museum of the Fine Arts, situated to the left of the Prado as one comes from the street AlcalÁ; and so great was my pleasure that on reaching the doorway I stopped and said to myself, “Let us see: what have you ever done in your life to deserve an entrance here? Nothing! Well, then, on that day when some misfortune comes upon you bow your head and consider that your account is balanced.”

As I entered I unconsciously raised my hat: my heart beat fast and a slight shiver ran through me from head to foot. In the first room there are only some large paintings of Luca Giordano. I passed them by. In the second I was no longer myself, and, instead of staying to look at paintings one by one, I postponed that examination and made the circuit of the gallery almost on the run. In the second room there are some paintings of Goya, the last great Spanish painter; in the third, which is as large as a square, are masterpieces of the great masters. On entering you see on one side the Madonnas of Murillo, on the other the saints of Ribera; a little farther on, the portraits of Velasquez; in the middle of the hall, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, and at the end those of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni. You turn back and enter a great room to the right. There you see at the end other paintings of Raphael; on the right and left, more of Velasquez, Titian, and Ribera; opposite the entrance, Rubens, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Murillo. Another is devoted to the French school—Poussin, Daguet, Lorraine. In two other rooms of vast size the walls are covered with paintings of Breughel, Teniers, Jordaens, Rubens, Durer, Schoen, Mongs, Rembrandt, and Bosch. In the other rooms, of equal size, there is a medley of the works of Joanes, Carbajal, Herrera, Luca Giordano, Carducci, Salvator Rosa, Menendez, Cano, and Ribera.

You walk for an hour and have seen nothing. For the first hour a war is waging: the masterpieces struggle for the possession of your soul. The Conception of Murillo blots out Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew with a flood of light; Ribera’s Saint James obliterates Joanes’ Saint Stephen; Titian’s Charles V. dooms the Count-Duke de Olivares of Velasquez; Raphael’s Pasmo de Sicilia casts all the paintings around it in the shade; the Drunkards of Velasquez, with their reflection of bacchanalian joy, somewhat disconcert the faces of the neighboring saints and princes; Rubens overthrows Van Dyck; Paolo Veronese triumphs over Tiepolo, and Goya kills Madrazo.

The conquered turn against those still weaker than themselves, or in their turn win lesser victories over their conquerors. It is a struggle of the miracles of art, in the midst of which one’s restless soul trembles like a flame fanned by a thousand gusts of wind, and one’s heart expands with a sense of pride in the power of the genius of man.

When the first enthusiasm has subsided one begins to admire. In the midst of an army of such artists, each of whom would require a volume for himself, I restrict myself to the Spaniards, and among these to the painters who aroused within me the most profound admiration and whose canvases I remember most distinctly. The most recent of these is Goya, who was born toward the end of the last century. As a painter he is the most Spanish of the Spaniards, the painter of toreros, of the people, of contrabandists, hags, and robbers, of the War of Independence, and of that old Spanish life which melted away before his very eyes. He was a fiery son of Arragon, of iron temper, passionately devoted to bull-fights, so that even in the closing years of his life, when he was living at Bordeaux, he was accustomed to come once a week to Madrid with no other reason than to witness those spectacles; and he would go back like an arrow, not even so much as saluting his friends. A genius rigorous, cynical, imperious, awe-inspiring—who in the heat of his violent inspirations would in a few moments cover a wall or a canvas with figures, giving the finishing touches with whatever came to hand—sponges, brooms, or sticks; who in sketching the face of a person whom he hated would insult it; who painted a picture as he would have fought a battle; very bold in composition, an original strong colorist, the creator of an inimitable style, with frightful shadows, hidden lights, and resemblances distorted and yet true to life. He was a great master in the expression of all terrible effects of anger, hate, desperation, and the thirst for blood; an athletic, turbulent, indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velasquez, fantastical like Hogarth, vigorous like Rembrandt, the last ruddy spark of Spanish genius. There are several of his paintings in the museum of Madrid,

and among them is a very large canvas representing the entire family of Charles IV. But the two paintings into which he put his whole soul are the French soldiers shooting the Spaniards on the second of May, and the fight of the people of Madrid with the Mamelukes of Napoleon, in which the figures are life-size. These are paintings which make one shudder. One cannot imagine anything more terrible, nor is it possible to give overbearing power a form more execrable, to desperation a more fearful appearance, or to the fury of a battle an expression of greater ferocity. In the first of these paintings there is a murky sky, the light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a confused mass of corpses, a crowd of men condemned to death, a row of French soldiers in the act of firing: in the other, bleeding horses, cavaliers dragged from their saddles, stabbed, trampled down, and mangled. What faces! what attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and see the blood run; the actual scene could not have been more horrible. Goya must have painted these pictures with flashing eyes and foaming mouth, with all the fury of a demoniac. It is the final point which painting can reach before it is transferred into action; beyond this point the brush is flung aside and the battle begins. Anything more terrible than these paintings must be slaughter; after these colors comes blood.

Of Ribera—whom we know also by the name of Spagnoletto—there are enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn out and exhausted, clothed in rags—yellow with the deathly pallor of corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art—ah, it is not that! In those faces there is none of that celestial light, that immortal ray of the soul, which reveals with sublime pathos, noble aspirations, those “subtle flashes” and “limitless desires”—that light which draws the eye from the sores and calls down the thought of heaven. There is only the crude suffering which causes repulsion and fear; there are only weariness of life and the presentiment of death; only that fleeting mortal life without a suggestion of the immortality drawing near. There is not one of those saints whose image one recalls with affection: one looks and is chilled at heart, but the heart beats none the quicker. Ribera never loved. Yet as I hurried through the halls of the museum, in spite of that strong repugnance which many of these paintings inspired in me, I was obliged to look at them and could not withdraw my eyes, so great is the attractive force of truth, even if it be despicable. And how true are the paintings of Ribera! I recognized those faces: I had seen them in the hospitals, in the morgues, behind the doors of churches—the faces of beggars, of the dying, of those condemned to death, which haunt me at night even now when I hurry along a deserted street, pass by a graveyard, or climb a mysterious staircase. There are some of them which I could not look at—a naked hermit, stretched on the ground, who seemed like a skeleton covered with skin; an old saint whose shrunken skin gave the appearance of a flayed body; the Prometheus with his entrails bursting from his breast. Ribera delighted in blood, mangled limbs, and butchery; it was his delight to represent suffering; he must have believed in an Inferno more horrible than that of Dante and in a God more terrible than that of Philip II. In the museum of Madrid he represents religious dread, old age, torture, and death.

More cheerful, more various, and more splendid is the great Velasquez. Almost all his masterpieces are there. They form a world: everything is pictured in them—war, the court, the street, the tavern, Paradise. It is a gallery of dwarfs, idiots, beggars, buffoons, revellers, comedians, kings, warriors, martyrs, and gods, all alive and speaking, in bold and novel attitudes, with serene brow and smiling lip, full of animation and vigor; the great painting of Count-Duke de Olivares on horseback, the celebrated paintings of the Beggars, of the Weavers, of the Revellers, the Forge of Vulcan, and of the surrender of Breda—large canvases full of figures which seem to be stepping out of the frame, which on once seeing you remember distinctly by some trifling characteristic, a gesture or a shadow on the face, as though they were real persons whom you have just met; people with whom you seem to have talked, and of whom you think long afterward as of acquaintances of a forgotten time; people who might inspire cheerfulness and provoke a smile of admiration, causing you to regret that it is possible only to enjoy them with the eyes and not to mingle with them and share a little of their exuberant life. This is not the effect of a preconceived opinion which the name of the great artist has given, nor need one be a connoisseur of art to experience it. The poor ignorant woman and the boy stop before those pictures, clap their hands, and laugh. It is Nature painted with a fidelity higher than any imagination. One forgets the painter, does not think of the art, nor try to discover its meaning, but says, “This is true! This is the very thing! It is the picture I had in my mind!” One would say that Velasquez has not put anything of himself in it, but that his hand has only drawn the lines and put the colors on the canvas from a likeness which reproduced the very persons whom he was painting. There are more than sixty of his paintings in the museum of Madrid, and if one saw them only once, and hurriedly at that, not one of them would be forgotten. It is with the paintings of Velasquez as with the romances of Alessandro Manzoni—when one has read them for the tenth time they become so interwoven and confused with one’s personal memories that one seems to have lived them. So the persons in Velasquez’s paintings melt into the crowd of friends and acquaintances; the neighbors and strangers of our whole life present themselves and entertain us without our even remembering that we have seen them on the canvas.

Now let us speak of Murillo in our gentlest tones. Velasquez is in art an eagle; Murillo is an angel. One admires Velasquez and adores Murillo. By his canvases we know him as if he had lived among us. He was handsome, good, and virtuous. Envy knew not where to attack him; around his crown of glory he bore a halo of love. He was born to paint the sky. Fortune gave him a mild and serene genius, which bore him to God on the wings of a tranquil inspiration, and yet his most admirable paintings breathe an air of gentle sweetness which inspires sympathy and affection even before admiration. A simple nobility and elegance of outline, an expression full of sprightliness and grace, an inexpressible harmony of colors,—these are the qualities that impress one at first sight; but the more one looks at the paintings, the more one discovers, and surprise is transformed little by little into a delicious sense of pleasure. His saints have a benign aspect, cheering and consoling; his angels, whom he groups with marvellous ability, make one’s lips tremble with a desire to kiss them; his Virgins, clothed in white, with long flowing draperies of azure, with their great black eyes, their clasped hands, delicate, graceful, and ethereal, make one’s heart tremble with their beauty and one’s eyes fill with tears. He combines the truth of Velasquez, the vigor of Ribera, the harmonious transparency of Titian, and the brilliant vivacity of Rubens. Spain has given

him the name of the “Painter of Conceptions” because he is unsurpassed in the art of representing that divine idea. There are four grand Conceptions in the museum of Madrid. I have stood for hours in front of those four paintings, motionless and entranced. I was enraptured, above all, by that incomplete one, with the arms folded over the Virgin’s breast and a half moon across her waist. Many prefer the others; I trembled on hearing this, for I was filled with an inexpressible love for that face. More than once as I looked at it I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. As I stood before that painting my heart was softened and my mind was lifted to a plane of thought higher than any I had ever before reached. It was not the enthusiasm of faith; it was a longing, a boundless aspiration toward faith, a hope which gave me visions of a life nobler, richer, and more beautiful than that which I had yet known—a new feeling of prayer, a desire to love, to do good, to suffer for others, to make atonement, to elevate my mind and heart. I have never been so full of faith as in those moments. I have never felt so good and affectionate, and I believe that my soul has never shone more clearly in my face. The Lady of Sorrows, Saint Anna Teaching the Virgin to Read, Christ Crucified, The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Holy Family, The Virgin of the Rosary, and The Child Jesus are all admirable and beautiful paintings of a soft and serene light which appeal to the soul. One should see on a Sunday the children, the girls, and the poor women before those pictures—see how their faces light up and hear the sweet words upon their lips. Murillo is a saint to them, and they speak his name with a smile, as if to say, “He is ours!” and in so saying they look as though they were performing an act of reverence. The artists do not all regard him in the same manner, but they love him above all others, and they are not able to divorce their admiration from their love.

Murillo is not merely a great painter; he is a great soul. He has won more than glory: he has won the love of Spain. He is more than a sovereign master of the beautiful; he is a benefactor, an inspiration to noble deeds, for a lovely image, when once seen on his canvas, is carried in the heart throughout life with a feeling of gratitude and religious devotion. He is one of those men whom some secret prompting tells us we must see again, and that the meeting will be a reward: such men cannot have disappeared for ever; in some place they still live where their life is as a lamp of constant flame, which must one day appear to the eyes of mortals in all its splendor. “The empty dreams of fancy,” one may say, but, ah, what pleasant dreams!

After the works of these four great masters there are the paintings of Joanes to admire—an artist imbued with the Italian feeling, whose correct drawing and nobility of character have won for him the title, although it must be spoken in an undertone, of the Spanish Raphael. He resembles Fra Angelico in his life, not in his art, for his studio was an oratory where he fasted and did penance. Before beginning his work he used to take the communion.

Then there are the paintings of Alonzo Cano; the paintings of Pacheco, the master of Murillo; the paintings of Pareja, Velasquez’s slave; of Navarrete the mute; of Menendez, a great painter of flowers; of Herrera, Coello, Carbajal, Collantes, and Rizi, and there are a few works of ZurbarÁn, one of the greatest Spanish artists, worthy to stand beside the three first. The corridors, the antechambers, and the halls are full of the works of other artists, of less importance than those mentioned, but nevertheless admirable for particular points.

But this is not the only art gallery in Madrid; there are hundreds of pictures in the Academy of San Fernando. In the chambers of Fomento and in other private galleries one would have to spend month after month to see everything well, and to describe it would take an equal time, even if one had sufficient ability to do so. One of the ablest French writers, a great lover of art and a master of description, when it came to the point was frightened and knew nothing better to do than to avoid the dilemma by saying that it would take too long to describe it all; and if he thought well to keep silent, it must appear that I have said too much already. It is one of the saddest consequences of a pleasant journey to discover that one has in one’s mind a crowd of lovely images and in one’s heart a tumult of grand emotions, and to be able to express only so small a part of them.

With what profound contempt could I destroy these pages when I think of those paintings! O Murillo! O Velasquez! O my poor pen!

A few days after my arrival at Madrid, as I was coming from the street AlcalÁ into the square of the Puerta del Sol, I saw King Amadeus for the first time. I felt it to be as great a pleasure as if I had met my most intimate friend. It is strange to find one’s self in a country where the only person one knows is the king. One could wish to run after him saying, “Your Majesty, it is I; I have arrived.”

Amadeus pursued his father’s course at Madrid. He rose at dawn and walked in the gardens of Moro, which lie between the royal palace and the Manzanares, or else he visited the museums, walking through the city on foot with only one attendant. The maids, running home in breathless haste with their well-filled baskets, told their sleepy mistresses how they had met the king, how they had passed him so near that he could have touched them; and the Republican matrons would say, “And so he ought to!” And the Carlists would make a grimace and mutter, “What sort of a king is that?” Or as I heard one say, “He seems determined to get shot at any cost.” On returning to the palace he received the captain-general and the governor of Madrid, who, in accordance with the ancient custom, are obliged to present themselves every day to the king to ask if he has any orders to give to the army or the police. Next came the ministers. Besides seeing them altogether in council once a week, Amadeus received one of them every day. On the departure of the minister the audience began.

Amadeus gave an audience every day of at least one hour’s duration, and many times prolonged it to two hours. The demands were innumerable, and the ends sought may be easily imagined—subsidies, pensions, positions, favors, and decorations. The king heard them all. The queen also received—not every day, however, on account of her variable health. To her lot fell all the deeds of charity. She received all sorts of people in the presence of the major-domo and a lady of honor at the hour of the king’s audience—ladies, laboring-men, peasant-women, hearing with pity their long recitals of poverty and suffering; moreover, she distributed in works of charity a hundred thousand francs a month, without counting her liberal donations to hospitals, asylums, and other benevolent institutions, some of which she herself founded.

On the bank of the Manzanares, in sight of the royal palace, in an open smiling place, one sees a brightly-colored cottage surrounded by a garden, when as one passes one hears the laughter, the crowing, and the crying of babies. The queen had this house built to shelter the little children of washerwomen, who, while their mothers were at work, used to remain in the streets exposed to a thousand dangers. There are teachers, nurses, and servants who provide for all the needs of the babies: it is at the same time a refuge and a school. The funds for the construction and maintenance of the house were appropriated from the twenty-five thousand francs a month which the state had granted to the duke of Puglia. The queen also instituted a foundling hospital, a home or sort of college for the children of the tobacco-workers, and kitchens where soup, meat, and bread are distributed to all the poor of the city. She herself went unexpectedly sometimes to assist at the distribution, to assure herself that no abuse was made of it, and, discovering that some trickery was practised, she provided against its repetition. Besides these acts, the Sisters of Charity received every month thirty thousand francs with which to succor those families that by reason of their social position were not able to come to the distribution of soup. These private deeds of benevolence which the queen performed were very difficult to discover, because she was accustomed to do them without speaking to any one. Little is known of her habits, because she did everything unostentatiously and with a reserve which would be considered excessive even for a private lady.

None of the court ladies knew that she went to hear the sermon at San Luis de Francis; a lady saw her there for the first time, by chance, among the other worshippers. In her dress there was nothing distinctive of royalty, not even on the days of the court dinners. Queen Isabella wore a great red mantle with the arms of Castile, a diadem, ornaments, and insignia; not so Donna Victoria. She usually dressed in the colors of the Spanish flag, with a simplicity which proclaimed her royalty much better than splendor and magnificence would have done. It was not Spanish gold which had to do with this simplicity: all the expenses which were incurred for herself, her children, and her servants were paid from her privy purse.

When the Bourbons were on the throne the whole of the royal palace was occupied. The king resided in the left wing toward the plaza of the armory; Montpensier lived in the part opposite to that of the queen; the princes had each an apartment looking toward the garden of Moro. When King Amadeus resided there a great part of the immense edifice remained empty: he occupied only three small rooms—a study, a bed-chamber, and a dressing-room. His chamber opened into a long corridor which led to the two little rooms of the princes, opposite to which was the queen’s apartments, for she would never be separated from her children.

Then there was a reception-room. All that part of the palace which served for the entire royal family was formerly occupied by Queen Isabella alone. When she learned that Amadeus and Victoria were content with such small quarters, she is said to have exclaimed with astonishment, “Poor young things! they won’t have room to turn around.”

The king and queen used to dine with a major-domo and one of the court ladies. After dinner the king smoked a Virginia cigar (if the detractors of this prince of cigars care to know it) and entered his cabinet to attend to the affairs of state. He was accustomed to take a great many notes and frequently consulted with the queen, especially when he was trying to reconcile the ministers or to conciliate the heads of departments. He read a great many magazines of every bias; anonymous letters which threatened him with death and those which gave him advice; satirical poems, schemes of social revolution,—everything, indeed, that was sent to him. About three o’clock he left the palace on horseback; the guards blew their trumpets and a squire in red livery followed him at a distance of fifty paces. To see him one would have said that he did not know he was the king: he looked at the children as they passed him, at the signs of the shops, the soldiers, the coaches, and the fountains with an expression of almost childish curiosity. He rode the whole length of the street AlcalÁ slowly, like an ordinary citizen thinking of his own affairs, and would turn into the Prado to enjoy his part of the air and the sunshine.

The ministers clamored against it; the Bourbons, accustomed to the imposing equipage of Isabella, said that he was trailing the majesty of the throne of San Fernando through the streets; even the squire who followed him looked around with a shamefaced air, as if to say, “See what folly!” But whatever they might say, the king gave no sign of fear. And the Spaniards, it must be said, did him justice, and, whatever may have been their opinion of his administration and government, they never failed to add, “So far as courage goes, there is nothing to say.”

Every Sunday there was a court dinner. Invitations were extended to deputies, professors, academicians, and illustrious men of letters and scientists. The queen talked with them all on every subject with a confidence and grace which, for all they had previously heard of her genius and culture, quite exceeded their expectations. The people naturally exaggerated in speaking of her attainments, and talked of Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, astronomy, and mathematics. But true it is that she talked intelligently on subjects far removed from the ordinary course of feminine studies, and not in the evasive and superficial manner of those who know only the names and titles. She had made a careful study of the Spanish language, and finally spoke it as though it were her own; the history, literature, and customs of her adopted country were alike familiar to her, and she lacked only the desire to remain in Spain to have made her a thorough Spaniard. The Liberals murmured, the Bourbons said, “She is not our queen,” but they all regarded her with profound respect. The bitterest journals went no farther than to call her the wife of Amadeus instead of the queen. The most violent of the Republican deputies in alluding to her in a speech at the Cortes could do no less than pronounce her illustrious and virtuous. She was the only person of the royal household against whom no one would permit a slur either by tongue or pen. She was like a white figure left in the centre of a group of spiteful caricatures.

As for the king, it seemed as though the Spanish press enjoyed an unrestrained liberty, and under the safeguard of the titles the Savoyard, the foreigner, and the young courtier the journals which were opposed to his rule could say in substance whatever they chose; and didn’t they say charming things? One took it to heart that the king was homely in face and figure, another was displeased because he walked so stiffly, a third tried to ridicule his manner of returning a salute, and other trifling matters which are almost incredible. Nevertheless, the people of Madrid had for him, if not the enthusiasm of the Azenzia Stefani, at least a very real sympathy.

The simplicity of his habits and his kindheartedness were proverbial even among the children. It was known that he bore no malice toward any, not even toward those who had treated him badly; that he had never given an affront to any one; that no bitter word against his enemies had ever escaped him. If one spoke of the personal dangers which he incurred, every good citizen answered indignantly that the Spanish people respect those who trust them; his bitterest enemies spoke of him with anger, but not with odium; the very men who would not raise their hats on meeting him in the street felt their blood boil when others followed their example, and could not conceal a feeling of sadness at the occurrence. There are images of fallen kings over which one casts a dark covering; others are concealed by a white veil which makes them appear more beautiful and venerable: over this one Spain has cast the white veil. And who knows but that one day the sight of this image will call from the breast of every honest Spaniard a secret sigh, like the memory of a beloved one who has been offended, or like a gentle and benign voice which says in sad tones of reproach, “Nevertheless, thou hast wronged me”?

One Sunday the king held a review of the Volunteers of Liberty, a sort of national guard like that of Italy, with this difference—that the Italians do good service voluntarily, while the Spaniards will do nothing even by force.

The Voluntarios were drawn up along the avenue of the Prado, where an immense crowd had collected. When I arrived there were already three or four battalions of them. The first was the battalion of veterans, all men above fifty, and not a few very old, dressed in black and wearing the cap À la Ros, with gold and silver lace and crosses upon crosses, as spruce and tidy as the students of a military academy, and from the proud and dignified rolling of their eyes they might have been confounded with the grenadiers of the Old Guard. After them came another battalion in a different uniform—gray breeches, a coat open and turned back over the breast, with large lapels of scarlet cloth; instead of the caps À la Ros, hats with blue plumes—and carrying guns with fixed bayonets. Another battalion and another uniform—the Ros caps again instead of the hats, and green cloth instead of the red, breeches of another color, and daggers instead of bayonets. A fourth battalion and arms all different. Other battalions come up, in various array. Some wear Prussian helmets, others helmets without points; some carry bayonets, some straight daggers, some curved and others spiral daggers; here there are soldiers with corded coats, there those without cords, and again those with cords; belts, epaulets, cravats, plumes; everything changes every moment.

All the divisions are gay and pompous, with a hundred colors and a hundred banners which wave, flash, and float in the air. Every battalion has a different banner covered with embroidery, ribbons, and fringe. Among the others one sees soldiers dressed like peasants with any sort of a stripe sewed loosely down a pair of ragged trousers; some without cravats, some with black cravats, open jackets, and embroidered tunics; boys from twelve to fifteen, armed at all points, walking in the ranks; vivandiÈres, with short skirts and red breeches, carrying baskets full of cigars and oranges. At the head of the battalions there is a continual hurrying of mounted officials. Every major wears on his head or on his breast or on his saddle some ornament of his own device; at every moment a courier of some unknown corps passes; one sees lace of liver, gold, and wool on the arms, on the shoulders, and around the neck; medallions and crosses so thick that they conceal half the breast, fastened one above the other, both above and below the belt; gloves of all the colors of the rainbow; sabres, swords little and big, pistols and revolvers—a mixture, in short, of all the uniforms and arms of every army; a variety that would appall ten ministerial commissioners for the modification of dress; a confusion that turns one’s head. I do not remember whether there were twelve or fourteen battalions; as each one of them selected its own uniform, there was necessarily the greatest possible diversity among them. They were commanded by the mayor, who also wore a fantastic uniform. There were about eight thousand men.

At the hour assigned a sudden scurrying of staff-officers and a loud blast of trumpets announced the arrival of the king. Amadeus had, in fact, arrived on horseback by the street AlcalÁ in the uniform of commander-in-chief, with cavalry boots, white breeches, and swallow-tail coat, and behind him a closely-formed group of generals, aides-de-camp, servants in scarlet livery, lancers, cuirassiers, and guards. After he had reviewed the entire front of the army from the Prado as far as the church of Atocha, surrounded by a dense, silent crowd, he returned toward the street AlcalÁ. Here there was a vast multitude which surged and murmured like the sea. The king and his staff took their stand in front of the church of San JosÉ, with their backs toward the faÇade, and the cavalry with great trouble succeeded in opening a narrow space through which the battalions might march.

They marched in platoons. As they passed, at a signal from the commander, they cried, “Viva el Rey! Viva Don Amadeo primero!” It was an unfortunate idea for the first officer to give the cry. The spontaneous cheer of the first became a duty to all the others, and this resulted in the public taking the greater and the less vigor and harmony of the voices as a sign of political demonstration. Some of the platoons gave such a weak, short cheer that it seemed like the cry of a group of sick men calling for aid; then the crowd burst out laughing. Other platoons gave a deafening shout, and that was interpreted as a demonstration hostile to the government. There were several reports passing among the people crowded about me. One said, “There comes such a battalion: they are republicans; you will see they will not cheer.” The battalion passed without cheering. The people coughed. Another said, “It is an outrage, a fault of education; I don’t like Amadeus much myself, but I keep quiet and respect him.” There was some disturbance. A young fellow shouted Viva in a falsetto voice, and a caballero told him he was impertinent; he resented this, and they both raised their hands, whereupon a third separated them.

Between the different battalions marched citizens on horseback; some did not raise their hats or even look toward the king, and then one might hear different expressions through the crowd, as “Well done!” and “What bad manners!” Others, whose will was good enough to salute him, were afraid to do so, and passed with bowed head and blushing face. Others, on the contrary, disgusted by the spectacle, made a courageous demonstration for Amadeus in the face of them all, marching past, hat in hand, and looking first respectfully toward the king and then fiercely toward the crowd for the distance of ten paces. The king sat until the end of the procession motionless, with an unchanged expression of serene haughtiness. So ended the review.

This national militia, although it is not so disorganized and exhausted as ours, is nothing more than the ghost of an army: the ridiculous has gnawed at its very roots; but as an amusement on a holiday, although the number of volunteers is much reduced (they numbered thirty thousand at one time), it is always a spectacle which far surpasses all the flag-poles and red rags of Signor Ottino.

THE BULL-FIGHTS.

The thirty-first of March inaugurates the spectacle of the bull-fights. Let us discuss them at leisure, for they form a worthy subject.

He who has read Baretti’s description may consider that he has read nothing. Baretti saw only the bull-fights of Lisbon, which are mere child’s play beside those of Madrid. Madrid is the home of the art: here are the great artists, here the stupendous spectacles, here the skilled spectators, here the judges who distribute the honors. The circus of Madrid is the Theatre della Scala of the art of bull-fighting.

The inauguration of the bull-fights at Madrid is even more important than a change of the ministry. A month beforehand the news spreads throughout all Spain: from Cadiz to Barcelona, from Bilbao to Almeria, in the palaces of the grandees and the cabins of the poor, they talk only of the artists and the breed of bulls; they arrange fights for pleasure between the provinces and the capital; he who is short of money begins to save so as to get a good place in the circus on that great day; fathers and mothers promise their children to take them if they will study well; lovers make similar promises to their sweethearts; the papers assure you that it will be a good season; the famous toreros, who already begin to appear in Madrid, are pointed out with the finger; rumors are afloat that the bulls have arrived, and some have seen them or have arranged to do so.

There are bulls from the pastures of the duke of Veragua, the marquis de Merced, and of Her Excellency the dowager of Villaseca, prodigious and terrible. The office is opened to receive subscriptions; the dilettanti crowd around, together with the servants of the noble families, the brokers, and friends commissioned by the absent. The first day the manager has received fifty thousand francs, on the second thirty thousand, and a hundred thousand in a week. Frascuelo, the famous matador, has arrived; Cuco has arrived; CalderÓn has arrived, and all the others three days before the time. Thousands of people can talk of nothing else; ladies dream of the circus; ministers have no thought for other affairs; old dilettanti can hardly contain themselves; soon laboring-men stop buying their cigarettes to have a few pennies on the day of the spectacle. Finally, on Saturday morning, before dawn, they commence to sell tickets in a room on the street AlcalÁ. A crowd collects before the doors are opened, yelling, pushing, and knocking each other about; twenty policemen with revolvers in their belts are scarcely able to keep decent order; there is a continuous stream of people until night.

The long-expected day has arrived. The spectacle commences at three o’clock; at noon the people start from all directions toward the circus, which stands at the edge of the suburb of Salamanca, beyond the Prado, outside of the gate of AlcalÁ; all the streets which lead there are crowded with a procession of people. The circus looks like a great anthill; troops of soldiers and Volunteers of Liberty arrive, headed by bands of music; a crowd of water-carriers and orange-sellers fill the air with their cries; ticket-sellers run here and there, hailed by a thousand voices. Woe for him who has not yet bought his ticket! He will pay double, treble, quadruple! But what cares he if a ticket costs even fifty or eighty francs? They are looking for the king; they say the queen is coming too. The chariots of the great guns begin to arrive; the duke Ferdinando Nunes, the duke d’Abrantes, the marquis de la Vega de Armijo, a crowd of the grandees of Spain, the goddesses of the aristocracy, the ministers, generals, and ambassadors—all that is beautiful, splendid, and powerful in the great city. One may enter the circus by many doors, but before entering one is deafened by the noise.

I entered. The circus is immense. The outside is in no way remarkable; it is a low circular yellow building without windows, but on entering one feels the liveliest surprise. It is a circus for a people, where ten thousand spectators can be seated and in which a regiment of cavalry might drill. The arena is circular, and so vast that it could hold ten of our equestrian circuses. It is encircled by a wooden barrier about even with a man’s shoulders, provided on the inside with a narrow ledge a little way from the ground, on which the toreros place their feet to jump over when the bull chases them. Beyond this barrier there is another higher one, for the bull often leaps over the first; between the two a narrow course, a little more than a metre in width, runs all the way round the arena; here the toreros stroll before the combat, and here stand the attendants of the circus—the carpenters ready to repair the gaps which the bull has made, the guards, the orange-venders, the dilettanti who enjoy the friendship of the manager, and the great guns who are allowed to transgress the rules. Beyond the second barrier rises a tier of stone seats, and beyond this are the boxes; below the boxes runs a gallery containing three rows of seats. The boxes are each large enough to hold three or four families; the king’s box is a great drawing-room; next to it is that of the city officials, in which sits the mayor or whoever presides at the spectacle. Then there is the box for the ministers, for the governors, and for the ambassadors; every noble family has one; the young bon tons, as Giusti would say, have a box to themselves; then there are boxes to let which cost a fortune.

Every seat in the tiers is numbered, every person has a ticket; so the entrance is made without the least disorder. The circus is divided into two parts—one in the shade, the other in the sunshine; in the first one pays more; in the second sit the common people. The arena has four doors at equal distances from each other—the door through which the toreros enter, the door for the bulls, another for the horses, and a fourth, under the king’s box, for the heralds of the spectacle. Over the door through which the bulls enter rises a sort of sloping platform which is called the toril, and well for him who can find a place there! Upon this platform, in a little box, stand the men who at a sign from the mayor’s box sound the trumpet and drum to announce the entrance of the bull. Facing the toril on the opposite side of the arena along the stone balcony is the band of music. The whole balcony is divided into compartments, each of which has its own door.

Before the show begins the people are allowed to enter the arena and to walk through all the passages of the building. They go to see the horses enclosed in a courtyard, and most of them destined to be killed, more’s the pity! They go to see the dark chambers where are confined the bulls, which are driven from one enclosure to another until they reach a corridor and dash into the arena; they go to see the infirmary where the wounded toreros are borne: once there was a chapel to visit in which mass was celebrated during the combat, and there the toreros went to pray before confronting the angry brutes; then they go to the principal entrance, where are exhibited the banderillas that are to be inserted in the bulls’ necks, and where one sees a group of old toreros—one lame, another without an arm, a third on crutches—and the young toreros who have not yet been admitted to the honors of the circus of Madrid. One buys a copy of the Bulletin of the Bulls, which promises miracles for the doings of the day. Then one gets from the guard the programme of the spectacle and a printed leaflet divided into columns for noting the strokes of the spear, the thrusts, the falls, and the wounds. One climbs along endless corridors and interminable stairways in the midst of a crowd which comes and goes, ascends and descends, crying and shouting, so that the whole building trembles, and finally one returns to one’s seat.

The circus is crowded full, and presents a spectacle of which it is impossible to form an idea unless one has seen it: it is a sea of heads, hats, fans, and hands waving in the air; on the side where sit the better classes in the shade all is dark; on the other side, in the sun, where the common people sit, a thousand brilliant colors of vesture, parasols, and paper fans—an immense masquerade.

There is not room enough for another child; the crowd is as compact as a phalanx; no one can go out, and it is difficult even to move one’s arms. It is not a buzzing like the noise of other theatres; it is different: it is an agitation, a life altogether peculiar to the circus; everybody is shouting, gesticulating, and saluting each other with frantic joy; the women and children scream; the gravest men frolic like boys; the young men, in groups of twenty and thirty, shout in chorus and beat with their canes against the stone balustrade as a sign to the mayor that the hour has arrived. In the boxes there is an overflow of spirits, like that in the galleries of the regular theatres; the discordant cries of the crowd are augmented by the howls of a hundred hawkers, who are throwing oranges in every direction; the band plays, the bulls bellow, the crowd outside roars; it is a spectacle which makes one dizzy, and before the struggle commences one is exhausted, intoxicated, and stupefied.

Suddenly there is a cry, “The king!” The king has arrived; he is come in a chariot drawn by white horses, with mounted grooms in picturesque Andalusian costumes; the glass doors of the royal box swing back, and the king enters with a stately crowd of ministers, generals, and major-domos. The queen is not there: one foresaw that; every one knows that she has a horror of this spectacle. Oh! but the king would not miss it; he has always come. They say he is mad over it. The hour has come, the spectacle begins. I shall remember to my dying day the chill which passed over me at that moment.

A blare of trumpets; four guards of the circus on horseback, with cap and plume À la Henri IV., with black mantles, tight-fitting jackets, jack-boots, and swords, enter by the gate under the king’s box and slowly make the circuit of the arena. The people separate; every one goes to his seat; the arena is deserted. The four cavaliers take their places, two by two, in front of the door opposite the royal box, which is still closed.

Ten thousand spectators fix their eyes on that spot; there is a universal silence. For through it will come the cuadrilla, with all the toreros in gala dress to present themselves to the king and the people. The band plays, the door springs open, there is a burst of applause; the toreros advance. First come the three espadas, Frascuelo, Lagartijo, and Cayetano, the three famous ones, dressed in the costume of Figaro in the Barber of Seville, in satin, silk, and velvet, orange, scarlet, and blue, covered with embroidery, fringe, lace, filigree, tinsel, spangles of gold and silver, which almost conceal their dress; enveloped in full capes of yellow and red, with white stockings, silken girdles, a bunch of tassels on the neck, and a fur cap. Next come the banderilleros and the capeadores, a troop covered like the others with gold and silver; then the picadores, on horseback, two by two, each with a great battle-lance, a low-crowned gray hat, an embroidered jacket, breeches of yellow buffalo skin, padded and lined inside with strips of iron; then the chulos, or servants, dressed in their holiday best; and altogether they walk majestically across the arena toward the box of the king. One cannot imagine anything more picturesque than this spectacle: there are all the colors of a garden, all the splendors of a royal court, all the gayety of a rout of maskers, all the grandeur of a band of warriors; on closing one’s eyes one sees only a gleaming of gold and silver. They are very handsome men—the picadores tall, stout of limb like athletes; the others slight and nimble, with chiselled forms, swarthy faces, and great fierce eyes—figures like the ancient gladiators, clothed with the magnificence of Asiatic princes.

The entire cuadrilla stops in front of the royal

box and salutes; the mayor makes a sign that they may begin; the key of the toril, where the bulls are confined, is tossed from the box into the arena; a guard of the circus picks it up and gives it to the custodian, who places himself before the door ready to open it. The band of toreros separates, the espadas leap over the barrier, the capeadores scatter through the arena, waving their red and yellow capas; the picadores retire to await their turn; the rest spur their horses and take their positions to the left of the toril at a distance of twenty paces apart, with their backs to the barrier and their lances in rest.

It is a moment of keen excitement, of unexpressible anxiety: all eyes are fixed on the door by which the bull will enter; all hearts are beating high; a profound silence broods over the whole circus; one hears only the bellowing of the bull as he advances from cell to cell in the darkness of his vast prison; one can almost hear him crying, “Blood! blood!” The horses tremble, the picadores grow pale: another instant a blare of trumpets, the door is thrown wide open, and the terrible bull dashes into the arena saluted by a terrific shout, which bursts at that moment from ten thousand throats. The butchery has begun.

Ah! it is a good thing to have strong nerves: at that moment one turns as white as a corpse.

I can only remember confusedly what followed in the first instance: I do not know where I could have been. The bull rushed against the first picador, retreated, continued his course, and rushed upon the second; if there was a struggle, I do not remember it; then a moment later he rushed against the third, ran to the centre of the arena, stood and looked about him: I too looked about and covered my face with my hands. All that part of the arena where the bull had passed was streaked with blood; the first horse lay dead on the ground with his belly ripped open and his entrails scattered about; the second, with his breast torn by a deep gash from which blood was streaming, staggered about here and there; the third was thrown to the ground and tried in vain to rise; the chulos hurried in, raised the picadores from the ground, took the saddle and bridle from the dead horse, and tried to help the wounded one to his feet: an infernal yell resounded from every part of the circus; thus the spectacle usually begins. The first to receive the onslaught of the bull are the picadores; they sit firmly awaiting him and plant the lance between the head and shoulders of the bull as he is in the act of fastening his horns in the horse. The lance, be it noted, has only a small point, which cannot make a deep wound, and the picadores are obliged by sheer force of arm to ward off the bull and save their steeds. To do this one must have a sure eye, an arm of bronze, and a dauntless heart; they do not always succeed; indeed, they usually fail, and the bull plants his horns in the horse’s belly and the picador is thrown to the ground. Then the capeadores run forward, and while the bull is shaking his horns free from the entrails of his victim they wave their capas before his eyes, turn his attention, make him follow them and leave the fallen horseman in safety; whereupon the chulos come to his aid, and help him again into the saddle if the horse can still stand, or carry him off to the infirmary if he has broken his head.

The bull stood panting in the middle of the arena with bloody horns, looking around as if to say, “Have you had enough?” A band of capeadores ran toward him, surrounded him, and commenced to tease and badger him, making him rush here and there, waving their capas before his eyes, passing them over his head, leading him on, and escaping with the nimblest turns, to return to tease him again, and again flee from him. And the bull turns on them one after another, and chases them as far as the barrier, where he butts his horns against the boards, stamps, cuts capers, bellows, buries his horns in the bodies of the dead horses as he passes, tries to jump into the course, and rushes around the arena in every direction. Meanwhile the other picadores come in to take the places of the two whose horses had been killed, and take their positions at some distance from each other, over beside the toril with lances in rest, ready for the attack of the bull. The capeadores dextrously draw him in that direction, and, seeing the first horse, he made a plunge toward him with lowered head. But this time his blow was parried: the lance of the picador was fixed in his shoulder and checked him.

The bull was stubborn; he strained and lunged forward with all his weight; but in vain: the picador held firm, the bull retreated, the horse was saved, and a thunderous burst of applause greeted the man. The other picador was less fortunate: the bull attacked; he did not succeed in planting his lance firmly; the terrible horns penetrated the horse’s belly as quickly as a sword might have done, were violently twisted in the wound, and withdrawn; the intestines of the poor animal fell through and remained dangling, like a great bag, almost down to the ground; the picador remained in the saddle. There a horrible sight was witnessed. Instead of dismounting, the picador, perceiving that the wound was not mortal, put the spurs to the horse and rode to another place to await a second attack: the horse crossed the arena with his entrails hanging from his belly, striking against his legs, and impeding his steps. The bull followed for a moment and stopped. At that point there was blast on the trumpets: it was the signal for the picadores to withdraw. A gate was opened, and they galloped out one after another; the two dead horses were left, and here and there were pools and streaks of blood which two chulos covered with earth.

After the picadores come the banderilleros. And to the uninitiated this part of the performance is the most entertaining, for the reason that it is the least cruel. The banderillas are little arrows about two spans in length, ornamented with colored paper and provided with a metal tip so formed that when it once penetrates the skin it cannot be withdrawn, and the bull with his running and shaking only drives it farther in. The banderillero takes two of these arrows, one in each hand, and assumes a position about fifteen paces distant from the bull, and then, by waving his hands and shouting, provokes an attack. The bull rushes toward him: the banderillero in his turn runs toward the bull, and just as the bull’s head is lowered to plunge his horns into the man’s body the banderillero plants the arrows in his neck, one on this side, the other on that, and saves himself by a quick turn. If he stops, if his foot slips, if he hesitates an instant, he will be spitted like a frog. The bull bellows, snorts, tosses himself, and turns with dreadful fury to follow the capeadores. In a minute they have all jumped into the course; the arena is cleared, and the brute, with foaming mouth, bloodshot eyes, and neck streaked with blood, stamps the ground, shakes himself, runs at the barrier, demands vengeance, thirsts for blood and slaughter: no one appears to confront him; the spectators fill the air with the cry, “Forward! courage!” “The next banderillero!” The next banderillero advances and plants his arrows, then a third, and then the first again. On that day there were eight arrows inserted. The poor beast, when he felt the last two, gave a long bellow, distressing and horrible, and, dashing after one of his enemies, followed him to the barrier, took the leap, and fell with him into the course. The ten thousand spectators were all on their feet in an instant, crying, “He has killed him!” But the banderillero had escaped. The bull ran backward and forwarded between the two barriers under a rain of blows and thrusts, until he was driven to an open gate and returned to the arena as the gate closed after him. Then all the banderilleros and all the capeadores rushed toward him again: one passed behind and gave his tail a jerk, and disappeared like a flash of lightning; another as he flew past wound a capa around his horns; a third actually had the audacity to snatch off with one hand a little silk bow which was tied to his tail; a fourth, the most rash of them all, planted a pole in the ground as the bull was running, took a flying leap, and passed entirely over him and landed on the other side, throwing the stick between the legs of the astonished animal; and they did all this with the quickness of jugglers and the grace of dancers, as though they were playing with a lamb. Meanwhile, the immense crowd made the circus resound with their laughter and applause and cries of delight, admiration, and terror.

Another blast of the trumpet; the banderilleros are done. Now for the espada. It is a solemn moment, the crisis of the drama. The crowd is still, the ladies lean forward in their boxes, the king rises to his feet. The famous Frascuelo, holding in one hand the sword and in the other the muleta, a piece of red stuff fastened to a stick, enters the arena, presents himself before the royal box, raises his cap, and in a poetic phrase consecrates to the king the bull that he is about to kill; then, tossing his cap in the air, as if to say, “Victory or death!” followed by a splendid train of capeadores, he advances resolutely toward the bull. Here follows a veritable hand-to-hand struggle worthy of Homer’s song. On one side is the brute with his terrible horns, with his enormous strength, his thirst for blood, maddened by pain, blinded by rage, fierce, bloody, terrible; on the other, a young man of twenty, dressed like a dancer, on foot, alone and defenceless but for the short, slender sword in his hand. But the gaze of twenty thousand eyes is bent upon him. The king has a gift at hand; his sweetheart is above there in a box, with her eyes fixed upon him; a thousand ladies are trembling for his life. The bull pauses and looks at him; he looks at the bull and waves the red cloth before him. The bull dashes under it; the espada springs aside; that terrible horn grazes his hip, strikes the red cloth, and cleaves the empty air. A shout of applause bursts from the entire balcony, from all the boxes and galleries. The ladies raise their opera-glasses and cry, “He has not paled!”

All is silence again; there is not a sound; not a whisper. The bold torero flutters the muleta before the eyes of the infuriated animal, passes it overhead between his horns and around his neck, makes him recede, advance, turn, jump; invites an attack ten times, and ten times by the slightest motion escapes death; lets his muleta fall, and picks it up under the eyes of the bull; laughs in his face, taunts him, insults him, and makes sport of him: all at once he stops, puts himself on guard, raises his sword, and takes aim; the bull looks at him; another instant and they will rush toward each other. One of them must die; ten thousand glances run with lightning rapidity from the point of the sword to the tips of the horns; ten thousand hearts beat fast with anxiety and terror; the faces are all tense with excitement; one does not hear a breath; the vast crowd seems petrified. Another instant—the time has come! The bull dashes forward; the man brandishes his sword; a single loud cry, and then a tempestuous burst of applause breaks forth on every side; the sword has been buried to its hilt in the bull’s neck; the bull reels and with a stream of blood flowing from his mouth falls as though he had been struck by lightning.

The man has conquered! Then follows an indescribable tumult; the multitude seems to grow mad; all leap to their feet, wave their arms, and cry at the top of their voices; the ladies wave their handkerchiefs, clap their hands, and shake their fans; the band strikes up; the victorious espada approaches the barrier and makes the circuit of the arena. As he passes, from the galleries, the boxes, and the balconies the spectators, carried away by their enthusiasm, shower upon him packages of cigars, purses, canes, hats, anything which they can lay their hands on; in a few moments the fortunate torero has his arms full of trophies, calls the capeadores to his assistance, throws back the hats to his admirers, thanks them, and responds as well as he can to the salutes, the praises, and the glorious titles with which he is hailed upon every side, and finally comes to the royal box.

Then all eyes are riveted on the king. The king puts his hand in his pocket, takes out a cigar-case full of bank-notes, and tosses it down; the torero catches it in the air, and the multitude bursts into applause. Meanwhile the band is playing a dirge for the bull; a gate opens, four enormous mules gallop in, ornamented with plumes, tassels, and ribbons of yellow and red, driven by a band of chulos, who shout and crack their whips; the dead horses are drawn out one after another, and finally the bull is removed, whereupon he is at once carried to a little square near the circus, where a crowd of gamins is waiting to dip their fingers in his blood, after which he is flayed, butchered, and sold.

The arena is again free; the trumpet sounds, the drum beats: another bull dashes from his prison, attacks the picadores, rips up the bellies of horses, offers his neck to the banderilleros, and is killed by an espada; and so, without any intermission, six bulls are presented in the arena one after the other.

How many shocks, how many tremors, how many chills at the heart and rushes of blood to the head does one feel during that spectacle! how many sudden pallors! But you, stranger, you alone are pale; the boy beside you is laughing, the girl in front of you is wild with delight, the lady whom you see in the next box says she has never enjoyed herself so much. What shouting! what exclamations! That is the place to learn the language! As the bull appears he is judged by a thousand voices: “What a fine head! what eyes! he will draw blood! he is worth a fortune!” They break out into words of love. He has killed a horse. “Bueno! see how much has fallen from the belly!” A picador misses his stroke and wounds the bull badly or is afraid to confront him; then there is a deluge of insulting names: “Poltroon! imposter! assassin! go hide yourself! go and be hanged!” They all rise, point with their fingers, shake their fists, throw orange-peel and cigar-stumps in his face, and threaten him with their canes. When the espada kills the bull with one stroke, then follow the delirious words of lovers and extravagant gestures: “Come here, angel! God bless thee, Frascuelo!” They throw him kisses, call to him, and stretch out their hands as if to embrace him. What a profusion of epithets, witticisms, and proverbs! What fire! what life!

But I have spoken only of the doings of one bull; in the entire corrida a thousand accidents occur. In that same day a bull thrust his head under a horse’s belly, raised the horse and horseman, and, carrying them in triumph across the arena, threw them both to the ground like a bundle of rags. Another bull killed four horses in a few minutes; a third attacked a picador so violently that he fell, struck his head against the barrier, fainted, and was carried out. But not for this nor for a graver wound, nor even for the death of a torero, is the spectacle interrupted—it is so stated in the programme; if one is killed, another is ready. The bull does not always attack; there are some cowardly ones which run toward the picador, stop, and after a moment of hesitation run away; others, naturally gentle and placid, do not in the least respond to provocations; they allow the picador to approach them to plant his lance in their neck, back off, shake their heads as if to say, “No, thank you!” run away, and then turn suddenly to look with astonishment at the band of capeadores who follow them, as though they would ask, “What do you want of us? What have we done? Why do you wish to kill us?” Then the crowd bursts forth in imprecations against the cowardly bulls, against the managers, and against the toreros; and first one of the dilettanti over the toril, then the spectators on the sunny side, then the gentlemen on the shady side, then the ladies, then all the spectators in the circus, cry with one voice, “Banderillas de fuego!” The cry is directed toward the mayor. The banderillas of fire serve to infuriate the bull; they are banderillas provided with a fire-cracker, which goes off at the moment the point penetrates the flesh and burns the wound, causing extreme pain; the animal is tortured and enraged to the point of changing from a coward to a daredevil, from quietness to fury. The permission of the mayor is required to use the banderillas de fuego: if he hesitates to give it, all the spectators leap to their feet, and there follows a wonderful sight: one sees ten thousand handkerchiefs waving like the ensigns of ten regiments of lancers, from the boxes to the arena, all the way around, forming a fluttering band of white which almost conceals the crowd, and ten thousand voices cry, “Fuego! fuego! fuego!” Then the mayor may yield, but if he is obstinate in his refusal, the handkerchiefs disappear, fists and canes take their places, and curses burst forth: “Don’t make a fool of yourself! don’t spoil the fun! The banderillas for the mayor! fire for the mayor!”

The agony of the bull is terrible. Sometimes the torero does not strike where he should, and the sword is buried to the hilt, but not in the direction of the heart. Then the bull commences to run about the arena with the sword sticking in his body, sprinkling the ground with blood, bellowing deeply, writhing and twisting in a thousand ways to free himself from that torture; and in his impetuous course sometimes the sword flies out, sometimes it is driven deeper in and causes death.

The espada is frequently obliged to give the bull a second thrust, and not rarely a third or a fourth; the blood flows in torrents; all the capas of the capeadores are sprinkled; the espada is besmeared and the barrier bespattered; everything is covered with blood; the indignant spectators load the torero with abuse. Sometimes the bull falls to the ground badly wounded, but does not die, and lies there motionless with his head high and threatening, as if he would say, “Come on, assassins, if you have the courage!” Then the struggle is ended, the agony must be shortened: a mysterious man climbs the barrier, approaches with stealthy steps, places himself behind the bull, and, watching his chance, gives him a blow on the head with a dagger which penetrates to the brain and kills him. Often this blow does not succeed, either; the mysterious man must strike twice, thrice, or even four times; then the indignation of the people bursts forth like a tempest. They call him an executioner, a coward, an infamous wretch, wish he were dead, and if they had him in their hands would strangle him like a dog. Sometimes the bull, mortally wounded, staggers a little way before he falls, and, reeling with slow step from the place where he was stricken, goes to die in peace in a quiet corner; all the toreros follow him slowly at a short distance, like a funeral train; the crowd watches all his movements, counts his steps, measures the progress of his agony; profound silence attends his last moments; his death has in it something majestic and solemn. There are some indomitable bulls that will not bow the head even in drawing the last breath—bulls that, while the blood runs in streams from their mouths, still threaten; bulls pierced by ten sword-thrusts, stabbed, and bleeding to death, that still raise their heads with a superb motion which makes the crowd of their persecutors recede halfway across the arena; bulls whose death-agony is more terrible than their first fury; bulls that tear dead horses, break through the barrier, furiously trample the capas scattered through the arena, jump into the course, and run around with a high head, looking at the spectators with an air of defiance, fall, rise again, and die bellowing.

The agony of the horses, though not so prolonged, is more dreadful. Some have a leg broken by the bull, others the neck pierced through and through; others are killed at one blow with a thrust of the horn in the breast, without shedding a drop of blood; others, overcome with fear, take to flight, and, running straight ahead, come in violent collision with the barrier and fall down dead; others welter a long time in a pool of blood before they die; others, wounded, bleeding, disembowelled, and mutilated, still gallop about with desperate fury, run against the bull, are felled to the ground, rise and fight again until they are carried away, ruined but alive, and then the intestines are replaced, the belly sewed up, and they serve again; others, terrified at the approach of the beast, tremble violently, paw the ground, recoil, neigh, and do not wish to die; and these most excite one’s pity. Sometimes a single bull kills five horses; sometimes in a corrida twenty are killed; all the picadores are drenched with blood; smoking entrails are scattered through the arena, and the bulls grow tired of slaughter.

The toreros also have their ugly moments. The picadores now and then, instead of falling under the horse, fall between the horse and the bull; then the bull plunges forward to kill them; the crowd gives a cry, but a brave capeador throws his capa over the bull’s eyes and at the risk of his own life saves that of his comrade. Often, instead of rushing at the muleta, the bull turns and rushes toward the espada, grazes him, attacks and follows him, and obliges him to throw away his weapon and save himself, pale and trembling, on the other side of the barrier. Sometimes he strikes him with his head and throws him down; the espada disappears in a cloud of dust; the crowd cries, “He is dead!” but the bull passes, the espada is saved. Sometimes the bull rushes unexpectedly, raises him with his head, and tosses him to one side. Not infrequently the bull does not allow him to take aim with the sword; the matador does not succeed in striking in the breast, and, as he is compelled by the laws to strike in a given place, and in that place only, he makes futile attempts for a long time, grows confused, and runs a thousand chances of losing his life; meanwhile, the crowd howls, hisses, and insults him, until finally the poor man in desperation resolves to kill or to be killed, and strikes at random; and he either succeeds and is lauded to the skies, or fails and is despised, derided, and pelted with orange-peels, even though he may be the most intrepid, bravest, and renowned torero in Spain.

In the crowd, too, a thousand incidents occur during the spectacle. Suddenly two spectators fall to fighting. The people are so closely packed that some one of the neighbors receives a blow from a cane; then they seize their canes and join the fray. The circle of the combatants grows wider; the row extends through entire compartments in the gallery; in a few moments there are hats flying through the air, torn cravats, bloody faces, a din which rises to heaven; all the spectators are on their feet; the guards run about; the toreros cease to be actors and become spectators. At other times a group of lively young fellows turn in one direction and shout all together, “There he is!” “Who?” No one, but meanwhile the persons next to them get up, and those at a distance stand on the seats; the ladies lean from the boxes, and in a moment the whole circus is topsy-turvy. Then the group of young men give a loud laugh; their neighbors, so as not to appear ridiculous, do the same; the laugh spreads to the boxes and through the galleries till ten thousand people are laughing. At other times it is a foreigner, seeing his first bull-fight, who faints; the news spreads in a trice; they all get up, stare, shout, and make a pandemonium that baffles description. Again, it is a good-humored man who hails his friend away on the other side of the theatre in a voice which sounds like a clap of thunder. That great crowd is stirred in a few moments with a thousand contrary emotions, passes with incessant change from terror to enthusiasm, from enthusiasm to pity, from pity to anger, from anger to delight, admiration, and unbridled enjoyment.

The final impression which this spectacle makes upon the mind is indescribable: it is a mingling of sensations, among which it is impossible to recollect anything clearly or to know one’s thoughts. At one moment you turn in horror to flee from the circus, and swear you will never come back; a moment later, astonished, enraptured, and almost intoxicated, you hope the spectacle will never end; now you are almost sickened; now you, too, like your neighbors, shout, laugh, and applaud; the blood makes you shudder, but the marvellous courage of the men exalts you; the danger clutches at your heart, but you are reassured by the victory; little by little the fever which works in the crowd steals into your veins; you do not know yourself, you are another person; you too are stirred by anger, ferocity, and enthusiasm; you feel bold and valiant; the struggle fires your blood; the gleaming of the sword enrages you; and then the thousands of faces, the clamor, the music, the bellowing, the blood, the profound silences and tumultuous bursts of applause, the vastness, the light, the colors, the indescribable grandeur, courage, cruelty, and magnificence, dazzle, amaze, and bewilder you.

It is a fine sight to see the people go out; there are ten torrents which pour from ten gates and flood in a few moments the suburb of Salamanca, the Prado, the avenues of the Recoletos, and the street AlcalÁ; a thousand carriages wait at the exits of the circus; for an hour, wherever one turns, one sees only a swarm of human ants as far as the eye can reach; and all is silent: their passions have exhausted them all; one hears only the roar of passing feet; it seems as if the crowd wishes to steal away secretly; a sort of sadness succeeds their clamorous joy. I, for my part, as I came from the circus for the first time, had scarcely strength to stand on my feet; my head was spinning like a top; my ears buzzed, and everywhere I saw the horns of bulls, eyes swimming in blood, dead horses, and flashing swords. I took the shortest way home, and as soon as I arrived there tumbled into bed and fell into a heavy sleep.

On the following morning the landlady came in great haste to ask me, “Well, how did it strike you? Did it amuse you? Are you going again? What do you say?”

“I do not know,” I replied; “it seems like a dream. I will tell you later; I must think it over.”

Saturday came, the day before the second bull-fight. “Are you going?” asked the landlady. “No,” I replied, thinking of something else. I went out, turned into the street AlcalÁ, and found myself accidentally in front of the shop where tickets are sold; there was a crowd of people. “Shall I go?” I asked myself. “Yes or no?”

“Do you want a ticket?” a boy demanded: “a shady seat, No. 6, near the barrier—fifteen reales?” “Done!” I replied.

But to clearly comprehend the nature of this spectacle it is necessary to know its history. No one knows certainly when the first bull-fight took place: the tradition tells that the Cid Campeador was the first cavalier to descend with his spear into the arena and on horseback kill the terrible animal. Later, the young nobles devoted themselves with great ardor to this sport; bull-fights were held at all the solemn feasts, and only to the nobility was granted the honor of taking part in them; even the kings entered the arena. All through the Middle Ages this was the favorite spectacle of the court—the chosen exercise of warriors, not only among the Spaniards, but among the Moors as well; and they both waged war in the circus as well as on the battlefield. Isabella the Catholic wished to prohibit the bull-fights, because she had been horrified on once seeing them, but the numerous and powerful patrons of the spectacle dissuaded her from putting her purpose into effect. After Isabella the circus received great encouragement. Charles V. with his own hand killed a bull in the great square of Valladolid; Ferdinand Pizarro, the celebrated conqueror of Peru, was a valiant torero; King Sebastian of Portugal won many laurels in the arena; Philip III. adorned the circus of Madrid; Philip IV. fought in it; Charles II. fostered the art; in the reign of Philip V. a number of circuses were built by order of the government, but the honor of fighting belonged exclusively to the nobility; they fought only on horseback, splendidly mounted, and yet the only blood shed was that of the bull.

It was not until the middle of the last century that the art became popular, and toreros, properly called artists of the profession, who fought on foot and on horseback, came into existence. The famous Francisco Romero Deronda perfected the art of fighting on foot, introduced the custom of killing the bull face to face with the sword and muleta, and established the practice. Thereupon the spectacle became national and the people welcomed it with enthusiasm. Charles III. forbade it, but his prohibition only served to increase the popular enthusiasm into a complete epidemic, as a Spanish chronicler puts it. King Ferdinand VII., who was passionately fond of bulls, instituted a school of bull-fighting at Seville. Isabella II. was more enthusiastic than Ferdinand VII.; Amadeus I., it is said, was not a whit behind Isabella II. And now bull-fighting flourishes more than ever before in Spain; there are more than a hundred great proprietors who raise bulls for the spectacles; Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Cadiz, Valencia, Jerez, and Puerto de Santa Maria have circuses of the first order; there are no less than fifty small circuses, with a capacity of from three to nine thousand spectators; in all the villages where there is no circus they hold the corridas in the square. At Madrid they are held every Sunday, and in the other cities whenever it is possible, and they are always attended by a vast concourse of people from the neighboring cities, villages, countryside, mountains, islands, and even from foreign countries.

If is true that all the Spaniards are not mad over this spectacle; many never attend; not a few disapprove, condemn, and would be glad to see it driven out of Spain; some journalists now and then raise a cry of protest; a deputy the day after a torero is killed talks of petitioning the government; but its enemies are all timid and feeble.

On the other hand, apologies are written in defence of the bull-fights, new circuses are built, old ones are renewed, and the foreigners who cry out against Spanish barbarity are laughed to scorn.

The corridas held in the summer are not the only ones, nor is the spectacle always equally good. In the circus there is an exhibition every Sunday through the winter, but there are not those noble and fiery bulls of the summer season, neither are there the great artists whom Spain admires; there are bulls of smaller size and less courage, and toreros not yet proficient in the art; but there is a spectacle, at all events, and, although the king does not attend or the flower of the citizens as in the summer-time, the circus is always well filled. Little blood is shed, only two bulls are killed, and the spectacle concludes with fireworks; it is an amusement fit for servants and children, as the passionate lovers of the art say in deprecation.

But there is one episode in the winter spectacles which is especially amusing. When the toreros have killed the toros de muerte, the arena is placed at the disposal of the dilettanti; from every part the people jump down, and in a moment there are a hundred workmen, scholars, and street arabs, some with cloaks in their hands, others with shawls, others with any sort of a rag, who crowd to right and left of the toril ready to receive the bull. The door opens; a bull with swathed horns rushes into the arena, and there follows an indescribable tumult; the crowd surrounds, follows, and drags the bull here and there, hitting him with their mantles and shawls, plaguing and tormenting him in a thousand ways, until the poor animal, entirely exhausted, is driven from the arena and another takes his place. It is incredible with what audacity those boys dart under him, twist his tail, and jump on his back; incredible too is the agility with which they dodge the blows. Sometimes the bull with a sudden turn strikes some one, knocks him down, tosses him in the air, or lifts him high on his horns; again he upsets at one blow a half dozen, and bull and men disappear in a cloud of dust, while the spectator fears for an instant that some one has been killed. Nothing of the kind! The intrepid capeadores jump up with bruised limbs and dusty faces, shrug their shoulders, and face him again. But this is by no means the best episode of the winter spectacles. Sometimes the bulls are confronted by toreras instead of toreros: these are women dressed like tightrope-walkers, with faces before which not the angels, but even Lucifer, would

The picadoras ride on mules; the espada—the one I saw was an old woman of sixty, Martina by name, an Asturian, known in all the circuses in Spain,—the espada fights on foot with the rapier, and the muleta like the most intrepid matador of the stronger sex. The entire cuadrilla is accompanied by a train of chulos with great wings and humps on their backs. These unfortunate women risk their lives for forty francs! A bull on the day when I witnessed the spectacle broke the arm of one banderillera and tore the petticoat of another, so that she was left in the middle of the circus with scarcely enough clothes on her back to cover her nakedness.

After the women, the wild beasts. At various times they made the bull fight with lions and with tigers; it is only a few years since one of these combats was held in the circus of Madrid. It was that celebrated event which the count-duke de Olivares commanded in honor of the birthday, if my memory does not fail me, of Don Baltasar Carlos of Asturia, prince of the Asturias. The bull fought with a lion, a tiger, and a leopard, and succeeded in conquering them all. Also in a combat a few years ago the tiger and the lion got the worst of it; they both jumped impetuously upon the back of the bull, but before they were able to fasten their teeth in his neck they fell to the ground in a pool of blood, pierced by the terrible horns. Only the elephant—a huge elephant which still lives in the gardens of Buen Retiro—carried the day; the bull attacked him, and he simply placed his head on the bull’s back and pressed, and the pressure was so delicate that his reckless assailant was crushed as flat as a pancake.

But it is not easy to imagine what skill, what courage, and what imperturbable tranquillity of mind must be possessed by a man who with his sword faces an animal that kills lions, attacks elephants, and tears in pieces, crushes, and covers with blood everything that he touches. And there are men who face them every day.

The toreros are by no means artists, as one would suppose, to be placed in the same category with mountebanks and those for whom the people feel no other sentiment than that of admiration. The torero is respected even outside of the circus; he enjoys the protection of the young aristocrats, has his box in the theatre, frequents the best cafÉs in Madrid, and is saluted in the street with a low bow by persons of refinement. Famous espadas like Frascuelo, Lagartijo, and Cayetano receive the nice little sum of about ten thousand francs a year; they own houses and villas, live in sumptuous apartments, dress with elegance, spend heaps of money on their costumes embroidered with gold and silver, travel like nabobs, and smoke Havana cigars. Their dress out of the circus is very curious: an Orsini hat of black velvet; a jacket fitting closely around the waist, unbuttoned and reaching barely to the trousers; a waistcoat opened almost to the waist, which allows a white shirt of very fine texture to be seen; no cravat; a sash of red or blue silk about the loins; a pair of breeches fitting the limb like the tights of a ballet-dancer; a pair of low shoes, of morocco leather, ornamented with embroidery; a little periwig falling down the back; and then gold studs, chains, diamonds, rings, and trinkets; in short, an entire jewelry-shop on their persons. Many keep their saddle-horse and some their carriages, and when they are not killing bulls they are always walking in the Prado, at the Puerto del Sol, or in the gardens of Recoletos with their wives and their sweethearts, splendidly dressed and proudly affectionate. Their names, their faces, and their deeds are even better known to the people than the deeds, faces, and names of their commanders and statesman. Toreros in comedies, toreros in song, toreros in pictures, toreros in the windows of the

print-shops, statues of toreros, fans painted with toreros, handkerchiefs with figures of toreros,—these one sees again and again, on every occasion and in every place.

The business of the torero is the most lucrative and the most honorable to which a courageous son of the people may aspire: very many, in fact, devote themselves to it, but very few become proficient; most of them remain mediocre capeadores, a few become banderilleros of note, still fewer famous picadores; only the few chosen ones of nature and fortune become brave espadas: it is necessary to come into the world with that bump developed; one is born an espada as one is born a poet. Those killed by the bulls are very few, and one may count them on one’s fingers for a long period of time; but the crippled, the maimed, those who are rendered unfit for the combat, are innumerable. One sees them in the city with canes and crutches, some without an arm, others without a leg. The famous Tato, the first of the toreros of modern time, lost a leg; in the few months which I spent in Spain a banderillero was half killed at Seville, a picador was seriously wounded at Madrid, Lagartijo was injured, and three amateur capeadores were killed at a village. There is scarcely a torero who has not bled in the arena.

Before leaving Madrid I wished to talk to the celebrated Frascuelo, the prince of espadas, the idol of the people of Madrid, the glory of the art. A Genoese captain who knew him took it upon himself to present me: we fixed the day and met at the Imperial CafÉ at the Puerta del Sol. It makes me laugh when I think of my emotions on seeing him in the distance and watching him come toward us. He was very richly dressed, loaded with jewelry, and resplendent as a general in full uniform; as he crossed the cafÉ a thousand heads were turned and a thousand eyes fixed upon him, my companion, and myself: I felt myself growing pale. “This is Signor Salvador Sanchez,” said the captain (Frascuelo is a surname). And then, presenting me to Frascuelo, “This is Signor So-and-So, his admirer.” The illustrious matador bowed, I bowed more profoundly; we sat down and commenced to talk. What a strange man! To hear him talk one would say that he had not the heart to stick a fly with a pin. He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, of medium stature, quick, dark, and handsome, with a firm glance and the smile of an absent-minded man. I asked him a thousand questions about his art and his life; he answered in monosyllables; I was obliged to draw the words from his mouth, one by one, by a storm of questions. He replied to my compliments by looking modestly at the tips of his shoes. I asked him if he had ever been wounded; he touched his knee, thigh, shoulder, and breast, and said, “Here, and here, and here, and here too,” with the simplicity of a child. He obligingly wrote out the address of his house for me, asked me to come and see him, gave me a cigar, and went away. Three days later, at the bull-fight, I had a seat near the barrier, and as he paused near me to gather up the cigars which the spectators threw him, I tossed him one of those Milan cigars which are covered with straw; he picked it up, examined it, smiled, and tried to discover who had thrown it: I made a sign, he saw me and exclaimed, “Ah! the Italian!” I seem to see him yet; he was dressed in gray embroidered with gold, and one hand was stained with blood.

But, in conclusion, a final judgment on the bull-fights! Are they or are they not a barbarous sport, unworthy of a civilized people? Are they or are they not a spectacle which corrupts the heart? Now for a frank opinion! A frank opinion? I do not wish to answer in one way and to draw upon myself a flood of invective, nor to answer otherwise and put my foot in a trap, so I must confess that I went to the circus every Sunday. I have told about it and described it: the reader knows as much as I do; let him judge for himself and allow me to keep my own counsel.

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I saw at Madrid the famous funereal ceremony which is celebrated every year on the second of May in honor of the Spaniards who died in battle or were killed by the French soldiery eighty-seven years ago, on that terrible day which filled Europe with horror and led to the outbreak of the War of Independence.

At dawn there was a booming of cannon, and in all the parish churches of Madrid and before an altar erected near the monument they began to celebrate mass, and continued to do so until nightfall. The ceremony consists of a solemn procession, which usually forms in the vicinity of the royal palace, proceeds to the church of Saint Isadore, where until 1840 were interred the bones of the dead, to listen to a sermon, and then to march on to the monument to hear mass.

In all the streets where the procession is to pass there are drawn up the volunteer battalions, the regiments of infantry, squadrons of cuirassiers, the civil foot-guard, the artillery, and cadets; everywhere bugles and drums are sounding and bands are playing; one sees in the distance, over the heads of the crowd, a continual passing of the hats of generals, the tossing plumes of adjutants, banners, and swords; all the streets are full of the carriages of members of the Senate and the Cortes, as large as triumphal chariots, gilded even to the wheels, upholstered in velvet and silk, adorned with fringes and tassels, and drawn by superbly plumed horses. The windows of all the houses are ornamented with tapestry and flowers; the whole populace of Madrid is astir.

I saw the procession pass through the street AlcalÁ. First came the huntsmen of the city militia; then the boys from all the schools, refuges, and hospitals of Madrid—thousands of them, two by two; then the wounded veterans of the army, some on crutches, some with bandaged heads, some supported by their companions, some so feeble that they had to be almost carried—soldiers and generals in their old uniforms, with their breasts covered with medals and lace, with long swords and plumed hats; then a crowd of the officers of the various corps, shining with gold and silver and dressed in a thousand colors; then the high officers of state, the provincial deputies, the members of Congress, the senators; then the heralds of the municipality and the chambers, with flowing robes of velvet and maces of silver; then all the municipal clerks and all the judges of Madrid, dressed in black with medallions at their throats; finally, the king in a general’s uniform, on foot, accompanied by the mayor, the captain-general of the province, the generals, ministers, deputies, officers of ordnance, and aides-de-camp, all with bared heads. The procession was ended by a hundred mounted guards, resplendent as the warriors of the Middle Ages; the royal guard on foot with great shakos, after the fashion of the Napoleonic guard; red swallow-tail coats, white breeches, wide shoulder-belts crossed over the breast, black gaiters to the knee, swords, epaulets, cordons, buckles, and ornaments; then the volunteers, soldiers, infantry, artillery; and the people. They all marched with slow step; all the bands played, the bells tolled; the people were silent, and altogether, the children of the poor, the priests, magistrates, wounded veterans, and the grandees of Spain, presented an appearance of dignity and magnificence which inspired at the time a feeling of sympathy and reverence.

The procession turned into the Prado and proceeded toward the monument. The avenues, the lawns, and the gardens were full of people. Ladies were standing in their carriages, on chairs, and on the stone seats, holding their children in their arms; there were people in the trees and on the roofs; at every step there were banners, funeral inscriptions, lists of the victims of the second of May; poems pinned to the trunks of trees, newspapers with borders of black, prints representing episodes of the massacre, wreaths, crucifixes, little tables with urns for alms, lighted candles, pictures, statuettes, and toys for children, with a model of the monument—everywhere memorials of 1808, emblems and signs of sorrow, festivity, and war. The men were almost all dressed in black; the women in gay holiday attire, with long funeral trains and veils; there were groups of peasants from all the surrounding villages dressed in lively colors, and through all the crowd one heard the discordant cries of water-carriers, guards, and officers.

The monument of the second of May, which stands at that point where the greater number of Spaniards were shot, though it does not possess an artistic value equal to its fame, is—to use a much-abused though significant word—imposing. It is simple and bold, and to many appears heavy and ungraceful; but it arrests one’s glance and one’s thought, even if one does not know what it is; for on first seeing it one perceives that some event of importance must have transpired in that place. Above an octagonal base of four steps rises a great square sarcophagus adorned with inscriptions and arms and a bas-relief representing the two Spanish officers who were killed on the second of May in the defence of the Artillery Park. On the sarcophagus rises a pedestal in the Doric style, on which stand four statues, symbolic of Patriotism, Bravery, Constancy, and Virtue. In the midst of the statues rises a high obelisk which bears in characters of gold the words, Dos de Mayo. Around the monument there extends a circular garden intersected by eight avenues which converge toward a common centre; all of the avenues are shaded by rows of cypresses, and the garden is enclosed by an iron railing, which in its turn is encircled by marble steps. This grove of cypresses, this solitary enclosed garden in the midst of the gayest promenade of Madrid, is like a vision of death mingling with the joys of life; one cannot pass without turning to look at it, and one cannot look at it without thinking: at night, as it lies in the moonlight, it seems like a fantastic apparition and breathes an air of solemn mystery.

The king arrived, mass was celebrated, all the regiments marched past, and the ceremony was ended. So to the present time they celebrate the anniversary of the second of May, 1808, with a dignity, an affection, and a veneration which do honor not alone to the Spanish people, but to the human heart. It is the true national festival of Spain, the only day in the year when party strife sleeps and all hearts are united in a common sentiment. And in this sentiment, as one can readily believe, there is no bitterness against France. Spain has thrown all the blame of the war and the massacres which it occasioned upon Napoleon and Murat; the French are welcomed amicably, like all other foreigners; the ill-fated days of May are mentioned only to celebrate the honor of the dead and of their country; everything in this ceremony is noble and grand, and before that sacred monument Spain has only words of pardon and peace.

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Another thing to be seen at Madrid is the cock-fighting.

I read one day in the Correspondencia the following notice: “En la funcion que se celebrarÀ maÑana en el circo de Gallos de Recoletos, hubrÀ, entre otras dos peleas, en las que figurarÁn gallos de los conocidos aficionados Francisco CalderÓn y Don JosÈ Diez, por lo que se espera serÀ muy animada la diversion.”

The spectacle commenced at noon: I was there. I was impressed by the originality and grace of the theatre. It looks like a mosque standing on a little hill in a garden, but yet is large enough to hold at least a thousand persons. In form it is a perfect cylinder. In the middle rises a sort of a circular stage about three hands high, covered with green carpet and surrounded by a railing about as high as the platform; this is the battle-ground of the cocks. Between the iron uprights of the railing is stretched a very fine wire netting which keeps the combatants from making their escape. Around this cage, which is about as large as a dining-table, runs a circle of arm-chairs, and behind them a second higher circle, and both of them are upholstered in red cloth. Several of the chairs on the first row bear inscriptions written in big letters, Presidente, Secretario, and other titles of the persons who compose the tribunal of the spectacle. Beyond the arm-chairs rise tiers of benches running back to the walls, and above them extends a gallery supported by ten slender columns. The light comes from above. The lively red of the arm-chairs, the flowers painted on the walls, the columns, the light, and, in a word, the atmosphere of the theatre, have about them something novel and picturesque which pleases and exhilarates. At first sight it seems like a place where one ought to listen to joyous and refined music rather than witness a fight between animals.

When I entered there were already a hundred persons present. “What sort of people are these?” I asked myself, and truly the frequenters of the cock-fights do not resemble those of any other theatre: it is a mixture sui generis, such as one sees only in Madrid. There are no women, no boys, no soldiers, and no working-men, for it is a work-day and at an inconvenient hour. But, nevertheless, one sees here a greater variety of feature, dress, and attitude than at any other popular gathering. The spectators are all persons who have nothing to do the livelong day—comedians with long hair and others with bald heads; toreros—CalderÓn, the famous picador, was there—with red sashes around their waists; students bearing on their faces the trace of nights spent at the gaming-table; dealers in cocks; young dandies; old amateur fanciers dressed in black with black gloves and cravats. These sit around the cage. Behind them are the rari nantes, some Englishmen, some blockheads, of the class one sees everywhere; the servants of the circus, a courtesan, and a policeman. With the exception of the foreigners and the guard, the others—gentlemen, toreros, dealers, and actors—all know each other, and talk among themselves, in one voice, of the quality of the cocks announced in the programme, of the exhibition, the bets made the previous day, the chances of the struggle, the talons, feathers, spurs, wings, beaks, and wounds, displaying the very rich terminology of the sport and citing rules, examples, the cocks of former days, fights, and famous winnings and losses.

The spectacle began at the appointed hour. A man presented himself in the middle of the circus with a paper in his hand and commenced to read; they all became silent. He read a series of figures which indicated the weight of the different pairs of cocks that were to fight, because, pair by pair, the one cock must not weigh more than the other, in accordance with the rules laid down for cock-fighting. The conversation began again, and then was suddenly hushed. Another man came in with two small cages under his arm, opened a gate in the railing, stepped up on the platform, and fastened the cages to the arms of a pair of balances suspended from the ceiling. Two witnesses assured themselves that the weights on the two ends were almost equal; everybody sat down; the president took his position; the secretary cried Silencio! the weigher and another attendant each took one of the cages, and, going to opposite doors in the railing, opened them simultaneously. The cocks stepped out, the gates were closed, and for some moments the spectators observed a profound silence.

They were two Andalusian cocks of English breed, to repeat a curious definition given me by one of the spectators. They were tall, thin, and straight as arrows, with long necks, very flexible and totally bare of feathers along the back and from the breast up; they were without crests, and had small heads and eyes which betokened their warlike nature. The spectators looked at them closely without saying a word. The fanciers in a few moments judge by the color, the form, and the movements of the two animals which will probably be the victor; then they offer their bets. It is a very uncertain judgment, as any one may understand, but it is the uncertainty which gives zest to the sport. Suddenly the silence is broken by an outburst of cries: “A crown on the right one!”—“A crown on the left!”—“Done!”—“Three crowns on the black!”—“Four crowns on the gray!”—“Eighty francs on the small one!”—“Done!”—“I take the bet on the gray!”

They all shout and wave their hands, and signal to each other with their canes; the bets cross in every direction, and in a few moments there are a thousand francs at stake.

The two cocks do not look at each other at first. One turns in one direction, the other looks the opposite way; they crow, and crane their necks toward the spectators, as if they are asking, “What do you want?” Little by little, without making any sign of having seen each other, they approach; it seems as though one is trying to take the other by surprise; suddenly, as quick as a flash, they spring at each other with open wings, strike in the air, and separate in a cloud of feathers. After the first encounter they stop and plant themselves one before the other, with their heads and beaks almost touching, motionless, and looking fixedly, as though they wish to poison each other with their eyes. Then they dash together again with great violence, and after that the attacks follow without interruption.

They strike with their talons, spurs, and beaks; clasp each other with their wings, so that they look like one cock with two heads; they dodge under each other, strike against the wires of the cage, chase each other, fall, slip, and fly. Soon the blows fall faster; feathers fly from their heads; their necks turn as red as fire and they begin to bleed. Then they fall to pecking each other on the head, around and in the eyes; they tear the flesh with the fury of two maniacs afraid of being separated; they seem to know that one of them must die; they utter not a sound or a groan; one hears only the beating of their wings, the sound of breaking feathers and of beaks striking the bones; there is not a moment’s respite; it is a fury which leads only to death.

The spectators watch all their motions intently, count the fallen feathers, and number the wounds, and the shouting becomes all the time more excited and the wagers heavier: “Five crowns on the little one!”—“Eight crowns on the gray!”—“Twenty crowns on the black!”—“Done”—“Done!”

At a certain point one of the cocks makes a motion that betrays his inferior strength and begins to show signs of weakening. While he still resists his pecks become slower, the strokes of his spurs feebler, and his springs lower. He seems to know that he must die. He fights no longer to kill, but to keep from being killed, retreats, flees, falls, raises himself, returns to fall again, reels as though seized with vertigo. Then the spectacle begins to grow horrible. Before the failing enemy the victor grows fiercer; his pecks fall fast and furious, striking the eyes of his victim with the regularity of the needle of a sewing-machine; his neck flies back and forth with the strength of a spring; his beak seizes the flesh, twists and tears it, then darts into the wound as if seeking for the most secret fibre; then he pecks the head again and again as though he wishes to crack the skull and tear out the brain. There are no words to express the horror of that pecking, continuous, insatiable, inexorable. The victim defends himself, flees, and runs around the cage, and after him, beside him, hovering over him like a shadow, with his head stretched over that of the fugitive, follows the victor like a confessor, always pecking, piercing, and tearing. He has about him the air of a jailer and executioner; he seems to be whispering in the ear of his victim and to accompany every blow with an insult: “There! take that! suffer! die! No! live; take this blow and this, and still another!” A little of the cock’s sanguinary fury is instilled into your veins; that cowardly cruelty inspires a longing for revenge; one would strangle the creature with one’s hands and crush its head with one’s feet. The conquered cock, all bedraggled with blood, featherless, and tottering, still tries now and then to return the attack, gives a few pecks, turns to flee, and dashes against the irons of the railing to find a way of escape.

The bettors become more excited and shout even louder than before. They can no longer bet on the struggle, and so begin to bet on the agony: “Five crowns that it does not make three attacks!”—“Ten crowns that it does not make five!”—“Four crowns that it does not make two!”—“Done!”—“Done!”

At this point I heard a remark which made me shudder: “Es ciego!” (“It is blind.”)

I approached the netting, looked at the conquered cock, and averted my face in horror. It had no skin, it had no eyes; its neck was only a bloody bone, its head a skull; its wings, reduced to three or four feathers, hung down like two rags; it seemed impossible that wounded as it was it could still live and walk; it no longer had any form.

Nevertheless, that remnant, that monster, that skeleton dripping with blood, still defended itself and fought on in the dark, raising its broken wings like two stumps, stretching out its fleshless neck, shaking its skull at random, here and there, like a new-born puppy.

It was so disgusting and horrible that I closed my eyes to blur the sight. And the executioner continued to peck at the wounds, to pierce its eyeballs and beat its naked skull; it was no longer a fight; it was torture; it seemed as though the cock wished to torment without killing; sometimes, when its victim remained still for a moment, it bent over and examined it with the scrutiny of an anatomist; sometimes it stepped off and looked down at it with the indifference of a grave-digger; then, again, it would leap upon it with the greed of a vampire, peck, suck, and tear it as vigorously as at first. Finally, the dying fowl stopped suddenly, bent its head to the ground as though overcome by sleep, and its executioner looked at it attentively and desisted.

Then the shouting was redoubled; it was no longer possible to bet on the convulsions of its agony, so they bet on the symptoms of death: “Five crowns that it will never raise its head!”—“Three crowns that it raises it twice!”—“Done!”—“Done!”

The dying cock slowly raised its head; the ready executioner leaped upon it with a storm of blows; the shouting burst out again; the victim made another slight movement, received another pecking, shook itself; received another blow; blood rushed from its mouth; it tottered and fell. The victor, coward that he was, began to crow. An attendant came and carried them both away.

All the spectators jumped to their feet and a clamorous conversation followed; the winners laughed loud and long, the losers swore, and one and all discussed the merits of the cocks and the chances of the struggle: “A good fight!”—“Good cocks!”—“Poor cocks!”—“They were no good!”—“You don’t understand it, sir!”—“Good!”—“Bad!”

“Be seated, caballeros!” cried the president; they all sat down, and another fight started.

I glanced toward the battlefield and went out. Some may not believe it, but that spectacle seemed to me more horrible than my first bull-fight. I had no idea of such ferocious cruelty; I did not believe until I saw it that one animal, after rendering another powerless, would be able to abuse, torment, and torture it in that manner with the fury of hate and the luxury of revenge; I had not believed that the rage of a beast could reach the point of presenting the character of the most extravagant human vice. Even now—and it is a long time since—whenever I remember that spectacle I involuntarily turn my head to one side as if to avoid the horrible sight of that dying cock, and I never chance to place my hand on a railing without casting down my eyes with the expectation of seeing the ground sprinkled with feathers and blood. If you go to Spain, take my advice, gentlefolk, and be content with the bulls.

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THE CONVENT OF THE ESCURIAL.

Before leaving for Andalusia, I went to see the famous convent of the Escurial, the Leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world, the grandest pile of granite on the earth; and if you wish other high-sounding names, you have only to create them, but you will find none that has not previously been applied to the edifice. I left Madrid early in the morning.

The village of the Escurial, which gives the convent its name, lies about eight leagues from the city, a short distance from the Guadarrama; the road crosses a desolate, arid plain bounded by a horizon of snow-clad mountains. When I arrived at the station of the Escurial a cold, drizzling rain was falling, which chilled me through.

From the station to the village there is a climb of half a mile. I entered a diligence, and after a few minutes’ ride was set down in a solitary street bordered on the left by the convent, and on the right by the houses of the village, and closed in the distance by the mountains. At the first sight one can make out nothing clearly: one expected to see a building, and sees a city; one does not know whether one is already in the convent or still outside of it; on every side there are walls; one goes forward, and finds one’s self in a square, looks around, and sees streets, but has scarcely entered these before the convent again closes around, and one has lost one’s bearings and does not know which way to turn. The first feeling is one of sadness. The entire building is of dirt-colored stone pointed with white lines; the roofs are covered with plates of lead. It seems like a building of earth. The walls are very high and bare, and there are a great number of windows, which look like loopholes. One would call it a prison rather than a convent. Everywhere one sees that sombre, dead color; there is not a living soul stirring, and the silence of an abandoned fortress broods over it; beyond the black roofs rises the black mountain, which seems to hang over the edifice and give it an air of mysterious solitude. The place, the lines, the colors, everything, seems to have been chosen by the founder for the purpose of offering to the eyes of man a sad and solemn spectacle.

Before entering you have lost your gaiety; you no longer smile; you think. You are arrested at the doors of the Escurial by a sort of trepidation, as at the gates of a desolate city; it seems that if the terrors of the Inquisition still linger in any corner of the earth, they must be found within these walls; you would say that here one might see its last traces and listen to its last echo.

Every one knows that the basilica and convent of the Escurial were founded by Philip II. after the battle of San Quintino, in fulfilment of a vow to Saint Lawrence made during the siege where the besieging force was obliged to storm a church consecrated to that saint. Don Juan Batista of Toledo began the work, and Herrera finished it; twenty years were spent in its construction. Philip II. wished the edifice to present the form of a gridiron, in commemoration of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, and such indeed is its form. The foundation is a rectangular parallelogram.

At the four corners rise four great square towers with pointed roofs, which represent the four feet of the gridiron; the church and the royal palace, which rise on one side, are symbolic of the handle, the interior buildings, which connect the two sides lengthwise, answer for the cross-bars. Other smaller buildings rise beyond the parallelogram at a short distance from the convent, and extend along one of the longer sides and one of the courts, forming two great squares; on the other two sides are gardens. The faÇades, the doorways, the vestibules—everything is in harmony with the grandeur and dignity of the edifice, and it is useless to add description to description. The royal palace is most splendid, and it is well to see it before entering the convent and the church, so as not to confuse the different impressions. This palace occupies the north-east corner of the structure. Some of the rooms are full of paintings; others hung from floor to ceiling with tapestries designed by Goya, representing bull-fights, popular balls, sports, festivals, and Spanish costumes; others royally furnished and adorned; the pavement, the doors, the windows covered with marvellous workmanship in mosaic and superb gilding.

But the chamber of Philip II. is the important one among all these rooms—a cell rather than a room, bare and squalid, with an alcove which opens into the royal oratory of the church, so that from the bed, when the doors are closed, one may see the priests saying mass. Philip II. slept in that cell, there he had his last sickness, and there he died. One may still see some chairs which he used, his writing-desk, and two small benches on which he rested his gouty leg. The walls are white, the ceiling is flat and without ornament, and the floor is of brick.

After seeing the royal palace one leaves the building, crosses the square, and re-enters by the principal doorway. A guide attaches himself to your person; you are led through a large vestibule and find yourself in the Courtyard of the Kings.

Then, for the first time, you are able to form an idea of the vast skeleton of the edifice. The courtyard is entirely surrounded by walls; on the side opposite the doorway rises the faÇade of the church. From the spacious platform rise six enormous Doric columns, each of which supports a great pedestal and every pedestal a statue. There are six colossal statues by Battista Monegro, representing Jehosaphat, Ezekiel, David, Solomon, Joshua, and Manasseh. The courtyard is paved with stone sprinkled with bits of mouldy turf; the walls look like rocks cut in vertical lines; everything is rigid, massive, and heavy, and offers the fantastic appearance of a building carved by Titans out of the solid mountain, ready to defy the shocks of time and the thunderbolts of heaven. There one begins to understand what the Escurial is.

One mounts the platform and enters the church.

The interior of the church is bare and gloomy; four enormous pilasters of gray granite bear up the vaulted roof painted in fresco by Luca Giordano; beside the great altar, carved and gilded in the Spanish style, and between the columns of the two royal oratories, one sees two groups of bronze statues, kneeling figures with clasped hands stretched toward the altar—on the right, Charles V., the empress Isabella, and several princesses; on the left, Philip II. with his wives. Over the doorway of the church, thirty feet from the ground, at the end of the great nave, rises the choir, with two rows of seats, in the Corinthian style and simple in design. In a corner near a secret door is the seat where Philip II. used to sit. Through that door he received letters and important despatches without being seen by the priests chanting in the choir. This church, which, compared with the whole edifice, seems very small, is nevertheless one of the largest churches in Spain, and, although it appears so devoid of ornament, contains a vast wealth of marbles, gold, relics, and paintings, which a dim light in part conceals, and from which the attention is diverted by the gloominess of the building. Besides the thousand works of art which one sees in the chapels, in the rooms which open out of the church, and on the staircases which lead to the galleries, there is in a corridor behind the choir a superb white marble crucifix, the work of Benvenuto Cellini, which bears the inscription, Benvenutus Zalinus, civis Florentinus, facebat 1562. In other parts one sees paintings by Navarrete and Herrera. But all surprise is overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. The color of the stone, the dim light, the profound silence which encircles you incessantly draw your thoughts to the vastness, the hidden recesses, and the solitude of the edifice, and leave no place for the indulgence of your admiration. The appearance of that church inspires an inexpressible sense of restlessness. You would know by intuition, if you had not learned it otherwise, that around those walls for a long distance extend only granite, shadows, and silence; you feel that measureless structure without seeing it; you feel that you are standing in the midst of a forsaken city; you would hasten your steps to see it at once, to free yourself from the incubus of that mystery, and to seek, if anywhere they might be found, light, noise, and life.

From the church, through several bare, cold rooms, one passes into the sacristy, a large, vaulted chamber, along one of whose walls runs an unbroken row of wardrobes made of various fine woods. It contains also a series of paintings by Ribera, Giordano, ZurbarÁn, Tintoretto, and other Spanish and Italian painters; and at the end stands the famous altar of the Santa forma, with the very celebrated painting of poor Claude Coello, who died of a broken heart when Luca Giordano was summoned to the Escurial. The effect of this painting is truly above all expectation. It represents with life-size figures the procession which once marched to place the Santa forma in that very spot; it depicts the sacristy and the altar, the prior kneeling on the steps, with the casket and the sacred Host in his hands; around him are grouped the deacons on one side, Charles II. on his knees, and beyond the monks, priests, collegians, and the other worshippers. The figures are so life-like and natural, the perspective so true, the coloring, shading, and light so effective, that on first entering the sacristy one mistakes the painting for a mirror which reflects a religious ceremony being celebrated at that moment in the next room. Then the illusion vanishes, but one is still deceived as to the background of the picture, and it is actually necessary to approach close enough to touch it before one believes that it is only a painted canvas and not another sacristy. On the festival days the canvas is rolled up, and there appears in the centre of a little chapel a small temple of gilded bronze, within which one sees a magnificent casket, which contains the sacred Host, adorned with ten thousand rubies, diamonds, amethysts, and garnets arranged in the form of dazzling rays.

From the sacristy we went to the Pantheon. A guide led the way with a lighted torch: we descended a long granite staircase and came to a subterranean door, where not a single ray of light penetrated. Over this door one reads the following inscription in gilded letters of bronze:

“A place consecrated by the piety of the Austrian dynasty to the mortal remains of the Catholic kings, who are looking for that day of their desire, under the great altar sacred to the Redeemer of the human race. Charles V., the most illustrious of the CÆsars, desired this for the last resting-place of himself and his lineage; Philip II., the most prudent of kings, planned it; Philip III., a monarch of sincere piety, made a beginning of the work; Philip IV., great in his clemency, constancy, and devotion, enlarged, adorned, and brought it to completion in the year of our Lord 1654.”

The guide entered: I followed him and found myself surrounded by sepulchres, or rather in a sepulchre, as dark and cold as a grotto in a mountain-side. It is a little octagonal chamber built entirely of marble, with a small altar on the side opposite the door, and in the remaining space from floor to ceiling, one above the other, tombs adorned with bronze ornaments and bas-reliefs; the ceiling is under the great altar in the church. To the right of the altar are the tombs of Charles V., Philip II., Philip III., Philip IV., Louis I., the three Don Carlos, and Ferdinand VII.; on the left, the empresses and queens. The guide placed his torch near the tomb of Maria Louisa of Savoy, the spouse of Charles III., and said to me with an air of mystery, “Read.” The marble is ruled in different directions; with a little study I was able to distinguish five letters; they form the name Luisa, written by the queen herself with the point of her scissors.

Suddenly the guide extinguished his torch and we were left in the dark; the blood froze in my veins. “Light it!” I cried. The guide laughed a long, ghostly laugh, which seemed to me like a death-rattle, and replied, “Look!” I looked: a faint ray of light, entering through a chink near the ceiling, stole along the wall almost to the pavement, shedding light

enough merely to make visible some tombs of the queens: it seemed like a beam of moonlight, and the bas-reliefs and the bronzes on the tombs gleamed in that uncanny glimmer as though they were dripping with water. At that moment I perceived, for the first time, the odor of that sepulchral air, and a tremor of fear seized me: in imagination I entered those tombs and saw all those stiffened corpses; I sought an escape through the vaulted roof, and found myself alone in the church. I fled from the church and lost myself in the labyrinth of the convent; presently I came to myself in the midst of the tombs, and felt that I was truly in the heart of that monstrous edifice, in its deepest part. I seemed to be a prisoner entombed in that mountain of granite, which was everywhere closing in upon me and pressing me on all sides, and would finally crush me, and I thought, with indescribable sadness, of the sky, the country, and the free air as of another world, “Sir,” said the guide solemnly before going out, extending his hand toward the tomb of Charles V., “the emperor is there, just as he was when they placed him there, with his eyes still open, so that he seems alive and speaking: it is a miracle of God performed for purposes of his own. He who lives will see.” And speaking these last words, he made the sign of the cross, as though he was afraid the emperor might hear, and led the way to the stairs.

After the church and the sacristy one goes to visit the picture-gallery, which contains a great number of paintings by artists of every nation, although not the best examples, for they were taken to the Madrid gallery, but, at any rate, paintings of sufficient merit to warrant a visit of a few hours.

From the picture-gallery one proceeds to the library by the great staircase, over which rises a high vaulted ceiling wholly covered with frescoes by Luca Giordano. The library consists of a hall of great size adorned with large allegorical pictures: it contains more than fifty thousand precious volumes, four thousand of which were presented by Philip II. There is also another room, containing a very rich collection of manuscripts.

From the library one goes to the convent. Here the imagination of man is lost. If any of my readers has read the Estudiante de Salamanca of Espronceda, he will remember how that indefatigable youth, in pursuing a mysterious lady whom he met at night at the foot of the chapel stairs, followed her from street to street, from square to square, from alley to alley, turning and twisting and going in circles, until he reached a point where he saw no longer the houses of Salamanca, but found himself in an unknown city, and how, as he continued to turn corners, cross squares, and hurry through the streets, the city seemed to enlarge as he advanced, and the streets to stretch away, and the alleys to make a thicker network, and how he went on and ever on without rest, not knowing whether he was asleep or awake, drunken or mad; and fear began to penetrate his iron heart and the strangest fancies crowded upon his bewildered mind. So is it with the stranger in the convent of the Escurial.

You pass through a long subterranean corridor, so narrow that you can touch the walls with your elbows, so low that your head almost strikes the ceiling, and damp as a submarine grotto, until you reach the end, turn around, and find yourself in another corridor. You go forward, come to doors and look through them: other corridors stretch away as far as the eye can reach. At the end of one you may see a ray of light, at the end of another an open door which allows you to peep into a suite of rooms. Now and then you hear the echo of a passing footstep; you stop and the sound dies away; then it comes again, but you cannot tell whether it is over your head, to the right or left, behind or in front. You step up to a door and turn back terrified. At the end of the interminable corridor along which your glance has run you have seen a man standing motionless as a spectre, looking at you. You hurry on and come out into a narrow courtyard surrounded by very high walls, grass-grown, hollow-sounding, and lighted by a wan light which seems to descend from an unknown sun—places like the courts of the witches of which they told us in our childhood.

You leave the courtyard, mount a flight of stairs, enter an upper gallery, and look around: it is another court, silent and deserted. You turn down another corridor, climb another staircase, and find yourself in a third court; then, again, corridors and stairs and suites of empty rooms and narrow courtyards; and everywhere granite, grass, a sickly light, and a sepulchral silence. For a little while you think you can retrace your steps; then the mind becomes confused, and you remember nothing; it seems as though you had walked ten miles—that you have been a month in this labyrinth and can never escape.

You approach a courtyard and say, “I have seen this already.” No, you are mistaken; it is another. You believe that you are in a certain part of the edifice when you are in the opposite part. You ask the guide where the cloister is, and he replies, “This is it,” and you walk on for half an hour. You seem to be dreaming: you see a succession of long walls flitting past, frescoed, hung with paintings, crosses, and inscriptions; you see and forget and ask yourself, “Where am I?”

You see the light of another world; you have never seen just such a light: is it the reflection from the stone, or does it come from the moon? No, it is daylight, but sadder than darkness—unreal, gloomy, and fantastic. And as you go on from corridor to corridor, from court to court, you look ahead with misgivings, expecting to see suddenly, as you turn a corner, a row of skeleton monks with hoods over their eyes and crosses in their hands; you think of Philip II., and seem to hear his heavy footsteps slowly retreating through the dark passages; you remember all that you have read about him, of his terrors and the Inquisition, and everything becomes clear to your mind’s eye with a sudden light; for the first time you understand it all: the Escurial is Philip II. You see it at every step, you feel it at every breath; he is still there, alive and terrible, with the image of his dreadful God. Then you would rebel and raise your thoughts to the God of your heart and your aspirations, and conquer the mysterious terror which the place inspires, but you cannot: the Escurial surrounds, holds, and crushes you; the chill of its walls penetrates to your marrow; the gloom of its sepulchral labyrinthine passages invades your soul; if you were with a friend, you would say, “Let us go out;” if perchance you were with a loved one, you would clasp her to your heart in trepidation; if you were alone, you would flee. Finally, you climb a staircase, enter a room, approach a window, and with a cry of gratitude hail the mountains, the sun, liberty, and the great and beneficent God who loves and pardons.

What a long breath you draw at that window!

From it you see the gardens, which fill but a small space and are very simple; but who can tell how elegant and beautiful they are, and in what perfect harmony with the building? You see twelve graceful fountains, each surrounded by four plots of myrtle, which represent royal shields, designed with exquisite taste and trimmed with such nicety that as one looks down at them from the windows they look like fabrics of plush and velvet, and form a very grateful contrast to the white sand of the paths. There are no trees, flowers, nor arbors: in all the garden one sees only the fountains, the plots of myrtle, and the two colors, green and white; and so charming is that dignified simplicity that one cannot bear to leave it, and when one has looked away the memory returns there and rests with a sweet subdued sense of pensive sadness.

In a room near that from which I looked at the garden the guide made me look at a collection of relics, which I examined in silence, without allowing him to suspect my secret feeling of doubt. There is a piece of the Holy Cross, presented by the Pope to Isabella II.; a bit of wood stained with the blood of Saint Lawrence, which is still visible; Saint Theresa’s inkhorn, and other objects, among them a little portable altar which belonged to Charles V., a crown of thorns, a pair of tweezers used for torture, found I know not where. Thence I was led to the dome of the church, from which one enjoys a splendid view. On one side the view extends over all the mountainous country which lies between the Escurial and Madrid; on the other one sees the snowy mountains of Guadarrama; below one comprehends at a glance the whole of the measureless edifice, the long lead-colored roofs, the towers, the courtyards, the cloisters, the porticoes, and the galleries; one may pass in thought through the thousand windings of the corridors and stairways, and say, “An hour ago I was below there—here—up there—down there—over yonder,” marvelling that one has made so great a journey, and delighted to have escaped from that labyrinth, those tombs and shadows, and to be able to return to the city and see one’s friends again.

An illustrious traveller has said that after passing a day in the Escurial one ought to be happy throughout the rest of one’s life, with the single thought that one might still be within those walls; and it is almost true: even now, after so long a time, on rainy days, when I am feeling sad, I think of the Escurial, and then look at the walls of my room and congratulate myself; in sleepless nights I see again the courtyards of the Escurial; when I am sick and my sleep is broken and uneasy, I dream of wandering through those corridors alone in the dark, followed by the ghost of an old friar, crying and pounding at all the doors without finding a way of escape, until I rush headlong into the Pantheon, and the door clashes on my heels, and I remain entombed among the sepulchres. With what pleasure did I see again the thousand lights of the Puerta del Sol, the crowded cafÉs, and the great noisy street of AlcalÁ! On re-entering the house I made such a racket that the servant, a good simple Galician girl, ran breathless to her mistress and said, “I think the Italian has gone mad!”

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I was more amused by the deputies of the Cortes than by either the cocks or the bulls. I was successful in obtaining a little corner in the reporters’ gallery, and went there every day, staying until the very end with infinite pleasure. The Spanish Parliament has a more youthful appearance than ours—not because the deputies are younger, but because they are nattier and better dressed. One does not see those dishevelled heads of hair, those unkempt beards, and colorless surtouts which are to be seen on the benches of our Chamber: one sees smooth and shiny beards and hair, embroidered shirts, long black coats, light trousers, tan gloves, silver-headed canes, and button-hole bouquets. The Spanish Parliament follows the fashion-plate. And as is the dress, so is the speech, lively, gay, flowery, and brilliant. We are continually lamenting that our deputies are more careful of form than is becoming to political orators, but the Spanish deputies observe this even more studiously, and, it must be admitted, with even greater grace. Not only do they speak with marvellous facility, so that one very rarely hears one of them pause in the middle of a period to find a word, but, moreover, every one tries to speak correctly and to add to his speech a certain poetical lustre, a little classical polish, and a slight impress of the grand oratorical style. The gravest ministers, the most timid deputies, the sternest financiers, even when they use arguments utterly foreign to rhetorical treatment, embellish their speeches with verses from the anthology, with happy anecdotes, and famous quotations, and apostrophes to culture, liberty, and patriotism; and they talk as rapidly as though they were reciting something committed to memory, with an intonation always measured and euphonious, and a variety of pose and gesture of which one never tires for an instant. And the journals, in criticising the speeches, praise the elevation of their style, praise the purity of their language, los rasgos sublimes (the sublime flashes), which appear admirable if they are writing of their friends, be it understood, or, on the other hand, they say in disparagement that the style is slipshod, the language corrupt, the form—that precious form!—in a word unpolished, base, and unworthy of the splendid traditions of Spanish oratory.

This cultivation of form, this great facility of speech, degenerates into vanity and bombast, and it is true that one must not search in the Parliament of Madrid for examples of genuine political eloquence; but it is none the less true, as is universally conceded, that this Parliament, among all those of Europe, is richest in oratory in the general acceptation of that word. One should hear a discussion on some important political measure which stirs the passions of the deputies. It is a veritable battle! There are no longer speeches, but torrents of words which drive the stenographers mad and confuse the heads of those in the galleries. There are tones, gestures, violent expressions, bursts of inspired eloquence, which remind one of the French Assembly in the turbulent days of the Revolution. There one hears Rios Rosas, a most violent orator, who rules the tumult with a roar; a Martos, an orator of distinguished figure, who destroys by ridicule; a Pi y Margall, a venerable old man, who terrifies by his gloomy predictions; a Colantes, an indefatigable speaker, who crushes the Chamber under an avalanche of words; a Rodriguez, who with marvellous flexibility of argument and illustration pursues, entangles, and strangles his enemies; and, in the centre of a hundred others, a Castelar, who conquers and enslaves both friends and enemies by a flood of poetry and harmony. And this Castelar, famous throughout Europe, is really the most perfect expression of Spanish eloquence. He carries the cultivation of form almost to idolatry; his eloquence is music; his argument a slave to his ear; he says a thing or leaves it unsaid, or says it in one sense rather than in another, according as it turns or fails to turn a period; there is a harmony in his mind which he follows and obeys, and to which he sacrifices everything that can possibly offend; with him a period is a strophe, and one must hear him to believe that human speech without the cadence of poetry and the aid of song is able to approach so closely to the harmony of song and poetry. He is more of an artist than a politician, and he has not only the genius, but the heart, of an artist—the heart of a child incapable of anger or resentment. In all his speeches no one can find a ground of offence; in the Cortes he has never provoked a serious dispute of a personal nature; he never has recourse to satire and never uses irony; in his most violent philippics there is no touch of bitterness; and this is a proof of these assertions: although he is a Republican, an opponent of all the ministers, an aggressive journalist, a continual adversary to every one who exercises any power, and of every one who is not a fanatic on the subject of liberty, he has never had an enemy. Consequently, his speeches are enjoyed and are not feared; his words are too beautiful to terrify; his character too ingenuous for him to exercise a political influence; he does not know how to fight, to conspire, and to accomplish his ends through bribery; it is his function only to please and to shine: his eloquence even at his grandest is tender, his most beautiful speeches make one weep. To him the Chamber is a theatre. Like an improvisatore, to have a full and serene inspiration he is obliged to speak at a given hour, at a predetermined moment, and with a certain period of time at his disposal. Accordingly, on the day when he wishes to speak he makes his arrangement with the president of the chamber; the president so disposes the business that his speech may begin when the galleries are crowded and all the deputies are in their seats; his papers announce his speech on the previous evening in order that the ladies may procure tickets, for he must have popular attention. Before speaking he is restless and cannot be still for an instant; he enters the Chamber, goes out, comes back, turns to go out again, hurries along the corridors, goes to the library to consult a book, rushes into a cafÉ for a glass of water, seems to be stricken with fever: he imagines that he will not be able to pronounce two words—that he will appear ridiculous and be hissed: not a single idea of his speech remains clear in his mind; he has confused and forgotten everything. “How is your pulse?” his friends ask him with a smile. The solemn moment arrives; he rises from his seat with bowed head, trembling and pale, like a man condemned to death, resigned to lose in a single day the glory won in so many years and with so great labor. At that moment his very enemies pity his condition. He raises his head, casts a glance around, and says, “SeÑores!” He is saved; his courage is renewed; his mind clears, and his speech takes form again like a forgotten air; the president, the Cortes, the galleries vanish; he feels only the irresistible flame which burns within him—the mysterious force which sustains him. It is fine to hear him say these words. “I no longer see the walls of the Chamber,” he says; “I see distant lands and people never seen before.” He speaks hour after hour, and not a deputy leaves the hall, not a person moves in the galleries, not a voice interrupts, not a motion disturbs him; not even when he transgresses the rules has the president courage to stop him; he pictures at his pleasure the image of his republic clothed in white and crowned with roses, and the monarchists do not rise in protest, for when so clothed they too find her beautiful. Castelar is the ruler of the Assembly; he thunders, lightens, sings, roars, and flashes like fireworks, provokes laughter, calls forth shouts of enthusiasm, ends in a tremendous tumult of applause, and disappears with head erect. Such is the famous Castelar, professor of history in the university—a most fertile writer on politics, art, and religion; a publicist who annually receives fifty thousand francs from the journals of America; an academician unanimously elected a member of the Academia espaÑola—pointed out in the streets, hailed with joy by the people, loved by his enemies, noble, vain, generous, and happy.

While we are on the subject of political eloquence let us glance at literature.

Imagine a hall in the Academy full of noise and confusion. A crowd of poets, novelists, and writers of every sort, nearly all of them having a French air in their expression and manner, although very studious to conceal it. They are reading and declaiming from their own works, each one trying to drown the voice of the others, to the end that he may make himself heard by the people who crowd the galleries, while they, on their part, put through the time by reading the papers and discussing politics. Now and then a clear, sonorous voice rises above the tumult, and then a hundred voices burst forth together from one corner of the room, crying, “He is a Carlist!” and a flood of hisses drowns the cry; or, on the other hand, “He is a Republican!” and another flood of hisses from the other side drowns the clear, sonorous voice. The academicians crush their papers into balls, throw them at each other, and shout in each other’s ears, “Atheist!”—“Jesuit!”—“Innovator!”—“Weathercock!”—“Traitor!”

By listening attentively to those who are reading one may catch harmonious stanzas, well-turned periods, powerful phrases: the first effect is agreeable; the prose and poetry are indeed full of fire, life, flashes of light, and happy comparisons, drawn from everything that one hears and sees in the sky, the earth, and the sea; and it is all dimly lighted with the colors of the Orient and richly clothed in Italian harmonies. But, alas! it is literature only for the eyes and the ears; it is only music and painting; on rare occasions the Muse drops a gem of thought in the midst of a shower of flowers, and of this bright shower there remains only a lingering perfume in the air and the echo of a dying murmur on the ear.

Meanwhile one hears in the street the shouts of the people, the firing of guns, and the beating of drums; at every moment some artist deserts the ranks and goes to wave a banner among the crowd; they separate in twos and threes and in larger groups and go to swell the crowd of journalists; the turmoil and the continuous turning of Fortune’s wheel dissuade the most industrious from lengthy works; it is in vain that some solitary figure in the crowd cries, “In the name of Cervantes, stop!” A few strong voices are raised above this clamor, but they are the voices of men who hold themselves apart, many of whom will soon make that voyage from which there is no return. There is the voice of Hartzenbusch, the prince of the drama; the voice of Breton de las Herreros, the prince of comedy; the voice of Zorilla, the prince of poetry; there is the Orientalist, Gayangos; the archeologist, Guerra; a writer of comedies, called Tamayo; a novelist, Fernand Caballero by name; Amador de los Rios, a critic; Fernandez y Gonzalez, a novelist; and a host of other able and productive writers. In the midst of these there still lives the memory of Quintana, the great poet of the Revolution; of Espronceda, the Byron of Spain; of a Nicasio Gallego, a Martinez della Rosa, and a duke di Rivas. But the tumult, the disorder, and the discord burst through like a torrent and engulf everything.

To leave allegory, Spanish literature finds itself in a condition similar to ours—a group of illustrious writers whose powers are failing, but who have had two grand sources of inspiration, religion and love of country, or both in one—men who have left a distinct and enduring mark in the field of art; and, on the other hand, a body of young men who are groping their way forward, asking what it is they have to do, rather than actually doing it, wavering between faith and doubt; either possessing faith without courage or taught by custom to simulate it when they have it not; not even certain of their own language, and vacillating between the academies, which cry, “Purity!” and the people, who cry, “Truth!”—hesitating between the weight of traditions and the need of the moment; thrust aside by the thousands who give fame or spurned by the few who seal it; obliged to think in one way and to write in another—to conceal their inmost self, to let the present escape so as not to break with the past, to steer as best they can between opposing obstacles. Good fortune may be able for a few years to keep their names afloat amid the torrent of French books which is pouring in upon the country. Hence arises the discouragement, first to their own individual effort, and then to the national genius; and from this follow imitation which sinks into mediocrity, and the abandonment of the literature of broad scholarship and large hopes for the ease and profitable scribbling for the newspapers.

Alone among so many ruins stands the theatre. The new dramatic literature lacks the marvellous invention, the splendid form, and the pristine impress of the nobility and grandeur of the old, which was the expression of a people who ruled Europe and the New World. Still less does it possess the incredible productiveness and the endless variety; but, in compensation, it possesses a more wholesome influence, a deeper observation, a finer delicacy, and a greater degree of conformity to the true scope of the theatre, which is to purify manners and to ennoble the heart and mind.

In all the forms of literature, moreover, as in the drama, in the novels, the popular songs, the poems, and histories, there always lives and rules the sentiment which informs the literature of Spain more powerfully indeed than any other European literature, from the first rude lyrics of Berseo to the noble martial hymns of Quintana—the sentiment of national pride.

And here it is appropriate to speak of the Spanish character. The national pride of the Spaniards is still so great to-day, after so many misfortunes and so grave a fall, that the stranger who lives among them is doubtful whether they are the Spaniards of three centuries ago or the Spaniards of the nineteenth century. But it is an inoffensive pride, a pride which runs to harmless rhetoric. They do not depreciate the other nations which seem to rise higher than themselves. No; they respect, praise, and admire them, but show a feeling of superiority which draws a clear inference contradictory to their praise. They are benevolent toward other nations, with that benevolence which Leopardi justly remarks is peculiar to men full of self-conceit, who believe that they are admired by all, and love their avowed admirers because they think that a duty attendant upon the superiority with which they imagine fate has blessed them. Surely there has never existed in the world a people with greater enthusiasm for their history than the Spanish. It is incredible. The boy who shines your boots, the porter who carries your valise, the mendicant who begs for alms, raises his head with flashing eyes at the names of Charles V., Philip II., Hernando Cortez, and Don John of Austria, as if they are heroes of his own time, and as if he had witnessed their triumphal entry into the city only the day before. The people pronounce the word EspaÑa with an accent like that with which the Romans of the most glorious times of the Republic would have pronounced Roma. When they speak of Spain modesty is thrown aside, even by men of extremely modest nature, without the least indication in their faces of that exaltation because of which one may sometimes pardon intemperate speech. They boast in cold blood, from habit, without being conscious of so doing. In the speeches of Parliament, in the newspaper articles, in the writings of the Academy, they speak of the Spanish people without circumlocution as a nation of heroes, the great nation, the wonder of the world, the glory of the ages. It is a rare thing to hear any one speak or read a hundred words before an audience without sooner or later recognizing the burden of the song in Lepanto, the Discovery of America, or the War of Independence, the mention of which always elicits a burst of applause.

And it is precisely this tradition of the War of Independence that constitutes to the Spanish people a powerful inherent force. One who has never lived in Spain for a long or short period cannot believe that a war, however fortunate and glorious, could leave to the people so steadfast a faith in their national valor. Baylen, Victoria, San Marcial, are throughout Spain even more potent traditions than are Marengo, Jena, and Austerlitz in France. Even the martial glory of the armies of Napoleon, seen through the War of Independence, which shrouds it like a veil, appears to the eyes of the Spanish less splendid than to any other people in Europe. The idea of a foreign invasion provokes among the Spaniards a smile of proud disdain; they do not believe it possible to be conquered in their own country; one should hear the tones in which they speak of Germany when it is rumored that the emperor William has determined to uphold the throne of the duke d’Aosta with his arms. And doubtless if they were obliged to fight a new war of independence, they would fight, possibly with less fortunate success, but with a bravery and constancy equal to those which they once so marvellously displayed. 1808 is the ’93 of Spain; it is a date which stands out before the eyes of every Spaniard in letters of fire; they glory in it, from the women and the boys to the babies who are just learning to lisp; it is the war-cry of the nation.

And they have a similar pride in their writers and artists. The beggar, instead of saying EspaÑa, says sometimes the country of Cervantes. No writer in the world has ever gained such popularity among his own people as the author of Don Quixote in Spain. I believe that there is not a peasant or a shepherd from the Pyrenees to the Sierra Nevada, from the coast of Valencia to the hills of Estremadura, who if asked about Cervantes will not reply with a smile of complacence, “He is the immortal author of Don Quixote!” Spain is perhaps the country where the anniversaries of the great writers are most generally celebrated; from Juan de Mena to Espronceda, each one has his solemn day, when they offer at his tomb a tribute of song and flowers. In the squares, the cafÉs, the railway-carriages, wherever you are, you hear lines of the famous poets repeated by all sorts of people; he who has not read them has heard another read; he who has not heard them read repeats the quotation as a proverb learned from others; and when any one repeats a verse, they all prick up their ears. Any one who knows a little Spanish literature may make a journey in that country with the assurance of always having something to talk about and something with which to inspire sympathy wherever and in whatever company he may happen to be. The national literature is truly national.

The defect of the Spanish which from the first strikes the stranger is this—that in their estimate of the affairs, the men, and the achievements of their time and their country they over-estimate their measure, if one may so speak. They exaggerate everything, they see everything, as it were, through a lens that magnifies to vast proportions. For a long time they have had no immediate part in the common life of Europe, and hence they have lacked opportunity for comparing themselves with other states and of judging themselves by such comparison. On this account their civil wars, the wars in America, Africa, and Cuba, are to them not what the little war of 1860 and ’61 against the Papal army, or even the revolution of 1860, are to us, but what we regard the great Crimean War and the wars of 1859 and of 1866. They speak of the combats—which exalt the Spanish armies in those wars, sanguinary doubtless, but not great—as the French speak of Solferino, the Prussians of Sadowa, and the Austrians of Custozza. Prim, Serrano, and O’Donnell are generals who in comparison dwarf the most illustrious commanders of other countries. I remember the to-do made at Madrid over the report of the victory gained by General Merriones over four or five thousand Carlists. The deputies in the lobby of the Cortes exclaimed emphatically, “Ah! Spanish blood!” Some even said that if an army of three hundred Spaniards had found itself in the position of the French in 1870, it would have marched straight to Berlin. Certain it is, that one cannot doubt the valor of the Spanish, which has been proved on so many occasions, but one may safely assert that there is a great difference between disorganized Carlists and Prussians in battle array—between the soldiers of Europe, to speak more comprehensively, and the soldiers of Africa—between great pitched battles, where canister sweeps away its thousands, and the combats of ten thousand soldiers on either side with great disparity in equipment and discipline. And as they speak of war, so they speak of everything else; and this is true not only of the common people, but of the upper classes as well. They lavish high-sounding praises upon their writers; they give the title of grande poeta to many whose names are never heard outside of Spain; adjectives of exalted sublimity and wonder are current coin given and taken without the least doubt of its value as legal tender. One may say that Spain regards and judges everything like an American, rather than a European, people, and that it is separated from Europe by an ocean instead of the Pyrenees, and joined to America by an isthmus.

In other points how similar they are to us! To hear the people talk of politics, one would think one was in Italy: they do not argue, they express opinions; they do not censure, they condemn; a single argument is enough for any judgment, and to form an argument an inference alone is sufficient. As for this minister, he is a rascal; that one, a traitor; and this one a hypocrite: they are all a pack of thieves. One has sold the trees in the gardens of Aranguez; another has robbed the Escurial of its treasures; a third has drained the coffers of the state; a fourth has sold his soul for a bag of money. They have lost all faith in the very men who have had a hand in all the political movements of the last thirty years; even among the lowest people there is creeping in a spirit of discouragement which gives rise to the expressions that one hears very often and on every side: “Poor Spain! Unhappy country! Wretched Spaniards!”

But the violence of the political passions and the fury of the civil struggles have not changed the foundation of the ancient Spanish character. Only that part of society known as the political world, only this is corrupt; the people, though always inclined toward those blind and at times savage impulses of passion which betray the mingling of the Arabian and Latin blood, are good and loyal and capable of magnanimous action and sublime bursts of enthusiasm. “The honor of Spain” is still a motto which quickens every pulse. And, moreover, their manners are frank and refined; perhaps less polished, but certainly more amiable and ingenuous, than those for which the French are praised. Instead of smiling at you, they offer you a cigar; instead of paying you a compliment, they press your hand, and are more hospitable in actions than in protestations. Nevertheless, the forms of address still preserve their ancient courtliness; the gentleman says to the lady, “I am at your feet;” the lady to the gentleman, “I kiss your hand.” Among themselves the gentlemen sign their letters Q. B. S. M.—que besa sus manos (I kiss your hands), like a servant to his master; only friends say Adios; and the people preserve their affectionate salutation, Vaya Usted con Dios! (God be with you!), which is worth more than all the kissing of the hands.

With the warm, generous nature of this people it is impossible to spend a month in Madrid without making a hundred friends, even though one does not seek them. Think how many one might make if one did seek them! This was my case. I cannot say that they were real friends, but I was acquainted with so many persons that it did not seem at all like being in a foreign city. Even the illustrious men are very easy to approach, and hence there is no need, as elsewhere, of a pile of letters and messages from friends in order to meet them. I had the honor of knowing Tamayo, Hartzenbusch, Guerra, Saavedra, Valera, Rodriguez, Castelar, and many others, some famous in letters and some in the sciences, and I found them all alike—open, cordial, fiery; men with silvered hair, but with the eyes and voices of young men of twenty; passionately devoted to poetry, music, and art; cheerful and animated, with a fresh, ringing laugh. How many of them did I see, as they read the lines of Quintana or Espronceda, grow pale, weep, and spring to their feet as though touched by an electric spark, revealing their whole soul in a radiant glance! What youthful spirits! What ardent hearts! How delighted I was to see and hear them—to belong to that same poor Latin race of which we now say such hard things! and how happy I was in the thought that to a greater or less degree we are all formed in the same mould, and that, although we may accustom ourselves, little by little, to envy the qualities of others, yet we are never wholly successful in obliterating our own!

After three months and more of sojourning in Madrid I was obliged to take my departure, in order that I might not be caught by the summer in Southern Spain. I shall always remember that beautiful May morning when I left, perhaps for ever, my dear Madrid. I was going to see Andalusia, “the promised land” of travellers, the ideal Andalusia, whose wonders I had so often heard sung by poets and romancers in Italy and Spain—that Andalusia for whose sake, I may say, I had undertaken the journey; and yet I was sad. I had passed so many happy days in Madrid! I was leaving so many dear friends! On my way to the station to take the noon train I passed along the AlcalÁ, saluted from a distance the gardens of the Recoletos, passed the Museum of Painting, stopped to take a last look at the statue of Murillo, and reached the station with an aching heart. “Three months?” I asked myself a few moments before the train started. “Have three months passed already? Has it not been a dream? Yes, it seems as if I have been dreaming. Perhaps I shall never again see my good landlady, nor SeÑor Saavedra’s little daughter, nor the sweet, serene face of Guerra, nor my friends of the CafÉ Fornos, nor any one else. But what is this? Shall I not return? Return! Oh, no! I know well that I shall not return. And so ... farewell, my friends! farewell, Madrid! farewell, my little room in the street of Alduana!” At this moment my heartstrings seem to be breaking and I must hide my face.

End of Vol. I.