A FEW miles from Barcelona one comes in sight of the serrated crags of the famous Montserrat, a peculiar mountain which at first sight raises a suspicion of an optical illusion, so hard is it to believe that Nature could ever have yielded to so strange a caprice. Imagine a succession of little triangles connected with each other, like those which children use to represent a chain of mountains, or a crown with a pointed circlet, stretched out like the teeth of a saw or a great many sugar-loaves ranged in a row, and you have an idea of the distant appearance of Montserrat. It is a group of immense cones which rise side by side one behind another, or rather one great mountain formed of a hundred mountains, cleft from the summit to a distance almost one-third of its height in such a manner that it presents two grand peaks, around which cluster the lesser ones. The highest altitudes arid and inaccessible; the lower slopes mantled with pine, oak, arbutus, and juniper, broken here and there by measureless caverns and fearful precipices, and dotted by white hermitages, which stand out in bold relief against the aËrial crags and the deep gorges. In the cleft of the mountain, between the two principal peaks, rises the ancient monastery of the Benedictines, where Ignatius Loyola meditated in his youth. Fifty thousand pilgrims and sight-seers annually visit the monastery and the caves, and on the eighth of September a festival is held which brings together an innumerable throng from every part of Catalonia.

Shortly before we arrived at the station where one gets off of the train to ascend the mountain, a group of school-boys from an academy of some unknown village rushed into the railway-carriage. They were making an excursion to the monastery of Montserrat, and a priest accompanied them. They were Catalans—with fair, ruddy faces and large eyes; each one carried a basket containing bread and fruit; one had a scrap-book, another a field-glass. They all laughed and talked at once, rollicked about on the seats, and filled the car with infinite merriment. But, although I strained my ears and racked my brain, I could not understand a word of the miserable jargon in which they were chattering. I entered into conversation with the priest.

“Look, sir,” said he after the preliminary sentences, as he pointed out one of the boys: “he knows all the Odes of Horace by heart; the way in which that other boy can solve problems in arithmetic would astonish you; this one here is a born philosopher;” and so he described to me the gifts of each.

Suddenly he interrupted himself to shout “Beretina!” (Caps). The boys all drew their red Catalonian caps from their pockets, and with cries of delight proceeded to put them on, some slipping them back so that they fell over their necks, the others pulling them forward until they dangled in front of their noses. The priest made a gesture of disapproval, and at once those who had their caps pushed back pulled them over their noses, and those who had them pulled forward pushed them back over their necks, with laughter and shouts and clapping of the hands.

I approached one of the most roguish of the boys, and, merely for the fun of it, knowing that I might as well have talked to a wall, I asked in Italian, “Is this the first time you have made the journey to Montserrat?”

The boy thought for a moment, and then answered very slowly, “I—have—been—there—before—at—other—times.”

“Ah! my dear boy!” I cried with a feeling of satisfaction hard to imagine, “and where have you learned Italian?”

The priest here put in a word to say that the boy’s father had lived several years at Naples. Just as I was turning toward my little Catalan to continue the conversation my words were cut short by a miserable whistle, and then the wretched cry of “Olesa!” the village at the foot of the mountain. The priest bade me good-bye, the boys tumbled out of the car, the train was off again.

I put my head out of the window and shouted to my little friend, “Buona passeggiata!” (A pleasant walk), and he shouted back, emphasizing each syllable, “A-di-o!” Some may laugh at the thought of mentioning these trifles; nevertheless, they are the liveliest pleasures of the traveller’s experience.

The towns and villages which one sees in crossing Catalonia toward Arragon are almost all populous and flourishing, surrounded by workshops, factories, and buildings in course of construction, from which in every direction one sees thick columns of smoke rising here and there among the trees, and at every station there is great running hither and thither of peasants and merchants. The country is a pleasing succession of cultivated fields, gentle hills, and picturesque valleys until one comes to the village of Cervera.

Here one begins to see great stretches of arid land with a few scattered houses, which announce the proximity of Arragon. But then, unexpectedly, one enters a smiling valley clothed with olive-groves, vineyards, mulberry trees, orchards, and dotted with towns and villas. One sees on the one side the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, on the other the mountains of Arragon—Lerida, the glorious city of ten sieges, along the bank of the Segre, on the slope of a beautiful hill; and all about a luxuriance of vegetation, a variety of scenery—a glorious feast to the eye. It is the last view of Catalonia; in a few minutes one enters Arragon.

Arragon! What vague memories of wars, of bandits, queens, poets, heroes, and storied lovers dwell in the echo of that sonorous name! And what a profound feeling of sympathy and respect! The old, noble, haughty Arragon, from whose brow flash the splendid rays of the glory of Spain! upon whose ancestral shields is written in characters of blood, “Liberty and valor!” When the world bent beneath the yoke of the tyrants the people of Arragon said to their king, through the mouth of their chief-justice, “We, who are as great as thou, and more potent, have chosen thee for our lord and king on thy agreement to obey our commands and conserve our liberties; and not otherwise.”

And the king knelt before the might of the magistrate of the people and took his oath on this sacred formula.

In the midst of the barbarity of the Middle Ages the fiery race of Arragon recked not of torture; the secret trial was banished from their code; all their institutions protected the liberty of the citizen and law held absolute sway. Discontented with their narrow mountain-home, they descended from Sobrarbe to Huesca, from Huesca to Saragossa, and as conquerors entered the Mediterranean. Joining with brave Catalonia, they redeemed the Balearic Isles and Valencia from Moorish dominion; fought Murat for their outraged rights and violated consciences; tamed the adventurers of the house of Anjou and spoiled them of their Italian lands; broke the chains of the port of Marseilles, which still hang on the walls of their temples; with the ships of Roger di Lauria ruled the seas from the Gulf of Taranto to the mouth of the Guadalquivir; subdued the Bosphorus with the ships of Roger de Flor; swept the Mediterranean from Rosas to Catania on the wings of victory; and, as though the West was too narrow for their ambition, they dared to carve upon the brow of Olympus, the stones of the PirÆus, and the proud mountains which form the gates of Asia the immortal name of their fatherland.

These were my thoughts on entering Arragon, although I did not express them in these very words, for I did not then have before me a certain little book by Emilio Castelar. The first sight upon which my eyes rested was the little village of Monzon lying along the stream of Cinca, noted for the famous assemblies of the courts and for the alternate attacks and defences of Spanish and French—the common fate of almost all the villages of the province during the War of Independence. Monzon lies outstretched at the foot of a formidable mountain upon whose side rises a castle as black, sinister, and appalling as the grimmest of the feudal lords could have planned to condemn the most detested of villages to a life of fear. Even the guide pauses before this monstrous edifice and breaks forth in a timid exclamation of astonishment. There is not, I believe, in Spain another village, another mountain, another castle which better represents the fearful submission of an oppressed people and the perpetual menace of a cruel ruler. A giant pressing his knee on the breast of a mere child whom he has thrown to the ground,—this is but a poor simile to give an idea of it; and such was the impression it made upon me that, although I do not know how to hold the pencil in my hand, I tried to sketch the landscape as best I could, so that it might not fade from my memory. And while I was making scratches I composed the first stanza of a gloomy ballad.

After Monzon the country of Arragon is merely a vast plain, bounded in the distance by long chains of reddish hills, with a few wretched villages, and some solitary eminences upon which rise the blackened ruins of ancient castles. Arragon, so flourishing under her kings, is now one of the poorest provinces of Spain. Only on the banks of the Ebro and along the famous canal which extends for forty miles from Tudela as far as Saragossa, serving at the same time to irrigate the fields and to transport merchandise,—only here does commerce thrive. Elsewhere it languishes or is dead.

The railway-stations are deserted; when the train stops one hears no other sound save the voice of some old troubadour who strums his guitar and chants a monotonous ditty, which one hears again at all the other stations, and afterward in the cities of Arragon: the words varied, but eternally the same tune. As there was nothing to be seen out of the window, I turned to my travelling companions.

The car was well filled: we were about forty in number, counting men and women, and as the second-class carriages in Spain do not have compartments, we could all see each other—priests, nuns, boys, servants, and other persons who might have been business-men or officials or secret emisaries of Don Carlos. The priests smoked their cigarettes, as the custom is in Spain, amicably offering their tobacco-pouches and rolling paper to those beside them. The others ate with all their might, passing from one to another a sort of bladder, which when pressed with both hands sent out a spurt of wine. Others were reading the newspaper, wrinkling their brows now and then with an air of profound meditation.

A Spaniard will not put a piece of orange, a bit of cheese, or a mouthful of bread into his mouth in the presence of others before he has asked every one to eat with him; and so I saw fruit, bread, sardines, and cups of wine pass under my nose, everything accompanied with a polite “Gusta usted comer, commigo?” (Will you eat with me, sir?) To which I replied, “Gracias” (No, thank you), though it went against the grain to do so, for I was as hungry as Ugolino. Opposite to me, with her feet almost touching mine, sat a young nun, if one were to judge of her age by her chin, which was all of her face visible below her veil, and by her hand, which lay carelessly on her knee. I looked at her closely for more than an hour, hoping that she would raise her face, but she remained motionless as a statue, although from her attitude it was easy to see that she was obliged to resist the natural curiosity to look around her; and for this reason she finally won my admiration. What constancy! I thought; what strength of will! What a power of sacrifice even in these trifling matters! What a noble contempt for human vanity! As I was engaged with these thoughts I happened to glance at her hand; it was a small, white hand, and it seemed to me to be moving. I watched it more intently, and saw it escape very slowly out of the sleeve, extend the fingers, and rest on the knee, so that for a moment it hung gracefully down; then it turned a little to one side, was drawn back, and again extended. Oh, ye gods! anything but contempt of human vanity!

I could not have been mistaken; she had gone to all that trouble merely to display her little hand, yet she did not once raise her head all the time she remained in the car, nor did she even allow her face to be seen when she got out. Oh, the inscrutable depths of the feminine mind!

It was ordained that I should make no other friends than priests during the journey. An old father with a benevolent expression spoke to me, and we commenced a conversation which lasted almost to Saragossa. At first, when I said I was an Italian, he became a little suspicious, thinking perhaps that I had been one of those who had broken the bolts of the Quirinal, but when I told him that I did not busy myself about politics he was reassured and talked with perfect freedom. We chanced upon literature. I repeated to him the whole of Manzoni’s Pentecoste, which delighted him, and he recited for me a poem of the celebrated Luis de Leon, a sacred poet of the sixteenth century, and we were friends. When we came to Zuera, the last station before arriving at Saragossa, he arose, bade me good-bye, and with his foot on the step he turned quickly and whispered in my ear, “Beware of the women; they bring evil consequences in Spain.” When he alighted he stood to watch the train start, and, raising his hand with a gesture of fatherly admonition, he said a second time, “Beware!”

It was late at night when I reached Saragossa, and as I left the train my ear suddenly became aware of the peculiar cadence with which the hackmen, the porters, and the boys were speaking as they quarrelled over my baggage. In Arragon even the most insignificant people can speak Castilian, although with some mutilation and harshness; but your pure Castilian can recognize the Arragonese before he has spoken half a word; and, in fact, the Andalusians can imitate their accent, and do so occasionally in derision of its roughness and monotony, as the Tuscans used sometimes to mock the speech of Lucca.

I entered the city with a certain feeling of reverent fear. The terrible fame of Saragossa oppressed me; my conscience almost upbraided me for having so often profaned its name in the school of rhetoric, when I hurled it as a challenge in the face of tyrants. The streets were dark; I saw only the black outline of the roofs and steeples against the starlight sky: I heard only the rumble of the coaches as they rolled away. At certain turns I seemed to see daggers and gun-barrels gleaming at the windows and to hear far off the cries of the wounded. I do not know what I should have given if I could have hastened the daybreak, and so have gratified that eager curiosity which was stirring within me to visit one by one those streets, those squares, those houses, famous for desperate conflicts and horrible slaughter, painted by so many artists, sung by so many poets, and so often in my dreams before I departed from Italy, that I used to murmur with delight, “I shall one day see them.” Arrived finally at my hotel, I looked at the porter who conducted me to my room with an amiable smile, as though I would have said, “Spare me! I am not an invader!” And with a glance at a large painting of Amadeus hanging at an angle of the corridor—a great reassurance to Italian travellers—I went to bed as sleepy as any of my readers.

At daybreak I hurried from the hotel. Neither shops, doors, nor windows were yet open, but hardly had I taken a step in the street before an exclamation of surprise escaped me, for there passed me a party of men so strangely dressed that at first sight I believed them to be masqueraders. Then I thought, “No, they are the silent characters of some theatre;” and then, again, “No, they are madmen, beyond a doubt.”

Imagine them: for a cap they wore a red handkerchief bound about the head like a padded ring, from which their dishevelled hair stuck out above and below; a blanket, striped blue and white, worn like a mantle, and falling almost to the ground in ample folds, like the Roman toga; a wide blue sash around the waist; short breeches of black corduroy gathered in tight at the knee; white stockings; a sort of sandal laced over the instep with black ribbons; and yet bearing with all this picturesque variety of vesture the evident impress of poverty, but with this evident poverty a manner not only theatrical, but proud and majestic, as shown in their carriage and gestures—the air of ruined grandees of Spain; so that one was in doubt, on seeing them, whether to laugh or to pity, whether to put one’s hand in one’s pocket and give them an alms or to raise one’s hat as a mark of respect. But they were simply peasants from the country around Saragossa, and this which I have described was only one of a thousand varieties of the same manner of dress. As I passed along at every step I saw a new costume. Some were dressed in ancient, others in modern, style; some with elegance, others simply; some in holiday attire, others with extreme plainness; but every one wore the scarf, the handkerchief about the head, the white stockings, the cravat and parti-colored waistcoat.

The women wore crinolines with short skirts, which showed their ankles and made their hips seem ridiculously high. Even the boys wore the flowing mantle and the handkerchief around the head, and posed in dramatic attitudes like the men.

The first square I entered was full of these people, who were sitting in groups on the doorsteps or lying about in the angles formed by the houses, some playing the guitar, others singing, many going about begging in patched and tattered garments, but with a high head and fiery eye. They seemed like people who had just come from a tableau in which together they had represented a savage tribe from some unknown country.

Gradually the shops and houses were opened and the people of Saragossa began to fill the streets. The citizens do not appear different from us in dress, but there is something peculiar in their faces. They unite the serious expression of the Catalans with the alert air of the Castilians, and then add a fierceness of expression which belongs entirely to the blood of Arragon.

The streets of Saragossa are severe, almost depressing, in appearance, as I had imagined they would be before I saw them. Excepting the Coso, a wide street which runs through a large part of the city, describing a grand semicircular curve—the Corso famous in ancient times for the chariot-races, jousts, and tourneys which were celebrated in it at the times of the public feasts,—excepting this beautiful and cheerful street and a few streets which have recently been rebuilt like those of a French city, the rest are tortuous and narrow, flanked by tall houses, dark in color and with few windows, reminding one of ancient fortresses. These are the streets which bear an impress and which have a character, or, as another has said, a physiognomy, of their own—streets which once seen can never be forgotten. Throughout one’s life at the mention of Saragossa one will see those walls, those doors, those windows as one saw them before. At this moment I see the court of the New Tower, and could draw it house by house, and paint each one with its own color; and so vividly does the picture live in my imagination that I seem to breathe that air again, and to repeat the words which I then spoke: “This

square is tremendous!” Why? I do not know: it may have been an illusion of mine. It is with cities as with faces—each one reads them in his own way.

The streets and squares of Saragossa impressed me thus, and at every turn I said, “This place seems to have been made for a combat,” and I looked around as though something was needed to complete the scene—a barricade, the loopholes, and the guns. I felt again all the profound emotions which the account of that horrible siege had produced upon me: I saw the Saragossa of 1809, and hurried from street to street with increasing curiosity to find the traces of that gigantic struggle at which the world trembled. Here, I thought, indicating to myself the place, passed the division of Grandjean, there perhaps Musnier’s command sallied forth; at this point the troops of Morlot rushed into the fight; at that angle before me the light infantry of the Vistula made their charge; still farther round occurred the attack of the Polish infantry; yonder three hundred Spaniards were cut down; at this spot burst the great mine which blew a company of the Valencian regiment to atoms; in this corner fell General Lacoste, his forehead pierced by a bullet.

There lie the famous streets of Santa Engracia, Santa Monica, and San Augustine, through which the French advanced toward the Coso from house to house with a blasting of mines and counter-mines, through crumbling walls and smoking beams, under a tempest of bullets, grape-shot, and rocks.

There are the narrow ways, the little courts, the dark alleys, where they fought those horrid battles, hand to hand, with bayonet and dagger, with scythes and their very teeth; their houses barricaded and defended room by room, in the midst of fire and ruin, the narrow stairways which ran with blood, the gloomy halls which echoed to cries of pain and despair, which were covered with mutilated corpses, which saw all the horrors of pestilence, famine, and death.

As I was walking from street to street I came out in front of the cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar, the terrible Madonna to whom came the squalid rout of soldiers, citizens, and women to plead for protection and courage before they went to die on the ramparts. The people of Saragossa still persevere in their ancient fanaticism in regard to it, and venerate it with a peculiar sentiment of love and fear, which still lives in the minds of persons who are strangers to all other religious feelings. Nevertheless, from the moment you enter the court and raise your eyes toward the church to the moment you turn on leaving it to take a farewell look, be careful not to smile or make any careless gesture which might possibly seem irreverent; for there are those who see you, who watch you, and who will on occasion follow you, and if faith is dead within you, prepare your mind, before you cross the sacred threshold, for a confused reawakening of those childish terrors which few churches in the world have such power to revive even in the coldest and most callous of hearts.

The first stone of Our Lady of the Pillar was laid in the year 1686, in a place where stood a chapel erected by St. James to receive the miraculous image of the Virgin, which still remains. It is an immense edifice, with a rectangular base, surmounted by eleven domes painted in different colors, giving the whole a pleasing Moorish effect. The walls are unadorned and dark in color. Let us enter. It is a vast cathedral, dark, bare, and cold, divided into three naves, encircled by modest chapels. One’s eye turns quickly to the sanctuary which rises in the middle: there stands the statue of the Virgin. It is a temple within a temple, and might stand alone in the middle of the square if the building which surrounds it were torn away. A circle of beautiful marble columns, arranged in the form of an ellipse, bear up a dome richly adorned with sculpture, open at the top, and ornamented within the opening by aspiring figures of angels and saints. In the centre stands the great altar; on its right the statue of St. James; on the left, far back under a silver canopy which gleams against a background of a richly-draped velvet curtain sown with stars, amid the flashing of thousands of costly offerings, in the glare of innumerable lights, the famous statue of the Virgin, where St. James placed it nineteen centuries ago, carved in wood, black with age, all enveloped in a bishop’s gown, excepting its head and the head of the Christ child. In front of it, between the columns grouped around the sanctuary and in the far recesses of the naves, in every place from which one can see the venerated image, kneel faithful worshippers, prostrate, their heads almost touching the pavement, their hands clasping the crucifix—poor women, laboring-men, ladies, soldiers, boys, and girls—and through the different doorways of the cathedral passes a continuous stream of people, walking slowly on tiptoe, with solemn faces; and in that deep silence not a murmur, not a rustle, not a sigh; the very life of the crowd seems suspended: it seems as though they were all expecting a divine apparition, a mysterious voice, some awful revelation from the dim sanctuary; and even one who does not have their faith, and who does not pray, is forced to gaze himself at that point where all eyes are turned, and the current of his thoughts is interrupted by a sort of restless expectation.

“Oh, would that some voice would speak!” I thought. “Would that the apparition would appear! Would that there might be a word or a sigh which would turn my hair white with fear and make me utter a cry the like of which was never heard on earth, if so I might for ever be delivered from that horrible doubt which saps my brain and saddens my life!”

I tried to enter the sanctuary, but I could not have done so without passing over the shoulders of a hundred worshippers, some of whom had already begun to look surly because I was going around with a note-book and pencil in my hand. I attempted to go down into the subterranean crypt where are the tombs of the archbishops and the urn which holds the heart of John II. of Austria, the natural son of Philip IV., but this I was not allowed to do. I asked to see the vestments, the gold, the jewels, which had been poured out at the feet of the Virgin by the lords, the rulers, and the monarchs of every age and every land, but I was told that it was not the proper time, and not even by showing a shiny peseta was I able to corrupt the honest sacristan. But I was not refused some information concerning the worship of the Virgin after I had told him, to win favor in his eyes, that I was born in Rome in the Borgo Pio, and that from the little terrace in front of my home I could see the windows of the Pope’s apartments.

“It is a fact,” said he, “almost a miracle—and one would not believe it if it were not attested by tradition—that at the very early time when the statue of the Virgin was placed on its pedestal, even down to the days in which we are living, except in the night when the cathedral is closed, the sanctuary has never been empty a moment—not even a moment, in the full sense of the word. Our Lady of the Pillar has never been alone. In the pedestal there has been a hollow worn by kisses in which I could put my head. Not even the Moors dared to forbid the worship of Our Lady; the chapel of St. James was always respected. The cathedral has been struck by lightning many times, and the sanctuary too, even on the inside, right in the midst of a crowd of people. Well! the souls of the lost may deny the protection of the Virgin, but no—one—has—ever—been—struck! And the bombs of the French? They have burned and ruined other buildings, but when they fell on the cathedral of Our Lady it was as though they had fallen on the rocks of the Sierra Morena. And the French, who pillaged on every hand, did they have the heart to touch the treasures of Our Lady? One general only allowed himself to take some trifling thing to give to his wife, offering a rich gift to the Virgin in compensation, but do you know what followed? In the next battle a cannon-ball carried away one of his legs. There is not a trace of a general or a king who has imposed on Our Lady, and moreover it is written up above that this church will stand to the end of the world.” And he ran on in this vein until a priest made a mysterious sign from a dark corner of the sacristy, and he at once bowed and disappeared.

As I came out of the cathedral, with my mind occupied with a picture of the solemn sanctuary, I met a long procession of Carnival chariots, led by a band of music, accompanied by a crowd, followed by a great number of carriages, on their way to the Coso. I do not ever remember to have seen faces so grotesque, ridiculous, and preposterous as those worn by the maskers, and, although I was alone and not at all disposed to merriment, I could no more have kept from laughing than I could have done at the close of one of Fucini’s sonnets. The crowd, on the other hand, was decorous and silent and the maskers were as grave as possible. One would have said that both parties were more impressed by the melancholy presentiment of Lent than by the short-lived gaiety of the Carnival. I saw some pretty little faces at the windows, but as yet no type of that proverbial Spanish beauty, of the rich dark complexion, and the fiery black eyes which Martinez de la Rosa, an exile in London, remembered with such passionate sighs among the beauties of the North. I passed between two carriages, pushed my way out of the crowd, thereby drawing down some curses which I promptly entered in my note-book, and turned at random down two or three narrow little streets. I came out at the square of San Salvador in front of the cathedral of the same name, which is also called the Seo—a richer and more splendid edifice than that of Our Lady of the Pillar.

Neither the GrÆco-Roman faÇade, although majestic in its proportions, nor the high, light tower, is a preparation for the grand spectacle of the interior. On entering I found myself surrounded by gloomy shadows. For an instant my eyes could not discover the outlines of the building. I saw only a shimmer of broken light resting here and there on column and arch. Then slowly I distinguished five naves, divided by four orders of Gothic pilasters, the walls far in the distance, and the long series of lateral chapels, and I was overwhelmed by the sight. It was the first interior which corresponded with the image I had formed of the Spanish cathedrals, so varied, magnificent, and rich. The principal chapel, surrounded by a great Gothic dome in the form of a tiara, alone contains the riches of a great church. The large altar is of alabaster covered with rosettes, scrolls, and arabesques; the vaulted roof is adorned with statues; on the right and left are tombs and urns of princes; in an angle stands the chair in which the kings of Arragon sat at their coronation. The choir rising in the middle of the great nave is a mountain of treasures. Its exterior, broken by some passages leading to little chapels, presents an incredible variety of statuettes, little columns, bas-reliefs, friezes, and mosaics, and one would have to look all day to see it thoroughly. The pilasters of the two outer naves and the arches which span the chapels are richly adorned from the base to the capital with statues—some so enormous that they seem to be raising the edifice on their shoulders—with pictures, sculpture, and ornament of every style and of every size. In the chapels there is a wealth of statues, rich altars, royal tombs, busts, and paintings, which are so shrouded by the deep gloom that they appear only as a confused mass of colors, reflections, and shadowy forms, among which the eye loses itself and the imagination faints. After much running hither and thither, with my note-book open and pencil in hand, noting this and sketching that, with my brain in a whirl, I tore out the chequered leaves, and, promising myself that I would not write another word, I left the cathedral and began to walk through the city, seeing for at least an hour only long dim aisles and statues gleaming in the deep recesses of mysterious chapels.

There come moments to the gayest and most enamored traveller, as he walks the streets of a strange city, in which he is suddenly overwhelmed by such a strong feeling of utter weariness that if he were able by a word to fly back to his home and his dear ones with the rapidity of the genii of the “Arabian Nights,” he would pronounce that word with a cry of joy. I was seized by such a feeling just as I turned into a narrow street far from the centre of the city, and it almost terrified me. I anxiously rehearsed all the images I had formed of Madrid, Seville, and Granada, hoping in this way to arouse and rekindle my curiosity and enthusiasm; but those images now seemed dull and lifeless. My thoughts carried me back to my home, when on the day before my departure in my feverish impatience I could hardly wait for the hour of starting; but even that did not remove my sadness. The idea of having to see so many more new cities, of having to pass so many nights in hotels, of having to find myself for so long a time in the midst of a strange people, disheartened me. I asked myself how I could have resolved to leave home. It seemed as if I were suddenly separated from my country by a measureless distance—that I was in a wilderness alone, forgotten by all. I looked around; the street was empty, my heart turned cold, tears gathered in my eyes. “I cannot stay here,” I said to myself; “I shall die of melancholy. I will return to Italy.”

I had not made an end of speaking these words before I almost burst into hysterical laughter. In an instant everything regained life and splendor in my eyes. I thought of Castile and of Andalusia with a sort of frantic joy, and, shaking my head with an air of pity for my recent dejection, I lighted a cigar and walked on, happier than I had been at first.

It was the last day of the Carnival: in the evening on the principal streets I saw a procession of maskers, carriages, bands of young men, large family parties with children and nurses and budding girls, walking two by two. But there was no disagreeable shouting, no coarse songs of drunken men, no troublesome crowding and pushing. Now and then one felt a light rub on the elbow, but light enough to seem like the greeting of a friend who would say, “It is I,” rather than the jostling of some thoughtless fellow; and together with the touch at the elbow there were voices, much gentler than of old when the Saragossa women used to scream from the windows of their tottering houses, and much more ardent than the boiling oil which they poured down on the invaders. Oh! those were certainly not the times of which I heard recently at Turin, when an old priest of Saragossa assured me that in seven years he had not received the confession of a mortal sin.

That night I found at the hotel a madcap of a Frenchman whose equal I believe does not exist under the sun. He was a man of forty, with one of those putty-like faces which say “Here I am; come and cheat me”—a wealthy merchant, as it appeared, who had just arrived from Barcelona and expected to leave the next day for St. Sebastian. I found him in the dining-room telling his story to a group of tourists, who were bursting with laughter. I too joined the circle and listened to his story.

The fellow was a native of Bordeaux, and had lived for years at Barcelona. He had left France because his wife had run away from him, without saying good-bye, with the ugliest man in the town, leaving four children on his hands. He had never heard of her since the day of her flight. Some told him she had gone to America, others that she was in Africa or Asia, but those were mere groundless conjectures. For four years he had believed her to be dead. One fine day at Barcelona, as he was dining with a friend from Marseilles, his guest said to him (but you ought to have seen with what comical dignity he described the circumstance):

“My friend, I am going to make a trip to St. Sebastian one of these days.”

“What for?”

“Just a little diversion.”

“A love-affair, eh?”

“Yes, at least—I will tell you. It is not exactly a love-affair, because, as for me, I do not care to come in at the tail end of a love-affair. It is a caprice. A pretty little woman, however. Why, only the day before yesterday I received a letter. I did not want to go, but there were so many comes and I expect yous and my friends and dear friends, that I allowed myself to be tempted.” So saying, he drew out the letter with a grimace of lordly pride.

The merchant takes it, opens it, and reads.

“By the gods! my wife!” and without another word he leaves his friend, runs home, packs his valise, and hurries to the station.

When I entered the room the man had just shown the letter to everybody present, and had spread on the table, so that every one could see them, his certificate of baptism, his marriage articles, and other papers which he had brought along in case his wife might not wish to recognize him.

“What are you going to do?” we all asked with one voice.

“I shall not do her any harm. I have made up my mind: there will be no bloodshed, but there will be a punishment even more terrible.”

“But what will that be?” demanded one of his auditors.

“I have made up my mind,” replied the Frenchman with profoundest gravity, and, taking from his pocket a pair of enormous scissors, he added solemnly, “I am going to cut off her hair and her eyebrows!”

We all burst into a shout of laughter.

“Messieurs!” cried the abused husband, “I have said it, and I will keep my word. If I have the pleasure of meeting you here again, I will see that you are presented with her wig.”

Here ensued a pandemonium of laughter and shouts of applause, but the Frenchman did not for a moment relax his tragic scowl.

“But if you find a Spaniard in the house?” some one asked.

“I shall then throw him out of the window,” he responded.

“But if there are a number there?”

“All the world out of the window.”

“But you will make a scandal; the neighbors will run in, the police, and the people.”

“And I,” cried the terrible man, striking his hand on his chest, “I will throw the neighbors, the police, the people, and the whole city out of the window if it is necessary.”

And he went on in this vein, swaggering about and gesticulating with the letter in one hand and the scissors in the other, in the midst of the convulsive laughter of the tourists.

Vivir para ver (Live and see), says the Spanish proverb; and it ought rather to say viager (travel), for it seems that only in hotels and on the train does one fall in with such originals. Who knows how it all came out in the end?

On entering my room I asked the waiter what those two things on the wall were which I had been seeing since the evening of my arrival, and which seemed to have some claims to pass as paintings.

“Sir,” he replied, “they are nothing less than the brothers Argensola, Arragonese, natives of Barbastro, most celebrated poets of Spain.”

And truly such were the two brothers Argensola, two veritable literary twins, who had the same temperament, studied the same subjects, wrote in the same style, pure, dignified, and refined, striving with all their powers to raise a barrier against the torrent of depraved taste which in their time, the end of the sixteenth century, had begun to invade the literature of Spain. One of them died in Naples, the secretary of the viceroy, and the other died at Tarragona, a priest. The two left a name illustrious and beloved, upon which Cervantes and Lope de Vega have placed the noble seal of their praise. The sonnets of the Argensola brothers are recognized as the most beautiful in Spanish literature for their clearness of thought and dignity of form, and there is one of them in particular, to Lupercio Leonardo, which the legislators repeat in answer to the grandiloquent philippics of the orators on the left, emphasizing the last lines. I quote it with the hope that it may supply some of my readers with an answer to their friends who reprove them for being enamored, as was the poet, of a lady with a weakness for rouge:

The following morning I wished to try a pleasure similar to that which Rousseau indulged in following the flight of flies—the pleasure of wandering through the streets of the city at random, stopping to look at the most insignificant things, as one would do in the streets at home if one were obliged to wait for a friend. I visited some public buildings, among them the palace of the Bourse, containing a magnificent hall in which are twenty-four columns, each ornamented with four shields placed above the four faces of the capital and bearing the arms of Saragossa. I visited the old church of Santiago and the beautiful palace of the archbishop; stood in the centre of the vast, cheerful Square of the Constitution, which divides the Coso, and into which run the two other principal streets of the city; and from that point I set out and wandered about until noon, to my infinite delight. Now I stopped to watch a boy playing nocino; now I poked my curious head into a little cafÉ frequented by scholars; now I slackened my pace to overhear servants joking with each other at a street-corner; now I flattened my nose against the window of a bookshop; now I almost pestered a tobacconist to death by asking for cigars in German; now I stopped to chat with a peddler of matches; here I bought a diary, then asked a soldier for a light, again asked a girl to show me the way, and, pondering the lines of Argensola, I commenced facetious sonnets, hummed the hymn of Riego, thought of Florence, the wine of Malaga, the counsels of my mother, of King Amadeus, my purse, a thousand things and nothing; and I would not have changed places with a grandee of Spain.

Toward evening I started to see the New Tower, one of the most curious monuments in Spain. It is eighty-four metres high, or four metres higher than Giotto’s tower, and without a crack leans about two and a half metres from the perpendicular, like the Tower of Pisa. It was erected in 1304. Some affirm that it was built just as it now stands, others that it settled afterward; there are different opinions. It is octagonal in form, and is built entirely of bricks, but presents a marvellous variety of design and ornamentation—a different appearance at every point, a graceful blending of Gothic and Moorish architecture. To gain admittance I was obliged to ask permission of some municipal official who lived hard by, who, after he had eyed me carefully from the tips of my boots to the hairs of my head, gave the key to the keeper and said to me, “You may go, sir.”

The keeper was a vigorous old man, who climbed up the interminable steps much more rapidly than I could follow.

“You will have a magnificent view, sir,” said he.

I told him that we Italians also had a leaning tower like that of Saragossa. He turned so that he could look at me and said sternly, “Ours is the only one in the world.”—“Oh, nonsense! I say that we have one too, and I have seen it with my eyes, at Pisa, but then, if you don’t want to believe me, you may read it here. See, the guide-book tells about it.”

He gave me a look and muttered, “Perhaps so.”

Perhaps so! the stubborn old numbskull! I could have thrown the book at his head.

Finally we reached the top. It is a wonderful sight. One sees Saragossa at a glance—the great Coso, the avenue of Santa Engracia, the suburbs; and then below, where it seems one can almost touch them, the richly-colored domes of Our Lady of the Pillar; just beyond, the bold tower of the Seo; yonder the famous Ebro sweeping around the city with a majestic curve, and the wide valley, enamored, in the words of Cervantes, with the beauty of her waters and the dignity of their flow; and the Huerba and the bridges and the hills, which could tell of so many bloody repulses and desperate assaults.

The keeper read in my face the thoughts which were passing through my mind, and, as though he was continuing a conversation which I had commenced, he began to point out the places at which the French forced their entrance, and where the citizens made the most stubborn resistance. “It was not the bombs of the French,” said he, “which made us surrender. We ourselves burned the houses and blew them up with mines. It was the plague. During the last days there were in the hospitals more than fifteen thousand of the forty thousand men who defended the city. There was not time to bring in the wounded or to bury the dead. The ruins of the houses were covered with putrefying corpses, which poisoned the air. One-third of the buildings of the city were destroyed, yet no one said surrender, and if any one had done so, he would have been strung up on one of the gallows which had been erected in every square.

“We would have died behind the barricades, in the fire, beneath the rubbish of our walls, rather than have bowed the head. But when Palafox found himself at the point of death, when it was known that the French were victorious in other places, and that there was no longer any hope, then we were obliged to lay down our arms. But the defenders of Saragossa surrendered themselves with all the honors of war, and when that crowd of soldiers, peasants, monks, and boys—haggard, ragged, blood-stained, and battle-scarred—filed out before the French army, the victors trembled with awe and had not the heart to rejoice over their victory. The lowest of our peasants could carry his head as high as the first of their marshals. Saragossa”—and, speaking these words, the old man was magnificent—“Saragossa has spit in the face of Napoleon!”

I thought at that moment of Thiers’ history, and the remembrance of his account of the fall of Saragossa raised within me a feeling of disdain. Not one generous word for the sublime sacrifice of that devoted people! To him their valor was but the raging of fanatics or a senseless mania for war on the part of the peasants weary of their monotonous life in the fields, and of monks surfeited with the solitude of the cell; their unyielding heroism was only obstinacy; their love of country, foolish pride. They did not die pour cet ideal de grandeur which animated the courage of the imperial troops. As if liberty, justice, and the honor of a people were not nobler than the ambition of an emperor seeking to triumph by treachery and wishing to rule with violence!

The sun was setting, the towers and minarets of Saragossa were gilded by the last rays, the sky was liquid. Again I looked around to impress clearly upon my memory the picture of the city and the country, and before I descended I said to the keeper, who regarded me with an air of benevolent curiosity: “Tell the strangers who in after-time may come to visit this tower that one day a young Italian a few hours before he started for Castile, in bidding a last farewell to the capital of Arragon from this balcony, bared his head with a sentiment of the deepest reverence, thus, and, as he was not able to kiss, one by one, the brows of all the descendants of the heroes of 1809, he gave a kiss to the keeper;” and so I kissed him and he me, and I went away content, and he too; and you may laugh who will.

After this it seemed to me that I could say I had seen Saragossa, and I turned toward the hotel, summing up my impressions. I was still very desirous of having a conversation with some good Saragossan, and after dinner I entered a cafÉ, where I quickly found an architect and a shopkeeper, who between sips of chocolate explained to me the political situation of Spain and the most effectual means of “bringing her safely through her troubles.” They thought very differently. The shopkeeper, a little man with a flat nose and a great furrow between his eyes, wanted a federal republic right off hand, that very night, before he went to bed, and he provided, as a sine-quÂ-non condition for the prosperity of the new government, the execution of Serrano, Sagasta, and Zorilla, to convince them, once for all, that “they cannot trifle with the Spanish people.” “And to that king of yours,” he concluded, looking me in the eyes—“to your king, whom you have sent us—pardon me, my dear Italian, for the frankness with which I say it—to your king I would give a first-class ticket to return to his native Italy, where the air is better for kings. We are Spanish, my dear Italian,” said he, laying his hand on my knee,—“we are Spanish, and we do not want foreigners, either cooked or raw.”

“I think I have caught your meaning; and you?” I asked, turning to the architect, “how do you believe Spain can be saved?”

“There is but one way,” he answered solemnly; “there is but one way—a federal republic; in this I am of the same mind as my friend, but with Don Amadeus for president.” (The friend shrugged his shoulders.) “I repeat it—with Don Amadeus as president! He is the only man who could direct the republic. This is not my opinion alone; it is the opinion of a great many. Let Don Amadeus make it plain to his father that a monarchy will never please us here; let him call Castelar, Figueras, and Pi y Margal to the government; let him proclaim a republic and have himself elected president, and cry to Spain, ‘Sirs, I am now in command, and if any one raises his horns, let him beware of the rod!’ And then we shall have true liberty.”

The shopkeeper, who did not believe that true liberty consisted in being beaten over the horns, protested, the other replied, and the discussion lasted some time. Then they began to speak of the queen, and the architect declared that, although he was a republican, he had profound respect and warm admiration for Donna Victoria. “She has a great deal in here,” said he, touching his forehead with his finger. “Is it true that she knows Greek?”

“Oh yes,” I replied.

“Did you hear that, eh?” he asked the other.

“Yes,” replied the shopkeeper in a low voice, “but you don’t govern Spain with Greek.” He admitted, however, that, since one must have a queen, it was desirable to have one who was learned and intelligent, and worthy of sitting on the throne of Isabella the Catholic—who, as every one knows, knew as much Latin as a well-read professor—rather than to have one of those hare-brained queens who have no head for anything but festivities and favorites. In a word, he did not wish to see the house of Savoy in Spain. But if anything could plead a little in its favor, it would be the Greek of the queen.

What a gallant republican!

There is, however, in this race a generosity of heart and a vigor of mind which justify their honorable fame. The Arragonese are respected in Spain. The people of Madrid, who pick flaws in the Spaniards of all the provinces—who call the Catalans rough, the Andalusians vain, the Valencians fierce, the Galicians miserable, the Basques ignorant—even they speak with a little more reserve of the haughty sons of Arragon, who in the nineteenth century have written in their own blood the most glorious page in the history of Spain. The name of Saragossa sounds to the people like a cry of liberty, and to the army it is a battle-cry. But, since there is no rose without a thorn, this noble province is also a seed-bed of restless demagogues, of guerilla chieftains, of magistrates, of a people with the hot head and steady hand, who give all the government departments a great deal to do. The government is obliged to caress Arragon like a morose, passionate son who lays his plans to blow up the house if his will is crossed in the least thing.

The entrance of King Amadeus into Saragossa and the short stop he made there in 1871 offered an occasion for some deeds which are worthy of being retold, not only because they refer to the prince, but because they are an eloquent expression of the character of the people; and before everything else should come the speech of the mayor, which made such a stir in and out of Spain, and will probably remain among the traditions of Saragossa as a classic example of republican audacity. Toward evening the king arrived at the railroad-station, where, accompanied by an immense crowd, the delegates of the many municipalities, the societies, and the civil and military corps of the various cities of Arragon had gathered to meet him. After the customary cheers and applause had subsided the alcayde of Saragossa presented himself before the king, and read the following address in an emphatic manner:

“Sir! It is not my own humble self, and it is not the man of deep republican convictions, but in truth the alcayde of Saragossa, invested with the sacred universal suffrage, who, through a sense of unavoidable duty, presents himself here before you and submits himself to your commands. You are about to enter the precincts of a city which, sated at length with glory, bears the title of enduring heroism—a city which, when danger threatened the integrity of the nation, became a new Numantia—a city which humbled the armies of Napoleon in their very triumphs. Saragossa was the advance-guard of liberty; to her no government has ever seemed too liberal. Treason has never found shelter in the breast of any of her sons. Enter, then, within the precincts of Saragossa. If you lack courage, you have no need of it, for the sons of their ever-heroic mother are brave in open field and are incapable of treachery. There is at this moment no shield nor any army more ready to defend your person than the loyalty of the descendants of Palafox, for their very enemies find an inviolate asylum beneath their roofs. Think and consider that if you walk steadfastly in the path of justice; if you further the observance of the laws of the strictest morality; if you protect the producer, who hitherto has given so much and received so little; if you maintain the integrity of the ballot; if Saragossa and Spain shall one day owe to you the achievement of the sacred aspiration of the majority of this great people whom you have learned to know,—then perhaps you may be honored by a more glorious title than that of king. You may then be the first citizen of the nation, and the most dearly loved in Saragossa, and the Spanish republic will owe to you her complete felicity.”

To this address, which signified, after all, “We do not recognize you as king, but, however, you may come in, and we will not murder you, because heroes do not murder by treachery; and if you will be brave and will treat us as you ought to do, we will possibly consent to support you as president of the republic,”—to this the king replied with a bitter-sweet smile which seemed to say, “Too great a condescension,” and pressed the hand of the alcayde, to the great surprise of all present. He then mounted his horse and entered Saragossa. The people, from all accounts, received him with delight, and from the windows many ladies threw poems, garlands, and doves down upon him. At some points General Cordova and General Rosell, who accompanied him, were obliged to clear the street with their horses. When he entered the Coso a woman of the people rushed out to present him with some memorial. The king, who had ridden past without noticing her, turned back and took it. Soon after a charcoal-man presented himself and stretched out his sooty hand, which the king grasped. In the square of Santa Engracia he was received by a pompous masquerade of dwarfs and giants, who welcomed him with some traditional dances, amid the discordant cheers of the multitude. So he passed through the entire city. The next day he visited the church of Our Lady of the Pillar, the hospitals, the prisons, and the circus of the bull-fights, and everywhere his presence was hailed almost with the enthusiasm due a monarch, not altogether without the secret chagrin of the alcayde, who accompanied him, and who would have been better pleased had the people of Saragossa contented themselves with the observance of the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” without entering further upon his modest promises.

However, the king had a joyous welcome on the way from Saragossa to LogroÑo.

At LogroÑo, in the midst of an innumerable crowd of peasants, national guardsmen, women, and boys, he saw for the first time the venerable General Espartero. As soon as they saw each other they ran together; the general sought the hand of the king, the king opened his arms, and the crowd gave a shout of joy. “Your Majesty!” said the illustrious soldier in a husky voice, “the people welcome you with patriotic enthusiasm, because they see in their young monarch the firmest support of the liberty and independence of their country, and are sure that if by any misfortune our enemies were to cause trouble, Your Majesty, at the head of the army and the citizen militia, would overwhelm and rout them. My broken health did not suffer me to go to Madrid to felicitate Your Majesty and your august consort upon your establishment on the throne of Ferdinand. To-day I do so, and I repeat, once again, that I will serve faithfully the person of Your Majesty as king of Spain, chosen by the will of the nation. Your Majesty, I have in the city a modest home, and I offer it to you, and ask of you to honor it with your presence.” In these simple words the new king was greeted by the oldest, the best-beloved, and the most renowned of his subjects. A happy augury, though sadly at variance with the final outcome!

Toward midnight I went to a masquerade in a theatre of moderate size on the Coso, a short distance from the Square of the Constitution. The maskers were few and very shabby, but there was a compensation for this in a dense crowd of people, fully a third of whom were dancing furiously. Except for the language, I should not have known that I was at a masked ball in a theatre in Spain rather than in Italy. I seemed to see precisely the same faces. There was the same familiarity, the same freedom of speech and movement, the usual degeneracy of the ball into noisy and unbridled brawl.

Of the hundred couples of dancers who waltzed past me, only one pair remains impressed upon my memory—a youth of twenty years, tall, lithe, and fair, with great black eyes, and a girl of the same age, brown as an Andalusian—both beautiful and noble in their bearing, dressed in the ancient costumes of Arragon, clasped in each other’s arms, face to face, as though the one wished to breathe the other’s breath, rosy as two flowers, and radiant with joy. They paused in the middle of the crowd, glancing about with an air of disdain, and a thousand eyes followed them with a low murmur of admiration and envy.

On leaving the theatre I stood a moment at the door to see them pass again, and then I turned toward the hotel melancholy and alone. The next morning before dawn I was on my way to the Castiles.