VALLADOLID, “the rich,” as Quevedo calls it, a famous dispenser of colds,—Valladolid, of all the cities lying north of the Tagus, was the city which I had the liveliest desire to see, although I knew that it contained no grand artistic monuments and no modern buildings of importance. Its name, its history, and its character had a peculiar attraction for me as I had imagined them in my own way from my knowledge of its inhabitants. I expected that it would be a noble, cheerful, and studious city, and I could not picture its streets to my mind without seeing Gongora walking here or Cervantes there or Leonardo de Argensola yonder, and all the other poets, historians, and scholars who dwelt there when it was the seat of the splendid court of the monarch. And as I thought of the court I saw in the vast squares of this city, which had so won my heart, a confused mingling of religious processions, bull-fights, military parades, masquerades, balls—all the mad merriment of the festival in celebration of the birth of Philip IV., from the arrival of the English admiral with his retinue of six hundred to the final banquet famous for the twelve hundred dishes of meat, to repeat the popular tradition, without counting the plates of those who were not served. I arrived in the night and went to the first hotel, when I fell asleep with the delightful thought that I should awake in an unknown city.

And to awake in an unknown city when one has gone there from choice is indeed a very lively pleasure. The thought that from the moment you step out of the house in the morning until you return to it at night you will do nothing but pass from curiosity to curiosity, from pleasure to pleasure, that everything you see will seem new, and that at every step you will be learning something, and that all will be impressed upon your memory so long as you live; that through the livelong day you will be as free as air and as gay as a lark, without a thought in the world unless it be to amuse yourself, and that by amusing yourself you are at the same time gaining health of body, mind, and soul; that, finally, the termination of all these pleasures, instead of bringing to you a feeling of melancholy, like the evening of a holiday, will be only the beginning of another company of delights, which will attend you from that city to the next, and from it to a third, and so on as long as your fancy is pleased not to confine them within bounds,—all these thoughts, I say, which present themselves in a crowd as soon as you open your eyes, give you such a joyful surprise that

before you know it you find yourself standing in the middle of the room with your hat on and the Guide in your hands.

Let us go, then, to enjoy Valladolid.

Alas! how changed from the time of Philip III.! The population, which was then above one hundred thousand, has dwindled to less than twenty thousand; in the principal streets there is a fair showing of university students and tourists on their way to Madrid; the other streets are dead. The city makes upon one the impression of a great abandoned palace, where one still sees traces of carving, gilding, and mosaic, and finds in some of the central rooms a few poor families which reflect by their melancholy life the vast solitude of the edifice.

There are many spacious squares, an old palace, houses in ruins, empty convents, long streets grass-grown and deserted; in short, all the appearances of a great city fallen into decay. The most beautiful part is the Plaza Mayor, a vast arena, encircled all around by a portico supported by heavy columns of bluish granite, behind which rise houses, all three stories in height. In front of the houses run three orders of terraces of great length, where it is said twenty-four thousand people can be conveniently seated. The portico extends along the two sides of a wide street which opens into the square, and here and in two or three other adjacent streets there is a great concourse of people. It was market-day: under the porticoes and in the square swarmed a crowd of country-folk, vegetable-sellers, and market-men, and, as they speak Castilian with admirable purity of expression and pronunciation at Valladolid, I began to stroll about among the baskets of lettuce and the piles of oranges, to catch as I might the bon-mots and the cadences of that most beautiful language.

Among other things I remember a curious proverb repeated by a woman who was vexed beyond endurance by a young bully. “Sabe Usted,” she said, planting herself before him, “lo que es que destruye al hombre?” (I stopped and pricked up my ears.) “Tres muchos y tres pocos: mucho hablar y poco saber; mucho gastar y poco tener; mucho presumir y nada valer.” (Do you know, sir, what it is that ruins a man? Three muckles and three mickles: much talking and little sense; much spending and little keeping; much presumption and no worth.)

It seemed to me that I could perceive a great difference between the voices of these people and those of the Catalans: here they were more liquid and silvery, and the gestures too were livelier and the expression of the faces more animated; but there was nothing remarkable about their features and complexion, and in their dress they differed very little from the peasants of Northern Italy.

It was in the square at Valladolid that it occurred to me for the first time that I had not seen a pipe since I entered Spain. The laboring-men, the peasants, the poor, all classes, smoke the cigarette, and it is ridiculous to see great strapping fellows, with long moustaches, going about with that little microscopic thing in their mouths, half hidden in their beards. And they are very careful to smoke it up to the very last particle of tobacco, until they have only a bit of smouldering ashes left on their lower lip, and they even cling to this as though it were a drop of liquor, and finally they spit out the ashes with the air of one who is making a sacrifice.

Something else occurred to me also—a fact which I often observed afterward as long as I remained in Spain: I never heard any whistling.

From the Plaza Mayor I passed on to the wide, cheerful Plaza of San Pablo, where is the ancient royal palace. The faÇade is not remarkable either for grandeur or beauty. I entered the doorway, and before I could feel a sense of admiration for the magnificence of the hall I felt only sadness at the sepulchral silence which reigned in it. Nothing else produces the impression made upon one by a cemetery so closely as does an abandoned castle, for there especially, to a greater extent than in other places, the contrast is very strong and sharp between the remembrance of what has been and the actual condition in which one finds it. Alas for the superb retinue of plumed cavaliers! Alas for the splendid feasts, the fervid enjoyment of a prosperity which seemed eternal! It is a novel pleasure—that of coughing a little in front of those hollow sepulchres, as invalids sometimes cough to test their strength, and of hearing the echo of your lusty voice, which assures you that you are young and hearty. On the inside of the palace there is a court of generous size surrounded by busts of the Roman emperors in demi-relief, a beautiful staircase, and wide galleries on the upper stories. I coughed and the echo answered, “What health!” and I went out comforted.

A drowsy porter showed me another palace in the same square which I had overlooked, and told me that in it was born the great king Philip II., from whom Valladolid had received the title of a city. “You know, sir, Philip II., son of Charles V., father of”—“I know, I know,” I hastened to reply to save the narration, and, casting a gloomy glance at the gloomy palace, I passed on.

Opposite to the royal palace is the Dominican convent of San Pablo, with a faÇade of the Gothic order so richly and extravagantly ornamented with statuettes, bas-reliefs, and traceries of every sort that one half of them would amply adorn an immense palace. At that moment the sun was shining on it, and the effect was magnificent. While I stood contemplating at my ease that labyrinth of sculpture, from which it seems one’s eye will never turn when once it has become fixed upon it, a little rogue, six or eight years old, who had been sitting in a distant corner of the square, rushed from his place as though he had been thrown from a sling, and ran toward me, crying in an affectionate, plaintive tone, “SeÑorito! SeÑorito! I like you so much!”

This is something new, I thought, for the ragamuffins to make declarations of love. He came and stood in front of me, and I asked, “Why do you love me?”

“Because,” he answered frankly, “you will give me alms.”

“And why should I give you alms?”

“Because,” he replied, hesitating, and then resolutely, in the tones of one who has found a good reason—“because, sir, you have a book.”

The Guide which I held under my arm! But, you see, one must travel to learn these new things. I carried a Guide, foreigners carry Guides; foreigners give alms; therefore I ought to give him alms; all this reasoning instead of saying, “I am hungry!”

I was pleased by the plausibility of this discovery, and dropped into the hands of this profound boy the few cuartos which I found in my pockets.

Turning into a street near by, I saw the faÇade of the Dominican college of San Gregorio, Gothic in its architecture, and more dignified and richer than the convent of San Pablo. Then I went from street to street until I came to the square of the cathedral. At the point where the street widens into the square I met a very graceful little Spanish lady, to whom I might have applied those two verses of Espronceda:

or that line of ours, “She walks not like a mortal thing,” for in their gait lies the supreme grace of the Spanish women. She had in her walk those thousand fugitive little friskings and easy undulating motions which the eye cannot follow one by one, nor the memory retain, nor words express, but which, taken altogether, form the most feminine of woman’s charms. Here I found myself in an embarrassing position. I saw the great mass of the cathedral looming up at the end of the square, and curiosity prompted me to look at it; but a few feet in front of me I saw this little person, and a curiosity not less lively constrained me to look at her; and so, as I did not wish to lose the first glimpse of the church nor the fleeting sight of the woman, my glances ran from her face to the dome and from the dome to her face with such breathless rapidity that the fair unknown must have certainly thought that I had discovered a correspondence of line or some mysterious bond of sympathy between the building and herself, for she also turned and looked at the church, and smiled as she passed me.

The cathedral of Valladolid, although it is unfinished, is one of the largest cathedrals in Spain. It is an imposing mass of granite, and produces upon the mind of the incredulous an effect similar to that produced by the church of the Pillar at Saragossa. On first entering one flies in thought to the Basilica of St. Peter’s. Architecturally, it is dignified and simple, and receives a sombre reflection from the dark color of the stone. The walls are bare, the chapels dark, the arched columns, the doors, and everything gigantic and severe. It is one of those cathedrals which make one stammer out his prayers with a sense of secret dread. I had not yet seen the Escurial, but I thought of it. It was, in fact, designed by the same architect. The church was left unfinished, so that the work of building the convent might be carried on, and on visiting the convent one is reminded of the church.

In a little chapel to the right of the great altar rises the tomb of Pedro Ansurez, a gentleman and benefactor of Valladolid, whose sword has been placed above his monument. I was alone in the church and heard the echoing of my footsteps. Suddenly a keen sense of fear seized me and an indescribable feeling of childish fright: I turned my back upon the tomb and went out.

As I was going out I met a priest and asked where the house of Cervantes was. He answered that it was in the street of Cervantes, and pointed out the way I ought to take. I thanked him, and he asked me if I was a stranger; I said I was.

“From Italy?”

“Yes, from Italy.”

He scanned me from head to foot, raised his hat, and went on his way down the street. I too started off, in the opposite direction, and the thought came to me: “I’ll wager that he has stopped to see how one of the Pope’s prison-keepers is made.” I looked back, and there he was, sure enough, standing stock still in the middle of the square, staring at me with all his eyes. I could not keep from laughing, so I excused my amusement with the salutation, “Beso a usted la mano!” (I give you my hand), and he called back, “Buenos dias!” (Good-day), and was off. But he ought to have added, not without surprise, that for an Italian I had not such a villainous face, after all. I crossed two or three quiet, narrow streets, and entered the street of Cervantes, a long, straight, dirty thoroughfare lined with wretched houses. I walked along it for some distance without meeting anybody but some soldiers and servants-girls and an occasional mule, my eyes busily scanning the walls for the inscription, “A qui vivio Cervantes,” etc. (“Here lived Cervantes,” etc.). But I found nothing. On reaching the end of the street I found myself in the open country. There was not a soul in sight. I stood a while to look around, and then I retraced my steps. I happened to meet a muleteer and asked him, “Where is the house in which Cervantes lived?” The only answer he gave me was a blow for the mule as he went on his way. I questioned a soldier: he sent me to a shop. In the shop I questioned an old woman. She did not understand, and, believing that I wished to buy a copy of Don Quixote, sent me to a book-store. The bookseller, who wanted to play the wiseacre and could not bring his mind to confess that he knew nothing about the house of Cervantes, began to beat about the bush, talking of the life and works of that “marvellously great writer;” so that, to cap the climax, I went off about my own affairs, without seeing anything. However, the memory of this house must be preserved (and no doubt if I had searched more diligently I should have been successful), not only because Cervantes lived in it, but because an act was committed there which all of his biographers mention. One night, a short time after the birth of Philip II., a cavalier of the court happened to meet an unknown man, and for some unknown reason high words were passed between them: both drew their swords and fell to fighting, and the cavalier was mortally wounded. The other disappeared. The wounded man, all drenched with blood, ran to a neighboring house to find succor. In the house lived Cervantes with his family, together with a widow of a famous chronicler and her two sons. One of them ran and lifted the wounded man from the ground and called Cervantes, who was already in bed. Cervantes got up and helped his friend carry the cavalier into the widow’s house, where he died two days later. Justice took a hand in the case and sought to ferret out the cause of the duel. It was believed that the combatants were both paying court to the daughter or niece of Cervantes. The entire family were cast into prison. Shortly afterward they were set at liberty, and nothing more was heard of it. But even this had to befall the poor author of Don Quixote, so that he might truly say that he had experienced every misfortune.

In this same street of Cervantes it was my good fortune to witness a scene which repaid me a thousand times for not finding the house. As I passed a door I spied a little Castilian girl of twelve or thirteen years, as beautiful as an angel, standing at the foot of the stairs with a baby in her arms. I cannot find words sufficiently delicate and refined to describe what she was doing. A childish curiosity to know the delight of mother-love had softly tempted her. The buttons of her little bodice had been slowly slipped through the button-holes one by one under the pressure of a trembling finger. She was alone; there was not a sound in the street; she had hidden her hand in her bosom; then perhaps she stood a moment in doubt, but, glancing at the baby and feeling her courage renewed, and making a final effort with the hidden hand, she uncovered her breast as well as she could, and, opening the chubby lips of the baby with her thumb and finger, she said tenderly, “Hela aqui” (Here it is), her face glowing and a sweet smile in her eyes. Hearing my step, she gave a cry and disappeared.

Instead of the house of Cervantes I found, a little farther along, the house in which was born JosÉ Zorrilla, one of the most gifted of the Spanish poets of our time, who is still living, but must not be mistaken, as many in Italy do mistake him, for Zorilla the radical leader, although he too has some poetry in his head and scatters it with a liberal hand through his political speeches, supplementing it with bursts of eloquence and furious gestures. In my opinion JosÉ Zorrilla is to Spanish letters a little more than Prati is to our Italian literature, and the two have many points of similarity—religious feeling, passion, productiveness, spontaneity, and a certain indefinable quality, vague and daring, which fires the youthful fancy. Zorrilla has a way of reading in resonant, solemn tones, it is said, somewhat monotonous, and yet many Spaniards rave over it. In form I should say the Spanish poet is more correct; they are both prolix, and in each there is the germ of a great poet. Admirable above every other work of Zorrilla are his “Songs of the Troubadour,” narrative poems and legends, full of the tenderest love-lyrics and descriptions of incomparable beauty. He has written also for the stage. His Don Juan Tenario, an ideal drama, in eight-line rhymed stanzas, is one of the most popular dramatic operas of Spain. It is performed once a year on All Souls’ Day with great magnificence, and the people crowd to the performance as they would to a festival. Some of the lyrics scattered through the drama run through the speech of all, and especially is this true of Don Juan’s declaration to his love, whom he has stolen away; which is one of the gentlest, tenderest, and most ardent expressions that could possibly fall from the lips of an enamored youth in the most impetuous burst of passion. I am confident that the coldest of men could not read these lines without a thrill. The woman’s answer is possibly even stronger: “Don Juan! Don Juan! I implore thee, of thy noble compassion, rend my heart or love me, for I adore thee!” Let some fair Andalusian repeat these lines and see if you do not appreciate them; or, if this be impossible in your case, read the ballad called “La Pasionaria,” which is rather long, but full of affection and an entrancing melancholy. I cannot think of it without my eyes filling with tears. I always see the two lovers, Aurora and Felice, in the flush of youth, alone at the close of day in the deserted fields, going their opposite ways, turning at every step, waving good-bye, and never satisfied with gazing back at each other. The lines are what the Spanish call asonantes (unrhymed), but so composed and arranged that the penult of each line, equal or unequal, is accented and always has the same vowel. This is the most popular verse in Spain—the verse of the Romancero, in which very many can improvise with surprising facility; nor is a foreigner able to perceive all its harmony unless his ear has been trained.

“May I see the picture-gallery?”

“Why not, caballerito?” The portress opened the door of the Colegio de Santa Cruz, and followed me inside. There are many paintings, but besides some by Rubens, Mascagni, Cardenas, Vincenzo Carduccio, the rest of them are of very slight merit, gathered together from convents here and there, and hung at random in the rooms, along the corridors, staircases, and galleries. None the less, it is a museum which leaves upon the mind a profound impression, not very unlike that produced by one’s first sight of a bull-fight; in fact, it is more than six months since that day, and yet the impression is still as distinct as though it was made only a few hours ago. The gloomiest, the bloodiest, the most horrid work from the brushes of the finest Spanish painters are found there. Imagine gaping wounds, mutilated limbs, heads severed from the trunks, ghastly corpses, bodies that have been bruised, torn asunder, racked with the cruelest tortures you have found described in the romances of Guerrazzi or in the History of the Inquisition, and you will have formed an adequate idea of the gallery of Valladolid. You pass from room to room and see only faces distorted by death, faces of the dying, of demoniacs, of executioners, and on every side blood, blood, blood! until you seem to see blood spurting from the walls and feel as though you were wading in it, like Father Bresciani’s Babette in the prisons of Naples. It is a collection of woes and horrors enough to fill to overflowing all the hospitals in the country.

At first one feels a sense of sadness, then a shudder of abhorrence, and finally far more than abhorrence—indignation against the butcher-artists who have so shamelessly debased the art of Raphael and Murillo.

The most noticeable painting which I saw, among the many bad ones, although it too was a cruel Spanish realism, was a picture representing the circumcision of Jesus, with all the most minute details of the instruments and the operation, and a circle of spectators standing motionless with bowed heads, like the students of a surgical clinic around their chief.

“Let us go! let us go!” I said to the courteous portress; “if I stay here half an hour longer I shall be burned, flayed, or quartered. Have you nothing more cheerful to show me?”

She took me to see Rubens’ “Assumption,” a grand, effective painting which would look well above a great altar—a majestic, radiant Virgin, ascending to heaven, and around her, above and below, a host of angelic faces, wreaths of flowers, golden hair, white wings, waving pinions, and dancing sunbeams. It is all tremulous, and pierces the air and soars upward like a flock of doves, so that it seems from moment to moment that the whole scene ought to rise and disappear.

But it was not ordered that I should leave the museum with a pleasant picture before my eyes. The portress opened a door and with a laugh bade me enter. I entered, and turned back in fright. It seemed to me that I had fallen upon a madhouse of giants. The vast room was full of colossal statues of painted wood which represented the drama of the Passion—soldiers, jailers, and spectators, each in the attitude befitting his office, some in the act of scourging, others binding the criminals, others smiting, and wagging their heads—horrid faces horribly distorted, a few kneeling women, Jesus nailed to an enormous cross, the thieves, the ladder, the instruments of torture,—in short, everything one could think of to represent the Passion as it was once portrayed in the square, with a group of these huge statues which must have required as much room as a house. And here too were wounds, heads dripping with blood, and gashes enough to sicken you.

“See that Judas there?” said the woman as she pointed out one of the statues—a gallows face which I shall dream of sometimes. “When they arranged the groups outside, they had to take it down, it was so ugly and sad. The people hated it like death, and wanted to break it to pieces, and as there was always such a great to-do to guard it and to keep their threats from becoming deeds, it was decided to form the groups without it.” The most beautiful statue, to my eyes, was a Madonna, the work of Berruguete, Juan de Juni, or Hernandez—I do not know which, for they all three have statues there. She was kneeling with her hands clasped, and her eyes turned toward heaven with an expression of such passionate sorrow that one is moved to pity as though the statue were a living person; and, in fact, a few steps distant it seems to be alive, so that on seeing it suddenly one cannot check an exclamation of surprise.

“The English,” said the portress (for the cicerones repeat the opinions of the English as a confirmation of their own, and sometimes attribute to them the most tiresome extravagances),—“the English say that only words are lacking.”

I joyfully assented to the opinion of the English, gave the portress the customary reales, and, taking my departure with a head full of sanguinary images, hailed the cheerful sky with an unwonted feeling of pleasure, like a young student leaving the dissecting-room where he has been assisting at his first autopsy.

I visited the beautiful palace of the University, La Plaza Campo Grande, where the Holy Inquisition kindled its fagots—a wide, cheerful square, surrounded by fifteen convents. I went to see a church adorned with famous paintings, and then my brain began to confuse the images of the things I had seen. I slipped the guide-book into my pocket and took my way toward the great square. I did the same thing in all the other cities, for when the mind becomes tired it may be a good sign of constancy to force one’s attention in deference to that mistaken idea of following the guide-book, but it is a dangerous practice for one who is travelling with the intention of afterward telling the impressions of what he had seen. For one cannot remember everything, and it is better not to confuse the vivid remembrances of the principal objects with a crowd of vague recollections of things of less account. Moreover, one never has pleasant recollections of a city where he has used his head for a storehouse.

To see how the city appeared in the evening I took a walk under the porticoes, where they were beginning to light up the shops, and there was a continual passing of soldiers, students, and girls, who disappeared through the little passages, darted between the columns, and glided here and there to escape the eager hands of their pursuers, who were enveloped in their flowing capes; a troop of boys were romping about the square, filling the air with their sonorous cries: and everywhere there were groups of caballeros, among whom one occasionally heard the names Serrano, Sagasta, and Amadeus alternating with the words justicia, libertad, traiciÓn, honra de EspaÑa, and the like. I entered a very large cafÉ which was full of students, and there satisfied the natural talent of eating and drinking, as a refined writer would say. Then, as I had a great desire to talk, I noticed two students who were sipping their coffee and milk at a neighboring table, and without any introduction I addressed one of them—a very natural thing to do in Spain, where one is always sure of receiving a courteous response. The two students came over, and, as every one may imagine, we discussed the absorbing subjects of Italy, Amadeus, the university, Cervantes, the Andalusian women, balls, Dante, travels; in short, it was a course in the geography, the literary history, and the customs of the two countries; then a glass of Malaga and a friendly hand-clasp.

O caballeros of happy memory, comrades in every cafÉ, companions at all the hotel tables, near neighbors in every theatre, fellow-travellers on all the railway-trains in Spain! who so often, moved by gentle pity for an unknown stranger, scanning with sad eyes the railway-guide or the Correspondencia EspaÑola, thinking of his family, his friends, his distant country,—who with generous impulse have offered him the cigarette and drawn him into conversation; who have broken the course of his gloomy thoughts and have calmed and cheered him,—I thank you, caballeros of happy memory, whoever you may be, Carlists or Alphonsists or Amadeists or Liberals—from the bottom of my heart I thank you in the name of all Italians who are travelling or who will travel in your dear country; and I swear on the eternal volume of Miguel Cervantes that whenever I hear your highly-civilized European brothers condemning your fierce nature and savage manners, I will rise in your defence with the fire of an Andalusian and the constancy of a Catalan so long as I have the strength to cry, “Long live hospitality!”

A few hours later I found myself in the carriage of a train bound for Madrid; the starting whistle was still sounding when I clapped my hand to my forehead. Alas! it was too late! I had been to Valladolid and had forgotten to visit the room where Christopher Columbus died!