“TO-DAY is the fiesta of San Antonio the Abbot,” said Pedra, when she came in to light the fire. “The SeÑora should go to see the blessing of the animals at his church.”

Fasts, feasts, everything connected with the Church has far greater importance in Madrid than in Rome. One gets some idea here of what the power of the church was in Italy before 1870. Pedra, who was very devout, never let me forget a saint’s day. It was like living in ancient Rome, this strict observance of the days of fest and ne fest.

“Then this must be your mother’s fiesta, her name is Antonina,” I said.

“No, SeÑora. There are two San Antonios and two religions; the patron of my mother is San Antonio of Padua,—see, here is his picture; his fiesta comes in June.” A photograph of Murillo’s Vision of Saint Anthony hung on the wall.

“How can you tell the difference between the two?”

“But it is so easy! San Antonio the Abbot is an old man with a beard; he is always represented with a pig; he carries a bell. It is said that whenever he rings his bell all the animals kneel down. San Antonio of Padua is young, and has no beard. It is he who grants so many favors. To him I burned the candle when the SeÑora lost her brooch; she found it the day after, she remembers.”

Don Jaime, old pagan, took me to see the blessing of the animals. He brought me a little image of the saint with a pig following at his heels, as a dog follows.

The Abbot was very wise, Jaime explained; he knew, good man, that in case of hunger, pig is better eating than dog. In Madrid people are rather indifferent to him. All the Antonios the Don knew claim San Antonio of Padua for patron because he is more aristocratic. Only the peasants will have the Abbot for their patron, because he takes care of their animals.

As we drew near the church, we met a great number of horses, mules and donkeys on their way to be blessed. A white horse with the paso castellano, a beautiful silky mane braided with bright ribbons and a pretty silk head-stall, was so exactly like the horse the young dealer from Ronda showed at the Seville fair that I half believed it to be the same animal. The man who led him wore Andalusian dress, and a carnation behind the ear. Man and horse picked their way through the crowd of loafers, women, children and sweetmeat-sellers, to the church. A priest soon came out followed by an acolyte all in scarlet like an embryo cardinal, and from the church steps the priest sprinkled the horse with holy water, the acolyte swung his silver censer, the incense rose in a blue cloud. From a side window a sacristan passed the young man a bag of fodder that had been blessed, and with the payment of a little money, the ceremony was over.

The church was full of kneeling people; the altars were ablaze with candles. I wished to go in to see the Goya, a picture of the Last Communion of Saint Jerome.

Don Jaime said I had better see it another time; to-day there were too many people. There was some small-pox about—not enough to be nervous over—but to avoid contagion it was well to keep out of the churches. If there is a desperately sick child in the house, of course one goes continually from the bedside of the child to the church and prays for its recovery. The old grandmother, or the little children who can do nothing to help, can at least spend the morning in the church, out of harm’s way, praying for it!

At dinner Antonina, a fairy of five who lived next door, brought in a plate of rosquitas de San Antonio, delicious little crisp cakes baked only this day in all the year. Jaime, who had come in while we were still at table, ate one of the cakes as a reward for having been to church.

“In England,” the Don remembered, “they eat hot cross buns on Good Friday and pancakes on Shrove Tuesday; they have forgotten the rosquitas of Saint Anthony and the tortas of San JosÉ.”

On the nineteenth of March, the fiesta of San JosÉ and of all his namesakes, I asked Pedra if we should have one of the tarts of St. Joseph for dinner.

“In all Madrid there is no house so poor that the torta of San JosÉ will not be eaten to-day. He is the patron of the church, and as such we all must venerate him.” It was a busy day for Don JosÉ Villegas; a flood of visitors, cards, letters, telegrams and presents poured through the Tower of Babel from daylight till midnight. He sat in his study busy writing notes of congratulation and sending despatches to all the other JosÉs of his acquaintance. I looked over the cards; there were the names of statesmen, artists, poets, singers, musicians and bull-fighters, all linked together into a sort of fraternity, because they bore in common the name of good Saint Joseph.

In almost every circumstance of life or death, the Church plays a leading part. The wife of a friend of Don Jaime died while we were in Madrid, and the Don arranged that I should see the funeral procession and one of the many services. The cortÉge was headed by four men dressed in white broadcloth short clothes and Louis-Seize coats, white wigs, silk stockings and three cornered hats; each carried a long white staff. The hearse was a gorgeous white affair, drawn by four white horses with sweeping ostrich plumes. It was preceded and followed by a large company of priests, monks and choristers carrying wax candles and chanting a miserere. The mourners followed on foot. More than a week after the lady’s death I went with Jaime and his sister Candalaria to the house of mourning. In the private chapel we listened to a long service lasting over an hour. The chaplain of the family officiated, reciting the rosary, the litany and many prayers. This was the last and ninth day of these services. When it was over, I went home, Don Jaime and Candalaria remaining behind to speak with the mourners. Afterwards they told me something of the visit. Candalaria found the ladies of the family in one room surrounded by a crowd of women friends dressed in mourning.

“They all talked at once,” said Candalaria, “saying the same thing over and over again. ‘Poor soul! So young to die! So good, so devout! What will her husband do without her?’”

The Don had found the widower in another room with his men friends about him. He told the Don that his greatest grief was that his wife had died suddenly, without having time to make a confession or receive the sacraments. The Don wondered what possible sin she could have had on her soul. Everybody said, and he believed, that the dead woman was very nearly a saint.

Candalaria—her name means Candlemas—is a Majorcan. When I asked Don Jaime to tell me something about the island of Majorca where she lives, he said: “In Majorca all properties is oranges. It has a fine weather as well.” I said it must be a pleasant place to live.

“Candalaria she finds it so. She is bery clever, she plays piano and biolin.” Jaime always assumed b and v to be interchangeable in English as they so often are in Spanish. “Her husband is topographic engineer. Candalaria helps him to draw the geographic carts.”

Don Jaime’s sister is married to an officer of engineers; she draws so nicely that she often helps her husband in making his army maps. She is a small, energetic woman with consuming eyes, fiery, energetic, practical, everything Don Jaime is not. She had come to Madrid to see her brother and the carnival. Jaime introduced us to her, and during her stay, we were often together.

“In your country, SeÑora,” Candalaria said when we first met, “you have the largest of everything of the world. Is it rivers? The Mississippi. Is it a cataract? Niagara. Is it mountains? The Andes. Your fortunes are also the largest. Where we count in millions of reals, you count in millions of duros.”

It was Candalaria who presented me to DoÑa Emilia Pardo de Bazan, one of the leading Spanish novelists, a gray-haired woman with a powerful face. DoÑa Pardo Bazan spoke with me about the position of women in Spain.

“I look for nothing from the women of my country,” she said; “whatever is done to improve their position must be done by men. Our laws are good. Women have a right to enter some of the universities and some of the professions, but they take no advantages of these privileges. It is the fear of ridicule that keeps them back.”

I told her that we used to hear a great deal about the fear of ridicule in the old days at home, and that it had been proved a bugbear. She went on to say that she had been asked to help form a woman’s club and had refused; she knew it would be of no use, because it would be laughed at.

At the reception where I met DoÑa Pardo Bazan I was introduced to a pretty Marquesa Fulano and her prettier daughter. “Tell me,” I said to the Marquesa, “the title of DoÑa Pardo Bazan’s most important book.”

“I do not know it,” was the answer; “she writes for gentlemen, not for ladies. I will enquire, if, among the many books she has written, there is one that you could read.”

Though I never saw the Marquesa again, I read La Tribuna, one of the writer’s strongest novels, and I know the Marquesa and I should not agree about what books a woman may with advantage read. I know, too, that everything is to be looked for from the women of Spain, for whom DoÑa Pardo Bazan—I have heard her called the foremost literary woman in Europe—has done so much.

I asked Jaime how many children Candalaria had.

“Eleven,” he said; “that gives me eleven to remember in my will. To whom God sends no children, the devil sends nephews and nieces.”

The carnival Candalaria had timed her visit for, was well worth seeing. It was a famous year in Spain for pageants of all sorts. The King’s engagement and approaching marriage put everybody in a good-natured, money-spending mood. Great enthusiasm was expressed for what was always spoken of as “the English alliance.” Whenever the King gave his ministers the slip, and ran off in his automobile to see the Princess Ena at San SebastiÁn, everybody was delighted.

Carnival began the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The chief feature was a parade of cars, or floats, competing for prizes offered by the municipality. The parade took place in the splendid avenue that, under various names, runs through the new quarter of Madrid from north to south.

Lucia, Patsy and I started from the Tower of Babel soon after three o’clock. We had not driven far, when we caught sight of Villegas in the crowd at the corner.

“I knew he was dying to come with us all the time,” murmured Patsy; “in spite of what he said.”

“Angoscia disappointed me; they are all mad;” sighed Villegas, as he climbed into the carriage.

“That is well,” said Lucia. “Thou hadst need of a holiday; thou hast not taken a day of repose this year.”

“Though the premium is offered for the best car, the best car will not get the premium, thou wilt see.” Jaime called to Villegas from his cab, following at a foot-pace, along the Castellana.

“Se sabÉ!” Villegas agreed. The “best car” came creaking towards us, a vast float drawn by four gray oxen with gilded horns and gold-embroidered head-dresses. Two Catalan peasants

walked beside, driving the oxen: they wore wide sombreros, and bright mantas folded over the shoulder. The car was an excellent representation of the House of Congress, with its Greek faÇade, white columns, timpanum, and bronze lions on either side the door. Behind the columns was a brazen pot filled with men dressed as locusts. The car was greeted with roars of laughter and applause.

“Thou seest?” said Jaime to Villegas. “The government devours the country like locusts! It is true! We have the best people in the world, and the worst government!”

“Bravo! El Congreso!” yelled the people in the carriages. “Muy bien!” The crowd that lined the sidewalks answered with cries of “Magnifico! Bravo! El carro satirico!”

Jaime was right, the prize was not awarded to the Congreso, but to the parrots. A mammoth cage in the middle of a float with a big sham parrot hanging on a ring and all around the cage a group of seÑoritas and caballeros dressed to look like parrots with green velvet coats, gray satin vests, red velvet caps and big beaks.

“It almost deserves the prize, only the Congreso should have had it!” said Patsy.

As the Government appoints the judges, that was hardly to be expected. The second prize was awarded to a wagon-load of toy soldiers in French uniform. They stood stiff as wooden dolls, till you looked close and saw, under the soldiers’ caps, the faces of pretty girls and laughing lads.

“Seville, the Feria, Concepcion!” cried Patsy; “this is magic!”

It was little short of it. On the float coming towards us was the patio of an Andalusian house with Moorish columns and azulejos, from which a maya and a mayo looked out on the crowd. The maya wore a black chenille overdress with a yellow satin skirt and a rose in her hair like Concepcion.

Down the middle of the Paseo de la Castellana, the most fashionable part of the route, a line of gaily decorated tribunes had been built; these were filled with well-dressed people.

“That is the tribune of La Pena, the fashionable club in the AlcalÁ,” Patsy said. “The next is the Press Club. This is the Artists’ Club, and this last is the tribune of the French Colony.”

The crowd of men, women and children in the stands were armed with flowers, huge sacks of confetti, and rolls of colored paper ribbons, which unwind when they are thrown, like rockets or lassos. In a white carriage drawn by four silver-gray mules with postilions and outriders, sat two beauties dressed in silver. Passing in the other direction was a car with a representation of Carthage. The Carthaginians were splendidly dressed. As car and carriage met, a pair of dark Carthaginian men lifted a bag of violet confetti and poured it down on the white carriage, so that we saw the beauties through a purple haze. The effect of the changing colors was dazzling. Violet, declared at Paris the color of the season, predominated over all others.

“This,” said Patsy, “is like walking through a gallery of living impressionist pictures.”

“Maestro! Ay Maestro!” we were passing the tribune of the Artists’ Club, when, bifferty! a long yellow streamer coiled about Villegas’ neck and flew out behind. Soon the landeau was hung in a maze of paper ribbons, every color of the rainbow, tangling in the wheels, wound round the hubs, filling the carriage, half strangling us. A fine victoria with a harlequin and a mask in pink satin, stopped close to us. A servant was sent to our carriage and presented Lucia with a pretty porcelaine bonbonniÈre of caramels. It was growing late and people began to be hungry. The flowers were exhausted; chocolates and candies hailed into the carriage. In the cab behind, Candelaria unpacked a box of sandwiches, a bottle and two glasses.

“Un poco de ginevra de campana?” said Don Jaime, offering a glass to Patsy.

“Luz, Luz, Luz!” The cry came from a box of caramels filled with young caballeros done up like bonbons in pink paper. Luz, lovely as daybreak, smiled as her carriage passed the caramels; we saw her through a storm of rosy confetti. We drove down for a last turn to the end of the Castellana.

The sunset was pink, gold and violet, to match the prevailing tone of the carnival. Against the sky the Guaderramas stood out boldly with the eternal white confetti on their summits. Our carriage halted by the statue of Isabel the Catholic, sitting on her horse between her good and her evil genius, Columbus standing at her bridle and just behind her the cowled, sinister figure of Torquemada.

“Don Alfonzo!” The young King in his automobile flew by, a dent in his bowler hat, his coat covered with confetti. He threw a bunch of roses to a seÑorita dressed like a strawberry, sitting in a basket of fruit, the other strawberries all answered with double handful of pinkish confetti, and cries of “muy bien!” He was supposed to be incognito and was throwing flowers and confetti just like any other jolly boy of nineteen. Of course everybody recognized him, but the fiction of the incognito was strictly respected, which seemed very sensible. It must be supposed that he needs a little fun for his soul’s sake, like the rest of us. He got his full share that afternoon.

Last of all we drove through the AlcalÁ, Madrid’s main artery, to the Puerta del Sol, the city’s mighty heart. The rest of Madrid sometimes sleeps a little; here the life blood pulses ceaselessly to and fro.

“I have been in the Puerta del Sol at every hour of the twenty-four,” said Patsy, “and I have never found it empty.”

The streets were guarded by the Ramonones,—mounted police, polite, energetic, keeping an order that was wonderful, considering the vast crowd, and was most of all due to the crowd’s desire that order should be kept.

It was growing dark, the electric lamps twinkled out of the lavender mist. Just ahead of us, on the prize-winning car of the parrots, they were burning red Bengal lights. At the corner of the dark street where we must turn to reach home, a fine carriage, full of elegant maskers, passed us. A Pierrot in green satin stood on one step flirting with a Turkish lady, a contrabandista on the other whispered to an Andaluz. As we drove by in our modest carriage, the red Bengal lights of the parrots lit up Don JosÉ’s face. From the grand carriage came the cry:

“Villegas! gloria de la patria!”

“They are all mad!” said Villegas; “vamos! it’s time to go home.”

Ash Wednesday morning the streets were full of sweepers trying to get rid of the green, pink and red papers, the trampled dÉbris of the last three days’ frolic. We met Luz coming out of San Isidro Real. She was all in black, wearing the mantilla. On her forehead the priest had traced a cross of ashes. The church was filled with fashionably dressed men and women, many of whom we had seen the day before at the carnival. Each came out into the sunlight with the cross of dust and ashes on the forehead, in token of the day of mourning. In the stable-yard behind the church we saw the ruins of the second prize winner, the toy soldier cart. The little sentry box hung in the right place, the stiff green trees, the dummy soldiers in their smart French uniforms stuck up oddly from the cart. The merry group of live soldiers, the pretty girls and saucy boys were scattered; perhaps some of them were in the church. As we stood watching the wreck of the prize winner, men began to take the car to pieces and to pull off the remaining decorations.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” said Patsy; “I’m for the Prado and glories that do not pass so quickly.”