THE Basque is still one of the sturdy untouched peoples of the earth; they make still the unmixed aborigines of Spain. Their difficult dialect remains a perplexity to the etymologist, some believe it to be of Tartar origin. They themselves claim to be the oldest race in Europe and that their language came to Spain before the confusion of tongues at Babel. They derive their name from a Basque phrase meaning "We are enough," that fittingly describes their character of self-sufficiency; the mere fact of being born in the province confers nobility. Life for centuries in the isolated valleys that never were conquered by Moor or foreign invader has bred in the Basque a passionate independence. He would never join with the neighboring kingdoms of Navarre and LeÓn until his special privileges were ratified; and though these privileges were the important ones of exemption from taxes and military service, he succeeded in keeping them intact until his sympathies with the Pretenders in the Carlist wars lost him his ancient rights. To-day the Basques must pay taxes and serve in the army like the rest of Spain, but their soldiers are usually employed in the customs, or as aids to the local police. Their red cap, like the French bÉret, and brilliant red trousers are a familiar sight among the valleys.

Of the three Basque provinces with their 600,000 people, the smallest, GuipÚzcoa, is a good epitome of national characteristics. The sinuous valleys now serve as the passageway for the rushing mountain river, now spread out into a plain where the villages are set. Each town has its shady alameda, its plaza, and a court for playing pelota, a kind of tennis, the game of the province. There are frequent casas solares,[1] or family manor houses; one of these I remember wedged in with its neighbors, in Azcoitia, unnoticed by the guide book, only by chance we looked up and found it looming above the narrow pavement; blackened with age and scarred as if crashed with blows of warring times, it was a speaking record of old Basque life. In any other country but Spain, the carelessly rich and unrecorded, such a fortress-house would be a lion in the district,—from this very unexpectedness Spanish travel is of unflagging charm. The strong primitive GuipÚzcoans cling to their patriarchal customs. The men and boys sit before their doors making the cord soles used in peasants' shoes; the women in groups of twenty or more, wash clothes in the public trough or down by the river. The industry of all is unflagging. The roads are among the best built in Spain, along them go creaking carts, each wheel made of a solid block of wood bound in iron and emitting a prolonged agonizing squeak. The cream-colored oxen that drag them have their yokes covered with sheepskin, another century-old custom. The carts sometimes carry pigskins filled with wine, three legs in the air, and the unique casks are mended with a kind of pitch that lends a disagreeable flavor to the wine, but these highlanders will not yield an old usage.

No sooner did we cross the Puente Internacional that connects France with its neighbors over the Bidassoa River—scene of historic meetings—than we found ourselves in the wooded Basque provinces of the northern Pyrenees. The country was fertile, the small farms cultivated with activity; on the hills were heavily-laden chestnut trees, in the valleys, orchards: we often passed trainloads of red apples carried unpacked in the open cars like coal. Not far from the frontier the train skirted what appeared to be an inland lake surrounded by hills, when suddenly I noticed an ocean steamer and some fishing smacks lying at anchor, and looking closer I saw that a narrow passage led through the hills to the ocean breaking outside,—another of Spain's unheralded effects. This was the beautiful inland Bay of Pasajes, the port from which young Lafayette sailed for America.

At San SebastiÁn, the most fashionable summer resort in Spain, and still gay with Madrid people, for the season holds till October, we saw the first bull-ring, a circular building of red and yellow brick in the Moorish style. To find a plaza de toros here in the north was disconcerting. Spain's national game has withstood the will of kings, Papal bulls, the dislike of a large proportion of the Spanish people who petitioned the Cortes in 1878 for its abolishment, and the odium of foreign races. Until this debased cosa de EspaÑa is done away with it will remain a stumbling block to even the most sympathetic of travelers.

At IrÚn, the frontier town behind us, we had taken our tickets for ZumÁrraga, two hours away. There we were to leave the railway and drive into the valleys to Loyola, where in an old castle the hidalgo vizcaÍno, Don IÑigo de Loyola, was born. Our guide book gave but the slightest information. It was raining drearily. With trepidation and sinking hearts we looked out at ZumÁrraga as the train drew near. Would this, the first night in Spain, cold and wet, be spent in some miserable tavern in a town of a thousand inhabitants, and perhaps the next morning would a rickety diligence take us up the valley? We stepped from the train reluctantly; at the last minute we were tempted to turn back. But a porter had seized our valises, and muttering something incomprehensible about Loyola and an automobile hurried us through the station. And there, beyond, stood the wonderful thing, sign manual of modern comfort—a great red automobile with a gallant chauffeur! We sat down on our luggage and burst into a hearty laugh. It began to dawn on us that perhaps the tour of Spain was not going to be the series of hardships and privations we anticipated.

For the sum of three pesetas each (fifty-four cents) we were whirled up the winding valley. The mountains rose precipitously from the road and its accompanying river, reminding me of the valley in the Pistoiese Apennines that leads down to the Bagni di Lucca. In the motor diligence with us were a few courteous Basques; an elderly architect, with the finely-chiseled features of the country, pointed out a sight here and there, among others the birthplace and statue of Legazpi, conqueror of the Philippines. I think he took us for countrywomen of his young queen, and, trying to emulate his politeness, we were silent as to our nationality; later we discovered that this was quite unnecessary, for there is not the slightest prejudice in Spain against the United States. We passed a building by the river and were told it was an electric power-house; almost every part of the country is now lighted by electricity. "You are very up-to-date!" we exclaimed. He replied by a shrug of delighted self-depreciation, a proud smile of conscious superiority aping the humble, not out of place in a Basque whose mysterious language Adam spoke, so ancient and difficult a tongue that the devil who once tried to learn it, they say, had to give up in despair. Our opposite neighbors in the diligence, countrymen whose loss of teeth made them appear aged, sought also to show some courtesy. Each wayside shrine was named with glistening eyes,—St. Anthony; the hermitage on the hill above, St. Augustine; here, St. John. One began to understand religion was no mere Sunday morning service with this people.

After six miles the valley opened out and we came to Azcoitia, a town of some five thousand inhabitants where is manufactured the bÓina, the typical cap of the province. The automobile went slowly through the narrow cobbled streets, under the high houses and the cliff-like church, then sped over two miles of a beautiful valley, with mountain rising behind mountain in the evening light, and at length we reached Loyola.

Here one of the great discoverers of new strength, of untried powers in the human soul, one of the holiest men of Christendom, saw the light in 1491, the year before the discovery of America: in the life of St. Ignatius are several coincidental dates to give us pause. Surely it was to these peaceful Basque hills that his thoughts turned when, a knight in the worldly court that surrounded Ferdinand and his second wife Germaine de Foix, Ignatius in gazing at the stars would feel with sudden potency the pettiness of man's grandeur, and during his religious life, when he craved at the sunset hour to be alone to meditate, he must have recalled this lovely valley of his birth. With emotion I saw in the distance the huge quadrangle of the convent that now surrounds the Santa Casa: the thought of what this spot has given to the world, of the thousands of chosen souls linked to-day by one will to work for good in every land, can well make Loyola a place to stir the heart.

At a little past six we left the automobile which was to run farther up the valley, and a porter from the inn led us through the park the Jesuits have planted for the people. The HospederÍa de Loyola was a large building with a porticoed entrance at right angles to the convent, more like a monastery than a hotel, with polished staircase and corridors, neat bare rooms, and a long white refectory. The table was excellent, one course followed another at the one o'clock luncheon and the eight o'clock dinner. There was fresh fish from San SebastiÁn (to which daily another motor diligence ran), there were home-made preserves, and we had our first taste of the universal garbanzos[2] of Spain, a chickpea shaped like a ram's head. The waitress, the first of many Carmens and Dolores, was a wonderful old woman who grew so intent on teaching us her language that she would insistently repeat the name of each dish she passed. She managed to convey to us by pantomime, for our Spanish as yet was of the meagerest, that there were eight ladies from Madrid in the hotel, living upstairs in retirement as they were making a Retreat. They had come last Saturday;—talk, talk, talk,—and the animated little woman gesticulated to show. Then the Retreat began,—did we know what "the Exercises" were? Off she walked with bowed head and downcast eyes. So it would be all week. The next Monday we should see them, they would come to table with us, and it would be talk, talk, talk again. During the week we occasionally saw a lady in black, her head covered with a veil, cross from the hotel to the Santa Casa where the meditations were held. In the convent the Jesuits were conducting another Retreat attended by fifty men from different Spanish cities: these lived in the seminary with the priests.

At table with us were some Spanish people of a kind the tourist does not usually meet. One of them, a deeply religious man from Barcelona, on his first visit to the Santa Casa, following the example of St. Francis Borgia, knelt to kiss the floor of the room in which the patron of the Basques was born. Another, an elderly woman fond of lace and jewels, and probably longing for the gayeties of San SebastiÁn, was waiting in this quiet spot while her daughter made the Retreat. When the eight days were ended we met this daughter, a beautiful girl with the charm of manner and quickness of intelligence that we found as a rule among Spanish women. The afternoon the two Retreats closed was a pleasant sight. The valley was fragrant from the rain, on the mountains the chalets stood out strangely near in the clear air. Carriages and touring-cars rolled up, pretty wives to fetch their husbands to claim their wives. All were happy and natural, but one felt around one the atmosphere of the higher things of life, an exaltation that only religion can give. Religion is ineradicably woven into the every-day life of this race: a Spaniard is half mystic by inheritance. The power to understand the spiritual is not the gift of a few but of all. It gives to the peasant woman, to the uncouth lad serving Mass, an intelligence above themselves.[3] Before the late dinner that last evening in Loyola, a tall Spanish woman with her four daughters automobiled over from San SebastiÁn; she came to join her husband who had been following the "Exercises." He now sat with us at table, a man of the grave dignity and fine presence we were later to meet frequently. That night when passing through the corridors we heard the sounds of prayer in their rooms, the wife and children making the responses to the man's deeper voice.

The convent of Loyola is the center of civilization for the countryside. All day there is a ceaseless come and go to the church, or to the Santa Casa for silent prayer. At one each day troops of children go to the door of the convent with baskets and tins, and food is given them to carry to the aged and decrepit of the town. An hour later some dozens of lads in blue smock and bÓina, playing their ceaseless pelota, flock into the building for a half hour of doctrina. Then at three the young novices come out gayly for their ramble over the mountains and as they pass before the church each instantly removes his hat as walking they repeat together a prayer. Happy those whose formative years are passed in hardy discipline among these uncontaminated Basque hills! The peasants of the valley, when the bell sounds the hours, pause to remove their caps in salutation. Every morning they cross the fields from Azpeitia on the raised path beside the river, or they come from Azcoitia, two miles down the valley, to attend the morning services. No one who has not seen a Spanish priest's attitude of devotion can understand its appealing beauty. These Jesuits and their attendant young novices (there are about two hundred students in the seminary) approach the altar with solemn reverence, without a trace of self-consciousness, and slowly and beautifully say the Mass. "The Jesuit seems to love God from pure inclination, out of admiration, gratitude, tenderness, for the pleasure of loving Him," wrote that subtle critic, Joubert: "In their books of devotion you find joy because with them nature and religion go hand in hand." A Basque congregation is worthy of such ministers. All kneel without bench or chair, the men on folded handkerchiefs, the women on the circular straw mats scattered over the pavement. We were fortunate enough to attend a late Benediction, not a customary service in Spain as we found later. The thrilled exaltation of the singing in which all joined, the aged as well as children, is impossible to describe. It was a triumphant full-hearted adoration trying to voice the inexpressible; the organ ran riot, strained to its utmost, to accompany the ecstatic singing.

Every Sunday the peasants drive in from the mountains to attend the afternoon service, and after it they stand to chat for a placid hour on the wide steps of the church. Arm in arm the young girls stroll up and down in the park before the convent. I looked on at this scene of contentment that told of frugal, upright living, with the sad thought of France deprived of such wholesome beauty, of the peasants round the Grande-Chartreuse, poverty-stricken and desolate since the industrial monastery was closed. Happily for the future of Spain, she has at hand a neighbor to give her the lesson in time.

The convent of Loyola was built by the Austrian wife of Philip IV to enclose and preserve the Santa Casa, and it was by her presented to the Jesuits. The church whose dome overtops the convent is in imitation of the Pantheon. Unfortunately, as are most Jesuit churches in Europe, it was erected in a bad period, and overloaded with ornament. The Company of Jesus was not founded until the golden age of architecture was well past; Churriguera, archmaster of bad taste, was in vogue when they built. But at Loyola if the twisted pillars of decorated marble are hideous, the ample flowing staircase that leads to the church is a beautiful feature, reminiscent of Italian villas.

The soul of the valley is naturally the Santa Casa itself, the casa solar of the saint's fore-fathers. The lower story is of rough-hewn stone, and once the whole building was the same, but a jealous king leveled the fortress-houses of the Basque nobles and the upper stories were rebuilt in ancient brick. Above the entrance door the arms of the family are carved, two wolves and a pot. The tradition is that the knights of Loyola were so generous to their retainers that even the wolves came to share their hospitality. In many of the rooms daily Masses are said; the four stories have been inlaid with mosaic, carved wood, and gold leaf, the gifts of devotees of the Basque patron. One room is pointed out as the saint's before his conversion, another as the one in which St. Francis Borgia said his first Mass, giving up a brilliant career, as viceroy, admiral, Duke of GandÍa by inheritance, favorite of Charles V, to consecrate himself to the service of the altar. At this memorable Mass he gave communion to one of his sons, married to an inheritor of the Santa Casa, a niece of St. Ignatius. So many were the communicants another day that the Mass lasted from nine to three. Such rare instances of Christian perfection make the ancient house a chosen spot.

The story of St. Ignatius' life is told throughout his casa solar. On the staircase is a window showing him as a courtier. He was skilled in knightly exercises, fond of the saddle and equally fond of rich attire: good-looking, high-spirited, truthful, and brave, he was a favorite with his soldiers. The scene of his wounding at the siege of Pamplona is given; he lies on the ground with his leg shattered. A long year of convalescence followed, and we see him reading the books that wrought his marvelous change of heart. He sought the monastery of Montserrat, above Barcelona, to beg counsel of a learned man concerning the vocation he felt within him. His military training made him dream of forming a spiritual knighthood to battle for the salvation of souls: "Company of Jesus" is a military term. At Montserrat he performed the vigil of the armor, like a true knight watching till dawn before the altar; then exchanging his fine robes with a beggar he went forth, "el pobre ignoto peregrin." In a cave of Manresa he lived in seclusion and prayer, verifying on himself in agony of spirit the knowledge which was later to guide the troubled souls of others who sought light. "His experience in this solitude was an epitome of the psychology of the saints; and it smote him all the more intimately because he was utterly without foreknowledge of the spiritual life, and fought out his fight alone, like the first Fathers of the Desert." In the cave of Manresa was forged his Excalibur (to use again the vivid phrase of Francis Thompson, own brother to Crashaw in his flashes of celestial intuition), there originated the "Spiritual Exercises," the work used to-day in the Retreats. "It has converted more souls to God," wrote St. Francis de Sales, "than it contains letters."

Eighteen years were to pass before St. Ignatius founded his Order. They were years filled with wanderings in Spain and Europe, a student at universities, a humble but joyous pilgrim to Jerusalem. One day while he was reading the eighteenth chapter of St. Luke the words, "And they understood none of these things" brought before him with sudden force the realization of his own untrained mind, the fact that he must be educated himself before he could help others. So at thirty this remarkable man began his scholastic studies in Barcelona, in Cardinal Ximenez's famous university of AlcalÁ, in Salamanca. One day, in the streets of AlcalÁ, as he was led to prison on a false accusation, the proud young grandee of GandÍa passed him. This was the first sight Francis Borgia had of the man who later was to lead his life. Then followed some years of study in Paris. 1530 found him in London at the time of the agitation of Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, again a coincidence in Ignatius' life that he should visit at this critical moment the land soon to desert a church for which he was destined to raise so powerful a defense. There was another notable Spaniard in England then, not a humble summer student begging his way like the Basque hidalgo, but a scholar of Corpus Christi College, distinguished and lauded, to attend whose lectures the King and Queen used sometimes to spend a few days in Oxford. This was Juan Luis de Vives, born in the great year 1492, the precursor of Bacon and Descartes, a man of such vast erudition and impartial judgment that he has been called with Erasmus and the French prodigy, BudÉ, the intellect of his century. Vives stood forth courageously as defender of his country-woman when the divorce question arose; he was imprisoned for a short time, forfeited his position and pension, and finally left England altogether.

Loyola now took his degree as Master of Arts in Paris, and gathering round him some young men of earnest life—among them the future apostle and martyr in the East, St. Francis Xavier from Navarre—the memorable band of seven students made the vows of poverty and chastity in the crypt of a church on Montmartre on the Feast of the Assumption, 1534. Thirty years later the remembrance of that hour made one of the seven, RodrÍguez, feel his heart swell with ineffable consolation. Literally these ardent souls fulfilled the letter of the Gospel for the way of perfection: "If thou wilt be perfect go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor." "If any man will come after me let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." Their founder with superhuman perspicacity prayed it might be so. The world's hate is their alembic of purification.

Ignatius returned to Spain to arrange with Xavier's family—he also was of the northern mountain race of Spain—and with the kindred of three others of his followers. He crossed the Pyrenees by footpaths, and descending to his own valley of Loyola preached down by the river in Azpeitia. Later in Italy the band of Montmartre met again, working in hospitals, preaching, and converting souls to God. It was in Venice, many years after his wounding at Pamplona, that Ignatius Loyola was at length ordained priest, and in Rome, in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore said his first Mass. When the projects of the small band were submitted to the Pope, he had the inspired wisdom to discern in humble beginnings a future great movement and exclaimed: "Digitus Dei est hic!"—truly the finger of God. The new Order approved, Loyola was elected its general; like a military company, the first law was the unhesitating obedience of the soldier to his leader, the unbreakable power that lies in many working as one. The CompaÑÍa spread over the world, reforming monasteries, giving help to the poor, persuading the rich to purer lives, reconciling husbands and wives. Within a few years Francis Borgia gave up his dukedom to join them, and his accession brought to the Order many Spaniards of high rank. The founder continued to live in Italy between Rome at the GesÙ and Tivoli: he died in Rome in 1556.

In the Santa Casa we followed this remarkable life in scene after scene. There is a touching picture of the grown man at school among lads half his age, of the crypt of Montmartre, and of the final scene in Rome. His face was said by St. Philip Neri to have shone with compelling personality. In speech he was grave and admirable, a never-tiring student of the Bible; that, and the "Imitation of Christ" were the only books he much valued. "To see Father Ignatius was like reading a chapter of the 'Imitation,'" they used to say of him.

We lingered for some days in the beautiful Basque valley, following the winding paths among the mountains, loitering in the two little towns near by in the pleasant discovery of rare old windows and portals. Most of the houses had a picture of the Saviour on the entrance door. Each new-born child is brought to the parish church of Azpeitia where St. Ignatius was baptized, and each boy is called by his name, though only the eldest in a family has the privilege of using it. The saint's hymn is the national hymn of the Basques.

It was a raw autumn morning when we left Loyola. The light was just filling the valleys as we passed the sweeping steps of the church up which the peasants were mounting to beg a blessing on their working hours. The influence of their loved patron is as vivid as if he had lived but yesterday, so truly can one human mind, touched by divine grace, with no thought of self, in sublime earnestness, rouse mankind to shake off its apathy, to aspire to the highest. If only another such knight might arise to-day to fight the modern battle of Christianity!