A barber may have his brass chin-basins, which hang outside the door, burnished every day; his fly-catcher renovated every month; his bottles containing leeches nice and clean; and he may know all the scandal of the town, which is decidedly a part of his duty; but if he cannot play the guitar and the castanets at the same time—which he can only do by calling the big toe of his left foot into requisition—he must not be considered a barber of the first class. He may do for shaving poor priests and water-carriers; but he may not shave an abbot, nor an archbishop, still less a grandee of Spain, who may sit before the king with his hat on.
In other countries the position of a barber is somewhat less important than it used to be when cleanliness required of a man that he should appear at early mass on the Sunday well shaved; but in Spain, cleanliness of the face is a great recommendation, for a rough chin never earned kisses. Therefore is a barber still held in great respect in the land of the Cid; and although Don Pedro Moreno was known by the name of “El Macho,” no one would have dared address him thus.
One day the archbishop called on El Macho to request of him to come and look at the image of St. James in the cathedral, to whom the edifice is dedicated, because this miraculous figure, who had wrought so many miracles, had, strange to say, commenced letting his beard grow, much to the astonishment of all the priesthood and of the common people, and to the dismay of several knights who had been knighted at the altar of St. James, because in those days knights did not use beards.
The barber, seeing the archbishop enter his house, advanced, knelt, and kissed his ring; and, knowing on what errand he was come, he was so solicitous of securing the archbishop’s favour, that he put aside his guitar, and respectfully awaited the prelate’s commands.
The archbishop having informed Pedro of the state of St. James’s chin, proceeded to inform him that it had been decided, at a meeting of the clergy, to entrust the shaving of the saint to him, Pedro Moreno; but that, as this growth of hair was most exceptional, seeing that the image was of wood, it was probable that the usual process of shaving might not be sufficient.
“And you are quite right, most excellent sir, in your supposition,” exclaimed the barber; “for unless I obtain some of the holy water in which the good saint was baptized, and a piece of the soap with which Judas Iscariot greased the rope with which he hanged himself, it will be useless to try and shave him, for the hair will grow as fast as it is taken off.”
“But that is impossible,” answered the archbishop; “for we do not even know where the good saint was baptized; and as for the soap last used by the arch-traitor, I should not be astonished to hear that Satan had taken it away with him when he came to fetch Judas. No, good Pedro; you must help me out of this difficulty in some other manner.”
“Then we must do with St. James of Compostella what the men of Burgos did with their alcaide, who persisted in getting drunk when he ought to have been getting sober. They got another alcaide as much like the other as possible, excepting that he was not a borracho. We must get another St. James like this one, but without a beard, and the people will be none the wiser.”
“But,” whispered the venerable archbishop, “what are we to do without our real, own, good, sweet St. James, whose miracles have been the means of restoring so many erring ones to the fold, and bringing in so much money to the Church? How can we replace him? And then, again, where can we hide him?”
“All this can be arranged very easily,” answered El Macho. “Any St. James will perform the same miracles, for the people have faith in him. It is the same with me; the hidalgos have faith in me, and therefore believe I am the only man in Compostella that can shave them, although there are many other barbers. It is the people’s faith that performs the miracles. As for hiding the saint, I will put him in a box I have got, and lock him up safely.”