Nowhere in Europe had Protestantism nobler martyrs than the Spaniards: and numbers of them were men of eminence; for their very judges lamented that the learned men whom they had sent to confute foreign heretics were returning to preach the faith which they were commissioned to{263} destroy. But against such persecutors their cause was hopeless. Philip and Valdez were men with hands of iron.
Valladolid has many fine monuments, but they are scattered and lost among newer and less interesting surroundings. Even the old arcaded plaza is becoming deplorably modernised; and the old-world charm of Toledo and Segóvia may here be sought in vain. The Pisuerga river (upon which the city stands) forms the eastern boundary of the Tierra de Campos, as the Esla forms the western.[53] And the scenery of the two valleys is so nearly identical that a traveller dropped unexpectedly in either might be puzzled to say which. There are the same wide basin, the same crumbling yellow cliffs, the same troglodyte villages, the same Nilotic-looking stream. The only speciality of the Pisuerga is the extreme dustiness of the roads.
Dueñas is one of the most typical little towns of the district. Perched in full sunshine on one of the bare hills that flank the valley, it looks as thoroughly baked as a pie-crust, in spite of the poplared meadows at its feet. Here Ferdinand and Isabella first started their housekeeping, on a very modest scale indeed, with scarcely enough{264} capital to guarantee to-morrow’s dinner. “Saving a crown, he had nothing else beside,” sings the Scottish lassie of her suitor in the old ballad. But the royal lovers’ crowns were still in abeyance; and the then wearer of the Castilian diadem had very different matrimonial plans for his high-spirited sister. Wherefore he, whom History remembers as the austere and politic Ferdinand, stole secretly across the hostile frontier, disguised as groom to his own attendants, at the imminent risk of a broken head; and the knot was safely tied in the cathedral at Valladolid, with the connivance of a few of Isabella’s staunchest partisans.
The little cathedral town of Paléncia lies a little off the direct road; but it is most conveniently situated as a half-way house to Búrgos. The cathedral is a singularly fine one, though rather ramshackle externally; and, like a true Spanish cathedral, it is crammed with works of art. The streets are all quaintly colonnaded; but we were somewhat taken aback when we were shown the entrance to the Fonda, a miserable rat-hole in a blank and dirty wall. We had expected something better of Paléncia:—yet nothing quite so good as the delicious shady patio which we found at the end of the passage; for the hotel is{265} really an excellent one, and its true entrance is from a street at the back. On the whole, we have nothing but commendation for Paléncia. Only we wish that the little sisterhood, “Siervas de Maria, ministras para los enfermos,”[54] would mind—not their p’s and q’s, but their m’s and n’s. A little ambiguity in the final syllable is so extremely compromising!
We quitted Paléncia early on midsummer morning, and soon regained the Búrgos road. The villages that lay before us were vomiting such volumes of smoke that we concluded Torquemada must be justifying its title by the celebration of an Auto-da-fé. But it proved to be only lime-kilns; and Torquemada is pretty enough to deserve a gentler name. Here the Pisuerga is crossed by a long crooked old bridge; and in the fields near by occurred the incident which forms the subject of Pradilla’s famous picture, when poor mad Juana, escorting her husband’s body from Búrgos to Grenada, elected to spend the night in the open sooner than shelter the faithless corpse in a convent of nuns. An incident worthy of Lear!