In this corridor there is a continual passing of bank-runners, office-clerks, and messenger-boys, and the constant hum of the market-place. Barbarians! How many beautiful faces, how many noble eyes, how many splendid heads of dark hair in that crowd of ladies! In ancient times the young Catalan lovers, to win the heart of their ladies, bound themselves to fraternities of flagellants and beat themselves with whips of iron beneath the windows of their loves until the blood burst from the skin; and the ladies cheered them on, crying, “Lash thyself still harder, so; now I love thee, I am thine!” How many times did I exclaim that night, “Gentlemen, for pity’s sake give me a whip of iron!”
The next morning before sunrise I was on my way to Saragossa, and, to tell the truth, not without a feeling of sadness at leaving Barcelona, although I had been there only a few days. This city, although it is anything but the flower of the beautiful cities of the world, as Cervantes called it,—this city of commerce and warehouses, spurned by poets and artists—pleased me, and its hurried, busy people inspired me with respect. And then it is always sad to depart from a city, however unfamiliar, with the certainty of never seeing it again. It is like saying good-bye for ever to a travelling companion with whom one has passed twenty-four happy hours: he is not a friend, but one seems to love him as a friend, and will remember him all one’s life with a feeling of affection more real than that one holds toward many who are called by the name of friends.
As I turned to look once again at the city from the window of the railway-carriage, the words of Alvaro Tarfe in Don Quixote came to my lips: “Adieu, Barcelona, the home of courtesy, the haven of wanderers, the fatherland of the brave! Adieu!” And I continued sadly: “Lo, the first leaf is torn from the rosy book of travel! So all things pass. Another city, then another, then another, and then—I shall return, and the journey will seem like a dream, and it will seem as though I had not even stirred from home; and then another journey—new cities and other sad partings, and again a memory vague as a dream; and then?” Alas for that traveller who harbors thoughts like these! Look at the sky and at the fields, repeat poetry, and—smoke. Adios, Barcelona, archivio de la cortesia!
SARAGOSSA.
A FEW miles from Barcelona one comes in sight of the serrated crags of the famous Montserrat, a peculiar mountain which at first sight raises a suspicion of an optical illusion, so hard is it to believe that Nature could ever have yielded to so strange a caprice. Imagine a succession of little triangles connected with each other, like those which children use to represent a chain of mountains, or a crown with a pointed circlet, stretched out like the teeth of a saw or a great many sugar-loaves ranged in a row, and you have an idea of the distant appearance of Montserrat. It is a group of immense cones which rise side by side one behind another, or rather one great mountain formed of a hundred mountains, cleft from the summit to a distance almost one-third of its height in such a manner that it presents two grand peaks, around which cluster the lesser ones. The highest altitudes arid and inaccessible; the lower slopes mantled with pine, oak, arbutus, and juniper, broken here and there by measureless caverns and fearful precipices, and dotted by white hermitages, which stand out in bold relief against the aërial crags and the deep gorges. In the cleft of the mountain, between the two principal peaks, rises the ancient monastery of the Benedictines, where Ignatius Loyola meditated in his youth. Fifty thousand pilgrims and sight-seers annually visit the monastery and the caves, and on the eighth of September a festival is held which brings together an innumerable throng from every part of Catalonia.
Shortly before we arrived at the station where one gets off of the train to ascend the mountain, a group of school-boys from an academy of some unknown village rushed into the railway-carriage. They were making an excursion to the monastery of Montserrat, and a priest accompanied them. They were Catalans—with fair, ruddy faces and large eyes; each one carried a basket containing bread and fruit; one had a scrap-book, another a field-glass. They all laughed and talked at once, rollicked about on the seats, and filled the car with infinite merriment. But, although I strained my ears and racked my brain, I could not understand a word of the miserable jargon in which they were chattering. I entered into conversation with the priest.
“Look, sir,” said he after the preliminary sentences, as he pointed out one of the boys: “he knows all the Odes of Horace by heart; the way in which that other boy can solve problems in arithmetic would astonish you; this one here is a born philosopher;” and so he described to me the gifts of each.
Suddenly he interrupted himself to shout “Beretina!” (Caps). The boys all drew their red Catalonian caps from their pockets, and with cries of delight proceeded to put them on, some slipping them back so that they fell over their necks, the others pulling them forward until they dangled in front of their noses. The priest made a gesture of disapproval, and at once those who had their caps pushed back pulled them over their noses, and those who had them pulled forward pushed them back over their necks, with laughter and shouts and clapping of the hands.