These were my thoughts on entering Arragon, although I did not express them in these very words, for I did not then have before me a certain little book by Emilio Castelar. The first sight upon which my eyes rested was the little village of Monzon lying along the stream of Cinca, noted for the famous assemblies of the courts and for the alternate attacks and defences of Spanish and French—the common fate of almost all the villages of the province during the War of Independence. Monzon lies outstretched at the foot of a formidable mountain upon whose side rises a castle as black, sinister, and appalling as the grimmest of the feudal lords could have planned to condemn the most detested of villages to a life of fear. Even the guide pauses before this monstrous edifice and breaks forth in a timid exclamation of astonishment. There is not, I believe, in Spain another village, another mountain, another castle which better represents the fearful submission of an oppressed people and the perpetual menace of a cruel ruler. A giant pressing his knee on the breast of a mere child whom he has thrown to the ground,—this is but a poor simile to give an idea of it; and such was the impression it made upon me that, although I do not know how to hold the pencil in my hand, I tried to sketch the landscape as best I could, so that it might not fade from my memory. And while I was making scratches I composed the first stanza of a gloomy ballad.
After Monzon the country of Arragon is merely a vast plain, bounded in the distance by long chains of reddish hills, with a few wretched villages, and some solitary eminences upon which rise the blackened ruins of ancient castles. Arragon, so flourishing under her kings, is now one of the poorest provinces of Spain. Only on the banks of the Ebro and along the famous canal which extends for forty miles from Tudela as far as Saragossa, serving at the same time to irrigate the fields and to transport merchandise,—only here does commerce thrive. Elsewhere it languishes or is dead.
The railway-stations are deserted; when the train stops one hears no other sound save the voice of some old troubadour who strums his guitar and chants a monotonous ditty, which one hears again at all the other stations, and afterward in the cities of Arragon: the words varied, but eternally the same tune. As there was nothing to be seen out of the window, I turned to my travelling companions.
The car was well filled: we were about forty in number, counting men and women, and as the second-class carriages in Spain do not have compartments, we could all see each other—priests, nuns, boys, servants, and other persons who might have been business-men or officials or secret emisaries of Don Carlos. The priests smoked their cigarettes, as the custom is in Spain, amicably offering their tobacco-pouches and rolling paper to those beside them. The others ate with all their might, passing from one to another a sort of bladder, which when pressed with both hands sent out a spurt of wine. Others were reading the newspaper, wrinkling their brows now and then with an air of profound meditation.
A Spaniard will not put a piece of orange, a bit of cheese, or a mouthful of bread into his mouth in the presence of others before he has asked every one to eat with him; and so I saw fruit, bread, sardines, and cups of wine pass under my nose, everything accompanied with a polite “Gusta usted comer, commigo?” (Will you eat with me, sir?) To which I replied, “Gracias” (No, thank you), though it went against the grain to do so, for I was as hungry as Ugolino. Opposite to me, with her feet almost touching mine, sat a young nun, if one were to judge of her age by her chin, which was all of her face visible below her veil, and by her hand, which lay carelessly on her knee. I looked at her closely for more than an hour, hoping that she would raise her face, but she remained motionless as a statue, although from her attitude it was easy to see that she was obliged to resist the natural curiosity to look around her; and for this reason she finally won my admiration. What constancy! I thought; what strength of will! What a power of sacrifice even in these trifling matters! What a noble contempt for human vanity! As I was engaged with these thoughts I happened to glance at her hand; it was a small, white hand, and it seemed to me to be moving. I watched it more intently, and saw it escape very slowly out of the sleeve, extend the fingers, and rest on the knee, so that for a moment it hung gracefully down; then it turned a little to one side, was drawn back, and again extended. Oh, ye gods! anything but contempt of human vanity!
I could not have been mistaken; she had gone to all that trouble merely to display her little hand, yet she did not once raise her head all the time she remained in the car, nor did she even allow her face to be seen when she got out. Oh, the inscrutable depths of the feminine mind!
It was ordained that I should make no other friends than priests during the journey. An old father with a benevolent expression spoke to me, and we commenced a conversation which lasted almost to Saragossa. At first, when I said I was an Italian, he became a little suspicious, thinking perhaps that I had been one of those who had broken the bolts of the Quirinal, but when I told him that I did not busy myself about politics he was reassured and talked with perfect freedom. We chanced upon literature. I repeated to him the whole of Manzoni’s Pentecoste, which delighted him, and he recited for me a poem of the celebrated Luis de Leon, a sacred poet of the sixteenth century, and we were friends. When we came to Zuera, the last station before arriving at Saragossa, he arose, bade me good-bye, and with his foot on the step he turned quickly and whispered in my ear, “Beware of the women; they bring evil consequences in Spain.” When he alighted he stood to watch the train start, and, raising his hand with a gesture of fatherly admonition, he said a second time, “Beware!”
It was late at night when I reached Saragossa, and as I left the train my ear suddenly became aware of the peculiar cadence with which the hackmen, the porters, and the boys were speaking as they quarrelled over my baggage. In Arragon even the most insignificant people can speak Castilian, although with some mutilation and harshness; but your pure Castilian can recognize the Arragonese before he has spoken half a word; and, in fact, the Andalusians can imitate their accent, and do so occasionally in derision of its roughness and monotony, as the Tuscans used sometimes to mock the speech of Lucca.
I entered the city with a certain feeling of reverent fear. The terrible fame of Saragossa oppressed me; my conscience almost upbraided me for having so often profaned its name in the school of rhetoric, when I hurled it as a challenge in the face of tyrants. The streets were dark; I saw only the black outline of the roofs and steeples against the starlight sky: I heard only the rumble of the coaches as they rolled away. At certain turns I seemed to see daggers and gun-barrels gleaming at the windows and to hear far off the cries of the wounded. I do not know what I should have given if I could have hastened the daybreak, and so have gratified that eager curiosity which was stirring within me to visit one by one those streets, those squares, those houses, famous for desperate conflicts and horrible slaughter, painted by so many artists, sung by so many poets, and so often in my dreams before I departed from Italy, that I used to murmur with delight, “I shall one day see them.” Arrived finally at my hotel, I looked at the porter who conducted me to my room with an amiable smile, as though I would have said, “Spare me! I am not an invader!” And with a glance at a large painting of Amadeus hanging at an angle of the corridor—a great reassurance to Italian travellers—I went to bed as sleepy as any of my readers.
At daybreak I hurried from the hotel. Neither shops, doors, nor windows were yet open, but hardly had I taken a step in the street before an exclamation of surprise escaped me, for there passed me a party of men so strangely dressed that at first sight I believed them to be masqueraders. Then I thought, “No, they are the silent characters of some theatre;” and then, again, “No, they are madmen, beyond a doubt.”