Imagine them: for a cap they wore a red handkerchief bound about the head like a padded ring, from which their dishevelled hair stuck out above and below; a blanket, striped blue and white, worn like a mantle, and falling almost to the ground in ample folds, like the Roman toga; a wide blue sash around the waist; short breeches of black corduroy gathered in tight at the knee; white stockings; a sort of sandal laced over the instep with black ribbons; and yet bearing with all this picturesque variety of vesture the evident impress of poverty, but with this evident poverty a manner not only theatrical, but proud and majestic, as shown in their carriage and gestures—the air of ruined grandees of Spain; so that one was in doubt, on seeing them, whether to laugh or to pity, whether to put one’s hand in one’s pocket and give them an alms or to raise one’s hat as a mark of respect. But they were simply peasants from the country around Saragossa, and this which I have described was only one of a thousand varieties of the same manner of dress. As I passed along at every step I saw a new costume. Some were dressed in ancient, others in modern, style; some with elegance, others simply; some in holiday attire, others with extreme plainness; but every one wore the scarf, the handkerchief about the head, the white stockings, the cravat and parti-colored waistcoat.
The women wore crinolines with short skirts, which showed their ankles and made their hips seem ridiculously high. Even the boys wore the flowing mantle and the handkerchief around the head, and posed in dramatic attitudes like the men.
The first square I entered was full of these people, who were sitting in groups on the doorsteps or lying about in the angles formed by the houses, some playing the guitar, others singing, many going about begging in patched and tattered garments, but with a high head and fiery eye. They seemed like people who had just come from a tableau in which together they had represented a savage tribe from some unknown country.
Gradually the shops and houses were opened and the people of Saragossa began to fill the streets. The citizens do not appear different from us in dress, but there is something peculiar in their faces. They unite the serious expression of the Catalans with the alert air of the Castilians, and then add a fierceness of expression which belongs entirely to the blood of Arragon.
The streets of Saragossa are severe, almost depressing, in appearance, as I had imagined they would be before I saw them. Excepting the Coso, a wide street which runs through a large part of the city, describing a grand semicircular curve—the Corso famous in ancient times for the chariot-races, jousts, and tourneys which were celebrated in it at the times of the public feasts,—excepting this beautiful and cheerful street and a few streets which have recently been rebuilt like those of a French city, the rest are tortuous and narrow, flanked by tall houses, dark in color and with few windows, reminding one of ancient fortresses. These are the streets which bear an impress and which have a character, or, as another has said, a physiognomy, of their own—streets which once seen can never be forgotten. Throughout one’s life at the mention of Saragossa one will see those walls, those doors, those windows as one saw them before. At this moment I see the court of the New Tower, and could draw it house by house, and paint each one with its own color; and so vividly does the picture live in my imagination that I seem to breathe that air again, and to repeat the words which I then spoke: “This
