Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

After hearing this story I took another turn through the cathedral, thinking with sadness that I should never see it again—that in a little while all these marvellous works of art would only linger with me as a memory, and that one day this memory would be obscured or confused with others, and finally be obliterated. A priest was preaching from the pulpit in front of the great altar. His voice was scarcely audible. A crowd of women were kneeling on the pavement with bowed heads and clasped hands, listening to him. The preacher was an old man of venerable appearance; he spoke in gentle accents of death, eternal life, and angels, making a gesture with his head at every period, as though he were seeking to lift up some fallen one and saying, “Arise!” I could have given him my hand with the cry, “Raise me!”

The cathedral of Burgos is not so depressing as all the other cathedrals of Spain. It calmed my spirit and disposed me to quiet religious thought. I went out, repeating softly, almost unconsciously, “Raise me!” Turning to look once more at the bold spires and the airy belfries, I started toward the centre of the city, musing on many things.

Turning a corner, I found myself in front of a shop which made me shudder. There are others like it in Barcelona and Saragossa, and indeed in all other Spanish cities, but somehow I had not seen them. It was a large, clean shop, with show-windows to the right and left of the door. On the threshold stood a woman knitting a stocking and smiling, and at the back of the shop a boy was playing. Nevertheless, when he saw that shop the most phlegmatic man would feel faint at heart and the gayest would be troubled. I give you a thousand chances to guess what it contained. In the windows, behind the doors, along the walls, and as high as they could be placed one above another, in nice rows like crates of fruit, some covered by a finely embroidered curtain, others figured, gilded, carved, and painted, were coffins—at the back, coffins for adults; in front, coffins for children. One of the show-windows adjoined the window of a butcher-shop in such a way that the coffins almost touched the eggs and cheese. And one can easily imagine how a flustered citizen, thinking he was going to buy his breakfast, might miss the door and stumble in among the caskets—a mistake not likely to increase his appetite.

While we are speaking of shops let us enter a tobacco-shop and notice how it differs from our own. In Spain, with the exception of cigarettes and Havanas—which are sold in special shops—they do not smoke cigars which cost less than tres cuartos, a sum equal to about three cents. These resemble our Roman cigars, although they are not quite so large, and are very good indeed or very bad according to their manufacture, which has become rather careless. Regular customers, who are called in Spanish by the very curious name of parroquianos, can get escogidos (selected cigars) by paying something extra; the man of fastidious taste, by adding still more to the sum, can secure los escogidos de la escogidos (the choicest of the choice). On the counter stands a little plate with a wet sponge to moisten stamps, without the annoyance of having to lick them, and in a corner is a little box for letters and stamps. The first time one enters one of these shops, especially if there are many in it, it makes one laugh to see the three or four salesmen throwing the money on the counter so hard that it bounces up higher than their heads, and catching it in the air with the ease of dice-throwers. They do this only to ascertain by the sound if the money is good, for there are a great many counterfeits in circulation. The coin in commonest circulation is the real, which is equal to about four cents; four reales make a peseta; five pesetas, a duro, which is equal to one dollar of blessed memory if you will add a few pennies. Five dollars make a doblon de Isabel, a gold-piece. The people calculate by reales. The real is divided into eight cuartos, or seventeen ochavos, or thirty-four maravedis—Moorish coins which have lost their original form and resemble worn buttons rather than coins. Portugal also has a monetary unit smaller than ours, the reis, which is not equal to a half cent in value, and everything is counted by the reis. Imagine a poor traveller who has arrived in all his ignorance, eaten a good breakfast, and asked for his bill, when he hears the waiter say with a stern face, not eighty cents, but eight hundred reis! It makes his hair stand on end.

Before evening I went to see the birthplace of the Cid. If I had not thought of it myself, the guides would certainly have suggested it to me, for everywhere I went they kept whispering in my ear, “The remains of the Cid!” “Monument of the Cid!” An old man, majestically wrapped in his cloak, said to me with an air of protection, “Venga usted commigo” (Come with me, sir), and he made me climb a hill overlooking the city, on the top of which one can still see the remains of an enormous castle, the ancient dwelling-place of the kings of Castile. Before reaching the monument of the Cid one comes to a triumphal arch in the Doric style, simple and graceful, which was erected by Philip II. in honor of Ferdinand Gonzales on the same spot, it is said, where stood the house in which the famous commander was born. A little farther on one finds the monument of the Cid, erected in 1784. It is a stone column, standing on a pedestal of masonry and surrounded by an heraldic shield which bears this inscription: “In this place stood the house where was born, in the year 1026, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known as the Cid Campeador. He died in Valencia in 1099, and his body was borne to the monastery of St. Peter of Cardena near this city.” While I was reading these words the cicerone told me a popular legend about the death of the hero. “When the Cid died,” said he, very gravely, “there was no one left to guard his corpse. A Jew entered the church, approaching the bier, and said, ‘Behold the great Cid, whose beard no one dared to touch so long as he was alive. I will touch it now, and will see what he is able to do.’ So saying, he stretched out his hand, but as he was just on the point of touching it the corpse grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it a hand’s-breadth out of the scabbard. The Jew uttered a cry and fell to the ground half dead. The priests ran in, the Jew was lifted up, and when he came to himself he told the miracle. Then they all looked toward the Cid, and saw that his hand still rested on the hilt of his sword in a threatening attitude. God willed that the body of the great warrior should not be defiled by the hand of an unbeliever.” When the guide had said this he looked at me, and, perceiving that I made not the least sign of incredulity, he led me underneath a stone arch, which must have been one of the old gates, a few steps distant from the monument, and, pointing out a horizontal mark which was visible on the wall a few feet above the ground, he said to me, “This is the measure of the Cid’s arms when he was young and came here to play with his companions;” and he stretched his arms along the mark to let me see how much longer it was. Then he wished me to measure also, and I too was too short, whereupon he gave me a look of triumph and started to go back to the city. Coming to a lonely street, he stopped before the door of a church and said to me, “This is the church of Saint Agnes, where the Cid made King Alfonso VI. swear that he had not had any part in the murder of his brother Sancho.” I asked him to tell me the whole story, and he continued:

“The prelates, the knights, and the other dignitaries of the state were present. The Cid put the Bible on the altar and made the king place his hand on it, and then the Cid said to him: ‘King Alfonso, you must swear to me that you are not stained by the blood of Don Sancho my lord, and, if you swear falsely, may you die by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’ and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he changed color. And the Cid said again: ‘King Alfonso, you must swear that you neither ordered nor counselled the death of Don Sancho my lord; and, if you swear falsely, may you die by the hand of a traitorous vassal!’ and the king said, ‘Amen,’ but he changed color a second time. Twelve vassals confirmed the oath of the king. The Cid would have kissed his hand, but the king would not permit him to do so, and hated him from that moment to the end of his life.” The old man added, however, that another tradition records the fact that he did not have King Alfonso sworn on the Bible, but on a bolt of the church-door, and that for a long time travellers came from all the countries of the world to see that bolt; that the people attributed to it I know not what supernatural virtues, and so it was much spoken of in every place; and that it gave rise to so many and such extravagant fables that the bishop, Don Fray Pascual, was constrained to have it removed, because it created a dangerous rivalry between the door and the high altar. The cicerone told me nothing more, but one could fill several volumes if he wished to collect all the traditions of the Cid which are current in Spain. No legendary warrior was ever dearer to his people than this terrible Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar. Poetry has made him little less than a god; his glory lives in the national spirit of the Spaniards, as though a few lustres, instead of eight centuries, had passed since the times in which he lived. The heroic poem which is called by his name, the greatest monument of the poetry of Spain, still continues to be the most powerful national work in Spanish literature.

As evening was drawing on I went to walk beneath the portico of the Plaza Mayor, in the hope of seeing something of the people. But the rain was pouring down and a high wind was blowing, so I found only some groups of boys, workmen, and soldiers, and directly turned back to the hotel. The emperor of Brazil had arrived in the morning, and was leaving for Madrid that night. In the room where I dined, together with some Spaniards—who talked pleasantly with me until the hour of departure arrived—there dined also all the major-domos, the valets, servants, and clerks of His Imperial Majesty, and the dear knows who else, a household which sat around a large table and filled it full. In all my life I have never seen a more motley crowd of human beings. There were white, black, yellow, and copper-colored faces, with some eyes and noses and mouths which could not be equalled in the whole collection of the Pasquino of Teza. Every one was talking in a different and much-abused language; one spoke English, another Portuguese, another French, another Spanish, while some spoke a mixture of all four languages, the like of which was never heard before, adding words, sounds, and accents of some outlandish dialect. However, they understood each other and jabbered all together, making such a confusion that it seemed as though they were speaking the horrible secret language of some savage land unknown to the world.

Before I left Old Castile, the cradle of the Spanish monarchy, I wished to see Soria, the town built on the ruins of ancient Numantia; Segovia, with its immense Roman aqueduct; Sant Idelfonso, the delightful garden of Philip V.; and Avilo, the native city of Saint Theresa. But when I had hurriedly and in desperation gone through the four elementary operations of arithmetic before buying my ticket to Valladolid, I said to myself that there was nothing great to be seen in those four cities, that the “Guide” exaggerated, that fame has pieced out their little attractions, that it is better to see a few things rather than many, if only those few are well seen and will be remembered. I indulged in these and other sophistries, and they corresponded perfectly with the results of my calculation and the motives of my hypocrisy.

So I left Burgos without having really seen anything but monuments, cicerones, and soldiers, for the fair Castilians, frightened by the rain, had not dared to risk their little feet in the streets, and therefore my recollections of the city are rather sad, in spite of the gorgeousness of its colors and the magnificence of its cathedral.

From Burgos to Valladolid the country is almost the same as that from Saragossa to Miranda. There are the same vast, desolate plains, bounded by dun-colored hills of angular form with bare summits. These silent, solitary wastes, flooded by dazzling light, bear one away in fancy to African deserts, to the hermit’s life, to the sky, to the infinite, and raise in the heart an irrepressible feeling of weariness and melancholy. Surrounded by these plains, this solitude, this silence, one understands the mystical nature of the Castilian people, the ardent faith of their kings, the sacred inspiration of their poets, the divine ecstasy of their saints, their churches, their grand cloisters, and their glorious history.