masquerade of the children. It is the custom to dress the boys under the age of eight years like men, after the French fashion, in complete ball-dress, with white gloves, great moustaches, and long flowing hair: some are dressed like the Spanish grandees, bedecked with ribbons and bangles; others like Catalan peasants, with the jaunty cap and the mantle. The little girls appear as court-ladies, Amazons, and poetesses with lyres and laurel crowns; and boys and girls in the costumes of the different provinces of the kingdom—one as a flower-girl of Valencia, another as an Andalusian gypsy or a Basque mountaineer—in the gayest and most picturesque costumes imaginable. Their parents lead them by the hand in the procession, and it is a tournament of good taste, of fantasy, and display in which the people share with great delight.
While I was trying to find my way to the cathedral I met a company of Spanish soldiers. I stopped to look at them, recollecting the picture which Baretti draws when he tells how they assailed him in a hotel, one taking the salad from his plate, while another snatched the leg of a fowl from his mouth. At first sight they resemble the French soldiers, who also wear the red breeches and gray coat reaching to the knee. The only noticeable difference is in the covering of the head. The Spanish wear a parti-colored cap, flat behind and curved in front, and fitted with a visor which turns down over the forehead. The caps, which are made of gray cloth, are light, durable, and pleasing to the eye, and are known by the name of their inventor, Ros de Olano, general and poet, who patterned them after his hunting-cap. The greater part of the soldiers whom I saw—they were all in the infantry—were young men, short of stature, swarthy, alert, and clean, as one would imagine the soldiers of an army which at one time had the lightest and most effective infantry in Europe. Indeed, the Spanish infantry has the reputation of containing the best walkers and swiftest runners. The men are temperate, spirited, and full of a national pride, of which it is difficult to get an adequate idea without studying them closely. The officers wear a short black coat like that of the Italian officers. When off duty they are in the habit of wearing the coat open, thereby revealing a waistcoat buttoned to the chin. In the hours of leisure they do not wear their swords; on the march, like the rank and file, they wear a sort of gaiter of black cloth reaching almost to the knee. A regiment of foot-soldiers completely equipped for action presents an appearance at once pleasing and martial.
The cathedral of Barcelona, in the Gothic style, surmounted by noble towers, is worthy of standing beside the most beautiful edifices in Spain. The interior is formed of three vast naves, separated by two rows of very high pillars slender and graceful in form. The choir, situated in the middle of the church, is profusely decorated with bas-reliefs, filigree-work, and small images. Beneath the sanctuary lies a small subterranean chapel which is always lighted, and in its centre is the tomb of Eulalia, which one may see by looking through one of the little windows opening from the sanctuary. There is a tradition that the murderers of the saint, who was very beautiful, wished before putting her to death to look upon her body, but while they were taking off her last covering a thick cloud enveloped her and hid her from their sight. Her body still remains as fresh and beautiful as when she was alive, and no human eye may endure to look upon it. Once an incautious bishop (after the lapse of a century) wished to open the tomb just to see the sacred remains, but even as he looked he was smitten with blindness.
In a little chapel to the right of the great altar, lighted by many candles, one sees a crucifix of colored wood, with the Christ’s figure inclined to one side. It is said that this image was carried on a Spanish ship at the battle of Lepanto, and that it so bent itself to avoid a cannon-ball which it saw coming straight for its heart. From the arched roof of the same chapel hangs a little galley with all its oars—modelled after the boat in which Don John of Austria fought against the Turks. Below the organ, of Gothic construction and covered with great pictorial tapestries, hangs a huge Saracen’s head with a gaping mouth, from which, in the olden times, candies poured forth for the children. In another chapel one may see a beautiful marble tomb, and also some valuable paintings by Viladomat, a Barcelonian painter of the seventeenth century.