This learned Benedictine monk was ahead of his age in many ideas. Are the stars not inhabited? he asked. Before Washington, he maintained that the Machiavellian theory of government, intrigue and diplomacy, which was then universally accepted in Europe, was inferior to friendly loyalty and honor. He preached compassion to animals generations before the age of our modern, humanitarian theories. With the painful remembrance of the diligence ride in Galicia, I was glad to find one of her sons advocating this. Feijóo stands out more prominently because of the intellectual desert around him. "The eighteenth century was an erudite, negative, fatigued." The Bourbons brought formality and sterility to spontaneous Spain. A dry soulless learning killed the creative power, and in every branch, art, music, and literature, the artificial rococo flourished. The two exceptions of vitality were Feijóo and the painter Goya. Had Padre Feijóo lived in our age, he might have been that great man hailed by De Maistre: "Attendez que l'affinité naturelle de la science et de la religion les ait réunies l'une et l'autre dans la tête d'un homme de génie! Celui-là sera fameux et mettra fin au dix-huitième siècle qui dure encore." How much longer are we to wait for him,—this great man!
If the only harrowing scene of the tour in Spain is to be associated with Galicia, so is one of the happiest, a day of such kindly chivalry that we felt the spirit of Isabella's time still endured. It was the chance of railway travel that introduced a modern knight to us. The journey back to Castile from Galicia is a most trying one. Some day perhaps an enterprising ocean line will put in at Vigo and run an express directly across country to Madrid; we were too early for such ease. From Santiago we had to take an afternoon train to Pontevedra, and there spend the night. At 5 A.M. (oh, those unforgettable, dark, cold railway stations of Spain!) we again took the train. It was dawn before Redondela was reached, and exquisite as a dream seemed the rías, the fiords of Galicia, with wooded mountains sloping to their shores. It is not hard to prophesy that this will be a great summer resort of the future.
At Redondela we changed trains, getting into the express for Monforte, the only other occupant of the carriage being an elderly man, blue-eyed, very tall and erect, with the air of distinction so frequently found among Don Quixote's countrymen. We had noticed him the night before in the Pontevedra hotel, and had thought him an Englishman, till in offering some service about our luggage he spoke in Spanish. As we were to spend fifteen hours in the same railway carriage, we soon entered into conversation. He came from Madrid each summer with a family of sons and daughters to spend some months in a castle among the mountains of Galicia. Evidently he was a lover of sport and of country life, for as we ran alongside the Miño River, with Portugal just across on the opposite bank, for hours he sat gazing out in enjoyment, and drew each beautiful thing to our notice. At noon we reached Monforte, where we had dinner in the station buffet. When we called for our account, to our astonishment the waiter told us it was settled already. We could not understand what had been done, till the proprietor himself came to explain. It seems it is a custom all over this generous land, for a man when he is with a lady or has spoken to her, to pay for everything she orders; tea, luncheon, even her shopping purchases. He does this with no offensive ostentation, but so quietly that he often slips away unnoticed and unthanked. Several travelers have since told me that they too met this hospitality; it had at first embarrassed them, but as there was not the slightest impertinence nor even the personal about it, as it was merely an act of chivalrous respect, done with superb detachment, when the confusion of being paid for by a stranger was over, they remembered only the charming courtesy.
The attentions of our kind host, for he seemed to look on two strangers in his land as his guests, did not stop at noontime, at tea he brought us platefuls of hot chestnuts. He tried to while away the hours pleasantly, playing games on paper in French and English; with all his dignified gravity the Spaniard is not blasé. Our struggles to learn his tongue rousing sympathy, it was from him we first heard of the pretty high-flown phrases still in daily use, how you bid farewell with, Beso à V. la mano (I kiss your hand), or A los pies de V. (I am at your feet); that the Usted, shortened to V., with which you address high or low, is a corruption of "Your Majesty." Somehow there seems nothing absurd in addressing a Spanish peasant as "Your Majesty." The love of abbreviations is a curious trait in a people with such leisurely ways; thus, a row of cabalistic letters ends a letter: S. S. S. Q. B. S. M., which means that your correspondent kisses your hand—su seguro servidor que besa su mano.
Then the interest which we evinced in the institutions and progress of Spain made him put his cultivated intelligence at our service, and we learned more in a day than in all the previous weeks. When I inquired into the vexed religious question he was able to explain much. As a rule, republicanism in Spain means avowed atheism and socialism; it has been well said that the republicanism of all Latin countries turns to social revolution. The socialists are a small, but well-organized band, international in character since their movements are directed from centers like Paris. They are chiefly in industrial cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Bilbao, where secret societies of anarchists abound, disguised as clubs for scientific study. The majority being of the rabble, repudiating all authority, ("civilization, that is the enemy!") their disorders would be called mob uprisings did they occur in Chicago, but deceived by the term "republicanism," the journals of England and America gave them too lenient a consideration. By no means devout himself, he assured us that what we saw on every side was for the most part very genuine religion, not sentiment with no result; for in those places where observance had slackened there was a marked difference in moral restraint, so potent a factor for morality was religion still in Spain. That there were faults none denied, but he had traveled enough to know the flaws of other countries too well to be despairing of his own.
He wrote for us a card of introduction to the big hospital of Madrid; he sought out a friend in another carriage, the son of the Admiral in Ferrol, who was rather up in statistics. Had we seen the asylum near Santiago where the insane are treated with such success that noted cures had been obtained? Had we met the archæologist of the province, a canon in the Cathedral? In short, from the questions and suggestions we realized that the average tourist goes through this reserved country half blind. Glad were we for this chance of insight. When in the dusk of evening it came time to descend at Astorga, our stopping-place for the night, and our fellow-traveler stood there shaking hands, with warm friendliness in his blue eyes, we felt there was no more thoroughbred specimen of manhood than a Spanish hidalgo.
SALAMANCA
"L'homme n'est produit que pour l'infini."
"Il y a des raisons qui passent notre raison."
"Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher."
PASCAL.
SALAMANCA is in León province, and in comparison with the hour of its prime, as it is to-day it too is very like a sleeping city. It is hard to realize that this dull, small town was a grandeza de España, ranking with Oxford, Paris, and Bologna, that once 10,000 students flocked here from all over Europe, and every young Spaniard turned here as naturally as a modern Englishman to Oxford or Cambridge; Cervantes' "Novelas Exemplares" give the picture. To-day there are barely a thousand students, chiefly from its own province; among the ten universities of Spain the former leader takes a very lowly place. Madrid, the continuation of Cardinal Ximenez' University of Alcalá, may be called the modern Salamanca in intellectual leadership.
