It is this petty thieving among a class that should be above it, such as postal clerks and railway officials, that rouses the traveler's harsh criticisms of Spain and makes him so unjust to her. The radical cure lies in the men being better paid, for their salaries are such pittances that many of them look on extortion as their right. The tourist can do something toward lessening the abuse, by firmly refusing to be cheated. Our experience was that firmness always won the battle; if one is of a fiery temperament there is a scene, if one is phlegmatic, one sits immovable as a rock and lets the other storm. If one yields finally one has the scene as well as the putting of oneself in the wrong.
To continue our day of ill-luck. From Zamora, we crawled along the dull, local line to the junction Medina del Campo, which we reached at eleven at night. We then changed our plans and got tickets for Segovia, deciding to leave Avila till later. At Medina we spent six weary hours in the waiting room, strolling up and down the windy platform, entering the buffet now and then to drink coffee, trying to rouse imaginative interest by thinking this was the spot where Isabella the Queen had died. But in vain, it was too dismal. How we abused Baedeker! And how we abused Spain and her railway system! Trains came and went, men muffled in their cloaks entered and left the dark waiting room, we the only impatient ones. A Spaniard accepts such things in full piety. Whoever heard of going faster than twenty miles an hour and what more natural than to wait in a station between trains half a night?
At two o'clock that raw windy morning we boarded the express to Segovia and finding the ladies' compartment full, for we were now on the direct route from Paris, we had to force ourselves into the carriage with two furiously cross, sleepy Frenchmen.
High, cold Segovia, almost 3,000 feet above the sea! A wind, de todos los demonios, was blowing that bleak first of November, and to give the final small touch of ill-luck, it lifted and bore away to the mysterious darkness outside, a treasured veil that the sun had at length toned to a rare tint. We stumbled into the ill-lighted station-buffet for more hot coffee, sending the luggage ahead to the sleeping hotel; for the faithful hotel-omnibus had been there waiting as usual. Strange memories remain of Spain's station restaurants,—the flitting waiters filling the bowls of coffee for the silent travelers, (no man is more silent than a traveling Spaniard);—frugal enduring scenes, not a touch of comfort, one eats to live indeed. "The French taste, the Germans devour, the Italians feast, the Spaniards se alimentan!"
As the dawn was breaking we left the station and walked, buffeted by the gale, through the mournful streets that lead to the town, passing on the way the Artillery Academy, where the country's crack regiments are trained. As we descended to the market place below the steep hill on which Segovia is built, a sight greeted us that repaid a thousand fold for the dreary day and night of unnecessary travel, for guide-book blunders, personal stupidity, dishonest officials, collarless, cross Frenchmen and even lost automobile veils. For there, rising one hundred and fifty feet in noble dignity and proportion, its boulders held together by their own weight, without cement or clamping, stood the giant Roman aqueduct that Trajan left his native land, and framed by its arches were hills, villages, and churches, under a sky of delicate rose. Never was there a lovelier sunrise, fragile, shell-like, dewy.
We climbed the steps that mount to the city beside the aqueduct, pausing again and again to look at the stupendous thing. Then we passed through quiet streets, with Romanesque doorways at every step (Segovia with Avila has the best portals in Spain) till we reached the hotel. Though, later, the night in Medina del Campo station revenged itself in a twenty hours' sleep, we were now too deeply fatigued to rest, and so soon were afoot again. A stone's throw brought us to the central square of Segovia, on one side of which is prominent the apse of the late-Gothic Cathedral. We pushed beyond it, here and there pausing to study some ancient doorway or to enter a carved courtyard, till at length the street ended in the big open space before the superbly set Alcázar, and we looked out on that memorable view.
With the towering Roman aqueduct on one side of the town and this Castle at the other, Segovia may claim to be one of the most picturesquely set cities in the world. The view from the Plaza de la Reina Victoria before the Alcázar is one of the unforgettable sights of the Peninsula, of the inmost fiber of Castile. On the horizon lies one of Spain's sad, isolated villages. A winding road leads to it, along which plod the familiar carriers of the land, brothers of Sancho's patient Rucio; the rocky hills stretch away, dotted with ancient churches. Close to the city lie oases of trees and gardens such as the monastery enclosure of La Parral, with its noticeable stone pines. The Alcázar with its bartizan towers is built on a lofty crag that rises like the prow of a giant ship above the meeting of two bosky little streams, the Eresma which yielded the "trout of exceeding greatness" whereon Charles I of England supped in this castle, and the peaceful brook, Clamores. Thus in one landscape are united hardy uplands, leafy parks, a mediæval town with church towers and fortified castle, making a scene whose individuality is beyond beauty, whose profound charm never palls. Here one communes with the silent, inner soul of Spain, the land of Isabella, of Garcilaso, of Teresa, of Cervantes, not a trace of whose spirit is found in Madrid, but in such spots as Toledo and Avila and this.
Segovia merits a prolonged stay. There were two Englishwomen in our hotel, who had passed months painting in the unfrequented city and found it a treasure house for the artist. It is full of Romanesque churches of the 11th and 12th centuries; so many are there that some are unused and falling into decay. The two best are San Martín and San Millán; the first, in the center of the town, surrounded by noticeable houses, has outside cloisters, that serve as a sunny lounging place for the people. From San Martín you can descend to San Millán by the steps beside the Plaza Isabel II. Apart from the church itself, with colossal animals carved on its capitols, the view from its porch is a most beautiful one, including the aqueduct, the Cathedral, and climbing houses, part of whose foundations it is plain to see are the apses of ancient churches.
Segovia's Cathedral is not Romanesque like most of her churches, but late-Gothic, designed by the same architect who did Salamanca's new Cathedral, and like it, though a poor thing exteriorly, the inside is dignified and effective: it is more fortunate than its sister church in having a curved east end, not Salamanca's cold hall-like apse. The cloisters of Segovia belonged to the earlier Cathedral; they were taken down and skillfully reset here; the pillars being elliptical in shape like Oviedo, are not thoroughly pleasing. In a chapel opening out of the cloisters is the touching, small tomb of the prince whose nurse dropped him by accident from a window of the Alcázar, back in the 14th century; and a good example of the countless rare tombs of Spain is the bishop, with an exquisite ascetic face of chiseled marble, who lies in the passage leading to the cloisters.
As we were in Segovia on All Saints' Day, we went to the celebration in the Cathedral, saw the prelate—the train of his red robe held by bearers—met at the church door by the canons and conducted in state to his throne. The vergers were very gorgeous; the leader carried a silver staff and wore a white wig and a white robe, his two assistants also in white wigs but with red velvet robes. The following day, All Souls', these vergers were dressed in mourning, and in the center of the black-draped church was placed, with true Spanish realism, a covered bier. On All Saints' Day there was really good music on the organ whose pipes flared out over aisles and choir; also an excellent sermon to which all listened in rapt attention, officers, peasants, and grave faced hidalgos standing in a characteristic group around the pulpit. The best way to learn Spanish and to learn more than the lip language of this race, is to listen to the sermons. Their eloquence is natural and contagious, and the peroration, delivered with brio, is often an artistic treat. Attend the sermons and frequent the early morning services, and you stumble on scenes of unobtrusive piety that tell you, despite some Spanish pessimists, that the soul of religion still lives in this land of the latest crusaders. As Sunday was the day we had set for the trip to La Granja, I went early to the Cathedral, and at Mass in a dark chapel of the apse, I watched long two gallant little lads of twelve and fourteen, smart in their artillery uniforms, swords, and white gloves. They went to Communion with their mother, who, like most Spanish women in church, was dressed in black with a draped veil, a fashion that lends an air of distinction to the plainest. This group of three remained to pray after the others had left the chapel, remained as a pleasure really to pray, the serious, high-browed, little faces bent over their books of devotion as they read the After-Communion devotions by the light of a tall candle placed on the floor beside them; then their blue eyes closed in such sweet, unconscious piety that it touched the heart strangely. And when, their prayers over, they left the Cathedral, each seized the mother's arm with a gay scamper of delight—she probably on a visit to them—and now for a whole day of vacation and enjoyment!