"Thou hast the same name
As our patroness,[29]
Thou hast the face of an angel,
Thou art a queen,
May God bless thee,
The fairest that has come to Seville!"
The loud exclamations of delight in the robust health of the little Prince of Asturias pleased the Queen, and as she passed through the cheering mass of people, she made very gracefully the foreign gesture of greeting, the fingers bent back rapidly on the palm. As the night journey had tired her, the doctors ordered her immediate entrance into the Alcázar, postponing the Te Deum till the afternoon; and Seville, who clings tenaciouly to old customs, was distinctly displeased.
The group that stood on the Cathedral steps later in the day was superb. There was the Archbishop in cope and miter, with his silver crozier, the canons in purple robes, the acolytes bearing the historic crosses carried on festivals, and all the chief citizens of the town. For just this occasion the huge western doors were thrown open, giving a new aspect to the nave; through this door the King is the only one privileged to pass, but on this her first entrance, the Queen too. The Archbishop on first coming to his church and when carried out to his burial passes under this portal. The King and Queen, led by the Archbishop, now walked up the nave, chanting Te Deum laudamus, and before leaving they went to kneel in the Royal Chapel where, before the High Altar, lies King Ferdinand the Saint who conquered Seville in 1248, after five hundred years of Moorish rule. Here on November 23d, anniversary of his entrance to the city, a Military Mass is said, and the colors are lowered as the garrison files past. To a Sevillian that day of 1248 is as alive as the Battle of Lexington to a New Englander.
This being a first visit, some brisk sightseeing was done. They automobiled out to Italica to see the Roman amphitheater there; and the day after her arrival Doña Victoria redeemed the good-will of the Sevillians by driving, in black mantilla, to visit a church in a poor part of the city where is an altar to Our Lady of Hope, dear to expectant mothers. In the Lonja, where the Indian archives are kept, Don Alfonso pored over the maps of Mexico and the autographs of Cortés and Pizarro; in the Museo, the Queen again touched the sentiment of the Spanish women by preferring Murillo's realistic "Adoration of the Shepherds." The Duke of Medinaceli got up some splendid provincial dances and tableaux in his Mudéjar Casa de Pilatos, one of the show places of the town. We happened to meet the pretty peasant girls who had taken part returning home, singing and waving to the crowd, like birds of paradise, in their rose and lemon silk shawls. There seemed to be a congenial companionship between the young royal people. They were at ease together. The King, extremely fragile-looking, has a thin Hapsburg face so eminently sympathetic that sometimes when he would give an affectionate grin at his applauding subjects he made one rather wish to be a Spaniard one's self. With the irresistible impulses of youth he would sally out from the Alcázar to explore the city on foot, like any other happy, free mortal, but sooner or later the cry "El Rey!" would gather a crowd and force him back to his state. One day he had to jump into a fiacre to escape the crush, and it was very jolly to see the descendant of the severe Philip II, of the inflated, pompous Bourbons, dashing through Seville, laughing at the good sport. We often met him riding back from Toblada in the late afternoon from polo, and it certainly appeared as if the affection of his countrymen went with him. I should say few kings are loved as is young Alfonso XIII, and Seville especially prides herself on being muy leal. Did not Alfonso el Sabio (tenth of the name, as this Alfonso is the thirteenth) give the city the famous nodo, seen everywhere as the town crest, for just this trait of loyalty six centuries ago? So several times a day an eager crowd gathered to watch the King pass, or to cheer for the rosy little Prince of Asturias who drove out with his titled governess and two nurses,—one of severe English propriety, the other a romantic Spanish peasant—behind four big mules decked with Andalusian red trappings and bells. A whole series of fêtes were preparing when the tragic assassination of the King of Portugal and his eldest son at Lisbon put a stop to the rejoicing. The sensation in Seville was enormous, as the Portuguese Queen had brought her two sons the year before to follow the services of Holy Week here, and her mother, the Countess of Paris, lives in an estate near the city. Don Alfonso had just gone for a week's big-game hunting to the Granada mountains, when he hurried back to take part in the funeral service held in Madrid at the same hour as that in Lisbon. On his return to Seville his changed appearance showed what a shock the tragedy had been; not relationship alone but friendship united him to Portugal.
Before the Royal visit ended there was a grand review of the troops in the park, where Don Alfonso wore a new uniform, that of the Hussars of Pavia, in commemoration of the great victory of Charles V in Italy four centuries before. Audience was given the envoys from the new King of Sweden in the Ambassador's hall of the Alcázar, which it was said had not been so used since Isabella's day. A mild form of carnival was followed by Ash Wednesday, when the King and Queen and court attended the services in the Capilla Real of the Cathedral, before St. Ferdinand's silver tomb. As they passed out between the dense mass of people, my heart sprang to my mouth when I saw a man struggling to reach the King,—fortunately only a humble petitioner, but the Lisbon assassinations had filled everyone with terror. The royal visit over, came Holy Week, but that and the dancing of the seises merit some pages to themselves.
A CHURCH FEAST IN SEVILLE
"I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth."—PSALMS XXV, 8.
"When after many conquerors came Christ
The only conqueror of Spain indeed,
Not Bethlehem nor Golgotha sufficed
To show him forth, but every shrine must bleed,
And every shepherd in his watches heed
The angels' matins sung at heaven's gate.
Nor seemed the Virgin Mary wholly freed
From taint of ill if born in frail estate,
But shone the seraph's queen and soar'd immaculate."
GEORGE SANTAYANA.
THE eighth of December is a great day in Spain, but more especially in Seville where they look on the Immaculate Conception as their special feast, symbolized, hundreds of years before the dogma was defined, by their fellow townsman Murillo, in the seraphic purity of his Concepción. The celebration began on the day preceding the eighth with an early-morning peal of bells that lasted half an hour, and was frequently repeated during the day. Nothing can express the mad, exultant peal of Spanish bells: one strong metallic dong backward and forward,—or rather over and over, for the bells are balanced with weights and make the complete circle when in motion,—with a running carillon of more musical minor notes. We mounted to a roof terrace to watch the ringers in the Giralda, who in reckless enjoyment, let the rope of the revolving bell toss them aloft, a perilous feat that has led to fatal accidents, but high up in that Moorish tower, above the palm and orange-growing city, a triumphant tumult filling the air, it must be easy to lose one's balance of common-sense.
Toward evening of the Víspera de la Pureza, every one placed lights along the balconies, which were draped with blue and white, those of the Archbishop's palace, under the Giralda, being hung in red and yellow, the national colors. A military band played in one of the smaller plazas, and the Seville girls flocked out in full enjoyment, each with the customary rose or bright ribbon in her hair. The people of the upper classes entertained their friends in open booths around the square.