The monotonous hours are passed in devotions and futilities, prayers and conventual disputes, long ceremonies and useless entertainments. Sometimes the even course of life is interrupted by a startling feat of prowess, or a festival, all gold and servility; the royal seals have arrived, a princess is born in Spain, a treasure has been discovered, a port has been sacked by audacious pirates, or sorcerers or Portuguese Jews are to be burned in an imposing autodafé. Then the provincial cities, slowly threaded by sumptuous processions, are all astir, but the dazzling vision is only ephemeral, and the grey monotony returns, with its petty quarrels, its indolence, its exaggerated rites.
The royal seals arrive under a pallium, and a luxuriously appointed horse advances, bearing the treasure. The spectators kneel before the symbol of monarchical majesty, and incense, as at the feet of a Byzantine ikon, expresses the adoration of believers. The viceroy also enters beneath a canopy, passing in solemn procession through the servile city, while the bells of a hundred churches celebrate his advent, and a solemn cohort of cabildantes in their robes, monks of all orders, and bedizened doctors, praise with courtier-like devotion the glory of the royal messenger. In the religious festivals the majestic altars which the devout, in token of penitence, carry upon their shoulders, bear virgins clad in velvets and glittering with jewels, or saints that bow to one another like courtly hidalgos, or Christs that weep before the wondering crowd. Around these gorgeous altars dance the slaves, and the monks chant a melancholy anthem. Seized by a sacred intoxication, men and women scourge their bodies till they bleed.
The cry of anguish mingles with the monotony of the prayers, amidst the tremulous excitement of the faithful.
The autodafés were the supreme feast of blood. The chronicles of the time praise the "marvellous" spectacle. The funeral procession advanced towards the pyre, surrounded by burlesque and fanatical groups. Groaning monks hemmed in the sorcerers, the blasphemers, the heretics; some bearing a yellow and others a green veil, and lugubrious draperies on which were miniature paintings descriptive of the infernal torments; others wore dunces' caps, which excited the cruelty of the people. As the victims proceeded to the pyre a crowd thirsting for the sight and sound of martyrdom, drunken with the heat of the sun, acclaimed the holocaust beneath the impassive tribune of the Inquisitors. Farce and grotesque invention mingled with tragedy, Oriental luxury with a mystic terror; and the great lady who at night would be dancing the pavane in her salon now devoutly sniffed the acrid stench of charred flesh and blood.
[[1]] Vol. iv. p. 285; Paris, 1811.
[[2]] The Portuguese colonisation of Brazil was less rigid, and the commercial isolation less rigorous; and religion was neither fanatical nor so powerful as in the Spanish colonies.
CHAPTER III
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles—Monarchy and the Republic—The leaders: Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar—Bolivar the Liberator: his ideas and his deeds.