I.
Ancient houses on either side the stage narrow back to an archway in the centre, opening through to a pillared walk and a dimly moonlit space beyond. Muffled figures occasionally pass the aperture.
Suddenly enters Don Ramiro—or Alvar Nuñez, I really don't know which—and advances toward the front. To our surprise he does not open the play with a set speech or any explanation, but continues to advance until he disappears somewhere under our private box, as if he were going from this street of the play into some other adjoining street, just as in actual life. A singular freak of realism! He is closely pursued, however, by two assassins in long cloaks, who, like all the other figures we have seen, move noiselessly in soft shoes or canvas sandals. Presently a shriek resounds from the quarter toward which Don Ramiro betook himself. Have they succeeded in catching him, and is that the sound of his mortal agony? We have just concluded that this is the meaning of the clamor, when, after a second or two, the shriek resolves itself into laughter. Then we begin to recall that we didn't pay anything on entering; and, as we glance up toward the folded curtain above the scene, discover that its place is occupied by the starry sky. The houses, too, have a singularly solid look, and do not appear to be painted. While all this has been dawning upon us, we become conscious that the mixed sound of agony or mirth just heard was merely the signal of amusement caused to certain wandering Spaniards by some convulsingly funny episode; and the next moment their party comes upon the scene at about the point where the foot-lights ought to be. They exchange a good-night; some go off, and others thunder at sundry doors with ancient knockers, awaking mediæval echoes in the dingy thoroughfares, without causing any great surprise to the neighborhood.
In truth, we had simply been looking from the window of an inn at which we had just arrived; but everything had grouped itself in such a way that it was hard to comprehend that we were not at the theatre. That day we had been hurled over the Pyrenees, and landed in the dark at our first Peninsular station; then, facing a crowd of fierce, uncouth faces at the depôt door, we had somehow got conveyed to the Inn of the North through narrow, cavernous streets, brightened only by the feeble light of a few lost lanterns, and so found ourselves staring out upon our first picturesque night in Spain. The street or plazuela below us, though now deserted, went on conducting itself in a most melodramatic manner. Big white curtains hung in front of the iron balconies, flapping voluminously, or were drawn back to admit the cool night air. Crickets chirped loudly from hidden crevices of masonry, and a well-contrived bat sailed blindly over the roofs in the penumbral air, through which the moon was slowly rising. Lights went in and out; some one was seen cooking a late supper in one dwelling; windows were opened and shut, and a general appearance of haunting ghosts was kept up. Now and then a woman came to the balcony and chatted with unseen neighbors across the way about the festival of the morrow. By-and-by one side of the street blew its lamps out and prepared for bed; but the wakeful side insisted on talking to the sleepy one for some time longer, until warned by the cry of the night-watch that midnight had come. Anything more desolate and peculiar than this cry I have never heard. It was a long-drawn, melancholy sounding of the hour, with a final "All's well!" terminating in a minor cadence which seemed to drop the voice back at once into the Middle Ages. This same chant may have resounded from the days of Lain Calvo and the old judges of Castile unaltered, and for a time it made me fancy that the little Gothic town had returned to its musty youth. We were walled into a sleepy feudal stronghold once more, and perhaps at that very moment the Cid was celebrating his nuptials with Ximena, daughter of the count he had murdered for an insult, in the old ruined citadel up there on the hill, above the cathedral spires. But the watchman came and went, and the present resumed its sway. He passed with slow step, in a big cloak and queer cap, carrying a long bladed staff, and a lantern which cast swaying squares of light around his feet; silent as a black ghost, and seeming to have been called into life only with the lighting of his lamp-wick. But, after he had disappeared, the lonely quaver of his cry returned to us from farther and farther away, penetrating into the comfortless apartment to which we now retired for sleep.
The Inn of the North was dirty and unkempt; a frightful odor from the donkey-stable and other sources streamed up into our window between shutters heavy as church doors; and the descant of the watch, relieved by violent cock-crows, disturbed us all night. Nevertheless, we awoke with a good deal of eagerness when the alert young woman with dark pink cheeks and snapping eyes who served us came to the door with chocolate and bread, water and azucarillos, betimes next morning. It was the festival of Corpus Christi; but although every one was going to see the procession, no one could tell us anything about it. Unless he be extraordinarily shrewd, a foreigner can hardly help arriving in Spain on some kind of a feast-day. When the people cannot get up a whole holiday, they will have a fractional one. You go about the streets cheerfully, thinking you will buy something at leisure in the afternoon; but when you approach the shop commerce has vanished, and is out taking a walk, or drinking barley-water in honor of some obscure saint. You engage a guide and carriage to visit some public building, and both guide and carriage are silent as to the religious character of the day until you arrive and find the place shut, when full price, or at least half, is confidently demanded. Church feasts are a matter of course, but you are expected to know about them, and questions are considered out of place. In this case we had kept Corpus Christi in mind, and as Burgos is a small place, the "function" could not by any possibility escape us.
The garrison turned out, and military music played in the procession, but otherwise it was a quaint reproduction of the antique. The quiet streets, innocent of traffic, were filled with peasants whose garments, odoriferous with age and dirt, made a dazzle of color, especially the bright yellow flannel skirts of the women, and the gay handkerchief which men and women alike employ here. Sometimes it is worn around the shoulders, sometimes around the head, and sometimes both: but everywhere and always handkerchiefs are brought into play as essentials. From almost every balcony, too, hung bedquilts, or sheets scalloped with red and blue, in emulation of the tapestries and banners that once graced these occasions. Amid a tumultuous tumbling of bells up amid the carven gray stone-work of the cathedral, the candles and images and tonsured priests, clad in resplendent copes, moved forth, attended by civil functionaries in swallow-tailed coats or old crimson robes of the twelfth century. But the prettiest sight, and a much more striking one than the gilt effigies of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen and the rest, under toy canopies and wreathed with false flowers, was that of two little boys, nude except for the snowy lamb-skins they wore, who personated Christ and St. John. The Christ rode on a lamb, and kept his head very steady under a big curled wig made after the old masters. We saw him afterward in his father's arms, still holding his hands prayerfully, as he had been drilled, with a look of sweet, childish awe in his face.
