one word,--everybody believed and nobody inquired.
The country sank fast into famine and anarchy. The madness of the monks and the folly of the king expelled the Moors in 1609, and the loss of a million of the best mechanics and farmers of Spain struck the nation with a torpor like that of death. In 1650 Sir Edward Hyde wrote that "affairs were in huge disorder." People murdered each other for a loaf of bread. The marine perished for want of sailors. In the stricken land nothing flourished but the rabble of monks and the royal authority.
This is the curious fact. The Church and the Crown had brought them to this misery, yet better than their lives the Spaniards loved the Church and the Crown. A word against either would have cost any man his life in those days. The old alliance still hung together firmly. The Church bullied and dragooned the king in private, but it valued his despotic power too highly ever to slight it in public. There was something superhuman about the faith and veneration with which the people, and the aristocracy as well, regarded the person of the king. There was somewhat of
80 CASTILIAN DAYS
gloomy and ferocious dignity about Philip II. which might easily bring a courtier to his knees; but how can we account for the equal reverence that was paid to the ninny Philip III., the debauched trifler Philip IV., and the drivelling idiot Charles II.?
Yet all of these were invested with the same attributes of the divine. Their hands, like those of Midas, had the gift of making anything they touched too precious for mortal use. A horse they had mounted could never be ridden again. A woman they had loved must enter a nunnery when they were tired of her.
When Buckingham came down to Spain with Charles of England, the Conde-Duque of Olivares was shocked and scandalized at the relation of confidential friendship that existed between the prince and the duke. The world never saw a prouder man than Olivares. His picture by Velazquez hangs side by side with that of his royal master in Madrid. You see at a glance that the count-duke is the better man physically, mentally, morally. But he never dreamed it. He thought in his inmost heart that the best thing about him was the favor of the worthless fribble whom he governed.
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION 81