CHAPTER XVIII.
ANCIENT BRIDGE OF GERONA.—THE POPULATION.—A FIESTA.—SEARCH FOR AN HOTEL.—THE FONDA DE LA ESTRELLA.—LAST SIEGE OF GERONA.—THE CATHEDRAL.—A FEW CONCLUDING WORDS ON SPAIN.
WHEN at last the train stopped in the outskirts of Gerona, we mounted on the top of an omnibus and were whirled off through a boulevard of plane trees, in which were groups of very plain folk, who—it being a fiesta day—were dancing and whooping in large circles in a frenzied manner that to us calm onlookers was very remarkable. The sight, however, was brilliant and animating. Scarlet caps, red sashes, velvet breeches, and jackets covered with flashing metal buttons, together with the brilliant petticoats and embroidered bodices of the females, produced a scene that was altogether of the most lively description.
Upon emerging from the avenue of plane trees, the town of Gerona burst suddenly upon us. A wonderful old town it is! Talk about the picturesque! Where are all the artists who frequent Wales, Margate, Scarbro', and the over-done East, who give us perennial views of the same, usque ad nauseam, until people need never have moved out of London to know them as well as the inhabitants of those places themselves? Why don't they travel hither, and put before the jaded British public this intensely interesting and most extraordinary place? Here they may find novelty and variety to please the most exacting taste. The city as a whole is very old and quaint. Rickety houses appear sometimes to be piled up indiscriminately upon heaps of gaunt battlements and crumbling ramparts. The brown decaying walls tell many a story of the violence and lawlessness of other times. The people of the present day live in houses which are built of the remains of old forts, and are constructed of anything that came to hand at the moment. Rocks, stones, wood, dirt-heaps, mud, old bricks, old ruins, rubbish, all have been raked together, and piled up confusedly into habitations; and a most unique, heterogeneous, and dangerous mass they seem. Houses and other buildings bend and bow to one another in all directions in a very stiff and awkward manner, as if the whole place had been suddenly paralysed in the midst of some general act of politeness. One edifice props up another, as the lame support the lame. There is one church, indeed, constructed out of some old convent walls of great solidity, that supports four feeble houses which lean bodily upon it, and without it would inevitably fall down like so many card-houses. It requires some judgment to walk about with security in the interior of many of these charming dwellings, the strange old rooms necessitating great steadiness of gait and correct judgment of eye, for the floors are not always so level as one might desire. There are heights and hollows which it is advisable to avoid as much as possible if one would escape painful bruises.
Gerona is in reality one of the quaintest and most ruinous cities of Spain. When its population are not dancing war-dances in the streets, it is very desolate and silent. It is entirely without trade or manufactures; and, barring its beautiful tiful Catalonian cathedral, it is without any worthy monuments whatever, and has nothing to attract the attention of the least exacting of tourists. It is supposed to have been founded by the tribe of Bracati Celts, as far back as the year 930 before the Christian era; and from the earliest times up to the French attack in 1809, it has again and again been battered, knocked about, and almost depopulated by repeated sieges, while its inhabitants, when any were left, have been decimated by famine and disease. Like a phœnix, however, the old city has risen again from its ashes. As it stands now, it is constructed entirely of ruins. The home of squalor, and priests, and decay, it is appropriately built upon the vestiges of the past. The little river Oña winds its serpentine course through rows of crazy houses, covered all over with wooden balconies filled with flower-pots, and gay with coloured rags. The houses seem toppling and pitching towards each other over the dirty stream, which is spanned by a picturesque old three-arch bridge, also in a most ruinous condition.
Where the citadel crumbled before the French cannon of 1809, there is now a high heap of rubbish bish, on the top of which are perched groups of eccentric-looking houses, built of the shattered bricks and débris hastily raked together, and piled anyhow into something resembling human habitations, with a noble disregard of all design, and apparently even of the laws of gravity. The town is all up hill and down hill, full of holes, ditches, and dykes. The arcades are mouldering; the courts dark and malodorous; and where there are flights of stone stairs, they are old and broken. There are churches and convents, but they are old and out of repair; there are forts, but they are battered; and battlements, but they are crumbling. A young fresh-looking child in such a place would appear an anachronism; but there are plenty of the most repulsive-looking beggars. A total absence of all sanitary arrangements causes the atmosphere of the town to be actually felt as well as smelt. A greasy mist seems to envelop it. Yet poor as Gerona is, what heroism has from time to time been displayed by the gallant inhabitants!
As we have said, we arrived on a fiesta day—a Sunday, and found all the young men in the town—for such there are in it—collected in the squares and courts, and walking round and round in rings, or pacing hand in hand to a measured cadence of song, something like that of howling dervishes, and looking very solemn, silly, and hot. This indeed seemed a most limited idea of amusement.
Heaven defend us from the hotels! Our diligence stopped at one. We got down to inspect it, and, on advancing, were immediately swallowed up by a dark archway leading to unknown depths beyond, and vomiting in our faces one of those volleys of terrible smells which are indigenous. Retreating in dismay, we took, as a matter of conscience, one glance up at the front of the house, and one look into it. We could imagine what the whole would be—a series of winding passages leading to whitewashed, uncomfortable rooms, with windows without glass, but grated and barred. Lean-eyed fowls, mostly moulting, would probably be roosting on the hat-pegs in bedrooms, while the floors would present a liberal collection of magnificent specimens of the pale-pink cockroach. Presiding over all this, no doubt there would be a greasy creature in the shape of a landlord, looking at us as if he had the Evil Eye, and wanted to give us a taste of its power. Seeing this would never do, we made one bound into the interior of the diligence, and hid ourselves, with quaking hearts, amongst some warm old ladies, with their bundles and umbrellas. At the next hotel we found a Spanish gentleman, our companion in the train from Barcelona, who had been so civil as to offer us a gold cigarette case as a present, which, unfortunately, we were told etiquette compelled us to refuse. What a waste of time that sort of thing is!—as absurd as two men going out to fight a duel, and snapping off copper caps at each other. However, there he was, leaning over the balcony of the Fonda de la Estrella. Étoile—Star!—The Star and Garter? No, most distinctly not The Star and Garter.