XXI
"O LA SEÑORITA!"
"Since the English education came into fashion, there is not a maiden left who can feel true love."—Alarcón.
During my stifling night journey from Madrid to the north I had much chat with Castilian and German ladies in the carriage about Spanish girls. Our talk turned especially on their reading, so reminding me of an incident of the past spring. On an Andalusian balcony I once found a little girl curled up in the coolest corner and poring over a shabby, paper-bound book. On my expressing interest in the volume, she presented it at once, according to the code of Spanish manners. "The book is at the disposal of your worship." But as the bundle of tattered leaves was not only so precious to her own small worship, but also greatly in demand among her worshipful young mates, whose constant borrowing seemed a strain even on Andalusian courtesy, I retained it merely long enough to note the title and general character. The next time I entered a book-shop I expended ten cents for this specimen of juvenile literature—"the best-selling book in Seville," if the clerk's word may be taken—and have it before me as I write. On the cover is stamped a picture of two graceful señoritas, perusing, apparently, this very work, "The Book of the Enamored and the Secretary of Lovers," and throughout the two hundred pages are scattered cheap cuts, never indecent, but suggesting violent ardors of passion—embracings, kissings, gazings, pleadings, with hearts, arrows, torches, and other ancient and honorable heraldry of Cupid. The title-page announces that this is a fifth edition of ten thousand copies.
The Divine Shepherd
The opening section is on "Love and Beauty," enumerating, by the way, the "thirty points" essential to a perfect woman. "Three things white—skin, teeth, and hands. Three black—eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes. Three rosy—lips, cheeks, and nails." But warning is duly given that even the thirty points of beauty do not make up a sum total of perfection without the mystic, all-harmonizing quality of charm.
Next in order are the several sets of directions for winning the affections of maid, wife, and widow, with a collection of edifying sentiments from various saints and wits concerning widows. Descriptions of wedding festivities follow, with a glowing dissertation on kisses, "the banquet-cups of love." After this stands a Castilian translation of an impassioned Arab love-song with the burden, Todo es amor. Maxims on love, culled chiefly from French authorities, are succeeded by an eighteenth-century love-catechism:—