Among the excellences of Madrid must be counted her museos. The Armería, with its plumed and steel-clad warriors, all at tourney, is no mere lumber room of wicked old iron, as might have been expected, but a new canto of the "Faery Queene." The Museo Naval still smells of the boundless brine and Isles of Spicery. The Museo Arqueológico Nacional sweeps one, as on the magic carpet of Alhambra legend, through the entire tragedy of Spain. Here are the successive leaves of her strange picture-book—scratched, prehistoric flints, grass-woven Iberian sandals, rudely sculptured shapes in sandstone grasping wine cups that suggest whole Rubaiyats, Phœnician anchors, bronze tables of Roman laws, Moorish arabesques, mediæval altars, modern wares and fineries, while barbaric spoils of Peruvian idols, Mexican feather-shields, sacrificial stones, and figures of forest lords speak to the imagination of that vast colonial empire which rose out of a dream to melt again like very dreamstuff, leaving "not a rack behind." These I have seen, but there are twice as many more Madrid museums which I had not time to see, and which, I am told, are no less rich in rarities and no less effective in pictorial beauty of arrangement.
Of the art galleries, who can say enough? The supreme Museo del Prado so magnetizes pilgrim feet that it is hard to spare even a few hours for the Académia de Bellas Artes, with its grand Murillos and calm Zurbaráns, or the Museo de Arte Moderno, with its succession of canvases depicting scene upon scene of death, decay, murder, execution, starvation, battle, torture, frenzy. Whatever is most horrible in the story of the Peninsula—Juana the Mad staring at her husband's coffin, the bloody fall of the betrayed Torrijos and his band, the nobles of Portugal doing shuddering homage to the exhumed corpse of Inez de Castro, all that moves disgust, distress, dismay, seems flaunted here. The technique is French, but the subjects are Spanish. Many of the pictures have historical dignity and faithfulness, a few reproduce the modern national types, with a preference for bull-fighters and anarchists over fishermen and peasants, but one misses the spiritual beauty that went hand in hand with the spiritual terror of the older art. Do the Spanish painters of to-day derive only from Goya and Ribera?
The old-time popular ceremonies are fast fading out of Europeanized Madrid. Even the Christmas mirth is waning, though still on Noche Buena the Plaza Mayor is close set with booths, and the Infanta Isabel, muy Madrileña that she is, makes a point of driving through and heaping her carriage with fairings. On Twelfth Night, too, there are a few small boys to be seen scampering about the streets, looking for the arrival of the Magi. Every year drops something of the mediæval heritage, and it has fallen to my lot to chronicle the passing of one of Madrid's most ancient and comfortable rites. The principal saint days of June, July, and August are preceded by verbenas, or evening fairs, chief among these being the Verbena de San Juan, on Midsummer Night. Many a baby has a grand frolic this evening, rocked back and forth on his mamma's knees, laughing eyes to laughing eyes, while she dips her head to his and tickles his little neck with kisses in time to the ancient ditty:—
"Recotín, recotón!
The bells of St. John!
There's a festival on.
Recotín, recotín, recotón!"
Far along the Prado gleam the busy fires over which are merrily bubbling the oiliest and brownest of buñuelos. The rows of lighted stalls, which have sprung up like mushrooms on either side of the promenade, present to the revelling, roving, shifting throng an amazing variety of tawdry knickknacks, ingeniously devised to meet no human want. As we drove slowly up and down, enjoying the scene, while beggars ran beside the carriage and hawkers darted out upon us with shrill cries, the "American girl" of our little group strove earnestly to find "something to buy."
The most useful and convenient article for a traveller that could be discovered was a pasteboard bull's head on a long stick, but her chaperon, mindful of trunk dimensions, discouraged this purchase so effectively that Little Boston gracefully made herself amends by presenting us all with images of St. John. These scandalously represented the Baptist as a ballet girl in short cotton-wool skirts and gilt ribbons, waving a banner with one hand and leading a two-legged lamb with the other.
As midnight drew near, carriages and foot-folk all pressed toward the stately Cybele fountain. It seems that there was once, in the Puerta del Sol, a magic spring whose waters, sprinkled at Midsummer Midnight on the most unlikely head, insured a wedding within the year. Trams and cabs, riots and bloodshed, drove the precious charm away to the Prado, even to this same Cybele fountain, which for many generations has continued to work bridal miracles. So recently as 1898, as soon as the clock in the tower of the stately Bank of Spain struck midnight, with wedding cadences lingering in its peal, eager feet went splashing through the broad marble basin, and the enchanted water, thrown by handfuls and cupfuls far out over the crowd, sparkled even on bald pates and wigs.