He died on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of May, within hearing of the Mediterranean waves he loved so well, with tender faces bent over him, and the crucifix at his lips. The news of his death aroused this grief-weary nation to a fresh outburst of sorrow. Some lamented him as one of the chief orators of modern Europe, recalling his eloquence in the tempestuous times of the Revolution, when he "intoned mighty hymns in praise of liberty, democracy, and the sacred Fatherland!" Some mourned the patriot, pointing proudly to the honorable poverty in which this holder of many offices, at one time almost absolute dictator, had lived and died. Some wept for the cordial, generous, noble-hearted man, the joy of his friends and idol of his household. His political sympathizers bewailed the loss of the Spanish apostle of democracy, the lifelong champion of liberty. And many not of his following nor of his faith felt that a towering national figure had disappeared and another glory of Spain vanished away.
The first wreath received was from a Republican club that sent the pansies of memory. Among the five hundred telegrams and cablegrams that arrived within a few hours at the country-seat where he had died was one from over seas, which read: "To Castelar: In thy death it seems as if we had lost the last treasure left to us, the voice of the Spanish race. In thy death Spain has become mute. Yet let me believe that thou respondest, 'She will speak again.'"
The coming of the body to the capital was a triumphal progress. A large escort of friends, who had made speed to Murcia from all parts of the Peninsula, accompanied it, and there were crowds at the stations, even in the mid-hours of the night, with tears, handfuls of roses, wreaths, and poems of farewell. There was often something very touching about these offerings. At one of the smaller towns a young girl hastily gathered flowers from the garden attached to the station, broke off a spray from a blossoming tree, tied these with the bright ribbon from her hair, and, clambering up, hung this simple nosegay among the costly tributes that already nearly covered the outer sides of the funeral car. In another crowded station the village priest came hurrying forward, bared his head with deepest reverence before the garlanded coach, as if before the altar, and chanted the prayers for the dead. Again, a group of workmen, allowed to enter the car, fell on their knees before the bier and prayed.
The train was met on its arrival in Madrid by an immense concourse of people. Señor Silvela and other distinguished representatives of the Government were there, church dignitaries, presidents of political societies and literary academies, but, above all, the people. It was the great, surging multitude that gave the Republican leader his grandest welcome.
This poor shell of Castelar, the man said to bear "the soul of a Don Quixote in the body of a Sancho Panza," lay in state through Sunday and a part of Monday in the Palacio del Congreso. The vestibule had been converted into a capilla ardiente. Masses were chanted ceaselessly at the two candle-laden altars, the perfume from the ever increasing heaps of flowers was so oppressive that the guards had to be relieved at short intervals, and the procession of people that filed rapidly past the bier, often weeping as they went, reached out from the Morocco lions of the doorway to the Prado and the Fountain of Neptune. Many of the humblest clad, waiting half the day in line, held pinks or lilies, fast withering in the sun, to drop at the feet of the people's friend. Early on Monday afternoon the doors were closed, and by half-past three the funeral cortège began to form in the Prado for its four-hour march by way of the Calle de Alcalá, Puerta del Sol, Calle Mayor, and Cuesta de la Vega, to the cemetery of San Isidro.
By the never failing Spanish courtesy, I was invited to see the procession from the balcony of a private house in the Alcalá. I found my hostess, a vivacious little old lady, whose daughter had crowned her with glory and honor by marrying into the nobility, much perturbed over the failure of the Queen Regent to show sympathy with the popular grief.
"There were one hundred and forty-nine wreaths sent in. The very number shows that the royal wreath was lacking. I am a Conservative, of course. Canovas was my friend, and has dined here often and often. You see his portrait there beside that of my daughter, la Marquesa. But Canovas loved Castelar, and would not, like Silvela, have grudged him the military honors of a national funeral. As if the dead were Republicans! The dead are Spaniards, and Castelar is a great Spaniard, as this tremendous throng of people proves. There were not nearly so many for Canovas, though the aristocracy made an elegant display; there were not so many for Alfonso XII, though all that Court and State and army could do was done, and the Queen rode in the splendid ebony coach in which Juana the Mad used to carry about the body of that handsome husband of hers.
"But the people know their losses. Never in my life have I seen the Alcalá so full as this. Silvela has had to give way, and the troops will come—at least a few of them. But not a word, not a flower, from the Queen! She sent a magnificent wreath for Canovas, and a beautiful letter to his widow. But for Castelar, her people's hero, nothing. Ah, she is not simpática. She does not know her opportunities. She does not understand the art of winning love. Only a year ago she sent a wreath to the funeral of Frascuelo, the torero. And everybody knows how she hates the bull-fight. But if she could drop her prejudices then to be at one with the feeling of her capital, why not now? They say she has a neuralgic headache to-day. Ay, Dios mio! I should think she might."
Listening to this frank chatter and watching that mighty multitude, I was reminded of one of the Andalusian coplas:—
"The Republic is dead and gone;