Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

Near the cemetery of San Isidro, across the Manzanares, are two other large Catholic burial grounds, and the Cementério Inglés.

"But murderers, atheists, and Protestants are buried way off in the east," said the pretty Spanish girl beside me.

"Oh, let's go there!" I responded, with heretic enthusiasm; but I had reckoned without the cabman, who promptly and emphatically protested.

"That's not a pleasant place for ladies to see. You would better drive in the Prado and Recoletos, or in the Buen Retiro."

We told him laughingly that he was speaking against his own interests, for the Civil Cemetery was much farther off than the parks. He consulted his dignity and decided to laugh in return.

"It is not of the pesetas I think first when I am driving ladies. But" (with suave indulgence) "you shall go just where you like."

So in kindness he gathered up his reins and away we clattered sheer across the city. Presently we had left the fountain-cooled squares and animated streets behind, had passed even the ugly, sinister Plaza de Toros, and outstripped the trolley track; but still the road stretched on, enlivened only by herds of goats and an occasional venta, where drivers of mule trains were pausing to wet their dusty throats. We met few vehicles now save the gay-colored hearses, and few people except groups of returning mourners, walking in bewildered wise, with stumbling feet.

"The Cemetery of the Poor is opposite the Civil Cemetery," said our cabman, "and they have from thirty to fifty burials a day. The keeper is a friend of mine. He shall show you all about."

A bare Castilian ridge rose before us, where a farmer, leaning on his scythe, was outlined against the sky like a silhouette of Death. And at last our cheery driver, humming bars from a popular light opera, checked his mettlesome old mare,—who plunged down hills and scrambled up as if she were running away from the bull-ring, where she must soon fulfil her martyrdom,—between two dismal graveyards. From the larger, on our right, tiptoed out a furtive man and peered into the cab as if he thought we had a coffin under the seat.

He proved a blood-curdling conductor, always speaking in a hoarse whisper and glancing over his shoulder in a way to make the stoutest nerves feel ghosts, but he showed us, under that sunset sky, memorable sights—ranks upon ranks of gritty mounds marked with black, wooden crosses, a scanty grace for which the living often pay the price of their own bread that the dead they love may pass a year or two out of that hideous general fosse. Then the sexton reluctantly led us to the unblessed, untended hollow across the way, where rows of brick sepulchres await the poor babies who die before the holy water touches them, where recumbent marbles press upon the dead who knew no upward reach of hope, and where defiant monuments, erected by popular subscription and often bearing the blazonry of a giant quill, denote the resting-places of freethinkers and the agitators of new ideas. There were some Christian inscriptions, whether for Protestants or not I do not know, but to my two companions there was no distinction of persons in this unhallowed limbo.