On Holy Thursday afternoon, the ceremony of the Washing of Feet was celebrated in the cathedral. The King, it was said, would take the first rôle; the Archbishop, however, officiated in his place. On a platform before the high altar stood the benches for the apostles. The twelve poor old men who impersonated them came toddling in, each carrying a clean, fringed towel over his shoulder. They took the shoe and stocking from the right foot. One old fellow, Concepcion’s friend, the beggar at the cathedral door, was so infirm that he could scarcely untie his shoe. He persisted bravely, though, and to him Torquemada, who assisted the Archbishop, first presented the silver basin. The pauper placed his foot in it, Torquemada poured water from a silver flagon; the old Archbishop, kneeling, kissed the beggar’s foot.
“Isn’t it a pleasant ceremony?” said Pemberton. “Poor old chaps, no wonder they look so proud. To-day they have dined with the Archbishop in his palace, and those fine new clothes are their very own for keeps.”
The service was followed by the singing of the tenebrae. It was growing dark in the cathedral; all the light and color were concentrated in the coro, glowing like a live jewel in the centre of the shadowy church. An aged crone, a battered derelict on life’s stream, drifted by, touching here and there at altar and at shrine, as at so many friendly ports. She came to anchor before our Lady of Good Counsel, and took out her rosary. At every pater noster she kissed her beads. Those pathetic, mumbling old lips must have had sore need of something to kiss. She pressed them over and over again on the cold glass that covered a little chromo of Our Lady of Good Counsel, set conveniently low in the wall, for the kisses of the forlorn old lips that missed perhaps the warm cheeks of child or grandchild. Outside the coro, below the black veil that hung before the altar, stood the vast bronze tenebrium, with its fifteen great candles. An acolyte with a long torch kindled the candles, and the first lamentation rang through the cathedral. One by one, as each pitiful lament commemorating the suffering and death of Christ trailed into silence, a candle was extinguished, till the fourteen symbolical of the apostles were all put out. It grew darker and darker; at last only the taper at the top remained alight in memory of Christ, the unquenchable light of the world.
Later that evening we returned to the cathedral for the miserere. The Calle de Sierpes was filled with a holiday crowd. In the balconies outside the cafés, at the street corners, were groups of young and old, little children, graybeards, and grandams; during Holy Week it seemed that nobody in Seville went to bed.
“El Liberal!” A newsboy offered the sheet, wet from the press.
“Agua, agua fresca!” The grave water seller followed close on his heels.
“Dos por uno perro chico,” cried a correct old man, with beautifully curled silver hair and beard, selling shoe laces. A woman who looked like a caryatid, with a basket of royal purple flags on her head, bought a pair of laces. A young girl with a dimple, carrying her boots in one hand and two large dried codfish in the other, accidentally jostled me. The caryatid, evidently her mother, cried, “Cuidada!” rather sharply.
“Dispense V.,” said the dimple, blushing and distressed at the mischance.
“Manos blancas no ofendan” (white hands never hurt), said Pemberton.
“What good manners these people have!” I said, as we passed on, leaving the girl still under the shadow of the caryatid’s displeasure.