Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

The last of the harvest was being got in at an epoch when the corn scarcely begins to assume its yellow tint in France, and the sheaves were carried to large areas of beaten earth, where horses and mules tread out the grain beneath their unshod hoofs. Both mules and horses are harnessed to a sort of sledge, on which the man superintending the operations stands upright in a posture of proud and graceful ease. Much self-command and skill are required to keep on this frail machine, as it is whisked along by three or four horses which are ever being lashed most lustily. A painter of the school of Leopold Robert would not fail to turn these scenes of Biblical and primitive simplicity to great account. Fine swarthy faces, sparkling eyes, Madonna-like features, costumes full of character, brilliant light, azure and sun would not fail him here any more than in Italy.

That evening the sky was of a milky blue colour, dashed with rose; the fields appeared, as far as the eye could reach, like an immense sheet of pale gold, where, here and there, you perceived a cart, looking like a small island in an ocean of light, and drawn by oxen which were almost hidden beneath the sheaves with which the cart was loaded. The wild notion of a picture without shade, which is so inherent to the Chinese, was realized here. All was sun and light; and the deepest tint that appeared upon the scene was of pearl grey.

At length we were summoned to a pretty good supper, or which, at least, our appetites made us think so; it was served in a low room, decorated with little paintings on glass, of somewhat curious Venetian taste. After supper, as my companion, Eugène, and myself, were but mediocre smokers, and as we could take but a very small part in the conversation, on account of the necessity we were under of saying everything we had to say in the two or three hundred words with which we were acquainted, we withdrew to our rooms, greatly discouraged at the different stories about robbers which we had heard related at table, and which, as they were only half understood, appeared all the more terrible to us.

We were forced to wait till two in the afternoon for the arrival of the correo real, for it would not have been prudent to set out without it. We had besides a special escort of four horsemen, armed with blunderbusses, pistols, and large sabres. They were men of commanding stature, with pointed hats, large red sashes, velvet breeches, leather gaiters and characteristic features, encircled by enormous black whiskers, all which made them look more like robbers than guards and whom it was a cunning contrivance to take with you, in order to avoid meeting them on the road.

Twenty soldiers huddled together in a galley, followed the correo real. A galley is a two or four wheeled cart, without springs, and having its bottom formed of an esparto network, instead of boards. This short description will suffice to give an idea of the position of these poor wretches, who were forced to stand, and who could only keep themselves from falling by catching hold of the sides of the cart. Add to this the rapidity at which we were going—four leagues an hour—a stifling heat, with the sun darting down his rays perpendicularly, and you will agree with me that it required a very great stock of heroic goodhumour to think such a situation funny. And yet these poor soldiers, scarcely covered by their ragged uniforms, with their stomachs empty, with nothing to drink but the heated water in their leathern bottles, and tossed about like mice in a trap, did nothing but laugh and sing all along the road. The sobriety and patience of the Spaniards in supporting fatigue are something wonderful. In this respect they have remained Arabs. It would be impossible to show more disregard for material life than they do. But these soldiers, who were without bread and shoes, had a guitar.

All that part of the kingdom of Toledo which we passed through is frightfully arid, and announces the approach of La Mancha, the country of Don Quixote, and the most desolate and sterile province of Spain.

We soon passed La Guardia, a little insignificant market-town, of the most miserable appearance. At Tembleque we bought a few dozen garters for the use of some pretty legs at Paris; these garters, of all colours, cerise, orange, and sky-blue, were ornamented with gold or silver thread, and marked with various-lettered devices, that would put to the blush the most gallant ones on the trumpets bought at the fête of St. Cloud. Tembleque has the same reputation for its garters as Châtellerault, in France, has for its pen-knives.

While we were bargaining for our garters, we heard by our side a hoarse, discordant, menacing growl, like that of a mad dog. We turned round quickly, but not without a certain amount of fear, for we did not know how to speak to Spanish dogs, and then we perceived that this growl came not from an animal, but from a man.

Never did nightmare, placing its knee on the chest of a delirious patient, produce a more frightful monster. Quasimodo is a very Phœbus by the side of it. A square forehead, two sunken eyes, glaring with a savage fire, a nose so flat that its place was distinguished only by the nostrils, with the lower jaw advancing full two inches beyond the upper one—such, in a few words, is the portrait of this scarecrow, the profile of which formed a concave line, like those crescents on which the face of the moon is represented in the almanack of Liege. The calling of this wretch consisted in being without a nose, and in imitating dogs, a calling which he exercised wonderfully well, for he was more noseless than death himself, and made alone more uproar than all the inmates put together of the Barrière du Combat at feeding-time.

Puerto Lapiche consists of a few tumbling-down huts, huddled together on the declivity of a hill which is itself full of cracks and chasms, and become so dry and rotten by the heat that it is continually giving way and being torn asunder by the most curiously-shaped rents. It represents aridity and desolation in its highest degree. Everything is of the colour of cork and pumice-stone. The fire of heaven seems to have passed over it; and the whole scene is smothered by grey dust, as fine as powdered sandstone. This wretchedness is so much the more heartrending as the lustre of an implacable sky makes the whole poverty of the place most prominently apparent. The cloudy melancholy of the north is nothing in comparison with the luminous sadness of warm countries.