"O, that was a poet!" said she,—"a funny man! Everybody knows him: he writes for the theatre, and all that is about some eggs which Angelita fried for him. We can't understand it all, but we think it's good-natured."
Here the mother came, not as duenna, but as companion, with her distaff and spindle, and talked and span until I could no longer distinguish the thread against her gray dress. When the lean chicken was set before me, Don Pedro announced that a mule and guide would be in readiness at sunrise, and I could, if I chose, mount to the topmost peak of San Geronimo. In the base of the mountain, near Collbató, there are spacious caverns, which most travellers feel bound to visit; but I think that six or seven caves, one coal mine, and one gold mine are enough for a lifetime, and have renounced any further subterranean researches. Why delve into those dark, moist, oppressive crypts, when the blessed sunshine of years shows one so little of the earth and of human life? Let any one that chooses come and explore the caverns of Montserrat, and then tell me (as people have a passion for doing), "You missed the best!" The best is that with which one is satisfied.
Instead of five o'clock, when I should have been called, I awoke naturally at six, and found that Don Pedro had set out for San Geronimo four hours before, while neither guide nor mule was forthcoming. The old woman pointed to some specks far up in the shadow of the cliffs, which she assured me were travellers, and would arrive with mules in fifteen minutes. But I applied the words in dubiis libertas, and insisted on an immediate animal and guide, both of which, somewhat to my surprise, were produced. The black mule was strong, and the lank old Catalan shouldered my heavy valise and walked off without a murmur. The sun was already hot; but once risen above the last painfully constructed terrace of olives, and climbing the stony steep, we dipped into the cool shadow of the mountain. The path was difficult but not dangerous, winding upward through rocks fringed with dwarf ilex, box, and mastic, which made the air fragrant. Thyme, wild flax, and aconite blossomed in the crevices. The botany of the mountain is as exceptional as its geology; it includes five hundred different species.
The box-tree, which my Catalan guide called bōsch in his dialect, is a reminiscence, wherever one sees it, of Italy and Greece,—of ancient culture and art. Its odor, as Holmes admirably says, suggests eternity. If it was not the first plant that sprang up on the cooling planet, it ought to have been. Its glossy mounds, and rude, statuesque clumps, which often seem struggling to mould themselves into human shape, cover with beauty the terrible rocks of Montserrat. M. Delavigne had warned me of the dangers of the path I was pursuing,—walls on one side, and chasms a thousand feet deep on the other,—but the box everywhere shaped itself into protecting figures, and whispered as I went by, "Never fear; if you slip, I will hold you!"
The mountain is an irregular cone, about thirty-five hundred feet in height, and cleft down the middle by a torrent which breaks through its walls on the northeastern side. It presents a perpendicular face, which seems inaccessible, for the shelves between the successive elevations, when seen from below, appear as narrow fringes of vegetation, growing out of one unbroken wall. They furnish, indeed, but scanty room for the bridle-path, which at various points is both excavated and supported by arches of masonry. After nearly an hour, I found myself over Collbató, upon the roofs of which, it seemed, I might fling a stone. At the next angle of the mountain, the crest was attained, and I stood between the torn and scarred upper wilderness of Montserrat on the one hand, and the broad, airy sweep of landscape, bounded by the sea, on the other. To the northward, a similar cape thrust out its sheer walls against the dim, dissolving distances, and it was necessary to climb along the sides of the intervening gulf, which sank under me into depths of shadow. Every step of the way was inspiring, for there was the constant threat, without the reality, of danger. My mule paced securely along the giddy brinks; and though the path seemed to terminate fifty paces ahead, I was always sure to find a loop-hole or coigne of vantage which the box and mastic had hidden from sight. So in another hour the opposite foreland was attained, and from its crest I saw, all along the northern horizon, the snowy wall of the Pyrenees.
Here a path branched off to the peak of San Geronimo,—a two hours' clamber through an absolute desert of rock. My guide, although panting and sweating with his load, proposed the ascent; but in the film of heat which overspread the land I should have only had a wider panorama in which all distinct forms were lost,—vast, no doubt, but as blurred and intangible as a metaphysical treatise. I judged it better to follow the example of a pious peasant and his wife whom we had overtaken, and who, setting their faces toward the renowned monastery, murmured an Ave from time to time. Erelong, on emerging from the thickets, we burst suddenly upon one of the wildest and most wonderful pictures I ever beheld. A tremendous wall of rock arose in front, crowned by colossal turrets, pyramids, clubs, pillars, and ten-pin shaped masses, which were drawn singly, or in groups of incredible distortion, against the deep blue of the sky. At the foot of the rock, the buildings of the monastery, huge and massive, the church, the houses for pilgrims, and the narrow gardens completely filled and almost overhung a horizontal shelf of the mountain, under which it again fell sheer away, down, down into misty depths, the bottom of which was hidden from sight. I dropped from the mule, sat down upon the grass, and, under pretence of sketching, studied this picture for an hour. In all the galleries of memory I could find nothing resembling it.
The descriptions of Montserrat must have made a powerful impression upon Goethe's mind, since he deliberately appropriated the scenery for the fifth act of the Second Part of Faust. Goethe was in the steadfast habit of choosing a local and actual habitation for the creations of his imagination; his landscapes were always either painted from nature, or copied from the sketch-books of others. The marvellous choruses of the fifth act floated through my mind as I drew; the "Pater Ecstaticus" hovered in the sunny air, the anchorites chanted from their caves, and the mystic voices of the undeveloped child-spirits came between, like the breathing of an Æolian harp. I suspect that the sanctity of the mountain really depends as much upon its extraordinary forms, as upon the traditions which have been gradually attached to it. These latter, however, are so strange and grotesque, that they could only be accepted here.
The monastery owes its foundation to a miraculous statue of the Virgin, sculptured by St. Luke, and brought to Spain by no less a personage than St. Peter. In the year 880, some shepherds who had climbed the mountain in search of stray goats heard celestial harmonies among the rocks. This phenomenon coming to the ears of Bishop Gondemar, he climbed to the spot, and was led by the music to the mouth of a cave, which exhaled a delicious perfume. There, enshrined in light, lay the sacred statue. Gondemar and his priests, chanting as they went, set out for Manresa, the seat of the diocese, carrying it with them; but on reaching a certain spot, they found it impossible to move farther. The statue obstinately refused to accompany them,—which was taken as a sign that there, and nowhere else, the shrine should be built. Just below the monastery there still stands a cross, with the inscription, "Here the Holy Image declared itself immovable, 880."
The chapel when built was intrusted to the pious care of Fray Juan Garin, whose hermitage is pointed out to you, on a peak which seems accessible only to the eagle. The Devil, however, interfered, as he always does in such cases. He first entered into Riquilda, the daughter of the Count of Barcelona, and then declared through her mouth that he would not quit her body except by the order of Juan Garin, the hermit of Montserrat. Riquilda was therefore sent to the mountain and given into the hermit's charge. A temptation similar to that of St. Anthony followed, but with exactly the opposite result. In order to conceal his sin, Juan Garin cut off Riquilda's head, buried her, and fled. Overtaken by remorse, he made his way to Rome, confessed himself to the Pope, and prayed for a punishment proportioned to his crime. He was ordered to become a beast, never lifting his face towards heaven, until the hour when God himself should signify his pardon.
Juan Garin went forth from the Papal presence on his hands and knees, crawled back to Montserrat, and there lived seven years as a wild animal, eating grass and bark, and never lifting his face towards heaven. At the end of this time his body was entirely covered with hair, and it so happened that the hunters of the Count snared him as a strange beast, put a chain around his neck, and took him to Barcelona. In the mansion of the Count there was an infant only five months old, in its nurse's arms. No sooner had the child beheld the supposed animal, than it gave a loud cry and exclaimed: "Rise up, Juan Garin; God has pardoned thee!" Then, to the astonishment of all, the beast arose and spoke in a human tongue. He told his story, and the Count set out at once with him to the spot where Riquilda was buried. They opened the grave and the maiden rose up alive, with only a rosy mark, like a thread, around her neck. In commemoration of so many miracles, the Count founded the monastery.