"A. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.
"B. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of heretics? Horrible!"
Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children, himself mounted on Dapple, while the little foal frolics about, unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will furnish a delightful supper to the patient burra. Sancho's neighbor is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village, for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap, while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.
With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants, and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil. They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, 'cruz, cruz,' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably amongst the populace of moat continental countries.
Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl, gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time, and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to be, the Tia Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.
[Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]
The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.
In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact by Fernan Caballero. Casta wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she takes him into her confidence.
"'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke de Rivas, is my composition.'
"'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly—a man-woman!'