Incredulity! Grand triumph of the material over the spiritual, of earth over heaven; of the apostate angel over the angel of light!
The small square that separates the convent from the street which leads to it is overgrown with grass, and in it, in their hours of rest, the drivers let their oxen loose.
Within the inclosure, in place of stairs, a slight terraced ascent, sustained at the sides by benches of stone mason-work, leads to the door of the church. On the right is the chapel of the third order; the path to the left conducts to the principal entrance to the convent.
Reader, if you love the things of our ancient Spain, come hither. Here the church still stands; here still flourish, without care, the two palms; here is still a Franciscan friar who says mass in the unoccupied temple. Here are still found ox-drivers who tell tales, in which things humorous and pious are mingled with the good faith and wholesomeness of heart of the child that plays with the venerated gray hairs of its parent without a thought that in doing so it is wanting in filial respect. But hasten! for all these things will soon disappear, and we shall have to mourn over ruins—ruins to which the past, in reparation, will lend all its magic.
The third day of the week shone pure and gay, ignorant, doubtless, of the unlucky quality which men attribute to it, and very far from suspecting that its enemy—a foolish saying—would fain deprive it of the happiness of witnessing weddings and embarkations.[304]
On a Tuesday, then, that was as innocent of any hostile disposition as if it had been a Sunday, the lady who told us that which we are going to repeat, walked up the long street of San Francisco to the vacant convent to hear the weekly mass in which God himself would fill the abandoned temple with his most worthy presence. She arrived before the priest, and finding the church closed, sat down to wait upon one of the benches that sustain the terrace. The morning was cool enough to make the sunshine agreeable. In sight rose the two palms, like a pair of noble brothers, bearing together persecution and slight, without yielding or humiliating themselves. The oxen lying down within the inclosure ruminated measuredly, but with so little motion that the small birds passing poised themselves upon their horns. The efts, gazing at all with their intelligent eyes, glided along the walls in a garden of gilly-flowers and rose-colored caper-blooms. Light clouds, like smoke from a spotless sacrifice in honor of the Most High, floated across the enamel of the sky—if it is permitted to compare that with enamel with which no enamel that was ever made can compare. It was a morning to sweeten life, so entirely did it make one forget the narrow circles in which we fret our lives away, and in which living is a weariness.
Two drivers seated themselves upon the same bench with the lady.
Your Andalusian is never bashful. The sun may be eclipsed; but, in the lifetime of God, not the serenity of an Andalusian. Sultan Haroun Al-raschid might have spared himself the trouble of the disguises he employed when he mingled among his people without causing them the least diffidence, if he had ruled in Andalusia. Not that the people despise or cannot appreciate superiority; but they know how to lift the hat without dropping the head.
Therefore it happened that, although the lady was one of the principal persons of the place, and although there were other benches to sit on, that one appearing to them the pleasantest, on that one they sat down, without thought or care as to whether their talk would be overheard. In the northern provinces, where the people are entirely good, and as stupid as they are good, they think little and speak less; but in Andalusia thought flies, and words follow in chase. These people can go two days without eating or sleeping, and be little the worse for it; but remain two minutes silent, they cannot. If they have no one to talk with, they sing.
"Man," said one to the other, "I can never see that chapel without thinking of my father, who was a brother of the third order, and used to bring me here with him to say the rosary, which the brothers recited every night at the Angelus."