To my Son
At San Juan.
Having sufficiently recovered from the violent shock given to his feelings, the Gallego once more presented himself at the post-office with the same question, “Is there a letter here from my father?”
“Oh! yes,” said the official, immediately producing the mysteriously addressed missive; “here, this is from your father. Take this one,” and delivered it without the slightest doubt as to the accuracy of its destination.
Another, on finding himself for the first time in a city, as he stood gaping and wondering at the sights around him, suddenly heard a shrill voice cry out, “I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”
He looked around for the child, but the only object that met his gaze was a parrot, mowing and chattering in a cage, and bobbing, wriggling, and looking at the Gallego with its cunning old eye forty different ways at once.
“I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”
The bewildered Gallego stared, and pondered, and, after a deep consultation with himself, came to the conclusion that the voice must proceed from the cage; from the strange specimen of humanity before him, so marvellously resembling a bird; but a bird talking the purest Castilian, though with something of a sharp accent, was a clear impossibility. His simple, good-nature was hurt at the idea of having wronged a fellow-creature even in his thoughts. So turning he excused himself: “Pardon me, child; I thought it was a bird.”
Of all traits in the national character, their universal civility astonishes an American or Englishman, accustomed as we are to the every-man-for-himself principle; yet how few we meet who do not consider the Spaniards as a treacherous, revengeful, and bloodthirsty race! Our own statistics, we fear, would furnish but a sorry set-off against theirs for crime in every phase; and particularly for the most cowardly, brutal, and premeditated assaults and assassinations, ending too often with the escape of the culprit. The quarrels in Spain between man and man arise generally from some love affair or political difference, very rarely from money. Two peasants are drinking in a tavern, the wine excites their fiery blood; one has lost his novia, the other has won her; a blow or an insult is given; they draw their knives, and adjourn to fight—“just like gentlemen.” It is, in fact, a duel, which common-sense has not yet been able to laugh out of Spain. No pecuniary damages, won by the cold arguments that sway a court of law, can heal the wound of honor in the chivalrous breast of the Spaniard; and not a few examples have we lately had of lives lost in this way. One was most tragic in its end as in all its bearings; I allude to the duel between Don Enrique de Bourbon and Montpensier. And surely never was presented on the stage a scene more dramatic or striking. Don Enrique was by profession a naval officer, high in the service of his royal relative, Queen Isabella, a young, gallant, and efficient sailor, with a promising future opening before him. He was happy in the love of a lady destined as all understood to be his; when suddenly Montpensier stepped in and won her, scarcely by force of personal attractions, for he was already well advanced in years; but the marriage was a closer link to the throne. Don Enrique vowed the death of the man who had crossed his life at the threshold. But his schemes of vengeance were baffled; an order came to quit the country, ostensibly for having joined in conspiracy against the throne. Deprived at once of his love, his command, and his country, life was closed to him. From his retirement he sent challenge after challenge to Montpensier, and vilified him even in the public press, as he could not force a response from him; but to no purpose. Montpensier, high in favor at court, secure in possession and in power, could safely affect to despise the ravings of a madman. By-and-by came the revolution which drove Isabella out. Now was Don Enrique’s chance, and he hastened to seize it. As expulsion under the queen’s reign was a virtue in the eyes of the new government, he applied for restoration to his country and his rank in the navy. The first request was granted, the second denied; as the government had proclaimed an end to the Bourbon race, no member of that race could take rank under them, unless he renounced his title. Here again he traced the hand of Montpensier. If he could have nothing else, at least he would have revenge, being now in the same city with the man who had crossed him at every step of his career. He sent his last challenge, publishing it at the same time in the press, enumerating the occasions on which he had sent similar messages, which had ever been met by the silence of fear. He heaped insults upon him, apostrophizing him as a “pastillero frances,” a fellow ready to soil his hands with the pettiest and meanest intrigue. Montpensier was at the time a candidate for the Spanish throne; for the kingship of a people in whose eyes honor was ever dearer than life; further silence would ruin his prospects; so at last he was forced out of his reserve, and, in a letter that sounded well, accepted the challenge as one which a man of honor could not pass over in silence, disclaiming at the same time any antagonism to its author personally; if there was any justice in what he said, it was the result of accident; in fact, leaving people to understand that he never troubled his head about the man. They met on a cold gray morning, and the chances of success leaned decidedly on the side of Don Enrique. A young, bold man, to whom deadly weapons had been playthings from his infancy, he was urged on by a life of hate to slay the man who had blighted that life and darkened its promising opening; his opponent was a middle-aged man, near-sighted, who bore the reputation of a littérateur rather than a fighter. Both felt that perhaps a crown as well as a life hung on the trigger. Scarce was the word given to fire when the bullet of Don Enrique brushed his foe, and Montpensier’s lost itself in the air. A second shot, and they still stood face to face uninjured. “Està afinando”—“He is getting closer,” whispered the prince to his second, as he took the last pistol from his hand. The words are remarkable as expressing the coolness of the man, whose eye took in everything at such a moment, and perhaps something more. At the next discharge, the bullet of the man who, whether designedly or not, had met him and beaten him at all points, pierced his breast; he sprang into the air, fell forward, and rolled contorted on the ground, a corpse—a theme for novelist as well as moralist: it looked like fatality.
But from such sad scenes we are happy to turn to others more worthy of our attention and more characteristic of the nation at large. The thing that of all others cannot fail to strike the visitor is the intense religion displayed everywhere. “Ay, Maria!” “Por Dios!”—“For God’s sake”—“Ay, Dios mio,” are the expressions that buzz around our ears all day. The holy name is a household word with them, pronounced at all times and on all occasions, but with a reverence that never shocks. When they wish something done, they say “Dios quiere”—“God grant it”; when they bid you good-by, “Adios—Vaya Usted con Dios—Queda Usted con Dios—Que Dios te guarda”—“Go with God—Rest with God—May God guard thee.” They speak of the blessed sacrament as “Su Majestad”—“his majesty,” of the Blessed Virgin always as “la Santissima Virgen”—“the most Holy Virgin.” The graveyard is “el campo santo”—“the holy field”: so like the old Catholic “God’s acre” that Longfellow loves. When they wish to express intense horror of a thing, they make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, lips, and breast, and then in the air, as though to place that invincible sign between them and the object of their abhorrence. The vast majority of the towns and villages are named after the saints, and each one has its special patron as well as the patron of the district. And that intense faith in intercessory prayer to some special saint which holy writers urge us to cultivate is born in them. On the festival of Good Friday throughout Spain, the municipality and gentlemen of the towns walk dressed in evening costume side by side with the poor. Not a vehicle is to be seen in the street: all the world is there to watch and pray. The new government, Prim’s, gave the order for coaches to run as usual on Good Friday, in outrage of a custom immemorial in the nation, and an honor to them as to all Christendom of whatever creed. But the coachmen as well as their masters proved better Christians than their rulers; and on the day in question not a conveyance was to be seen, save a solitary coach, which the populace immediately seized, compelling its occupant to descend, who proved to be a scared member of the diplomatic body. The celebration of Holy Week in Seville attracts the world thither.
The modern churches in Spain, particularly in Madrid, though for the most part spacious and lofty, do not impress one with their beauty. To those accustomed to associate their ideas of religion with the Gothic style of architecture, the altars will not be pleasing. Spiral pillars wriggle to the roof, inwrought and gorgeously painted. The vases are filled with silver and gold filigree work wrought to imitate flowers. There are many figures, small or large, of el niño Jesu, or la Santissima Virgen, or the saints, not always displaying the most finished art, decked out with a costume of sober black or gorgeous color and texture, glittering with gold and precious stones and ornaments of choice and antique workmanship. Little thanksgiving offerings surround them. Such things as these look like superstition to the cold eye of a man to whom faith is folly and reverence ignorance. But there is something powerful in the simple, earnest belief of the people who pray before them, and are content to be thus reminded of the great and good God and Virgin Mother, who are willing to receive the offerings of the meanest; a reverend familiarity with God is thus created which those people bear about with them. These men and women go into the church to pray: their very costume is befitting the sanctuary; and there is very little of that newspaper religion which some of our weekly journals piously advocate by so carefully announcing “where the best dresses and prettiest faces are to be seen.” On the walls hang magnificent paintings. The treasures of Murillo are in the cathedral of Seville. They were placed there by his own hand, having been painted for their several positions that the light might fall on them in such or such a manner. And it is not unpleasant to think of the sun rising and falling day after day as though in obedience to the great master who has passed away, bringing out their beauties faithfully in accordance with his wish. The construction of the cathedral itself is a triumph of architecture. Not a stone has shifted from its place since it was first laid there: there is no sinking or rising in the floor: and to-day you may pass your cane over the surface and not a joint offers the slightest obstruction.