[34], 4. tanto bueno, sc. por aquí, i. e., so much honor done us, lit., "so great a good thing here."
[35], 8. donde primero le coge: wherever it catches him; primero is an adverb.
[35], 25. Pamplona or Pampeluna, the old capital of Navarre, señá Frasquita's country, and a prominent border fortress, has been besieged frequently in the course of its long history. It was taken from the Romans by Euric in 466, sacked by the Franks under Childebert in 542, destroyed by Charlemagne in 778; in 907 it beat off the Moors, and in 1138 the Castilians, in the war between Alfonso VII and García Ramón II, after the dissolution of the union with Aragon; and it has been occupied not infrequently by the French, who gained possession of it by stratagem in 1808, and held it until October 21, 1813, General Cassan making a fine defence against the English and Spaniards; and it has suffered since then in the civil wars. Ignatius Loyola was one of the city's defenders in its siege by the French in 1521, and it is said that it was during convalescence from wounds in the hospital of the citadel that he planned the Order of Jesus. The special appositeness of Pamplona as an illustration here lay doubtless in the fact that señá Frasquita was of Navarre.
[36], 2. Rubens. Peter Paul Rubens, celebrated Flemish painter, born 1577, died 1640.
[36], 19. bestia, really a feminine noun, appears as masculine here, in [50], 6, and elsewhere; so also calavera, [45], 25, [111], 11, and espía, [86], 15. The three words are grouped in this note as being good illustrations of three stages of the same tendency: a disposition constantly more evident in Spanish to recognize association of real and grammatical gender in nouns that are of very common use. Espía, whose masculine signification is as old as the word itself, appears in Tolhausen's Dictionary (1891), and the thirteenth edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (1899), as both masculine and feminine. Calavera is given as masculine in the transferred sense by the Academy dictionary, but not by Tolhausen; bestia is exclusively feminine in both. The conclusion is clear, though it may be tempered by the consideration that bestia in the figurative sense is coarser and of lower use than the other words, and so slower in achieving recognition, in spite of its appearance in the more colloquial pages of such standard authors even as Alarcón.—un maula, [82], 10, is to be accounted for as bestia, or perhaps better, as a careless use of un by the unlettered Garduña; un ave, p. 60, is analogical to el ave, a regular form; so also un agua, [40], 16.
[38], 20. Ave María Purísima. (Cf. p. 97, title to Chapter XXVIII). By proclamation of 22d October, 1617, the Spanish Dominions in Europe and America were declared to be under the protection of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin; hence the addition of the word Purísima to the Ave Maria gratia plena of the prayer. Hence also, doubtless, the frequent expletive use of the words, as here, and their crystallization into formulæ of daily life, as in the other passage cited above. Hence also the frequency of the appearance of the Conception in Spanish Art. For notes of Spanish customs and rites connected with this doctrine see Ford, op. cit., ed. 1845, pp. 265 sqq. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was made part of the faith of the whole church by an apostolic Letter of Pius IX, dated December 8, 1854; it had been a matter of theological controversy since the thirteenth century.
[38], 29. San Miguel. St. Michael the archangel, the first and mightiest of created spirits, mentioned in the Bible in the books of Jude and Revelations. In churchly tradition he is the chief, and sometimes the sole archangel, and the one to whom was assigned the expulsion from Heaven of Satan and the other disobedient angels. His present office is two-fold: he is patron saint of the Church on earth, and lord of the souls of the dead. His feast, Michaelmas, is September 29. In art he is always young and handsome. His attributes vary with the function symbolized: as conqueror of Satan he stands with his foot upon his foe, who is always a monster, sometimes a dragon, sometimes part human, part dragon.
[39], 4. ¡Jesús, María y José! trans.: Mercy on us!
[40], 24. derritiéndosele la gacha. Gacha is a sort of gruel made by boiling broken rice in a large quantity of milk. When it is about to boil over, a very few drops of cold water stop the boiling and bring the mass down again. This is called derretir la gacha. So here, his anger fell suddenly.
[41], 10. Ticiano, Titian. Tiziano Vecelli, born at Cadore in Venetia, 1477, died at Venice 1576; the greatest of Venetian painters.