Part 11

Isabel in Paris abdicated in his favor, and in 1875 Alfonso XII returned to his native land. He came not in the same spirit as had Ferdinand VII in 1814. The sixty years of disorders had led to a solid result, Alfonso XII came back as a constitutional king. The Constitution of 1876 was a reconciliation of monarchical principles and those of a democracy. The new king died before he had reached the age of thirty, and his son Alfonso XIII, born after his father's death, was represented by his mother till his majority. To María Cristina of Austria, Spain owes an unending debt of gratitude. Under her wise rule the country had some years of the peace she so needed; and even what is termed disaster, the recent loss of colonies, is a blessing in disguise. Spain to-day needs all her strength for herself.

As the abuses of centuries are not reformed in a year and as nothing on earth can be perfect, there is much to be desired still in Spain's political life. Her constitution is an excellent one in theory, but in practice it is crippled by the dishonest elections. Political power is left in the hands of an unscrupulous minority who work for personal, not national aggrandizement, and the distrust such elections have engendered keeps the better element of the people aloof from the government. Only fifteen per cent of the Spanish people vote. The king has, like England's ruler, the right of absolute veto. If Spain is now so blessed as to have for her king a worthy descendant of Isabella the Catholic, the remedy for the political dishonesty may be close at hand. Young Alfonso XIII has an intelligence of the first order; he has been trained under a high-minded and truly Christian woman; he has married the daughter of a race that well understands constitutional rule; personally he is loved by his people with an affection not hard to understand, for despite his thin, plain face, the young king is eminently distinguished and _simpático_. Often in Seville, seeing him galloping back from polo, or returning from a week's hunt in the wilds of the sierras, our intense hopes went out to him. In his hands, it is slight exaggeration to say, lies Spain's future. If Alfonso XIII gives his intelligence and life-blood to his people, who can foresee to what heights this strong, uncontaminated race may climb? The past century's outburst in literature and art hint the possibility of a second _siglo de oro_.

La Granja has led me far afield. It does not stand for Spain's best, an artificial, foreign creation where passed hours of the nation's abasement. Segovia is the real Spain. Descend from the Alcázar to the river, cross the bridge, mount to the ten-sided chapel of the Knights Templars, and sitting on the steps of the granite cross, look back on the stretching city. There lies the Spain whose fiber is capable of regeneration: generous, patient, indomitable, faulty, but with manly faults, untouched by taint of luxury and greed, with blood in her veins, and ideals in her soul. Wander down by the Eresma past the hermitage, and encircle the town by the footpath beside the tree-hidden Clamores. High above, its yellow stones gleaming in the sunset light, rises the fortress which stood firm for Isabella in her critical hour, and from whence she started in state to claim her heritage. Will the young king of Spain to-day show the world that Isabella's heritage is worth the claiming?

SAINT TERESA AND AVILA

"All great artists are mystics, for they do but body forth what they have intuitively discerned: all philosophers as far as they are truly original are mystics, because their greatest thoughts are not the result of laborious efforts but have been apprehended by the lightening flash of genius, and because their essential theme is connected with the one feeling, only to be mystically apprehended, the relation of the individual to the Absolute. Every great religion has originated in mysticism and by mysticism it lives, for mysticism is what John Wesley called 'heart religion.' When this dies out of any creed, that creed inevitably falls into mere formalism."

W. S. LILLY.

Mysticism is St. Teresa's highest glory. To write of her with admiration and even enthusiasm, leaving untouched this acme of her genius, as certain of her biographers have done, is to describe the shape, the hue, the grace of a rose and omit to tell of its scent. On all sides her character was notable; in strength of will, in that most uncommon of qualities, common sense,[18] in vigorous administration, in sincerity of purpose. Carmelite nun and restorer of the strictest order of Carmelites, she was not in the least a withered ascetic but a well-bred Castilian lady of winning manners and pleasing appearance, who in courtesy, dignity, and simplicity, embodied in herself the best of Castile. From every word she wrote breathes a generous character. Her robust virility of mind, her complete absence of sophistry or of self-consciousness, help us to understand the love she roused among her nuns, and the respect she gained from the foremost men of her time.

"We cannot stir ourselves to great things unless our thoughts are high," wrote this soul of heroism. Yet, with all her supremacy of intellect, Teresa was so delicately witty, so gay--peals of laughter were often heard in her cloisters--so shrewd, that never in her was found the least trace of the pretentious. Anecdotes are told of her practical good sense. The first night of the foundation in Salamanca, in the solitary garret when the frightened little nun, her companion, exclaimed, "I was thinking, dear Mother, what would become of you, if I were to die," "Pish," said Teresa, who disliked the exalté, "it will be time to think of that when it happens. Let us go to sleep." Then her vehement protest to those who thought prayer alone sufficient for salvation: "No, sisters, no: our Lord desires works!" Her swift sweeping aside of the aristocratic spirit in her convents; let there be no talk of precedence, "which is nothing more than to dispute whether the earth be good for bricks or for mortar. O my God, what an insignificant subject!" "I have always been friendly with learned men," she wrote, and pleasant milestones in her burdened life are her interviews with some remarkable minds of the time. "Knowledge and learning are very necessary for everything, alas!"--This last exclamation made in naïve apology that she could only translate in halting language her inner life of the spirit, she whose witchery of style makes her read to-day even by the scoffer.

The human personality of the saint lives in her writing, where is found the fragrance of her own special soul. "I cannot see anyone who pleases me but I must instantly desire that he might give himself entirely to God, and I wish it so ardently that sometimes I can hardly contain myself." "Humility alone is that which does everything, when you comprehend in a flash to the depth of your being, you are a mere nothing and that God is all." "Oh, Lord of my soul! Oh my true Lord, how wonderful is Thy greatness! Yet here we live, like so many silly swains, imagining we have attained some knowledge of Thee; and yet it is indeed as nothing, for even in ourselves there are great secrets which we do not understand." "Do you know what it is to be truly spiritual? It is to be the slaves of God; those who are signed with His mark which is that of the Cross." And that supreme cry of the saints in all ages: "_¡Señor! ¡O morir ó padecer!_ My God! either to suffer or to die!"

It is inevitable sacrilege for anyone in this generation, which has traveled so far from the days of faith, to touch on Teresa's raptures and locutions, for in sheer ignorance we profane what is holy. The saint herself foresaw our difficulty. "I know that whoever shall have arrived at these raptures will understand me well; but he who has had no experience therein, will consider what I say to be foolish.... However much I desire to speak clearly concerning what relates to prayer, it will be obscure for him who has no experience therein.... Some may say these things seem impossible, and that it is good not to scandalize the weak.... I consider it certain that whoever shall receive any harm by believing it possible for God in this land of exile to bestow such favors, stands in great need of humility; such a person keeps the gate shut against receiving any favors himself." So unparalleled was her life of ecstasy that at first the saint doubted if it were heaven sent or not; she submitted herself humbly to the tests of that inquisition age till at length her own good judgment told her that this "joy surpassing all the joys of the world, all its delights, all its pleasures," was from God, because of its after-effects, an added peace, a deeper humility, a more ardent and practical love of souls. But her clear brain and transcendent honesty made her see the risk for weaker minds: "The highest perfection," she warns, "does not consist in raptures nor in visions, nor in the gift of prophecy, but in making our will so conformable with the will of God that we shall receive what is bitter as joyfully as what is sweet and pleasant."

Mysticism skirts indeed perilous precipices, but St. Teresa walked the narrow path securely, her eyes uplifted, oblivious of the dangers below. I dare not touch on her marvelous life of the spirit.[19] All I can say is, go to her own works, read them in their pure, native Castilian, do not be content with the few extreme quotations given perhaps by those who would discredit her; read her in various moods, as you do the "Imitation," and I doubt if she fails to convince you that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our negative philosophy, that a few rare souls have risen to supreme heights because they were really humble and really holy, that religion has preserved from total loss the subtlest faculty of man, and faith stood up bravely through centuries of intellectual contempt to battle for it. Recently I came across a review of some works on psychology by that able young English novelist, Robert Hugh Benson; it ended with these suggestive words:

"In Psychology, science and religion are very near to one another, for its subject is nothing else than the soul of man. Science in her winding explorations has been for centuries drawing nearer to this center of the maze: she has traversed physical nature, the direct work of God, and philosophy, the direct product of man.... Is it too much to hope that when science has advanced yet a few steps more she may have come to Faith with the human soul newly discovered in her hands: 'Here is a precious and holy thing that I have found in man, a thing which for years I have denied or questioned. Now I hand it over to the proper authority. It has powers of which I know little or nothing, strange intuitions into the unseen, faculties for communication which do not find their adequate object in this world ... a force of habit which is meaningless if it ends with time; an affinity with some element that cannot rise from matter as its origin. Take it from my hands for you alone understand its needs and capacities. Enliven it with the atmosphere it must have for its proper development, feed it, cleanse it, heal its hurts, train it to use and control its own powers, and prepare it for Eternity.'"

Let the reader before he opens the "Way of Perfection" know the saint's "Life"[20] which she wrote, by the advice of her superior, when forty-six years of age; it is an autobiography worthy to rank with Augustine's "Confessions." Read also the few hundred racy letters written after the press of the day while the convent slept. Chief of all, let the reader, if he is practical, know that inimitable book of her fifty-eighth year, the "Foundations," with its Cervantes-like pictures of the people and customs of the time. Perhaps only those who have traveled on Spanish country-roads, those tracts of mud or rocks, can appreciate the hardships endured by this aged woman as she went from city to city to found her houses; in heavy snows to Salamanca; to Seville in a covered cart turned to purgatory by the direct rays of the Andalusian sun, with fever and only hot water to drink; rivers overflowed by heavy rains; boats upset in the rivers. The last foundation was at Burgos, barely four months before her death, the jolting cart in which she rode from Palencia having to be pulled out of the ruts and she entered the coldest city in the Peninsula on a raw January day in a heavy rain, there to find further troubles.

Familiar with Teresa's physical endurance, her cool-headed business ability, her candid hatred of shams and pretence, then approach her loftier self and read the "Camino de Perfección." The treatise on prayer in the "Life," (Chap. XI to XXII) prepares one for this second book, which she wrote for her sisters and daughters of "St. Joseph's" in Avila, "those pure and holy souls whose only care was to serve and praise Our Lord, so disengaged from the things of the world, solitude is their delight." Through the "Way of Perfection" runs her beautiful exposition of the Pater Noster, with digressions to right and left as her thoughts arose. She tells of the intangible land of worship in magic-laden words that draw the cold heart to the far realm of contemplation wherein lay the source of her strength. The "Camino" leads one to her last book, the "Interior Castle," a glorious pæan to God, a courageous exploring of the untrodden realms of the soul that is truly one of the triumphs of the spirit, and when we consider it was written by a woman of sixty-two, worn out with labors and penance, living in a poor little convent, it is an incredible feat of genius. In all literature is found nothing loftier nor more ethereal: "Oh, 'tis not Spanish but 'tis Heaven she speaks!"

Teresa belonged to the race of the true mystics because she was a great saint. It has been said that sainthood, the divine hunger of the soul to do or to suffer _pro causa Dei_ is as difficult to define to the imagination as genius. The materialist may scoff at it, but it remains a primitive part of human nature against which argument beats itself in vain. Its form may change with the times, the Eastern anchorite and the mediæval ascetic may give way to the administrative bishop needed in his age; to a knightly paladin such as that "Raleigh among the Saints" who led his Free Lances to the fight for the salvation of souls; to a large-hearted philanthropist like Vincent de Paul, with his unresting Sisters of Charity; to a scholar of the schools, a Newman; to the reformer in our ugly modern cities; under varying vestures the spirit is the same. In the compelling power of her saints lies the force of the Church; to the saints of the Catholic Reformation, to Philip Neri, Charles Borromeo, Francis Borgia, Francis de Sales, Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, the Church owes her rehabilitation. These great souls rose in every land to purify abuses, to drive the money changers from the temple: they were the leaven in the hundred measures of meal. Macaulay noted the fact that since the middle of the sixteenth century Protestantism has not gained one inch of ground, and this is due to these saints of the Catholic Reformation; for deep in man's heart lies a reverence for simple goodness that overrides all disputes, and when such saints arose in the church that was called a sink of iniquity, men paused; those who had passed from her ranks did not return, but none after followed them. Had Luther been gifted with more of this personal sainthood, the fatal division that bequeathed centuries of hate and warfare might have been avoided, and the simpler method of example, of holiness of life, have sufficed for reforming Renaissance Rome intoxicated with the revival of pagan culture. Such regrets are futile, a mere weighing the weight of the fire, a measuring the blast of the wind; and they are ungrateful, too, since the spirit of that troubled time roused among other great souls, a Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada.

The writings of this remarkable woman have the same allurements for us to-day as when they flowed almost unconsciously from her pen, for besides her mysticism and her sainthood, she was a poet, of the race of those whose thoughts make rich the blood of the world. Her little nuns tell that when she wrote her hand moved so rapidly, it seemed hardly possible it could form human words, while in her face was an expression of exaltation. "She ranks as a miracle of genius, as perhaps the greatest woman who ever handled pen, the single one of all her sex who stands beside the world's most perfect masters," is the testimony of the ablest English critic of Spanish literature. She wrote with her eye direct on her soul's experience, with the glorious courage to give the naked truth regardless of consequences, and she will be read as long as sincerity of soul-expression is the poet's best gift and while the conflict of faith and unbelief remains the highest of human themes.

Mystic, saint, and poet, she can claim yet another title, that of philosopher. By the road of self-study, she reached that sublime height of metaphysics, the intellectual vision of the Absolute. The further Psychology advances, the more wonderful is found her knowledge of the soul and its moods and powers. "The highest, most generous philosophy that ever man imagined," wrote the scholar, Luis de León. "Sainte Térèse a exploré plus à fond que tout autre les régions inconnues de l'âme, ... elle explique savamment, clairement, le mécanisme de l'âme évoluant dès que Dieu la touche ... une sainte qui a vérifié sur elle-même les phases sur-naturelles qu'elle a décrites, une femme dont la lucidité fut plus qu'humaine" is the appreciation of Huysmans. Not only orthodox believers yield her this preëminence: Leibnitz read and deeply admired her; a recent French critic of the skeptic school compares her to Descartes. Hyperbole is inevitable in speaking of this "sweet incendiary," and all who know her books feel the same enthusiasm. "A woman for angelical height of speculation, for masculine courage of performance, more than a woman," wrote the old English poet, Richard Crashaw, whose "Flaming Heart" is touched with her own potency:

"Oh thou undaunted daughter of desires! By all thy dower of lights and fires; By all the eagle in thee, all the dove; And by thy lives and deaths of love, By thy large draughts of intellectual day; And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;...

By all the Heav'n thou hast in Him, (Fair sister of the seraphim!) By all of Him we have in thee; Leave nothing of myself in me, Let me so read thy life that I Unto all life of mine may die."

Spain may claim the glory of having appreciated this her greatest daughter. She is a colonel of artillery; she is a doctor in Salamanca; the manuscript of her "Life" was placed in the Escorial and the King carried the key; at country inns they tell of the night she rested there, as if it had been yesterday; her devotees to-day sign their letters "_su amigo teresiano_." It was reserved for later generations of different race to explain what they could not understand by calling it hysteria and epilepsy. Richard Ford's account of the saint is so wide of the original that Froude, no lover of Catholic Spain, says it is not even a caricature; the article on her in the Encyclopedia Brittanica is a disgrace to intellectual thought.

Spain stands indifferent to such criticism. She knows herself secure in her mystics who seem to have left the race an intuitive understanding of the life of the soul. This inherited intuition has, of course, its dangers, for all intelligences are not those of a Teresa de Jesús. It needs indeed "large draughts of intellectual day" to be a mystic. Valdés' novel, "Marta y María" shows this mistaken insisting in the nineteenth century on conditions of life suitable to the sixteenth. But because smaller minds have imitated her disastrously, their neo-mysticism need not be considered a serious menace in modern Spain, since following a saint, even haltingly, is not by any means an easy life to choose.

St. Teresa and Avila: her name evokes that of her native city as instantly as St. Francis' that of Assisi; every stone in Avila breathes of the heroic woman. Our first visit was to the small plaza under the city walls, where the _casa solar_ of the Cepeda family stood. Teresa came of the untitled gentry of Castile, _de sangre muy limpia_, and a Spaniard's pride in his blood, untouched by Moorish taint, by crime, or illegitimacy, is as strong to-day as then: perhaps it is this pride, in peasant as well as noble, that makes the democratic relation of the classes in the Peninsula.

At right angles to the mediocre church built in commemoration, on the site of the Cepeda house, stands the mansion of the Duque de la Roca, which gives a good idea of the solid escutcheoned homes of the hidalgo. Many such dignified houses are scattered over Avila, making a stroll in her streets full of the charm of surprise; their chief adornments are the doorways, truly splendid old portals with coping stones sometimes nine feet deep radiating round the entrance. In one of these solid Romanesque houses Teresa was born in 1515. Through a city gate before her house, I looked out on just the same scene she had known during the first eighteen years of her life; the rocky plain, through which the river wound, stretched to a spur of the Guadarrama mountains, capped already with the winter's snow. Leaving the venerable little plaza, I descended the steep street that led to the river bridge, in the spirit of pilgrimage still, for the child Teresa and a small brother wandered here alone one day on their way to seek martyrdom among the infidels. Met by an uncle beyond the bridge, the runaways were brought home. Truly in the saint's life, the child was father to the man, her days bound each to each in natural piety, despite that short period which her too tender conscience ever regretted when, as a pretty girl, love of fine clothes and flattery allured her. It is told of these remarkable children, that, hearing the word "Forever," they clasped their little hands and gazed wide-eyed in each other's faces, overcome by its stupendous meaning.