Part 8

I shall never cease regretting that we did not wait till the following day, when an electric diligence makes the journey, for that eight hours' trip over the hills to the capital was for us the only horrible experience of our tour in Spain. I wish I might blot out its memory, but as I am setting down frankly everything that occurred, this scene of cruelty must be told of, too. In the omnibus with us were but two other people, and there were five horses; there seemed no reason to foresee trouble. For the first relay of twelve miles all went well, and we enjoyed looking back from the hills on the blue Atlantic where the headland of Coruña jutted boldly out. Our drivers treated the horses with consideration and dismounted at every ascent. But, alas, for the second relay, we changed men and changed animals. Two young vagabonds were now on the box, driving four such miserable, bony nags that it tore the heart to see the sores the rope harness had made. We protested at the use of such horses, but in vain. Twelve miles lay behind, twenty-four were ahead, there were no inns, so we hesitated to desert the diligence, but had we realized the two hours of purgatory we were to face, we had dismounted and walked back to Coruña.

One young wretch drove with loud cries and slashing blows; the other alighted to beat the quivering animals up the hills. They guided so recklessly that we were once dashed down the bank into the gutter, and soon after run into a hay-cart and the wheels unlocked with difficulty. When at length they began to strike the spent beasts over the eyes our anger burst all bounds. In a heat of fury never before experienced, and I hope never again, we attacked those two brutal boys. I do not think they will soon forget that scene. At first they replied with impudence and went on lashing the horses. But impudence soon ceased. When two women are in earnest and are fearless of consequences, and have stout umbrellas, they win the day. The twelve miles of their escort over, and new horses harnessed to the diligence--those four pitiful, bleeding victims led away!--the two scoundrels slunk off, sore on arms and shoulders as well as shamed in spirit, for the country people who gathered round supported our protest. The remaining miles to Santiago finished well, with good drivers and stout horses. But never will the horror of those two hours leave me. In fairness I must add that this was the only scene of cruelty I saw during the eight months in Spain, and again and again I noticed plump happy donkeys who were treated as members of the family. It is far-fetched to account for this unfortunate instance by the bull-fight, since in countries that have no such spectacles, veritable skeletons are made to haul cabs, and poor jades are used for drag horses. But I cannot help seizing on this opening for a little tirade against the national game of Spain, which Fernán Caballero, who loved her home with passionate affection called, "inhuman, immoral, an anachronism in this century." The sports of other lands are open to harsh criticism. I do not think a Spaniard is more cruel by nature than an Englishman; in both nations is a certain proportion of coarsened characters,--the northern country may keep them better out of sight in the slums.

Northern Europe is to-day more humane to animals than southern Europe, because the women of the north have had greater freedom and have entered into philanthropic interests such as this. Kindness to animals is a modern movement everywhere (may the shade of St. Francis of Assisi forgive this half statement!) Spain need not be too discouraged by being behindhand. The bony exhausted horses used within my own remembrance on our American street-car lines, to drag cars laden each evening to twice the beasts' strength, would not be tolerated to-day, and this change has been wrought by societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, the membership made up chiefly of women and children. Would that Spanish ladies could be pricked to action by the statement of a living French novelist, made in ignorance of late conditions in America and England, that kindness to animals is a Protestant virtue. It is neither Protestant nor Catholic, but common to all human societies where women are allowed to aid with their gentler instincts in the public welfare of their country. The bull and the man are sport and skill, that part I can understand. It is the agony of the horses that is a disgrace to these shows, worn-out nags who can make no resistance are used, and when the bull gores them, their entrails are thrust back and the dying beasts pricked on to the fray. Herein lies the great difference between bull-fights to-day, which are debased money-making spectacles only taken part in by professionals, and the more chivalrous sport of earlier times when the hidalgo was _toreador_, and proper steeds that could defend themselves were used.

The bull-fight is found in Spain so early that its origin from the Roman period in the Peninsula, or from the first Mohammedan conquerors, is disputed. The Cid took part in a game, and games celebrated the marriage of Alfonso VII's daughter Urraca to the king of Navarre. During the reign of Isabella's father, Juan II, the _corrida de toros_ was much in vogue. Queen Isabella herself disliked the sport, and in one of her letters she vows never to witness it. On the birth of Philip II in Valladolid, Charles V killed a bull in the arena. The _fiestas_ continued under the Hapsburg Philips, until the advent of the French Philip V, in 1700. He so slighted this national sport that gentlemen ceased to take part in it, and it sank to its present level. It is now so well paying an affair that the only way to reform it would be through concerted action on the part of Spanish women. It is a crusade worthy of them.

A night of rest in the hotel at Santiago and the painful scene of the day before was somewhat dimmed. Early in the morning I started out to explore the old pilgrim city. It has a distinct character of its own, seldom have I felt so decided a place-influence. It is very solemn, very gray, very stately and aloof. On many of the houses the pilgrim shell is carved; the streets are paved with granite and the vast hospices are of the same severe stone, moss-grown and damp; grass also grows between the big granite slabs of the silent, imposing squares. Santiago does not belong to our age. Modern towns do not name their streets after twelfth-century prelates, "Street of Gelmúrez, 1st Archbishop of Compostella," makes a novel sign.

Here, as all over the land, the Cathedral was the magnet. I walked along the dark, arcaded streets in a Scotch drizzle, passed under Cardinal Fonseca's college and came out in the plaza before the west entrance. The west front is a baroque mass which those who can endure that style say is most successful. I cannot endure that style. It seemed to me doubly a pity that this late front should mask the chief treasure of Galicia, the _Pórtico de la Gloria_, which stands as an open portico to the church, fifteen feet within this west door.

Enthusiastic description had led us to expect much of what may be called the supreme work of Romanesque sculpture, in fact, it was this portico that had decided us for the long trip to Galicia. We were not disappointed. "_Es la oración más sublime que ha elevado al cielo el arte español._" Neither photograph nor words can describe it; it is one of those matchless works that body forth the best of an age. The model of South Kensington does not give its nobility, for it is the setting before the lofty dim Romanesque nave that makes it a unique thing. When later, in Constantinople, I saw Alexander's sarcophagus, the thought of Santiago sprang instantly to my mind. Both bring a feeling of sadness;--one, simple flowing Greek of the best period, the other, crabbed, original, mediæval,--they are alike in the absolute sincerity with which each embodied the highest then attainable. Over the carvings of both are faded traces of color that give the finishing touch of the exquisite.

The Archbishop, Don Pedro Suárez, in 1180 gave the commission for this portico to a sculptor named Mateo, whether Spanish or foreign is not known; he lived in Santiago till 1217. He must have been a close student of the Bible, for his symbolism is profound and harmonious. Above the central arch is a solemn Christ, of heroic size, at his side the four Evangelists, figures of youthful beauty: the lion and the bull have settled themselves cozily in their patron's lap. Large angels on either side carry the instruments of the Passion. Very fine statues of the Apostles stand against the pillars of the central doorway. In the tympanum are small figures typifying the Holy City of Isaiah, and on its arch are seated, on a rounding bench, the twenty-four ancients of the Apocalypse, with musical instruments and vases of perfume. This is perhaps the most beautiful part of the portico. For hours one can study it. Some of the heads are thrown back in revery, some turned together in conversation. "The four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb having everyone of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints" (St. John, Rev. V, 8). The carvings of that age were somewhat grotesque, but here the types are ideal, as beautiful in their way as Mino da Fiesole or Rossellino. When Master Mateo had finished his work, he made a statue of himself below the central column of the portico, kneeling toward the altar and humbly beating his breast; on this figure was written "architectus." Humility and a consummate profession of faith such as this went hand in hand.

It is anticlimax, after the _Pórtico de la Gloria_, to speak of the other sights of Santiago. On the plaza before the west end of the Cathedral stands the dignified Hospital Real, founded by Isabella and Ferdinand as a pilgrim inn. Two of the four patios are quaintly carved, and probably amuse the convalescents of the modern hospital lodged now in the building. It was a joy to find so many of Isabella's good deeds still bearing fruit. The nuns took us down to the big kitchen, white-tiled and spotless, where we saw the four hundred fresh eggs that arrive daily from the country; the tidy patients on the verandas showed clearly that no one suffered privations here. As we were leaving, the old chaplain of the institution ran after us to beg us to return to see something of which he was evidently vastly proud. When he ushered us into a tiled bathing room and turned on the water that dashed up and down and round about from every kind of new contrivance, he looked at us with a self-complacency that was adorable, as if he said: "There, you water-loving English, we're just as fond of it as you!" The excellently managed institution reminds one that this province produced Doña Concepción Arenal, sociologist and political economist, and withal a most tender-hearted Christian, whose books on prison organization and reform have been widely translated, and are quoted as authorities by the leading criminologists of Europe. For thirty years this admirable woman was inspector of prisons. She died at Vigo in 1893, and Spain has since erected statues in her honor.

In Galicia, as in Catalonia, there has been a revival of dialect literature. The Gallego tongue was the first in the Peninsula to reach literary culture, and in the Middle Ages two ideal troubadours wrote in it. Had not Alfonso _el Sabio_ written chiefly in Castilian, thereby fixing that as the leading tongue, as Dante did the Tuscan in Italy, it is probable that the dialect of Galicia had prevailed. Portuguese and Gallego were the same language up to the fifteenth century, hence it is that the great critic Menéndez y Pelayo always includes Portuguese writers in his studies of Spanish literature.

Galicia is fortunate in having an able living exponent, the Señora Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose novels are full of the charmed melancholy of the province. The Gallego is derided in other parts of Spain, his name is synonymous with boor, for he is judged by the clumsy _mozo_ who seeks work in the south. "The more unfortunate a country the greater is the love of its sons for it. Greece, Poland, Hungary, Ireland, prove this, and the nostalgia is strongest in those of Celtic origin. Ask the rude Gallegos of South America what is their ambition--'To return to the _terriña_ and there die' is the answer."

In a collection of essays "De mi Tierra," Madam Pardo Bazán has told of the learned Benedictine, Padre Feijóo, the Bacon of Spain, whose caustic pen did away with so many of the superstitions of his age. It may be a bit pedantic for me to give biographies in these slight sketches, but it seems as if a truer idea of the race is conveyed in such lives than could be given in any other way. This native of Galicia, Padre Feijóo, had few equals in the Europe of his time in liberality of view. He was born of hidalgo parents near Orense, where his _casa solar_ stands, still lived in by a Feijóo of to-day. He entered the Benedictine Order and in their cloisters passed most of his long life of eighty years, for half a century living in their Oviedo house. His unflagging industry, his clear intellect, and simple uprightness, won the admiration of all who knew him. "After fifteen years' intimate acquaintance with Feijóo," wrote a scientist of the day, "never have I met, inside religion or out, a man more sincere, more candid, more declared enemy of fraud and deceit." Not till he was fifty did Feijóo commence to write. In 1731 appeared the beginning of his "Teatro Crítico," essays that have been called the first step of Spanish journalism, written as they eminently were to communicate ideas to others. He had the passion to know why, a never-tiring love of investigation. Adopting the Baconian experimental method, he attacked the superstitions and pseudo-miracles around him. _¡Ay! de mí Inquisición_! Were you asleep that you did not clap this independent thinker into your capacious dungeons? So strong was Feijóo's influence that Benedict XIV curtailed the number of feast days on his mere suggestion.

This learned Benedictine monk was ahead of his age in many ideas. Are the stars not inhabited? he asked. Before Washington, he maintained that the Machiavellian theory of government, intrigue and diplomacy, which was then universally accepted in Europe, was inferior to friendly loyalty and honor. He preached compassion to animals generations before the age of our modern, humanitarian theories. With the painful remembrance of the diligence ride in Galicia, I was glad to find one of her sons advocating this. Feijóo stands out more prominently because of the intellectual desert around him. "The eighteenth century was an erudite, negative, fatigued." The Bourbons brought formality and sterility to spontaneous Spain. A dry soulless learning killed the creative power, and in every branch, art, music, and literature, the artificial rococo flourished. The two exceptions of vitality were Feijóo and the painter Goya. Had Padre Feijóo lived in our age, he might have been that great man hailed by De Maistre: "Attendez que l'affinité naturelle de la science et de la religion les ait réunies l'une et l'autre dans la tête d'un homme de génie! Celui-là sera fameux et mettra fin au dix-huitième siècle qui dure encore." How much longer are we to wait for him,--this great man!

If the only harrowing scene of the tour in Spain is to be associated with Galicia, so is one of the happiest, a day of such kindly chivalry that we felt the spirit of Isabella's time still endured. It was the chance of railway travel that introduced a modern knight to us. The journey back to Castile from Galicia is a most trying one. Some day perhaps an enterprising ocean line will put in at Vigo and run an express directly across country to Madrid; we were too early for such ease. From Santiago we had to take an afternoon train to Pontevedra, and there spend the night. At 5 A.M. (oh, those unforgettable, dark, cold railway stations of Spain!) we again took the train. It was dawn before Redondela was reached, and exquisite as a dream seemed the _rías_, the fiords of Galicia, with wooded mountains sloping to their shores. It is not hard to prophesy that this will be a great summer resort of the future.

At Redondela we changed trains, getting into the express for Monforte, the only other occupant of the carriage being an elderly man, blue-eyed, very tall and erect, with the air of distinction so frequently found among Don Quixote's countrymen. We had noticed him the night before in the Pontevedra hotel, and had thought him an Englishman, till in offering some service about our luggage he spoke in Spanish. As we were to spend fifteen hours in the same railway carriage, we soon entered into conversation. He came from Madrid each summer with a family of sons and daughters to spend some months in a castle among the mountains of Galicia. Evidently he was a lover of sport and of country life, for as we ran alongside the Miño River, with Portugal just across on the opposite bank, for hours he sat gazing out in enjoyment, and drew each beautiful thing to our notice. At noon we reached Monforte, where we had dinner in the station buffet. When we called for our account, to our astonishment the waiter told us it was settled already. We could not understand what had been done, till the proprietor himself came to explain. It seems it is a custom all over this generous land, for a man when he is with a lady or has spoken to her, to pay for everything she orders; tea, luncheon, even her shopping purchases. He does this with no offensive ostentation, but so quietly that he often slips away unnoticed and unthanked. Several travelers have since told me that they too met this hospitality; it had at first embarrassed them, but as there was not the slightest impertinence nor even the personal about it, as it was merely an act of chivalrous respect, done with superb detachment, when the confusion of being paid for by a stranger was over, they remembered only the charming courtesy.

The attentions of our kind host, for he seemed to look on two strangers in his land as his guests, did not stop at noontime, at tea he brought us platefuls of hot chestnuts. He tried to while away the hours pleasantly, playing games on paper in French and English; with all his dignified gravity the Spaniard is not blasé. Our struggles to learn his tongue rousing sympathy, it was from him we first heard of the pretty high-flown phrases still in daily use, how you bid farewell with, _Beso à V. la mano_ (I kiss your hand), or _A los pies de V._ (I am at your feet); that the _Usted_, shortened to _V._, with which you address high or low, is a corruption of "Your Majesty." Somehow there seems nothing absurd in addressing a Spanish peasant as "Your Majesty." The love of abbreviations is a curious trait in a people with such leisurely ways; thus, a row of cabalistic letters ends a letter: _S. S. S. Q. B. S. M._, which means that your correspondent kisses your hand--_su seguro servidor que besa su mano_.

Then the interest which we evinced in the institutions and progress of Spain made him put his cultivated intelligence at our service, and we learned more in a day than in all the previous weeks. When I inquired into the vexed religious question he was able to explain much. As a rule, republicanism in Spain means avowed atheism and socialism; it has been well said that the republicanism of all Latin countries turns to social revolution. The socialists are a small, but well-organized band, international in character since their movements are directed from centers like Paris. They are chiefly in industrial cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Bilbao, where secret societies of anarchists abound, disguised as clubs for scientific study. The majority being of the rabble, repudiating all authority, ("civilization, that is the enemy!") their disorders would be called mob uprisings did they occur in Chicago, but deceived by the term "republicanism," the journals of England and America gave them too lenient a consideration. By no means devout himself, he assured us that what we saw on every side was for the most part very genuine religion, not sentiment with no result; for in those places where observance had slackened there was a marked difference in moral restraint, so potent a factor for morality was religion still in Spain. That there were faults none denied, but he had traveled enough to know the flaws of other countries too well to be despairing of his own.

He wrote for us a card of introduction to the big hospital of Madrid; he sought out a friend in another carriage, the son of the Admiral in Ferrol, who was rather up in statistics. Had we seen the asylum near Santiago where the insane are treated with such success that noted cures had been obtained? Had we met the archæologist of the province, a canon in the Cathedral? In short, from the questions and suggestions we realized that the average tourist goes through this reserved country half blind. Glad were we for this chance of insight. When in the dusk of evening it came time to descend at Astorga, our stopping-place for the night, and our fellow-traveler stood there shaking hands, with warm friendliness in his blue eyes, we felt there was no more thoroughbred specimen of manhood than a Spanish hidalgo.

SALAMANCA

"L'homme n'est produit que pour l'infini." "Il y a des raisons qui passent notre raison." "Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher."

PASCAL.

Salamanca is in León province, and in comparison with the hour of its prime, as it is to-day it too is very like a sleeping city. It is hard to realize that this dull, small town was a _grandeza de España_, ranking with Oxford, Paris, and Bologna, that once 10,000 students flocked here from all over Europe, and every young Spaniard turned here as naturally as a modern Englishman to Oxford or Cambridge; Cervantes' "Novelas Exemplares" give the picture. To-day there are barely a thousand students, chiefly from its own province; among the ten universities of Spain the former leader takes a very lowly place. Madrid, the continuation of Cardinal Ximenez' University of Alcalá, may be called the modern Salamanca in intellectual leadership.

In the Spanish Oxford one looks in vain for the numerous colleges of the city on the Isis. Alas! Salamanca is half a ruin. The French, in the Napoleonic invasion, destroyed the whole northwest quarter of the town to make fortifications, undoing in a few brutal hours the work of centuries of culture and piety. In his despatches of 1812 the Duke of Wellington wrote: "The French among other acts of violence have destroyed thirteen out of twenty convents and twenty out of the twenty-five colleges which existed in this seat of learning." Twenty out of twenty-five colleges! The thought of Oxford's tranquil, age-crowned buildings makes one grasp the tragic wreck of the Spanish university; never while in Salamanca could I forget the desolate tract to the west, lying still a heap of ruins, untenanted save by wandering goats, those nomad creatures that give the culminating note of squalor to deserted districts.

Our train approached the city across the plains from Zamora, through plantations of isolated trees and past droves of black sheep whose guardian stood patiently under the rain. For some time in the distance we saw the prominent church towers. Salamanca lay on the old Roman road, the Via Lata, that connected Cadiz with the north, but the Roman associations here are slight. As in Zamora, the Cid and his feats dwarf other interests, so here it is the picturesque days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that fill the mind.