Part 19

Gregorio explained that this was a teaching sisterhood. He wished to interest Engracia in the convent. There was still room for a few more novices. Each novice must bring a dot of four thousand dollars, which insured her support for the rest of her life. While Gregorio was describing the joys of life in a Toledo convent, the Cardinal sent for us. We found him in the garden, attended by his secretary and the Lady Superior. They had been inspecting some mason work. The Cardinal was a fine subtle-faced old man with an authoritative manner, and a straighter, more dominating eye than any Roman cleric I know. Though he wore a simple black habit, with only a thread of scarlet and the scarlet moire skullcap under the shovel hat, I recognized him at once as the splendid prelate in the vermilion robes who had officiated at the Infanta’s marriage, and who would, Gregorio said, celebrate the marriage of the King.

Imperious Engracia knelt before the Cardinal, and kissed his emerald ring. He asked about her husband and parents, whom he had known, and then began to talk with her about his convent. He had founded this new order to resist the teaching of socialism and atheism to the masses. He had talked the plan over with Leo XIII, “a fine, great pope,” who had sympathized deeply with his scheme. Pope Leo, however, had feared it would be difficult to carry out the plan. It was a moment when convents and religious orders were being broken up everywhere; those already existing could only be maintained with the greatest fostering. He hoped, however, that the Cardinal might succeed, and blessed his undertaking. The whole idea of the new order was to teach the true value of the Church. The sisters were to have far greater liberty in coming and going than in the older orders. This was borne out by the free and frank bearing of the five or six sisters we saw. I was struck by the simplicity and directness of their manners. Compared to the Abbess of Ronda, who might have belonged to the time of Santa Teresa, the Superior of the Toledo Convent _seemed_ a modern person belonging to our epoch. Was she? To this day I cannot make up my mind! Can we pour new wine into old bottles, and mend the old garment with new cloth? That is the question!

We parted with the Cardinal at sunset. He shook hands kindly with us, and with old-fashioned courtesy invited us to come and see him again if we should return to Toledo.

We spent much of our too short time in Toledo in studying the pictures of that strange and interesting painter, Domenico Theotocopulos, called El Greco because he was a Greek, a native of Crete. The portraits in the little Museum of San Juan de Los Reyes are among the best examples of his individual and peculiar manner. Greco is a realist; he paints what he sees with splendid fidelity

and power. His most famous picture, the Funeral of Count Orgaz, in the church of San Tomé, is a fine illustration both of his strength and his weakness. In the lower part of the canvas we have the dead Count, with the priests and the mourners about him. Here all is real; the dead man in his armor, the Bishop in his mitre and gorgeous robes, the long line of attendants and mourners, and the lovely head of the young boy are all portrait studies. In the upper part, where the heavenly vision is painted, Greco has left the realm of the real and entered that of the ideal. Instead of raising us to the seventh heaven, he lets us down upon the earth. Saints Augustine and Stephen, who appear in the clouds as a heavenly vision attended by a heavenly host--things imagined and not seen--are grotesque, almost ridiculous.

Don Luis was right; it is only at Toledo that one can really understand El Greco. The religious pictures at the Prado had offended us; they had seemed the work of a madman. At Toledo one gets a true understanding of his original and extraordinary personality. He neither saw nor painted as other men see and paint. There was much that was morbid, something that was mad in his vision; but there was, besides, much that was sincere, honest and lucid. El Greco, who is now ranked as second only to Velasquez by many critics, by some as his equal if not superior, seems to have become so thoroughly saturated with the Spanish sentiment that, though his name is a constant reminder of his nationality, he is invariably spoken of as if he were in truth a Spaniard. The strange and wayward genius, who has so touched and influenced the imagination of Velasquez, of Sargent and so many other famous painters, was a true son of Hellas. To Greece belong his glory and his laurels.

XIV

THE BRIDE COMES

In March Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the new English Ambassador, presented his credentials to the King. We went over to the palace to see what we could of the ceremony. There had been a sudden change in the weather. It was very hot waiting in the Plaza de Armas outside the palace. The _chicos_, playing at marbles instead of basking in the sun, had moved into the shadow. There were very few spectators; Mrs. Young, the wife of one of the English Secretaries, fair and cool in a white summer dress, her maid armed with a kodak, and perhaps a dozen other people.

“What do they mean,” said Patsy, “by saying that in Madrid you must not put away your overcoat till the fortieth of May?”

“Wait a little and perhaps you will know,” said a familiar voice. It was the Argentino, who had lately come to Madrid; the chance acquaintance begun at Cordova was ripening into something like friendship.

Two lines of soldiers in fresh blue uniforms with green trimmings and gloves were drawn up between the gate of the plaza and the palace. Punctually at the appointed hour the band struck up the Spanish national air, there was a ruffle of drums and a fine gala coach from the royal stables came rumbling along the Calle Bailen at the heels of four noble horses with head-dresses of long nodding blue ostrich plumes. The coach was of gold and crystal with beautiful painted panels. The liveries of coachman, postillions, outriders, palfreniers and men-in-waiting who walked beside, were blue and gold to match the splendid trappings.

“The coach is empty, there is nobody inside,” cried Patsy. “What does it mean?”

“This,” said the Argentino, “is the _coche de respecto_ for the Secretaries of Embassy. In the days when people travelled by post or on horseback, important personages always had a led horse or an extra carriage in case of accident.”

“What accident,” laughed Patsy, “could happen between the Embassy and the palace?”

“One never knows; it is one of the picturesque old customs the Spanish Court preserves, even though the need of the _coche de respecto_ may have been outlived.”

In the second coach--as handsome in every detail as the first, the only difference being that the feathers and decorations were red instead of blue--rode Mr. Fairfax Cartwright, Mr. George Young, and two other English Secretaries of Embassy, looking magnificent and uncomfortable in stiff gold-laced court uniforms. Mr. Young made a little gesture of recognition to his wife, the others did not look out of the window.

The Ambassador’s _coche de respecto_, drawn by six horses, was even finer than the other. The liveries, trappings and feathers were red and yellow, the Spanish colors. There were six coaches in all, four for the Englishmen, two for the escort. In the last rode Sir Maurice, a tall fair man, with the First Introducer, both radiant in court finery. They had driven down the Calle Bailen in single file; at the plaza the shining coaches were drawn up into two lines, three abreast, with an escort of mounted cavalry on either side. They advanced at a snail’s pace, crossed the palace yard where the soldiers stood at attention, and approached the three doors of the palace to the music of the military march. The ambassador drove in through the middle door.

“That is the royal entrance,” said the Argentino. “Sir Maurice passes through it to-day because he brings letters from King Edward; he is not likely ever to go through it again.”

While we waited to see them come out, a private brougham with black and silver liveries drove up to the door by which the Secretaries had gone in. We caught a glimpse of Lady de Bunsen in a white dress with feathers in her hair, on the way to her audience with the Queen.

“She has come early,” said the Argentino, “so that she may see the finest sight of the ceremony, the halberdiers guarding the grand staircase while the Ambassador passes in and out of the throne room. They stand two on each step in that old swashbuckler uniform, silver-buckled shoes, cutaway coats, knee breeches and cocked hats, holding their big halberds so that the blades touch. The Ambassador walks up and down the stair between two flashing lines of steel. It really is worth seeing.”

We waited till the audience was over, watched the Ambassador and his suite drive away in the same state as they had come, and a little later the halberdiers march out of the palace and down the Calle Bailen to their barracks.

“There goes Pedro,” murmured Patsy, as the halberdier who had made room for us at the Infanta’s wedding swung by. “The soldiers on duty in the yard looked like any other soldiers. These chaps could only be Spanishers. The fire in the eye, the haughtiness, are perfectly colossal!”

“And the fierce curl of the _bigotes_. You know what _bigote_ means? When the Spanish soldiers were in the Low countries, they fell in with the English--you remember Uncle Toby says ‘our army swore terribly in Flanders.’ Every time the British soldier swore he twisted his moustache and said ‘by God!’ The Spanish imitated him, twirled his moustachios and cried ‘bigote.’ By and by he connected the action with the words, imagined the oath had something to do with the moustache; to this day the Spaniard calls his moustache a _bigote_ in memory of that swearing English army in Flanders--or, some people say, of the swearing German soldiers of Charles V.”

We lingered after the other spectators had gone, and the _chicos_ had begun their game again; palace and plaza had a strong fascination for us. We looked through the arches of the peristyle across the bare Castilian plain to the snow-capped Guadarramas.

“The Escorial lies in that direction,” said the Argentino. “On clear days it can be seen from the palace. Do you suppose when he looks out of window, Don Alfonzo ever thinks about that black marble sarcophagus waiting for him over there?”

That seventh wonder of the world, the Escorial, palace, monastery and mausoleum all in one, was built by Philip II. It is a proper monument to a man who is remembered as having laughed rarely, and loudest when he heard of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The Escorial expresses Philip’s dour personality as no other building that I know expresses any other man’s. From the moment you catch sight of the gloomy pile, built in the shape of a gridiron, in memory of Saint Lawrence, you feel if ever place was haunted, the ghost of Philip haunts that gray grim tragedy in stone.

“I am glad,” said Patsy, “that I saw the Escorial; I shall be glad never to see it again. The places where people have lived for me, rather than those where they are buried. This palace is a thousand times more interesting than the Escorial. Think how much we know about the people who have lived here! When Napoleon first saw this palace, he said to his brother Joseph--he had just casually made him King of Spain: “You will be better lodged than I.”

(Poor Joseph did not enjoy the lodging long; he was glad to escape from it alive and fly to Bordentown, New Jersey, where he lived in semi-royal state at Point Breeze. Here, an old letter preserves the fact, my grandmother Ward dined with him, and wore an “embroidered cambric dress and a lilac turban.”)

“We are interested not only in the people who have lived here, but in those who live here now,” Patsy went on, as a closed carriage drawn by four black mules dashed by. “There go the King’s nieces and nephews.”

The little Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the throne, bowed, smiled and waved his tiny hand in quaint mechanical greeting to whoever might be looking. The youngest child, still happily unconscious of his rank, wriggled in the English nurse’s arms like any other baby out for its airing.

“The boy has learned his part well,” said the Argentino. “He’s not like the little prince Imperial: when the Empress Eugenie threatened to punish him, he made the dreadful counter threat, ‘_je ferai des grimaces au peuple_’ (I will make faces at the people). There you see the difference between real and upstart royalty!”

The day after the Ambassador’s audience seemed to us the coldest of the winter. The trees in the Recoletos had a wedge of snow down one side, the side that faces north and gets the full force of the wind sweeping down from the snow fields of the Guadarramas. Engracia’s vivid face was tingling with the cold when she blew into the Tower with Don Luis that morning and announced that she had come to take us into the country for the day.

“The motor is at the door;” she declared, “luncheon is ordered. We go first to El Pardo to see the royal hunting chateau, and then on to our own shooting box where my husband joins us.”

From our first meeting at Toledo, not a week had passed without some pleasant incident for which we had to thank Engracia.

The city was soon left behind and we were bowling along a road smooth as a billiard table cut through the heart of a wood. The cool breath of the forest was in our faces, the smell of the woods in our nostrils, a mingled perfume of tree, moss, wild creature, and under all, binding them together like ambergris, the mysterious scent of decay. The air was full of wood noises, the peace and calm of the wilderness lay on either side of us not twenty feet away from a road as good as the Paseo Castellana.

“For the first time,” said Patsy, “I envy Don Alfonzo. I should hate to live in a palace, to have the power of life and death, to pass my life under a microscope, but I must say I should like to own El Pardo.”

“Velasquez often stayed here with King Philip and his brothers,” said Don Luis. “No wonder they all liked it. Court etiquette relaxed, the artist was treated as the friend. One understands why he painted so many portraits of the royalties man and boy, in hunting dress, with gun and dog. They were not only tremendous sports, but caramba! in these woods there was freedom, even for a king, even for a genius!”

Engracia on the front seat scanned the covers with keen eyes.

“Look!” she cried. “There is a deer; if I only had my gun, what an easy shot! There goes a red fox scuttling across the road. Ah! that was a hare.” A bright-eyed furry creature gave us one timid glance, flattened its ears and leapt into the bracken.

At the chateau we were refused admittance. Engracia, used to seeing all doors fly open before her, sent for the official in charge, an old friend of hers.

“Don Fulano, these are my friends; they are very anxious to see the chateau. Surely we may come in?” Engracia entreated.

Don Fulano, a grave Castilian, regretted, evaded, apologized, finally confessed. All ordinary rules should be set aside for Engracia, but he himself had received orders from His Majesty that no one should be admitted to the grounds. The work of putting the chateau in order for the bride had begun.

Engracia sparkled with excitement at the news. In that case, of course, we would not dream of asking; how natural, how charming of Don Alfonzo!

As we could not see the house, Don Fulano took us to a neighboring casino where, he said, the royal guests would go for tea. Here we wandered in the garden; Engracia picked a spray of orange blossoms, tucked it in her belt; then, like a fairy godmother, witched us away in her motor to the shooting lodge, where we found her serious husband and her five-year-old son. The shooting box stood on a piece of high cleared ground surrounded by a thick wood; it seemed delightfully sylvan and remote from feverish Madrid.

“We come here three days a week,” Engracia said when we were seated at luncheon. “Whenever the pace gets too rapid in town, I fly out here for a rest.”

Her husband laughed. “For a change of activities,” he said. “Engracia is a good shot, these are her trophies.”

The antlers of a stag hung over the fireplace, the floor was spread with skins. Engracia, pouring tea at the head of the table, nodded towards a shelf laden with silver cups.

“There are his trophies,” she laughed. “I have not yet won a prize.”

“You shot the birds we are eating,” said the husband. “Isn’t that more important?”

After lunch the people who knew how to shoot went off with guns and left me in the lodge with a bright fire crackling in the chimney and Engracia’s little son for company.

It was part of our luck, as Patsy said, that we should have had that sharp crisp day for our expedition, our one experience of life in a Spanish hunting lodge. Even the weather was on our side!

We drove back through the town of El Pardo, a sleepy place on the bank of the Manzanares. Cattle were drinking in the river; in a meadow where we stopped to admire some fine oaks, a flock of half-tame magpies were hopping over the grass.

In spite of April hailstorms it was a forward spring, the fruit trees put on their bridal dresses early to welcome the bride. In the Buen Retiro purple and white violets bloomed so thick that the air was scented. The laburnums shook out long golden clusters, the wistaria unfurled amethyst blossoms. The honey-sweet smell of the acacias in the Recoletos came in at the windows and drove us abroad early and late. It was impossible to stay indoors with the trees in flower, the streets abloom with children and girls. The crowd of vehicles in the Paseo was so great that horses and automobiles moved at a foot pace.

In the noon hour the working men and their families, who in winter had sought the sunny corners for their out-of-door feasts, hunted for the shadow of tree or kiosk. We were on friendly terms with several of these family groups, and had often been invited to join them at their meal. Patsy, consumed with curiosity to know just what they had to eat, made an excuse to stop one day and talk with a mason, just as the man left off work.

“Not two minutes after twelve,” Patsy told us afterwards, “the mason’s wife and children came trotting up with the family dinner. The wife carried a kettle of hot _puchero_, the eldest girl a dish of sausage and garlic, neatly tied up in a clean napkin; one boy had the bread, another the fruit, a middle-sized child plates, spoons and knives for the party. The father said there were few days in the year when his children did not dine with him; he believed in family life. He could not give time to go home, so the family came to him and they all dined together in the open air at the nearest sheltered corner.”

The house where the mason was at work was being swept, garnished and put in apple-pie order for some of the wedding guests, who were to lodge there. It was a good season for the working people. It may be that Madrid is always as fresh, smart and tidy as it was in that year of Grace, 1906, but it seemed to us that everybody tried to add to the general festive air by a little private gilding and varnishing on his own account. Don Jaime bought what he had threatened to buy for years, a new set of teeth. Pedra made herself a scarlet bodice, in which she looked prettier than ever. At the palace an army of furbishers were touching up, silver-plating, gilding and polishing. Work was pushed at the royal stables. The fifty state carriages needed for the wedding pageant, with the harnesses, liveries, and ostrich plumes for the horses, were renewed or furbished up to look as good as new, at a cost of half a million duros.

The hostlers at the studs of Aranjuez had extra work, for the eight cream-colored horses chosen to draw the bridal coach must have coats like satin on the King’s wedding day. Aranjuez, a royal summer residence, is a place lovely with the noise of running waters and the songs of nightingales. The elms here were brought out from England by grim Philip II, who laid out the garden so well that I relented a little towards him when I saw it. The court no longer goes to Aranjuez, and the royal stud is not what it was in the days when camels and lamas were raised there; but it is still an interesting place, if I only had time to tell about it! During the wars of the last century the French destroyed the breeding stables, but in 1842 they were restored and stallions were imported from England.

Extra hands were taken on at the Madrid Tapestry Manufactory. “Everybody who owns a tapestry wants it in order of course,” said the Director who showed us over the factory. A dozen men were at work upon a famous set of ruby velvet hangings emblazoned with silver, priceless things, not only unique but beautiful.

“You will see these hanging from the front of the Duke of Cestus’ palace all through the fêtes,” the director said.

“Suppose it should rain!” I cried horrified.

He shrugged his shoulders; “The Duke takes the risk,” he said. “The king is not married every day.”

The last Friday in May the Princess Ena, her mother and her two brothers entered Spain. We heard then for the first time that she wished to be known in future as Queen Victoria.

“That shows courage,” was Patsy’s comment. “A great name is a good thing to try and live up to, to be sure!”

Don Alfonso met the Princess at the frontier and they all travelled together to El Pardo. All Madrid, at least all fashionable Madrid, rode, drove, motored or ballooned out to meet them. Patsy of course managed to be there with Don Jaime. They described the arrival of the bride as a brilliant scene. All the great people were there in their best clothes; there was an overwhelming amount of gold lace; they all looked and behaved just as they should. “It was more than ever like Lohengrin,” was Patsy’s summing up.

I begged for particulars and learned that the Princess looked beautiful as she drove to the chateau in a carriage drawn by four mules; Don Alfonzo on horseback at her right, the Prince of the Asturias at her left.

“What did she wear?”

“Such golden hair, such a color, such blue, _blue_ eyes!” That was all the satisfaction I got out of Patsy. Don Jaime was incoherent with enthusiasm.

“_Muy guapa, divinamente guapa!_” he kept repeating. “And what a health, grace heaven! Not only for a Princess but if only a simple gel!”

By this time Madrid was upside down with excitement. The hurry-flurry of the final preparations was contagious. Most people really were busy, the others thought they were. Don Jaime got up at twelve o’clock, instead of two, and Patsy insisted, sometimes forgot to go to bed at all. The wedding guests were pouring into the city by every train.

“I am becoming hardened to royalty,” Patsy announced one evening. “I have seen three royal princes and four Ambassadors Extraordinary arrive to-day. The Prince and Princess of Wales and the Crown Prince of Sweden drove straight to the palace.”

All the King’s relations and the direct heirs to thrones stayed at the palace. The other visiting Princes and Ambassadors Extraordinary were lodged at the best private houses. We heard that the owners would accept no pay for the use of them; it was honor enough to be allowed to lend their houses to the King for the use of his guests.

“It may be the custom in other countries,” said Patsy, “but I doubt it. There’s something chivalresque and Spanish about it!”