CHAPTER V.

MADRID—PALACE—BANK—PICTURE-GALLERY.

WHEN Napoleon, as conqueror of Spain, entered the royal palace of Madrid (it was in 1808, his brother Joseph, the new-made king of Spain, being at his side), the great captain paused on the splendid marble staircase; and, as the magnificence of the mansion burst upon him, he turned to his brother, and said, in his epigrammatic way of putting his thoughts, “My brother, you will be better lodged than I.”

It is far more splendid than the Tuileries, or any palace in France, England, Germany, or Italy. It cost more than five millions of dollars a hundred years ago; and that was a much greater sum of money than now. It has been enlarged and embellished from year to year ever since. When we drove up to the grand court, it was so formidably filled with cavalry that we thought the predicted insurrection was imminent, and the army had been summoned to the defence of the palace. Not at all. These mounted soldiers are only the regular guard. In this inner court, or square, the cavalry, in long line and fierce array, are ready for a fight with the revolutionists, if they are brave enough, or mad enough, to try their hands in a tussle with the troops of government, trained and paid to defend the existing order of things. From the windows of the armory this martial parade was imposing, though there were but a few hundreds of mounted men. The officers were clad in polished steel back and breast plates, which flash brightly in the sun. The uniform is brilliant, and the riding splendid. Artillery companies, with cannon mounted, drawn by horses, manœuvre in the square, crossing and recrossing constantly, under the eye of the royal household. A long line of lounging people look on also; and, as they go and come all day, an impression is certainly insinuated by this military parade that the government is always ready to take care of itself.

The palace stands on the verge of a height that commands a wide and exciting view of the plains of Castile. The thought of what those plains have seen in the last two thousand years makes them of more than romantic interest to one who takes in the past with the present. What successive tides of conquest have there ebbed and flowed! To know that Charles V. and Napoleon and Wellington have followed one another up those shaded avenues to this summit, with their legions, is enough to invest them with grandeur.

And here in this armory is the very sword that Gonzalo, of Cordova, wore, and the sword with which Ferdinand, the saint and hero, smote the Moors; and the sword of Charles V., and the complete suit of armor which the great emperor often wore, and in which he was painted by Titian; and the suit of armor worn by Boabdil, the last Moorish king who sat on the throne in this Alhambra, and who left it behind, doubtless, when he delivered his sword into the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella, at the foot of the hill on which I am writing. We had thought revolvers a modern invention, but here are elegant pistols, on the same principle, used in the seventeenth century, and now as good as new. A crown, a sword, a helmet, or something else, illustrates the life of all the heroes of Spanish history; and the number of warlike memorials here displayed is about three thousand. How men managed to fight while clad from head to foot in these suits of steel armor is to me, a non-combatant, one of the mysteries of the art of war. We read of tournaments, and—more to be wondered at—of battle-fields, where all the knights are clothed from head to foot in the identical garments that are now before us, or in others made after the same pattern; and how, with such a weight of steel and so constrained in the freedom of action, they could manage to wield their swords and thrust their spears, I do not understand. They were not men of more physical power than our soldiers. Some of them were less than the present average size of men. But they were mighty men with the sword. The Toledo blade was quite equal to that of Damascus; and the helmet was often insufficient to save the brain, when the sword, in a strong hand, came down, cleaving through steel and skull.

Two or three hundred horses stood in the stables; and the grooms are only too happy, for a consideration to be paid at every door, to show these pampered and famous steeds. Each one of them has a name, in large letters, over his head, and on his blanket. Spain has some celebrated breeds of horses, but, like every thing else in Spain, they are run out, and the stock is only kept up by importation. It is so even with the _Merino_ sheep, which belongs to Spain, but would have been extinct ere this, if it had not been perpetuated and improved abroad. You may see five hundred finer horses any pleasant afternoon in the Central Park, in New York, than any one of these pet horses of royalty. But you will never see, I hope, such a wealth and folly of equipage as the hundred carriages, and more sets of harness, and plumes, and liveries, and coachmen’s hats, and velvet saddles, and embroidered hammer-cloths, which fill long apartments, and are shown together with the gilded chairs of state in which the king or queen is borne by hand in processions, and the chariot on which the royal personage is enthroned, with a canopy overhead, trumpeters below, and herald angels above, for the coronation parade. The carriages used by successive monarchs are here preserved in long lines of antiquated grandeur, even to the one in which Crazy Jane, the widow, carried about with her the corpse of her handsome husband, Philip the First. Queer woman that she was, jealous to insanity, she would not let her husband be buried while she lived; and now she lies by his side, down here in Granada, in the cathedral, and her marble effigy gives her an expression so gentle and loving, you would not believe she was ever the victim of the fiercest and meanest passion that makes hell of a woman’s heart.

I have been taking you with me through the palace and armory and royal stables, to give you a type of Spain. The poorest of all the governments, compared with its population and resources, it has these contrasts of wealth and poverty that mark its want of judgment, principle, and power. In the stables is invested a capital of more than half a million of dollars! This prodigality is royal, but also absurd. The people see it, and the world has gone by the age, when gilt trappings and gorgeous pageants struck the multitudes dumb with the reverence of royal glory.

The city of Madrid is well built, and has the appearance of a modern French town. Indeed, it is more French than Spanish in its out-of-door look, and the French language is very largely spoken in the shops and private families of culture. The intercourse now so frequent and ready with France by means of the railway and telegraph, and the abolition of all passport regulations and annoyances, have given the Spanish capital a start, and it will undoubtedly make rapid advancement.

But there is nothing rapid in Spain just yet. Opposite the hotel in Madrid where I was staying, an old building had been torn down to make room for another. Workmen were engaged in removing the debris to renew the foundation. You would suppose that horses and carts, or wheelbarrows and shovels, would be in use. Such modern improvements had not reached the capital of Spain. One man with a broad hoe hauled the dirt into a basket made of grass, holding half a bushel; another man took the basket and carried it a rod to another man, who handed it to another a few feet above him, and he emptied it on a pile of dirt up there, and sent the basket back to be filled again. And so, day after day, a job that with our tools and appliances would be done in a few hours, was here spun out indefinitely. Yet the palaces and cathedrals and fortresses of the southern climes have all been erected at this snail’s pace, numbers and cheapness making up for enterprise and force. In Paris, in the street, a small steam-engine was at work to mix mortar, and the ease with which the process was put through revealed the secret of the wonderfully rapid transformations going on in that ever increasingly beautiful city. Here in Spain, to this day, where there are smooth, good roads for wheels, they still put a couple of baskets across the back of a donkey, and fill them with dirt or brick or stones, and so transport them, even when they are putting up the largest buildings. The architecture of Spain is more imposing than that of any other country in Europe. It is the climate that makes men differ so much in their physical as well as mental manifestations.

To see the mode of doing business in Spain, take the simple story of one day’s work of mine in getting some money in Madrid. Holding a “letter of credit” which is promptly honored in any part of the world, and is just as good for the gold in Cairo or Calcutta as it is in London, I went in search of a Spanish banker to draw a hundred pounds sterling, say five hundred dollars. Anastazio led the way, and soon brought us to the house where the man of money held his court. Being shown up stairs, through two or three passages and an ante-chamber, we were at length ushered into _the_ presence. Señor Romero, the banker, was a man of fifty, dressed, or rather undressed, in a loose morning gown or wrapper, a red cap on his head, slippers on his feet, and a pipe in his mouth. A clerk was sitting near to do his bidding. I presented my letter. It was carefully read, first by the clerk, then by the principal. A long consultation followed, carried on in a low tone, and in Spanish, quite unintelligible to me, if it had been audible. It was finally determined to let me have the money, and after an amount of palaver sufficient for the negotiation of a government loan from the Rothschilds, and taking the necessary receipt and draft from me, I was presented with a check on the Bank of Spain. When I had fancied the delays were over, they had only just begun. The bank was in a distant part of the city, and thither we hastened, taking a cab, to save all the time we could. The bank is a large and imposing edifice of white stone. In the vestibule was a guard of soldiers. A porter stopped us as we were about to enter the inner door. We must await our turn as some one else was inside! One at a time was the rule. Benches were there, and we sat down, admiring silently the _moderation_ of banking business in Spain. At length our turn came. We entered a room certainly a hundred feet long. Tables extended the whole length. Behind them sat clerks very busy doing nothing. We were told to pass on, and on, to the lower end of the room, where we entered another, the back parlor, or private room of the officers. They were closeted out of sight, smoking, of course, and giving their wisdom to the business in hand. I presented the check at a hole out of which a hand was put to take it. I saw nothing more. We sat down and waited. Waiting is a Spanish institution. Everybody waits. Nobody gets any thing without it. We waited, and waited, and waited, and at last the little hole opened again, the mysterious hand was thrust out with the——money, you suppose; not a bit, but with the check approved. We must present it at the table or counter for payment. Returning to the long room, we presented the check, and were directed to the proper bureau. And here, of course, we got the money. Not yet. Bills of the Bank of Spain were given us, and when I required the gold, I was told that gold was paid only at the bureau of the bank in another street. Thither we now pursued our weary way. It was a rear entrance of the same bank building. A long line of gold hunters was ahead of us. We stood in the cue, and at last were inside. In the ante-room we had to wait so long that we took to the bench again. At last, admission being granted, we were told that only _one_ could be admitted with a single draft. We sent Antanazio in, and returned to the door. Here we were told that no _exit_, only _entrance_, was allowed at the rear! Explaining the case, we got out, and returning to the front, patiently as possible, we looked for the appearance of Antanazio loaded with gold. At last, for the longest delay has an end, the man emerged with the money in his hands. It had cost me from two to three hours in the middle of the day to draw this money, which in New York, London, Paris, or any city out of Spain, would have cost five minutes or less. And I have been so particular in the detail, because it lets you into the mode of doing business in the capital city, and the greatest bank of this country.

Until the French and English companies pushed railways into Spain, travel and mails were on the slow-coach system. When the royal person made a journey, it was like the march of an army, such was the retinue required for comfort and display. And as the railways are now completed only along a few great routes, the mails are largely carried in the diligences and coaches expressly made for the purpose. It is said, and there is no reason to disbelieve it, that down to the year 1840, when a Spaniard proposed to himself the danger and toil of a journey, it was his invariable custom to summon his lawyer and make his will; his physician, to learn if his health were adequate to the undertaking; and finally his priest, to confess his sins and get timely absolution. It is not regarded now so formidable an excursion to go across the kingdom, but the native travel is so little that the railroads are very unprofitable. If it were not for _freight_ they would not be supported at all. They have, however, greatly increased the correspondence of the country, and the rate of postage has been reduced, so that it is about as low as in other European countries. But the government keeps a sharp look-out upon the letters that come and go. In times when conspiracies are snuffed in every breeze, it would be quite unsafe for any one to entrust a secret in a letter going by mail. A government spy would be sure to have his hand on it and his eye in it, before it reached its address. The letters in the post-office at Madrid are held four hours after the arrival of the mail, before they are ready for delivery. The mail from the north, the London and Paris mail, comes in at ten o’clock A.M. We must _wait_ until two o’clock P.M. for our letters. Then a list of all letters not directed to some particular street and number, or to some post-office box, is posted up in the hall of the office,—an alphabetical list. You look over the list, and if you find a letter for yourself, you ask for it at the proper window. If you are a stranger, your passport is demanded. But you had been told before coming to Spain that no passports are required, and now you must have one merely to get your letters. In default of a passport, you must in some way establish your identity. This is not always easy in a foreign country, but then nothing is easy in Spain. I got no letter from the post-office addressed to me while I was in Spain! The noted rebel, General Prim, was a dreadful bugbear to the authorities, and all letters addressed to me were suspected by the local postmasters to be intended for the General. They were therefore sent to the government, or otherwise disposed of. No efforts to recover them were successful. Much good may they do the people who had to read them. Some of them had hard work, I know.

Telegraphs are spreading over Spain, as they are over the world, civilized or not. Spain is one of the last countries where they could become popular; but the business of any kingdom that has relations with the outside world must be armed with the telegraph, or it cannot hold its own. In traversing wild and secluded parts of the Peninsula, I have been surprised by finding the telegraph poles set up, and the wire stretching on, over hill and dale. Spain is slow, and the telegraph is not demanded here by the energy and enterprise of the people as it is elsewhere. Despatches of more than a hundred words are not sent. To or from any part of the Peninsula ten words may be sent for about twenty-five cents, twenty words for fifty cents, thirty words for seventy-five cents; but the count includes each word written by the sender, date, address, signature, and if a word is underscored it counts two. Great precautions are taken to insure accuracy in transmission, and a small extra charge is made for delivery.

Before coming to Spain I had been told that the picture-gallery in Madrid is the richest in the world. It seemed to me an idle tale, the boast of boasting Spaniards, repeated until perhaps somebody believed, as I certainly did not. But having seen it, day after day, for a week, I cheerfully cast a vote in its favor. It is superior to any other in Europe; and, of course, in the world. It is not complete in the series of art studies. There are gaps of time which the student may desire to see filled. But there are few who visit these great European galleries as learners. The world comes to see them for the momentary pleasure to be found in the contemplation of the pictures. And they will be astonished to find that so many and so splendid pictures have been gathered and preserved in the Spanish capital.

The gallery is open to the public only on _Sundays_, but the director allows it to be shown every day to strangers, who are expected to give a fee to the attendants. On rainy days it is always shut; an obvious reason is, that visitors will soil the floors with their shoes, but a better reason is that the gallery is so badly lighted that in gloomy weather some of the pictures are quite invisible.

Who would suppose that sixty pictures by Reubens are to be seen in one gallery in Spain! and fifty-three by Teniers; and ten grand pictures by Raphael; and forty-six by Murillo; and sixty-four by Velasquez, some of them very large and magnificent; and twenty-two by Van Dyck; and _forty-three of Titian_, who spent three years in Madrid, by invitation of Charles V.; ten of Claude Lorraine; and twenty-five by Paul Veronese; and twenty-three by Snyder; and more than thirty by Tintoretto!!! There are more than two thousand here. Among so many, of course, some are good for nothing, as in every large collection. But one gallery in the world has masterpieces only,—that is in the Vatican. And _there_ you have less than a hundred pictures, all told. But they are all great. Here, as in Florence and Dresden, good, bad, and indifferent have been hung together; and perhaps the contrast makes the good appear better, and the bad worse.

Murillo, the greatest of Spanish painters, is here in his glory. We have associated his name with his “Immaculate Conceptions” more than with any other of his works. One copy was brought to America a few years ago, and is now in the gallery of W. H. Aspinwall, Esq. A duplicate is in the Louvre, at Paris. And still another is in Madrid. These are three originals, undoubtedly, and they have been copied in every style of human art, especially in Paris, until they are as common as heads of the Saviour, all the world over. Yet this is not the _Murillo_,—not his “Conception.” It is a grand conception by the artist, but it is not the great picture of that subject on which, more than any other, his fame is founded. This is in another attitude, with another expression; the Virgin is looking downward, and not gazing, in an ecstasy, heavenward. The artist, in this picture, imagines the Virgin Mary at the moment she becomes conscious of the fact that by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost she is to be the mother of the Son of God! The accessories of the painting are of no account, but into the countenance of the Virgin he would throw the expression such as a spotless maiden might be supposed to have when first alive to such a wondrous, awful, yet transporting and delightful thought, “I,—I,—of all the daughters of Israel, am the highly favored among women. Of me is to be the Messiah! I am the mother of the promised Saviour!”

Not far from this is a picture of the Vision of St. Bernard, exhibiting marvellous skill. The head is one of those prodigies of the painter’s art, that is to haunt the memory in after years. Like the “Communion of St. Jerome,” in the Vatican, to see it is to have it photographed in the mysterious chamber of the brain. Raphael painted one of his most remarkable pictures, “The Christ sinking under His Cross,” for a convent in Sicily. It is said by some to be a greater work than the “Transfiguration,” which is held to be the finest picture existing. To me, this in Madrid is the most impressive, the most nearly perfect. It is taken at the moment when Simon, the Cyrenian, attempts to lift the crushing cross, while the patient sufferer, with a face radiant with love and holy resignation, says to the weeping women near, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.”

Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V. is sublime,—like a majestic mountain, or a mighty rock in a desert. The solemn grandeur of the picture is indescribable. The man and his times, a whole volume of biography and history, on one grand tableau, seen and remembered. Perhaps it would be as well to forget the women that Titian seems to have been fond of painting. Two of them here are not less perfect, many think they are more perfect, than the Venus of the Tribune. In other times the zealous priesthood condemned these nudities to the flames, with heretics, as corrupters of the people; but some have been saved.

The picture that I desired more than any other to carry away and cherish as a life-long treasure, is one by Correggio. After his resurrection the Saviour appeared to Mary, and she supposed it was the gardener; but Jesus, turning, said to her, “MARY,”—and the truth burst upon her, it was her Lord! That moment of transport is the time the artist has seized for the representation of the kneeling and rejoicing Mary and Jesus. The love and tenderness in his look, the joy and reverence in hers! What beauty, too: how the yellow hair falls in living lustre on her fair shoulders, and her eyes speak the full expression of her yearning soul. “Jesus said unto her, ‘MARY.’”

In another hall I found a picture of great merit, unmentioned by the guide-book, and by a painter unknown to me even by name before. It is a Virgin and Child, with four venerable saints kneeling before them. The artist is Bias del Prado. Few pictures in any gallery deserve more admiration than this. The heads of the old men are done with great power, and the thoughtful feeling in the face of the Virgin shows that the artist had both the genius to conceive, and the skill to create, an idea on the canvas, quite equal to the best of many others who have won a world-wide fame. And scattered through these long apartments, in narrow halls and basement rooms, in bad lights, and some almost in the dark, are many gems of rare value, “blushing unseen,” and worth a better place, and deserving wider renown. It would be tedious to read even a brief mention of the celebrated pictures of the famous old masters here, and that form so large a part of the attractions of Europe.

There are very few minor galleries in Madrid. Probably there has been a lack both of private wealth and taste to make collections. In one of these we found Murillo’s “Queen Isabel of Hungary healing the Lepers,” a picture that would be admired as one of his greatest and best, if it were not so true to life as to make one almost sick to look at it. But this is the height of the highest art. Birds have been deceived by painted fruit. Bees have sought honey in flowers on the walls. And perhaps this cheating of the senses, even to disgust, is the perfection of human skill. But the imitation of the _material_ is easy. If portrait painting were merely the reproduction of the form and features, it is the lowest department of the art. But to conceive the expression that belongs to the character of a saint, a prophet, a hero, a sibyl, a Madonna, and thus to create an ideal that will demonstrate its reality and truthfulness to an unbelieving or indifferent world, challenging admiration and asserting its own immortality, this is the attribute of genius only, and such is not the birth of every day or age.