Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

In the Prado one can scarcely walk. The gardens are crowded by thousands of boys; the theatres are full of music; every one hears the murmur of fountains, the swish of skirts, the shouting of children, and the cantering of horses. It is not only the movement and the gaiety of a promenade: it is the pomp, the uproar, the confusion, the feverish delight of a fête. The city is deserted during those hours. At dusk the whole of that immense crowd turns back into the great Alcalá Street, and then from the fountain of Cybele, as far as the Puerta del Sol, one sees only a sea of heads, furrowed by a line of carriages as far as the eyes can reach.

For promenades—and, in fact, for theatres and spectacular exhibitions—Madrid is, without doubt, one of the first cities of the world. Besides the great opera-house, which is very large and rich, besides the theatre for comedy, the theatre of the Zarzuela, the Madrid circus—all of which are first class in point of size, appointments, and attendance—there is a circle of smaller theatres for dramatic companies, for equestrian exhibitions, musical organizations, and vaudevilles—parlor theatres, theatres with boxes and galleries, theatres, big and little, for high and low, to suit all purses and all tastes, and for all hours of the night; and there is not one among so many that is not crowded at every performance.

Then there are the cock-pits, the bull-rings, the popular balls, and the games. Some days there are as many as twenty different entertainments, commencing at noon and continuing almost to dawn. The opera, of which the Spanish are passionately fond, is always magnificent, not only at the time of the Carnival, but at all seasons. While I was at Madrid, Fricci sang at the Zarzuela and Stagno at the circus; both were supported by very able artists, with excellent orchestra and splendid stage-setting.

The most celebrated singers in the world make an effort to sing in the capital of Spain, for artists are there sought after and fêted. The passion for music is the only one which is able to hold its own against the passion for bull-fights. Comedy is in great vogue also. L’Hatzembuch, Breton de los Herreros, Tamayo, Ventura, D’Ayala, Gutiérrez, and a great many other dramatic writers, some living and some dead, who are known even beyond Spain, have enriched the modern stage by a large number of comedies, which, although they do not bear that strong national stamp which has immortalized the dramatic works of the great century of Spanish literature, are nevertheless full of life, wit, and cleverness, without the unwholesome tendency of the French comedy. But, although they perform modern comedies, they are not unmindful of the old. On the anniversaries of Lope de Vega, Calderón, Morito, Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Francesco de Rojas, and the other great lights of the Spanish theatre their masterpieces are performed with solemn pomp. The actors, however, do not seem able to satisfy the authors, and show the defects of our own actors—too much action, ranting, and excessive sobbing. Many even prefer our actors, because they find in them a greater variety of cadence and inflection. Besides tragedy and comedy, they perform a dramatic composition that is thoroughly Spanish—the zainete, of which Ramon de la Cruz was the master. It is a sort of farce which in great part consists of tableaux of Andalusian costumes, with national and popular characters, and actors who imitate the dress, speech, and customs of the period in an admirable manner. The comedies are all published, and are eagerly read even by the lowest classes, and the names of the authors are very popular. Dramatic literature, in a word, remains to-day, as it was in former times, the richest and most general.

There is also a great passion for the zarzuela, which is usually represented in the theatre to which it has given the name, and is a composition midway between comedy and melodrama, between opera and vaudeville, with an easy interchange of prose and verse, of recitation and singing, of the serious and burlesque—a composition exclusively Spanish and very delightful. In some theatres they perform political comedies, a mixture of song and prose after the style of Scalvini’s “reviews;” satirical farces to take off the questions of the day; a sort of sacred tableaux, with scenes from the Passion of Our Lord, during Holy Week; and balls and dances and pantomimes of every sort.

In the small theatres they give three or four performances a night, one after the other, and new spectators come in for each performance. At the famous Capellanes Theatre every night in the year they dance a can-can, scandalous beyond the wildest imagination, and there crowd the dissolute young men, the fast women, and the old libertines with wrinkled noses, armed with monocles, spectacles, opera-glasses, and every sort of optical instrument which helps to bring nearer the forms advertised on the stage, as Aleardi says.

After the theatres are closed one finds all the cafés crowded, the city illuminated, the streets filled with countless carriages, just as in the early evening. One feels a little sad on coming out of a theatre in a foreign country, there are so many beautiful creatures, and not one of them deigns to bestow so much as a glance upon one. But an Italian finds one comfort in Madrid. The actors almost always sing Italian operas, and they sing in Italian, and so, as you return to your lodging, you hear them humming in the words of your own language the airs which you have known from infancy. You hear a palpito here, a fiero genitor there, a tremenda vendetta yonder; and these words are like the greetings of a friendly people. But to reach your house what a thick hedge of petticoats you must climb over! The palm is given to Paris, and doubtless she deserves it, but Madrid is not to be laughed at. What boldness! what words of fire! what imperious provocations! Finally, you arrive before your house to find that you have no door-key.

“Do not be disturbed,” says the first citizen you meet. “Do you see that lantern at the foot of the street? The man who carries it is a sereno, and the serenos have keys for all the houses.” Then you cry “Sereno!” at the top of your voice, and the lantern approaches, and a man with an enormous bunch of keys in his hands gives you a searching glance, opens the door, lights you to the second story, and bids you good-night. So it is every night; for a franc a month you escape the annoyance of carrying the door-key in your pocket. The sereno is a public officer, and there is one in every street, and each of them has a whistle. If the house takes fire or thieves force your lock, you have only to throw up a window and cry, “Sereno! help!” The sereno who is in the street sounds his whistle, the serenos of the neighboring streets whistle, and in a few moments all the serenos in the district run to your assistance. At whatever hour of the night you awake you hear the voice of the sereno announcing the time, or if it is fine weather, or if it is raining or going to rain. How many things he knows! and how many he never tells! this nocturnal sentinel. How many whispered farewells he hears from the lips of lovers! How many little letters flutter from the windows before his eyes! how many little keys fall on the pavement! and how many hands wave mysteriously in the air! Muffled lovers glide through narrow doorways, and lighted windows are suddenly darkened, and black shadows vanish along the walls at the first streaks of dawn.

I have spoken only of the theatres; at Madrid there is a concert, one may safely say, every day. There are concerts in the theatres, concerts in the academy halls, concerts in the streets, and then a company of strolling musicians who deafen you at all hours of the day. After all this one has a right to ask why it is that a people so infatuated with music that it seems as necessary, so to speak, as the air they breathe, have never produced any great master of the art. The Spanish will not be comforted.

One could cover many pages if he were to describe the fine suburbs of Madrid, the gates, the parks beyond the city, the squares, the historic streets; and, if nothing were willingly to be omitted, the splendid cafés, the “Imperial” in the square of the Puerto del Sol and the Fornos in Alcalá Street, two vast saloons, in which, if the tables were removed, a company of dragoons could be drilled, and the innumerable other cafés which one finds at every step, where two hundred dancers could be easily accommodated; the magnificent shops which occupy the entire ground-floor of vast buildings, and among them the great Havana tobacco warehouse (a meeting-place for gentlemen), filled with cigars, little and big, round, flat, pointed, and twisted, winding like snakes, bent like bows, hook-shaped, of every shape, for every taste, and at every price, enough to content the maddest fancy of a smoker and to stupefy the entire population of a city; spacious markets; the grand royal palace, in which the Quirinal and the Pitti Palace might hide without fear of discovery; the great street Atocha, which crosses the city; the immense garden of Buen Retiro, with its great lake, with its hills crowned with Moorish domes, and its thousands of rare birds.... But, worthy of attention above everything else, the museums of armor and painting, and the Naval Museum, to each of which one might easily dedicate a volume.

The armory of Madrid is one of the most beautiful in the world. As you enter the vast hall your heart gives a leap, your blood tingles, and you stand still on the threshold like one demented. A complete army of cavalry in full armor, with drawn swords and lances in rest, gleaming and terrible, rushes toward you like a legion of spectres. It is an army of emperors, kings, and dukes, clad in the most splendid armor that has ever left the hands of man, upon which pours a flood of light from eighteen enormous windows, producing a marvellous play and flashing of light, dancing sunbeams, and dazzling colors. The walls are covered with cuirasses, swords, halberds, jousting-spears, huge blunderbusses, and enormous lances which reach from the floor to the ceiling. Banners of all the armies of the world hang from the ceiling—trophies of Lepanto, of San Quintino, of the War of Independence, of the wars of Africa, Cuba, and Mexico. On every side there is a profusion of glorious standards, of illustrious arms, of marvellous works of art, of effigies, emblems, and immortal names.

One does not know what first to admire. One runs first here, then there, looking at everything and seeing nothing, and becomes tired before one has really begun. In the middle of the hall is the equestrian armor, the cavaliers and their horses, drawn up in line by threes and by twos, and all wheeling just like a squadron on the march. Among the arms one at first sight discovers those of Philip II., of Charles V., Philibert Emmanuel, and Christopher Columbus. Here and there, on pedestals, one sees helmets, casques, morions, gorgets, and shields which belonged to kings of Arragon, Castile, and Navarre, adorned with very fine reliefs in silver representing battles, mythological subjects, symbolic figures, trophies, grotesques, and garlands: some of these are works of the greatest power, the workmanship of the most famous artists of Europe; others are uncouth in form, with excessive ornament, with crests, visors, and colossal top-pieces. Then there are the little helmets and cuirasses of princes, swords and shields the gifts of popes and monarchs. In the midst of the knightly armor one sees statues dressed in the fantastic costumes of the American Indians, of Africans, and of Chinese, with feathers and bells, bows and quivers; then, too, horrible warmasks and the dresses of mandarins of gold woven with silk. Along the walls is other armor—the arms of the marquis de Pescara, of the poet Garcilasso de la Vega, of the marquis de Santa Cruz, the gigantic armor of John Frederick, the magnanimous duke of Saxony, and scattered here and there are Arabian, Persian, and Moorish banners falling to decay.

In the glass cases there is a collection of swords which make your blood run cold when you hear the names of those who wielded them—the sword of the prince de Conde, the sword of Isabella the Catholic, the sword of Philip II., the sword of Hernando Cortez, of the count-duke d’Olivares, of John of Austria, of Gonzalez of Cordova, of Pizarro; the sword of the Cid, and, a little farther along, the helmet of King Boabdil of Granada, the shield of Francis I., and the camp-chair of Charles V. In a corner of the hall are arranged the trophies of the Ottoman armies—helmets studded with gems, spurs, gilded stirrups, the collars of slaves, daggers, scimitars in velvet sheaths, with rings of gold, embroidered and inlaid with pearl; the spoils of Ali Pacha, who was slain on the flag-ship at the battle of Lepanto, his caftan brocaded with gold and silver, his girdle, sandals, and shields, the spoils of his sons, and the banners stripped from the galleys. On another side are votive crowns, crosses, and the necklaces of Gothic princes. In another room are articles taken from the Indians of Mariveles, the Moors of Cagyan and Mindanao, and the savages of the most remote islands of Oceanica; collars of snail-shells, stone pipes, wooden idols, reed flutes; ornaments made of the claws of insects; slaves’ garments made of palm-leaves with characters scribbled on them to serve as fetiches; poisoned arrows and axes of the executioners. And then, wherever one turns, there are royal saddles, coats of mail, culverins, historic drums, shoulder-belts, inscriptions, memorials and images of every time and every land, from the fall of the Goths to the battle of Tetuan, from Mexico to China—a storehouse of treasures and of masterpieces from which one goes out amazed and exhausted, to return to consciousness as if it were a dream, with one’s memory weary and confused.

If a great Italian poet shall one day wish to sing the discovery of the New World, nowhere will he be able to find so powerful an inspiration as in the Naval Museum of Madrid, because in no other place will he feel so profoundly the original air of the American wilderness and the subtle presence of Columbus. There is a room called the “Cabinet of Discoveries:” the poet on entering this room, if he really has the soul of a poet, will reverently uncover his head. Wherever one’s glance falls in the room one sees an image which stirs his blood. One is no longer in Europe nor in the century; one is in the America of the fifteenth century; one breathes that air, one sees those places, and lives that life. In the middle is a high trophy of the arms taken from the Indians of the newly-discovered land—shields covered with the skins of wild beasts, arrows of cane with feathered notches, wooden swords with sheaths woven of twigs, with hilts ornamented with horsehair, and scalp-locks falling in long streamers; clubs, spears, enormous axes, great swords with teeth like those of a saw, shapeless sceptres, gigantic quivers, garments of monkey-skin, dirks of kings and executioners, arms of the savages from Cuba, Mexico, New Caledonia, the Carolinas, and the most distant islands of the Pacific—black, uncouth, and horrible, suggesting to the imagination confused visions of terrible struggles in the mysterious shadows of the virgin forest, in an endless labyrinth of unknown trees. Among the spoils of the savage world are pictures and memorials of the Conquerors: here the portrait of Columbus, there that of Pizarro, farther on that of Hernando Cortez; on one of the walls the map of America by Juan de la Cosa, drawn during the second voyage of the Genoese upon an ample canvas dotted with figures, colors, and signs which were intended to direct expeditions into the interior of the country. Near the map is a bit of the tree under which the conqueror of Mexico lay on that famous “night of sorrow” after he had opened a passage through the immense army that awaited his coming in the valley of Otumba; also a vase turned from the trunk of the tree near which the celebrated Captain Cook died; models of the canoes, boats, and rafts used by the natives; a circle of portraits of illustrious navigators, in the middle of which is a large painting of the three ships of Christopher Columbus, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, at the moment when America was discovered, with all the sailors standing on the decks waving their arms and cheering lustily, greeting the new land and giving thanks to God. There is no word which expresses the emotion which one feels at the sight of that spectacle, no tear worth that which then trembles on the eyelash, no soul that does not at that moment feel itself ennobled.

The other rooms, of which there are ten, are also full of precious objects. In the room next to the Cabinet of Discoveries there are collected the relics of the battle of Trafalgar—the painting of the Holy Trinity which was in the cabin of the “Royal Trinidad,” and which was rescued by the English a few minutes before the ship went to the bottom; the hat and sword of Frederick de Gravina, the admiral of the Spanish fleet, who was killed that day; a large model of the Santa Anna, one of the few ships that escaped from the battle; banners and portraits of admirals, and paintings which depict episodes of that tremendous struggle. And besides the relics of Trafalgar there are many other things which affect the mind no less powerfully, as a chalice of wood from the tree called ceiba, in whose shade was celebrated the first mass at Havana, on the 19th of March, 1519; Captain Cook’s cane; idols of the savages; flint chisels with which the Indians of Porto Rico fashioned their idols before the discovery of the island. And beyond this there is another great room where, on entering, one finds one’s self in the midst of a fleet of galleys, caravels, feluccas, brigantines, sloops, and frigates—ships of all seas and of all ages, armed, gayly decked, and provisioned, so that they need only a wind to put to sea and scatter to all parts of the world. In the other rooms there is an exhibition of machinery, ordnance, and naval armor; paintings which represent all the maritime exploits of the Spanish people; more portraits of admirals, navigators, and mariners; trophies from Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, crowded and piled one above another, so that one must pass them on the run to see everything before nightfall. On coming out of the Naval Museum it seems as if you are just returning from a voyage around the world, so much have you lived in those few hours.

There is also at Madrid a large museum of artillery, an immense museum of the industrial arts, a fine archeological museum, a remarkable museum of natural history, as well as a thousand other things that are worth seeing; but it is necessary, however, to sacrifice the description of them for the marvellous Museum of the Fine Arts.

The day on which one enters for the first time a museum like that of Madrid forms a landmark in a man’s life. It is an important event, like marriage, the birth of a child, or the entrance upon an inheritance; for one feels the effect of it to the end of one’s life. And this is true because a museum like that of Madrid or that of Florence or that of Rome is a world: a day passed within its walls is a year of life: a year of life stirred by all the passions which are able to animate one in real life: love, religion, patriotism, glory; a year of life in the enjoyment it gives, in the instruction it imparts, in the thoughts it suggests, in the pleasure to be derived from its memory in the future; a year of life in which one reads a thousand volumes, feels a thousand sensations, and meets with a thousand adventures. These thoughts were in my mind as I approached with rapid steps the Museum of the Fine Arts, situated to the left of the Prado as one comes from the street Alcalá; and so great was my pleasure that on reaching the doorway I stopped and said to myself, “Let us see: what have you ever done in your life to deserve an entrance here? Nothing! Well, then, on that day when some misfortune comes upon you bow your head and consider that your account is balanced.”

As I entered I unconsciously raised my hat: my heart beat fast and a slight shiver ran through me from head to foot. In the first room there are only some large paintings of Luca Giordano. I passed them by. In the second I was no longer myself, and, instead of staying to look at paintings one by one, I postponed that examination and made the circuit of the gallery almost on the run. In the second room there are some paintings of Goya, the last great Spanish painter; in the third, which is as large as a square, are masterpieces of the great masters. On entering you see on one side the Madonnas of Murillo, on the other the saints of Ribera; a little farther on, the portraits of Velasquez; in the middle of the hall, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, and at the end those of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni. You turn back and enter a great room to the right. There you see at the end other paintings of Raphael; on the right and left, more of Velasquez, Titian, and Ribera; opposite the entrance, Rubens, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Murillo. Another is devoted to the French school—Poussin, Daguet, Lorraine. In two other rooms of vast size the walls are covered with paintings of Breughel, Teniers, Jordaens, Rubens, Durer, Schoen, Mongs, Rembrandt, and Bosch. In the other rooms, of equal size, there is a medley of the works of Joanes, Carbajal, Herrera, Luca Giordano, Carducci, Salvator Rosa, Menendez, Cano, and Ribera.

You walk for an hour and have seen nothing. For the first hour a war is waging: the masterpieces struggle for the possession of your soul. The Conception of Murillo blots out Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew with a flood of light; Ribera’s Saint James obliterates Joanes’ Saint Stephen; Titian’s Charles V. dooms the Count-Duke de Olivares of Velasquez; Raphael’s Pasmo de Sicilia casts all the paintings around it in the shade; the Drunkards of Velasquez, with their reflection of bacchanalian joy, somewhat disconcert the faces of the neighboring saints and princes; Rubens overthrows Van Dyck; Paolo Veronese triumphs over Tiepolo, and Goya kills Madrazo.

The conquered turn against those still weaker than themselves, or in their turn win lesser victories over their conquerors. It is a struggle of the miracles of art, in the midst of which one’s restless soul trembles like a flame fanned by a thousand gusts of wind, and one’s heart expands with a sense of pride in the power of the genius of man.

When the first enthusiasm has subsided one begins to admire. In the midst of an army of such artists, each of whom would require a volume for himself, I restrict myself to the Spaniards, and among these to the painters who aroused within me the most profound admiration and whose canvases I remember most distinctly. The most recent of these is Goya, who was born toward the end of the last century. As a painter he is the most Spanish of the Spaniards, the painter of toreros, of the people, of contrabandists, hags, and robbers, of the War of Independence, and of that old Spanish life which melted away before his very eyes. He was a fiery son of Arragon, of iron temper, passionately devoted to bull-fights, so that even in the closing years of his life, when he was living at Bordeaux, he was accustomed to come once a week to Madrid with no other reason than to witness those spectacles; and he would go back like an arrow, not even so much as saluting his friends. A genius rigorous, cynical, imperious, awe-inspiring—who in the heat of his violent inspirations would in a few moments cover a wall or a canvas with figures, giving the finishing touches with whatever came to hand—sponges, brooms, or sticks; who in sketching the face of a person whom he hated would insult it; who painted a picture as he would have fought a battle; very bold in composition, an original strong colorist, the creator of an inimitable style, with frightful shadows, hidden lights, and resemblances distorted and yet true to life. He was a great master in the expression of all terrible effects of anger, hate, desperation, and the thirst for blood; an athletic, turbulent, indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velasquez, fantastical like Hogarth, vigorous like Rembrandt, the last ruddy spark of Spanish genius. There are several of his paintings in the museum of Madrid,

Of Ribera—whom we know also by the name of Spagnoletto—there are enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn out and exhausted, clothed in rags—yellow with the deathly pallor of corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art—ah, it is not that! In those faces there is none of that celestial light, that immortal ray of the soul, which reveals with sublime pathos, noble aspirations, those “subtle flashes” and “limitless desires”—that light which draws the eye from the sores and calls down the thought of heaven. There is only the crude suffering which causes repulsion and fear; there are only weariness of life and the presentiment of death; only that fleeting mortal life without a suggestion of the immortality drawing near. There is not one of those saints whose image one recalls with affection: one looks and is chilled at heart, but the heart beats none the quicker. Ribera never loved. Yet as I hurried through the halls of the museum, in spite of that strong repugnance which many of these paintings inspired in me, I was obliged to look at them and could not withdraw my eyes, so great is the attractive force of truth, even if it be despicable. And how true are the paintings of Ribera! I recognized those faces: I had seen them in the hospitals, in the morgues, behind the doors of churches—the faces of beggars, of the dying, of those condemned to death, which haunt me at night even now when I hurry along a deserted street, pass by a graveyard, or climb a mysterious staircase. There are some of them which I could not look at—a naked hermit, stretched on the ground, who seemed like a skeleton covered with skin; an old saint whose shrunken skin gave the appearance of a flayed body; the Prometheus with his entrails bursting from his breast. Ribera delighted in blood, mangled limbs, and butchery; it was his delight to represent suffering; he must have believed in an Inferno more horrible than that of Dante and in a God more terrible than that of Philip II. In the museum of Madrid he represents religious dread, old age, torture, and death.

More cheerful, more various, and more splendid is the great Velasquez. Almost all his masterpieces are there. They form a world: everything is pictured in them—war, the court, the street, the tavern, Paradise. It is a gallery of dwarfs, idiots, beggars, buffoons, revellers, comedians, kings, warriors, martyrs, and gods, all alive and speaking, in bold and novel attitudes, with serene brow and smiling lip, full of animation and vigor; the great painting of Count-Duke de Olivares on horseback, the celebrated paintings of the Beggars, of the Weavers, of the Revellers, the Forge of Vulcan, and of the surrender of Breda—large canvases full of figures which seem to be stepping out of the frame, which on once seeing you remember distinctly by some trifling characteristic, a gesture or a shadow on the face, as though they were real persons whom you have just met; people with whom you seem to have talked, and of whom you think long afterward as of acquaintances of a forgotten time; people who might inspire cheerfulness and provoke a smile of admiration, causing you to regret that it is possible only to enjoy them with the eyes and not to mingle with them and share a little of their exuberant life. This is not the effect of a preconceived opinion which the name of the great artist has given, nor need one be a connoisseur of art to experience it. The poor ignorant woman and the boy stop before those pictures, clap their hands, and laugh. It is Nature painted with a fidelity higher than any imagination. One forgets the painter, does not think of the art, nor try to discover its meaning, but says, “This is true! This is the very thing! It is the picture I had in my mind!” One would say that Velasquez has not put anything of himself in it, but that his hand has only drawn the lines and put the colors on the canvas from a likeness which reproduced the very persons whom he was painting. There are more than sixty of his paintings in the museum of Madrid, and if one saw them only once, and hurriedly at that, not one of them would be forgotten. It is with the paintings of Velasquez as with the romances of Alessandro Manzoni—when one has read them for the tenth time they become so interwoven and confused with one’s personal memories that one seems to have lived them. So the persons in Velasquez’s paintings melt into the crowd of friends and acquaintances; the neighbors and strangers of our whole life present themselves and entertain us without our even remembering that we have seen them on the canvas.

Now let us speak of Murillo in our gentlest tones. Velasquez is in art an eagle; Murillo is an angel. One admires Velasquez and adores Murillo. By his canvases we know him as if he had lived among us. He was handsome, good, and virtuous. Envy knew not where to attack him; around his crown of glory he bore a halo of love. He was born to paint the sky. Fortune gave him a mild and serene genius, which bore him to God on the wings of a tranquil inspiration, and yet his most admirable paintings breathe an air of gentle sweetness which inspires sympathy and affection even before admiration. A simple nobility and elegance of outline, an expression full of sprightliness and grace, an inexpressible harmony of colors,—these are the qualities that impress one at first sight; but the more one looks at the paintings, the more one discovers, and surprise is transformed little by little into a delicious sense of pleasure. His saints have a benign aspect, cheering and consoling; his angels, whom he groups with marvellous ability, make one’s lips tremble with a desire to kiss them; his Virgins, clothed in white, with long flowing draperies of azure, with their great black eyes, their clasped hands, delicate, graceful, and ethereal, make one’s heart tremble with their beauty and one’s eyes fill with tears. He combines the truth of Velasquez, the vigor of Ribera, the harmonious transparency of Titian, and the brilliant vivacity of Rubens. Spain has given

him the name of the “Painter of Conceptions” because he is unsurpassed in the art of representing that divine idea. There are four grand Conceptions in the museum of Madrid. I have stood for hours in front of those four paintings, motionless and entranced. I was enraptured, above all, by that incomplete one, with the arms folded over the Virgin’s breast and a half moon across her waist. Many prefer the others; I trembled on hearing this, for I was filled with an inexpressible love for that face. More than once as I looked at it I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. As I stood before that painting my heart was softened and my mind was lifted to a plane of thought higher than any I had ever before reached. It was not the enthusiasm of faith; it was a longing, a boundless aspiration toward faith, a hope which gave me visions of a life nobler, richer, and more beautiful than that which I had yet known—a new feeling of prayer, a desire to love, to do good, to suffer for others, to make atonement, to elevate my mind and heart. I have never been so full of faith as in those moments. I have never felt so good and affectionate, and I believe that my soul has never shone more clearly in my face. The Lady of Sorrows, Saint Anna Teaching the Virgin to Read, Christ Crucified, The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Holy Family, The Virgin of the Rosary, and The Child Jesus are all admirable and beautiful paintings of a soft and serene light which appeal to the soul. One should see on a Sunday the children, the girls, and the poor women before those pictures—see how their faces light up and hear the sweet words upon their lips. Murillo is a saint to them, and they speak his name with a smile, as if to say, “He is ours!” and in so saying they look as though they were performing an act of reverence. The artists do not all regard him in the same manner, but they love him above all others, and they are not able to divorce their admiration from their love.

Murillo is not merely a great painter; he is a great soul. He has won more than glory: he has won the love of Spain. He is more than a sovereign master of the beautiful; he is a benefactor, an inspiration to noble deeds, for a lovely image, when once seen on his canvas, is carried in the heart throughout life with a feeling of gratitude and religious devotion. He is one of those men whom some secret prompting tells us we must see again, and that the meeting will be a reward: such men cannot have disappeared for ever; in some place they still live where their life is as a lamp of constant flame, which must one day appear to the eyes of mortals in all its splendor. “The empty dreams of fancy,” one may say, but, ah, what pleasant dreams!

After the works of these four great masters there are the paintings of Joanes to admire—an artist imbued with the Italian feeling, whose correct drawing and nobility of character have won for him the title, although it must be spoken in an undertone, of the Spanish Raphael. He resembles Fra Angelico in his life, not in his art, for his studio was an oratory where he fasted and did penance. Before beginning his work he used to take the communion.

Then there are the paintings of Alonzo Cano; the paintings of Pacheco, the master of Murillo; the paintings of Pareja, Velasquez’s slave; of Navarrete the mute; of Menendez, a great painter of flowers; of Herrera, Coello, Carbajal, Collantes, and Rizi, and there are a few works of Zurbarán, one of the greatest Spanish artists, worthy to stand beside the three first. The corridors, the antechambers, and the halls are full of the works of other artists, of less importance than those mentioned, but nevertheless admirable for particular points.

But this is not the only art gallery in Madrid; there are hundreds of pictures in the Academy of San Fernando. In the chambers of Fomento and in other private galleries one would have to spend month after month to see everything well, and to describe it would take an equal time, even if one had sufficient ability to do so. One of the ablest French writers, a great lover of art and a master of description, when it came to the point was frightened and knew nothing better to do than to avoid the dilemma by saying that it would take too long to describe it all; and if he thought well to keep silent, it must appear that I have said too much already. It is one of the saddest consequences of a pleasant journey to discover that one has in one’s mind a crowd of lovely images and in one’s heart a tumult of grand emotions, and to be able to express only so small a part of them.

With what profound contempt could I destroy these pages when I think of those paintings! O Murillo! O Velasquez! O my poor pen!

A few days after my arrival at Madrid, as I was coming from the street Alcalá into the square of the Puerta del Sol, I saw King Amadeus for the first time. I felt it to be as great a pleasure as if I had met my most intimate friend. It is strange to find one’s self in a country where the only person one knows is the king. One could wish to run after him saying, “Your Majesty, it is I; I have arrived.”

Amadeus pursued his father’s course at Madrid. He rose at dawn and walked in the gardens of Moro, which lie between the royal palace and the Manzanares, or else he visited the museums, walking through the city on foot with only one attendant. The maids, running home in breathless haste with their well-filled baskets, told their sleepy mistresses how they had met the king, how they had passed him so near that he could have touched them; and the Republican matrons would say, “And so he ought to!” And the Carlists would make a grimace and mutter, “What sort of a king is that?” Or as I heard one say, “He seems determined to get shot at any cost.” On returning to the palace he received the captain-general and the governor of Madrid, who, in accordance with the ancient custom, are obliged to present themselves every day to the king to ask if he has any orders to give to the army or the police. Next came the ministers. Besides seeing them altogether in council once a week, Amadeus received one of them every day. On the departure of the minister the audience began.

Amadeus gave an audience every day of at least one hour’s duration, and many times prolonged it to two hours. The demands were innumerable, and the ends sought may be easily imagined—subsidies, pensions, positions, favors, and decorations. The king heard them all. The queen also received—not every day, however, on account of her variable health. To her lot fell all the deeds of charity. She received all sorts of people in the presence of the major-domo and a lady of honor at the hour of the king’s audience—ladies, laboring-men, peasant-women, hearing with pity their long recitals of poverty and suffering; moreover, she distributed in works of charity a hundred thousand francs a month, without counting her liberal donations to hospitals, asylums, and other benevolent institutions, some of which she herself founded.

On the bank of the Manzanares, in sight of the royal palace, in an open smiling place, one sees a brightly-colored cottage surrounded by a garden, when as one passes one hears the laughter, the crowing, and the crying of babies. The queen had this house built to shelter the little children of washerwomen, who, while their mothers were at work, used to remain in the streets exposed to a thousand dangers. There are teachers, nurses, and servants who provide for all the needs of the babies: it is at the same time a refuge and a school. The funds for the construction and maintenance of the house were appropriated from the twenty-five thousand francs a month which the state had granted to the duke of Puglia. The queen also instituted a foundling hospital, a home or sort of college for the children of the tobacco-workers, and kitchens where soup, meat, and bread are distributed to all the poor of the city. She herself went unexpectedly sometimes to assist at the distribution, to assure herself that no abuse was made of it, and, discovering that some trickery was practised, she provided against its repetition. Besides these acts, the Sisters of Charity received every month thirty thousand francs with which to succor those families that by reason of their social position were not able to come to the distribution of soup. These private deeds of benevolence which the queen performed were very difficult to discover, because she was accustomed to do them without speaking to any one. Little is known of her habits, because she did everything unostentatiously and with a reserve which would be considered excessive even for a private lady.

None of the court ladies knew that she went to hear the sermon at San Luis de Francis; a lady saw her there for the first time, by chance, among the other worshippers. In her dress there was nothing distinctive of royalty, not even on the days of the court dinners. Queen Isabella wore a great red mantle with the arms of Castile, a diadem, ornaments, and insignia; not so Donna Victoria. She usually dressed in the colors of the Spanish flag, with a simplicity which proclaimed her royalty much better than splendor and magnificence would have done. It was not Spanish gold which had to do with this simplicity: all the expenses which were incurred for herself, her children, and her servants were paid from her privy purse.

When the Bourbons were on the throne the whole of the royal palace was occupied. The king resided in the left wing toward the plaza of the armory; Montpensier lived in the part opposite to that of the queen; the princes had each an apartment looking toward the garden of Moro. When King Amadeus resided there a great part of the immense edifice remained empty: he occupied only three small rooms—a study, a bed-chamber, and a dressing-room. His chamber opened into a long corridor which led to the two little rooms of the princes, opposite to which was the queen’s apartments, for she would never be separated from her children.

Then there was a reception-room. All that part of the palace which served for the entire royal family was formerly occupied by Queen Isabella alone. When she learned that Amadeus and Victoria were content with such small quarters, she is said to have exclaimed with astonishment, “Poor young things! they won’t have room to turn around.”

The king and queen used to dine with a major-domo and one of the court ladies. After dinner the king smoked a Virginia cigar (if the detractors of this prince of cigars care to know it) and entered his cabinet to attend to the affairs of state. He was accustomed to take a great many notes and frequently consulted with the queen, especially when he was trying to reconcile the ministers or to conciliate the heads of departments. He read a great many magazines of every bias; anonymous letters which threatened him with death and those which gave him advice; satirical poems, schemes of social revolution,—everything, indeed, that was sent to him. About three o’clock he left the palace on horseback; the guards blew their trumpets and a squire in red livery followed him at a distance of fifty paces. To see him one would have said that he did not know he was the king: he looked at the children as they passed him, at the signs of the shops, the soldiers, the coaches, and the fountains with an expression of almost childish curiosity. He rode the whole length of the street Alcalá slowly, like an ordinary citizen thinking of his own affairs, and would turn into the Prado to enjoy his part of the air and the sunshine.

The ministers clamored against it; the Bourbons, accustomed to the imposing equipage of Isabella, said that he was trailing the majesty of the throne of San Fernando through the streets; even the squire who followed him looked around with a shamefaced air, as if to say, “See what folly!” But whatever they might say, the king gave no sign of fear. And the Spaniards, it must be said, did him justice, and, whatever may have been their opinion of his administration and government, they never failed to add, “So far as courage goes, there is nothing to say.”

Every Sunday there was a court dinner. Invitations were extended to deputies, professors, academicians, and illustrious men of letters and scientists. The queen talked with them all on every subject with a confidence and grace which, for all they had previously heard of her genius and culture, quite exceeded their expectations. The people naturally exaggerated in speaking of her attainments, and talked of Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, astronomy, and mathematics. But true it is that she talked intelligently on subjects far removed from the ordinary course of feminine studies, and not in the evasive and superficial manner of those who know only the names and titles. She had made a careful study of the Spanish language, and finally spoke it as though it were her own; the history, literature, and customs of her adopted country were alike familiar to her, and she lacked only the desire to remain in Spain to have made her a thorough Spaniard. The Liberals murmured, the Bourbons said, “She is not our queen,” but they all regarded her with profound respect. The bitterest journals went no farther than to call her the wife of Amadeus instead of the queen. The most violent of the Republican deputies in alluding to her in a speech at the Cortes could do no less than pronounce her illustrious and virtuous. She was the only person of the royal household against whom no one would permit a slur either by tongue or pen. She was like a white figure left in the centre of a group of spiteful caricatures.

As for the king, it seemed as though the Spanish press enjoyed an unrestrained liberty, and under the safeguard of the titles the Savoyard, the foreigner, and the young courtier the journals which were opposed to his rule could say in substance whatever they chose; and didn’t they say charming things? One took it to heart that the king was homely in face and figure, another was displeased because he walked so stiffly, a third tried to ridicule his manner of returning a salute, and other trifling matters which are almost incredible. Nevertheless, the people of Madrid had for him, if not the enthusiasm of the Azenzia Stefani, at least a very real sympathy.

The simplicity of his habits and his kindheartedness were proverbial even among the children. It was known that he bore no malice toward any, not even toward those who had treated him badly; that he had never given an affront to any one; that no bitter word against his enemies had ever escaped him. If one spoke of the personal dangers which he incurred, every good citizen answered indignantly that the Spanish people respect those who trust them; his bitterest enemies spoke of him with anger, but not with odium; the very men who would not raise their hats on meeting him in the street felt their blood boil when others followed their example, and could not conceal a feeling of sadness at the occurrence. There are images of fallen kings over which one casts a dark covering; others are concealed by a white veil which makes them appear more beautiful and venerable: over this one Spain has cast the white veil. And who knows but that one day the sight of this image will call from the breast of every honest Spaniard a secret sigh, like the memory of a beloved one who has been offended, or like a gentle and benign voice which says in sad tones of reproach, “Nevertheless, thou hast wronged me”?

One Sunday the king held a review of the Volunteers of Liberty, a sort of national guard like that of Italy, with this difference—that the Italians do good service voluntarily, while the Spaniards will do nothing even by force.

The Voluntarios were drawn up along the avenue of the Prado, where an immense crowd had collected. When I arrived there were already three or four battalions of them. The first was the battalion of veterans, all men above fifty, and not a few very old, dressed in black and wearing the cap à la Ros, with gold and silver lace and crosses upon crosses, as spruce and tidy as the students of a military academy, and from the proud and dignified rolling of their eyes they might have been confounded with the grenadiers of the Old Guard. After them came another battalion in a different uniform—gray breeches, a coat open and turned back over the breast, with large lapels of scarlet cloth; instead of the caps à la Ros, hats with blue plumes—and carrying guns with fixed bayonets. Another battalion and another uniform—the Ros caps again instead of the hats, and green cloth instead of the red, breeches of another color, and daggers instead of bayonets. A fourth battalion and arms all different. Other battalions come up, in various array. Some wear Prussian helmets, others helmets without points; some carry bayonets, some straight daggers, some curved and others spiral daggers; here there are soldiers with corded coats, there those without cords, and again those with cords; belts, epaulets, cravats, plumes; everything changes every moment.

All the divisions are gay and pompous, with a hundred colors and a hundred banners which wave, flash, and float in the air. Every battalion has a different banner covered with embroidery, ribbons, and fringe. Among the others one sees soldiers dressed like peasants with any sort of a stripe sewed loosely down a pair of ragged trousers; some without cravats, some with black cravats, open jackets, and embroidered tunics; boys from twelve to fifteen, armed at all points, walking in the ranks; vivandières, with short skirts and red breeches, carrying baskets full of cigars and oranges. At the head of the battalions there is a continual hurrying of mounted officials. Every major wears on his head or on his breast or on his saddle some ornament of his own device; at every moment a courier of some unknown corps passes; one sees lace of liver, gold, and wool on the arms, on the shoulders, and around the neck; medallions and crosses so thick that they conceal half the breast, fastened one above the other, both above and below the belt; gloves of all the colors of the rainbow; sabres, swords little and big, pistols and revolvers—a mixture, in short, of all the uniforms and arms of every army; a variety that would appall ten ministerial commissioners for the modification of dress; a confusion that turns one’s head. I do not remember whether there were twelve or fourteen battalions; as each one of them selected its own uniform, there was necessarily the greatest possible diversity among them. They were commanded by the mayor, who also wore a fantastic uniform. There were about eight thousand men.

At the hour assigned a sudden scurrying of staff-officers and a loud blast of trumpets announced the arrival of the king. Amadeus had, in fact, arrived on horseback by the street Alcalá in the uniform of commander-in-chief, with cavalry boots, white breeches, and swallow-tail coat, and behind him a closely-formed group of generals, aides-de-camp, servants in scarlet livery, lancers, cuirassiers, and guards. After he had reviewed the entire front of the army from the Prado as far as the church of Atocha, surrounded by a dense, silent crowd, he returned toward the street Alcalá. Here there was a vast multitude which surged and murmured like the sea. The king and his staff took their stand in front of the church of San José, with their backs toward the façade, and the cavalry with great trouble succeeded in opening a narrow space through which the battalions might march.

They marched in platoons. As they passed, at a signal from the commander, they cried, “Viva el Rey! Viva Don Amadeo primero!” It was an unfortunate idea for the first officer to give the cry. The spontaneous cheer of the first became a duty to all the others, and this resulted in the public taking the greater and the less vigor and harmony of the voices as a sign of political demonstration. Some of the platoons gave such a weak, short cheer that it seemed like the cry of a group of sick men calling for aid; then the crowd burst out laughing. Other platoons gave a deafening shout, and that was interpreted as a demonstration hostile to the government. There were several reports passing among the people crowded about me. One said, “There comes such a battalion: they are republicans; you will see they will not cheer.” The battalion passed without cheering. The people coughed. Another said, “It is an outrage, a fault of education; I don’t like Amadeus much myself, but I keep quiet and respect him.” There was some disturbance. A young fellow shouted Viva in a falsetto voice, and a caballero told him he was impertinent; he resented this, and they both raised their hands, whereupon a third separated them.

Between the different battalions marched citizens on horseback; some did not raise their hats or even look toward the king, and then one might hear different expressions through the crowd, as “Well done!” and “What bad manners!” Others, whose will was good enough to salute him, were afraid to do so, and passed with bowed head and blushing face. Others, on the contrary, disgusted by the spectacle, made a courageous demonstration for Amadeus in the face of them all, marching past, hat in hand, and looking first respectfully toward the king and then fiercely toward the crowd for the distance of ten paces. The king sat until the end of the procession motionless, with an unchanged expression of serene haughtiness. So ended the review.

This national militia, although it is not so disorganized and exhausted as ours, is nothing more than the ghost of an army: the ridiculous has gnawed at its very roots; but as an amusement on a holiday, although the number of volunteers is much reduced (they numbered thirty thousand at one time), it is always a spectacle which far surpasses all the flag-poles and red rags of Signor Ottino.

THE BULL-FIGHTS.

The thirty-first of March inaugurates the spectacle of the bull-fights. Let us discuss them at leisure, for they form a worthy subject.

He who has read Baretti’s description may consider that he has read nothing. Baretti saw only the bull-fights of Lisbon, which are mere child’s play beside those of Madrid. Madrid is the home of the art: here are the great artists, here the stupendous spectacles, here the skilled spectators, here the judges who distribute the honors. The circus of Madrid is the Theatre della Scala of the art of bull-fighting.

The inauguration of the bull-fights at Madrid is even more important than a change of the ministry. A month beforehand the news spreads throughout all Spain: from Cadiz to Barcelona, from Bilbao to Almeria, in the palaces of the grandees and the cabins of the poor, they talk only of the artists and the breed of bulls; they arrange fights for pleasure between the provinces and the capital; he who is short of money begins to save so as to get a good place in the circus on that great day; fathers and mothers promise their children to take them if they will study well; lovers make similar promises to their sweethearts; the papers assure you that it will be a good season; the famous toreros, who already begin to appear in Madrid, are pointed out with the finger; rumors are afloat that the bulls have arrived, and some have seen them or have arranged to do so.

There are bulls from the pastures of the duke of Veragua, the marquis de Merced, and of Her Excellency the dowager of Villaseca, prodigious and terrible. The office is opened to receive subscriptions; the dilettanti crowd around, together with the servants of the noble families, the brokers, and friends commissioned by the absent. The first day the manager has received fifty thousand francs, on the second thirty thousand, and a hundred thousand in a week. Frascuelo, the famous matador, has arrived; Cuco has arrived; Calderón has arrived, and all the others three days before the time. Thousands of people can talk of nothing else; ladies dream of the circus; ministers have no thought for other affairs; old dilettanti can hardly contain themselves; soon laboring-men stop buying their cigarettes to have a few pennies on the day of the spectacle. Finally, on Saturday morning, before dawn, they commence to sell tickets in a room on the street Alcalá. A crowd collects before the doors are opened, yelling, pushing, and knocking each other about; twenty policemen with revolvers in their belts are scarcely able to keep decent order; there is a continuous stream of people until night.

The long-expected day has arrived. The spectacle commences at three o’clock; at noon the people start from all directions toward the circus, which stands at the edge of the suburb of Salamanca, beyond the Prado, outside of the gate of Alcalá; all the streets which lead there are crowded with a procession of people. The circus looks like a great anthill; troops of soldiers and Volunteers of Liberty arrive, headed by bands of music; a crowd of water-carriers and orange-sellers fill the air with their cries; ticket-sellers run here and there, hailed by a thousand voices. Woe for him who has not yet bought his ticket! He will pay double, treble, quadruple! But what cares he if a ticket costs even fifty or eighty francs? They are looking for the king; they say the queen is coming too. The chariots of the great guns begin to arrive; the duke Ferdinando Nunes, the duke d’Abrantes, the marquis de la Vega de Armijo, a crowd of the grandees of Spain, the goddesses of the aristocracy, the ministers, generals, and ambassadors—all that is beautiful, splendid, and powerful in the great city. One may enter the circus by many doors, but before entering one is deafened by the noise.

I entered. The circus is immense. The outside is in no way remarkable; it is a low circular yellow building without windows, but on entering one feels the liveliest surprise. It is a circus for a people, where ten thousand spectators can be seated and in which a regiment of cavalry might drill. The arena is circular, and so vast that it could hold ten of our equestrian circuses. It is encircled by a wooden barrier about even with a man’s shoulders, provided on the inside with a narrow ledge a little way from the ground, on which the toreros place their feet to jump over when the bull chases them. Beyond this barrier there is another higher one, for the bull often leaps over the first; between the two a narrow course, a little more than a metre in width, runs all the way round the arena; here the toreros stroll before the combat, and here stand the attendants of the circus—the carpenters ready to repair the gaps which the bull has made, the guards, the orange-venders, the dilettanti who enjoy the friendship of the manager, and the great guns who are allowed to transgress the rules. Beyond the second barrier rises a tier of stone seats, and beyond this are the boxes; below the boxes runs a gallery containing three rows of seats. The boxes are each large enough to hold three or four families; the king’s box is a great drawing-room; next to it is that of the city officials, in which sits the mayor or whoever presides at the spectacle. Then there is the box for the ministers, for the governors, and for the ambassadors; every noble family has one; the young bon tons, as Giusti would say, have a box to themselves; then there are boxes to let which cost a fortune.

Every seat in the tiers is numbered, every person has a ticket; so the entrance is made without the least disorder. The circus is divided into two parts—one in the shade, the other in the sunshine; in the first one pays more; in the second sit the common people. The arena has four doors at equal distances from each other—the door through which the toreros enter, the door for the bulls, another for the horses, and a fourth, under the king’s box, for the heralds of the spectacle. Over the door through which the bulls enter rises a sort of sloping platform which is called the toril, and well for him who can find a place there! Upon this platform, in a little box, stand the men who at a sign from the mayor’s box sound the trumpet and drum to announce the entrance of the bull. Facing the toril on the opposite side of the arena along the stone balcony is the band of music. The whole balcony is divided into compartments, each of which has its own door.

Before the show begins the people are allowed to enter the arena and to walk through all the passages of the building. They go to see the horses enclosed in a courtyard, and most of them destined to be killed, more’s the pity! They go to see the dark chambers where are confined the bulls, which are driven from one enclosure to another until they reach a corridor and dash into the arena; they go to see the infirmary where the wounded toreros are borne: once there was a chapel to visit in which mass was celebrated during the combat, and there the toreros went to pray before confronting the angry brutes; then they go to the principal entrance, where are exhibited the banderillas that are to be inserted in the bulls’ necks, and where one sees a group of old toreros—one lame, another without an arm, a third on crutches—and the young toreros who have not yet been admitted to the honors of the circus of Madrid. One buys a copy of the Bulletin of the Bulls, which promises miracles for the doings of the day. Then one gets from the guard the programme of the spectacle and a printed leaflet divided into columns for noting the strokes of the spear, the thrusts, the falls, and the wounds. One climbs along endless corridors and interminable stairways in the midst of a crowd which comes and goes, ascends and descends, crying and shouting, so that the whole building trembles, and finally one returns to one’s seat.

The circus is crowded full, and presents a spectacle of which it is impossible to form an idea unless one has seen it: it is a sea of heads, hats, fans, and hands waving in the air; on the side where sit the better classes in the shade all is dark; on the other side, in the sun, where the common people sit, a thousand brilliant colors of vesture, parasols, and paper fans—an immense masquerade.

There is not room enough for another child; the crowd is as compact as a phalanx; no one can go out, and it is difficult even to move one’s arms. It is not a buzzing like the noise of other theatres; it is different: it is an agitation, a life altogether peculiar to the circus; everybody is shouting, gesticulating, and saluting each other with frantic joy; the women and children scream; the gravest men frolic like boys; the young men, in groups of twenty and thirty, shout in chorus and beat with their canes against the stone balustrade as a sign to the mayor that the hour has arrived. In the boxes there is an overflow of spirits, like that in the galleries of the regular theatres; the discordant cries of the crowd are augmented by the howls of a hundred hawkers, who are throwing oranges in every direction; the band plays, the bulls bellow, the crowd outside roars; it is a spectacle which makes one dizzy, and before the struggle commences one is exhausted, intoxicated, and stupefied.

Suddenly there is a cry, “The king!” The king has arrived; he is come in a chariot drawn by white horses, with mounted grooms in picturesque Andalusian costumes; the glass doors of the royal box swing back, and the king enters with a stately crowd of ministers, generals, and major-domos. The queen is not there: one foresaw that; every one knows that she has a horror of this spectacle. Oh! but the king would not miss it; he has always come. They say he is mad over it. The hour has come, the spectacle begins. I shall remember to my dying day the chill which passed over me at that moment.

A blare of trumpets; four guards of the circus on horseback, with cap and plume à la Henri IV., with black mantles, tight-fitting jackets, jack-boots, and swords, enter by the gate under the king’s box and slowly make the circuit of the arena. The people separate; every one goes to his seat; the arena is deserted. The four cavaliers take their places, two by two, in front of the door opposite the royal box, which is still closed.

Ten thousand spectators fix their eyes on that spot; there is a universal silence. For through it will come the cuadrilla, with all the toreros in gala dress to present themselves to the king and the people. The band plays, the door springs open, there is a burst of applause; the toreros advance. First come the three espadas, Frascuelo, Lagartijo, and Cayetano, the three famous ones, dressed in the costume of Figaro in the Barber of Seville, in satin, silk, and velvet, orange, scarlet, and blue, covered with embroidery, fringe, lace, filigree, tinsel, spangles of gold and silver, which almost conceal their dress; enveloped in full capes of yellow and red, with white stockings, silken girdles, a bunch of tassels on the neck, and a fur cap. Next come the banderilleros and the capeadores, a troop covered like the others with gold and silver; then the picadores, on horseback, two by two, each with a great battle-lance, a low-crowned gray hat, an embroidered jacket, breeches of yellow buffalo skin, padded and lined inside with strips of iron; then the chulos, or servants, dressed in their holiday best; and altogether they walk majestically across the arena toward the box of the king. One cannot imagine anything more picturesque than this spectacle: there are all the colors of a garden, all the splendors of a royal court, all the gayety of a rout of maskers, all the grandeur of a band of warriors; on closing one’s eyes one sees only a gleaming of gold and silver. They are very handsome men—the picadores tall, stout of limb like athletes; the others slight and nimble, with chiselled forms, swarthy faces, and great fierce eyes—figures like the ancient gladiators, clothed with the magnificence of Asiatic princes.

The entire cuadrilla stops in front of the royal