Spanish Highways and Byways. Katharine Lee Bates

of events was duly observed, and the spectator, standing in market-place or at street corner, while one theatre after another rolled by him, saw acted out with much finery of wardrobe and ingenuity of machinery, with tragic dialogue and declamation, relieved by comic interludes, all the Bible story, from the revolt of Lucifer to the Day of Judgment. But modern Spain, abandoning the acting and recitation and substituting puppets for living men, has let slip the dramatic sequence, so that a few pageants less means only so much abatement in the general splendor of the spectacle.

      The bull-fighters of Andalusia are eminently religious and are said, likewise, to be remarkable for their domestic virtues. All their manly fury is launched against the bull, and they have only gentleness left for wives and children. I have heard no better argument for the bull ring. At all events, these toreros, marching soberly in black, with yellow belts, escorted with well-ordered solemnity an image of the crucified Christ, followed by a queenly effigy of Our Lady of Refuge, erect behind terraced ranks of candles on a flower-strewn litter, under a costly canopy of black velvet embroidered with gold. The cigarette-makers came after with their two pageants, Christ fastened to the pillar, and Our Lady of Victory.

      It was, as usual, the second upon which the main expense had been lavished. A great company of acolytes, richly clad and swinging censers of pure silver, went in advance of the Virgin, and three bands of music followed her with continuous acclaim, while a regiment of soldiers attended as a guard of honor. Immediately in front of the paso went, surrounded by officers and aides, General Ochando, his head uncovered and his breast glittering with decorations, for the young king of Spain is a member of this cofradia, and had sent the distinguished military governor of the Provinces, who has a palace in Seville, to represent him. Especial enthusiasm was called out by this image of Mary, for the cigarette-makers had just presented her with a new mantle at a cost of nine thousand dollars. The brothers were willingly aided by the seven thousand women who work in the immense tobacco factory, the average contribution of each donor being two centimos (two-fifths of a cent) a week during the preceding year. No wonder that the Virgin seemed to stand proudly upon her silvered pedestal, her gorgeous new mantle streaming out until it almost touched the head of a white-vested girl who walked barefoot close behind the litter, so fulfilling a vow made in extremity of illness.

      Black and white were the banners and costumes of the third procession, very effective through the deepening dusk. Their leading pageant was a Gethsemane, famous for the beauty of the carving. Christ is represented in prayer before an angel, who bears in one hand the cross and in the other the cup of bitterness, while Peter, James, and John are sleeping near their Master. These Passion groups are, with a few exceptions of still earlier date, works of the seventeenth century, the glorious period of Spanish art, the day of Murillo and Velázquez. The most and best are from the hand of the Sevillian Montañés, of chief repute in the Spanish school of polychrome sculpture, but this Gethsemane was carved by his imitator, Roldan, whose daughter, La Roldana, is accredited with the figure of the angel and with the reliefs that adorn the pedestal.

      Another Virgin, who, like all the rest, seemed a scintillation of gold and jewels, swept by, and a new troop of Nazarenes, this time in purple and white, passed with two august pageants, – the Descent from the Cross and the Fifth Anguish of Mary. Then came two files of ash-colored figures, who marshalled, between their rows of starry tapers, each taper bending toward its opposite, a vivid presentation of the Crowning with Thorns; and, after this, their Mary of the Valley, noted for the gracious sweetness of her countenance. This image is held to be one of Montañés's masterpieces in wood-carving.

      Five processions had now passed, with their two pageants each, and the hour was late, but we could not leave the balcony for anything so commonplace as dinner. Far down the street of Las Sierpes waved a river of lights, announcing the advent of the most ancient of all the Sevillian brotherhoods, Jesus of the Passion. The crowded plaza rose in reverence as the Crucifixion paso was borne by, and Our Lady of Mercy, too magnificent for her name, was greeted with rapturous outcries.

      Just how and when and where something in the way of food was taken, I hardly know, but as this, the last of the Thursday evening processions, passed in music out of the plaza, a few of us made speed by a deserted side street to the cathedral. We were too late for the Miserere, which was just closing in that surprising hubbub, the stamping of feet and beating of canes and chairs against the floor, by which Spanish piety is wont to "punish Judas." But we took our station near by the entrance to the Royal Chapel, wherein had been erected the grand Holy Week monument, in white and gold, shaped like a temple, and shining with innumerable silver lamps and taper lights. Within this monument the Host, commonly spoken of in Spain as Su Majestad, had been solemnly placed the night before, much as the mediæval church used to lay the crucifix, with requiems, under the High Altar on Good Friday, and joyously bring it forth again Easter morning. But Spanish Catholicism is strangely indifferent to dates, burying the Host on Wednesday and celebrating the Resurrection Saturday.

      All day long the Royal Chapel had been filled with relays upon relays of kneeling worshippers, and the hush there had been so profound that the hum of the tourist-haunted nave and the tumult of the streets seemed faint and foreign to the hearing, like sounds a universe away. Before this chapel entrance all the pageants, as they were borne in silence through the cathedral, paused and did homage to the Host. Having outstripped the procession, we had arrived in season to witness three of these salutations. The Nazarenes, in passing, fell upon their knees in the light of the great, gleaming monument, and each of the heavy platforms was slowly swung about so that it faced this symbol of Christ's sepulchre.

      Yet there was something besides devotion in the cathedral. As the crowd pressed close, we felt, more than once, a fumbling at our pockets, and the little artist lost her purse. The rest of us comforted her by saying over and over that she ought to have known better than to bring it, and by severally relating how cautious we had been on our own accounts.

      It was hard upon eleven when we returned to the house, but the streets were all alive with people. I went to the balcony at midnight, and again at the stroke of one, and both times looked down upon a plaza crossed and recrossed in all directions by talkative, eager groups. Many of these restless promenaders had been able to get no lodgings, and were walking to keep warm. The pressure upon the hotels was so great that one desperate stranger this Thursday night paid twenty dollars for a cot from ten o'clock till two, and private hospitality was taxed to a degree that nothing but Spanish courtesy and good-nature could ever have endured. In the house which harbored us, for instance, we were all fitted in as compactly as the pieces of a puzzle, when the unexpected friends began to arrive.

      On Wednesday there appeared from the far north a man and wife, acquaintances of ten years back. Our host and hostess greeted this surprise party with Andalusian sunshine in their faces, and yielded up their own room. Thursday morning there walked gayly in one of the son's university classmates from Madrid. Don Pepe embraced him like a brother, and surrendered the sofa, which was all he had left to give. And this Thursday midnight, as a crowning touch, three more chums of college days came clattering at the bell. Their welcome was as cordial as if the household were pining for society. The tired maids, laughing gleefully over the predicament, contributed their own mattresses and pillows, and made up beds on the study floor, where Don Pepe camped out with his comrades, to rise with a headache that lasted for days after.

      By two o'clock I had taken my station on the balcony for an all-night vigil. The most of the family bore me company for the cogent reason that they had nowhere to sleep, but the other guests of the house held out for only an hour or two, and then went blinking to their repose. My memory of the night is strangely divided between the dreamlike, unearthly pomps and splendors streaming through the square below and the kindly, cheery people who came and went about me. The señora, still fresh and charming, although she has wept the deaths of fourteen out of her nineteen children, was merrily relating, with weary head against her husband's shoulder, her almost insuperable difficulties in the way of furnishing her table. The milkman roundly declared that if she wanted a double quantity of the precious fluid (and goat's milk at that), she must make it up with water. There was no meat to be had in the Catholic city during these holy days, and even her baker had forsaken his oven and gone off to see the sights. And the black-bearded señor, who, like his wife, had not been in bed for forty odd hours, laughed at her and comforted