We had accounts of their condition by couriers
and carrier-pigeons. On the day when they appeared it was a high
festival in the court. All the sombreros in Spain were there, the ladies
in national dress with white mantillas. The young queen always in her
palco (may God guard her). The fighters of that day were high priests of
art; there was something of veneration in the regard that was paid them.
Duchesses threw them bouquets with billets-doux. Gossip and newspapers
have destroyed the romance of common life.
"The only pleasure I take in the Plaza de Toros now is at night. The
custodians know me and let me moon about in the dark. When all that is
ignoble and mean has faded away with the daylight, it seems to me the
ghosts of the old time come back upon the sands. I can fancy the patter
of light hoofs, the glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine the agile
tread of Romero, the deadly thrust of Montes, the whisper of
long-vanished applause, and the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growing
too old for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away with a cold in my
head. But you will never see a bull-fight you can enjoy as I do these
visionary festivals, where memory is the corregidor, and where the only
spectators are the stars and I."
RED-LETTER DAYS
No people embrace more readily than the Spaniards the opportunity of
spending a day without work. Their frequent holidays are a relic of the
days when the Church stood between the people and their taskmasters, and
fastened more firmly its hold upon the hearts of the ignorant and
overworked masses, by becoming at once the fountain of salvation in the
next world, and of rest in this. The government rather encouraged this
growth of play-days, as the Italian Bourbons used to foster mendicancy,
by way of keeping the people as unthrifty as possible. Lazzaroni are so
much more easily managed than burghers!
It is only the holy days that are successfully celebrated in Spain. The
state has tried of late years to consecrate to idle parade a few
revolutionary dates, but they have no vigorous national life. They grow
feebler and more colorless year by year, because they have no depth of
earth.
The most considerable of these national festivals is the 2d of May,
which commemorates the slaughter of patriots in the streets of Madrid by
Murat. This is a political holiday which appeals more strongly to the
national character of the Spaniards than any other. The mingled pride of
race and ignorant hate of everything foreign which constitutes that
singular passion called Spanish patriotism, or Espanolismo, is fully
called into play by the recollections of the terrible scenes of their
war of independence, which drove out a foreign king, and brought back
into Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more injurious.
