It Is The Palace Of Vanished Royalty, The Temple Of A
Religion Which Is Dead.
There are kings and priests still, and will be
for many coming years.
But never again can a power exist which shall
rear to the glory of the sceptre and the cowl a monument like this. It
is a page of history deserving to be well pondered, for it never will be
repeated. The world which Philip ruled from the foot of the Guadarrama
has passed away. A new heaven and a new earth came in with the thunders
of 1776 and 1789. There will be no more Pyramids, no more Versailles, no
more Escoriais. The unpublished fiat has gone forth that man is worth
more than the glory of princes. The better religion of the future has
no need of these massive dungeon-temples of superstition and fear. Yet
there is a store of precious teachings in this mass of stone. It is one
of the results of that mysterious law to which the genius of history has
subjected the caprices of kings, to the end that we might not be left
without a witness of the past for our warning and example, - the law
which induces a judged and sentenced dynasty to build for posterity some
monument of its power, which hastens and commemorates its ruin. By
virtue of this law we read on the plains of Egypt the pride and the fall
of the Pharaohs. Before the fagade of Versailles we see at a glance the
grandeur of the Capetian kings and the necessity of the Revolution. And
the most vivid picture of that fierce and gloomy religion of the
sixteenth century, compounded of a base alloy of worship for an absolute
king and a vengeful God, is to be found in this colossal hermitage in
the flinty heart of the mountains of Castile.
A MIRACLE PLAY
In the windy month of March a sudden gloom falls upon Madrid, - the
reaction after the folie gaiete of the Carnival. The theatres are at
their gayest in February until Prince Carnival and his jolly train
assault the town, and convert the temples of the drama into ball-rooms.
They have not yet arrived at the wonderful expedition and despatch
observed in Paris, where a half hour is enough to convert the grand
opera into the masked ball. The invention of this process of flooring
the orchestra flush with the stage and making a vast dancing-hall out of
both is due to an ingenious courtier of the regency, bearing the great
name of De Bouillon, who got much credit and a pension by it. In Madrid
they take the afternoon leisurely to the transformation, and the
evening's performance is of course sacrificed. So the sock and buskin,
not being adapted to the cancan, yielded with February, and the theatres
were closed finally on Ash Wednesday.
Going by the pleasant little theatre of Lope de Rueda, in the Calle
Barquillo, I saw the office-doors open, the posters up, and an
unmistakable air of animation among the loungers who mark with a seal so
peculiar the entrance of places of amusement. Struck by this apparent
levity in the midst of the general mortification, I went over to look at
the bills and found the subject announced serious enough for the most
Lenten entertainment, - Los Siete Dolores de Maria, - The Seven Sorrows of
Mary, - the old mediaeval Miracle of the Life of the Saviour.
This was bringing suddenly home to me the fact that I was really in a
Catholic country. I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when
reading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing one
than of assisting at an auto-da-fe or a witch-burning. I went to the
box-office to buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestallers had
swept the board. I was never able to determine whether I most pitied or
despised these pests of the theatre. Whenever a popular play is
presented, a dozen ragged and garlic-odorous vagabonds go early in the
day and buy as many of the best places as they can pay for. They hang
about the door of the theatre all day, and generally manage to dispose
of their purchases at an advance. But it happens very often that they
are disappointed; that the play does not draw, or that the evening
threatens rain, and the Spaniard is devoted to his hat. He would keep
out of a revolution if it rained. So that, at the pleasant hour when the
orchestra are giving the last tweak to the key of their fiddles, you may
see these woebegone wretches rushing distractedly from the Piamonte to
the Alcala, offering their tickets at a price which falls rapidly from
double to even, and tumbles headlong to half-price at the first note of
the opening overture. When I see the fore-staller luxuriously basking at
the office-door in the warm sunshine, and scornfully refusing to treat
for less than twice the treasurer's figures, I feel a divided
indignation against the nuisance and the management that permits it. But
when in the evening I meet him haggard and feverish, hawking his unsold
places in desperate panic on the sidewalk, I cannot but remember that
probably a half dozen dirty and tawny descendants of Pelayo will eat no
beans to-morrow for those unfortunate tickets, and my wrath melts, and I
buy his crumpled papers, moist with the sweat of anxiety, and add a
slight propina, which I fear will be spent in aguardiente to calm his
shattered nerves.
This day the sky looked threatening, and my shabby hidalgo listened to
reason, and sold me my places at their price and a petit verre.
As we entered in the evening the play had just begun. The scene was the
interior of the Temple at Jerusalem, rather well done, - two ranges of
superimposed porphyry columns with a good effect of oblique perspective,
which is very common in the Spanish theatres.
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