They attend to their religious
duties with the same interest which they displayed a few years before in
dressing and undressing their dolls, and will display a few years later
in putting the lessons they learned with their dolls to a more practical
use.
The visible concrete symbols and observances of religion have great
influence with them. They are fond of making vows in tight places and
faithfully observing them afterwards. In an hour's walk in the streets
of Madrid you will see a dozen ladies with a leather strap buckled about
their slender waists and hanging nearly to the ground. Others wear a
knotted cord and tassels. These are worn as the fulfilment of vows, or
penances.
I am afraid they give rise to much worldly conjecture on the part of
idle youth as to what amiable sins these pretty penitents can have been
guilty of. It is not prudent to ask an explanation of the peculiar
mercy, or remorse, which this purgatorial strap commemorates. You will
probably not enlarge your stock of knowledge further than to learn that
the lady in question considers you a great nuisance.
The graceful lady who, in ascending the throne of France, has not ceased
to be a thorough Spaniard, still preserves these pretty weaknesses of
her youth. She vowed a chapel to her patron saint if her firstborn was a
man-child, and paid it. She has hung a vestal lamp in the Church of
Notre Dame des Victoires, in pursuance of a vow she keeps rigidly
secret. She is a firm believer in relics also, and keeps a choice
assortment on hand in the Tuileries for sudden emergencies. When old
Baciocchi lay near his death, worn out by a horrible nervous disorder
which would not let him sleep, the empress told the doctors, with great
mystery, that she would cure him. After a few preliminary masses, she
came into his room and hung on his bedpost a little gold-embroidered
sachet containing (if the evidence of holy men is to be believed) a few
threads of the swaddling-clothes of John the Baptist. Her simple
childlike faith wrung the last grim smile from the tortured lips of the
dying courtier.
The very names of the Spanish women are a constant reminder of their
worship. They are all named out of the calendar of saints and virgin
martyrs. A large majority are christened Mary; but as this sacred name
by much use has lost all distinctive meaning, some attribute, some
especial invocation of the Virgin, is always coupled with it. The names
of Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall Our Lady of the Sorrows, of the
Gifts, of the Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little gypsy who bore the
tearful name of Lagrimas. The most appropriate name I heard for these
large-eyed, soft-voiced beauties was Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. Who
could resist the comforting assurance of "Consuelo"? "Blessed," says my
Lord Lytton, "is woman who consoles." What an image of maiden purity
goes with the name of Nieves, the Virgin of the Snows! From a single
cotillon of Castilian girls you can construct the whole history of Our
Lady; Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Solitude, Assumption. As young
ladies are never called by their family names, but always by their
baptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening in a Spanish
tertulia without being reminded of every stage in the life of the
Immaculate Mother, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond.
The common use of sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, but
nowhere so striking as in Spain. There is a little solemnity in the
French adieu. But the Spaniard says adios instead of "good-morning." No
letter closes without the prayer, "God guard your Grace many years!"
They say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence of death with the
sacramental wish of length of days. There is something a little shocking
to a Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha they
call fritters the Grace of God.
The piety of the Spanish women does not prevent them from seeing some
things clearly enough with their bright eyes. One of the most bigoted
women in Spain recently said: "I hesitate to let my child go to
confession. The priests ask young girls such infamous questions, that my
cheeks burn when I think of them, after all these years." I stood one
Christmas Eve in the cold midnight wind, waiting for the church doors to
open for the night mass, the famous misa del gallo. On the steps
beside me sat a decent old woman with her two daughters. At last she
rose and said, "Girls, it is no use waiting any longer. The priests
won't leave their housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's soul."
In these two cases, taken from the two extremes of the Catholic society,
there was no disrespect for the Church or for religion. Both these women
believed with a blind faith. But they could not help seeing how unclean
were the hands that dispensed the bread of life.
The respect shown to the priesthood as a body is marvellous, in view of
the profligate lives of many. The general progress of the age has forced
most of the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their cynical
immorality is still the bane of many families. And it needs but a glance
at the vile manual of confession, called the Golden Key, the author of
which is the too well known Padre Claret, confessor to the queen, to see
the systematic moral poisoning the minds of Spanish women must undergo
who pay due attention to what is called their religious duties. If a
confessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical authority,
his fair penitents will have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal of
Faublas or Casanova.
