It Is Said That The Editor Of The Ablest Paper In Madrid, Which
Publishes A Local Edition At Seville, Is A Protestant.
The queen mother
is extremely clerical, though one of the wisest and best women who ever
ruled; the king and queen consort are as liberal as possible, and the
king is notoriously a democrat, with a dash of Haroun al Rashid.
Lie
likes to take his governmental subordinates unawares, and a story is
told of his dropping in at the post-office on a late visit to Seville,
and asking for the chief. He was out, and so were all the subordinate
officials down to the lowest, whom the king found at his work. The
others have since been diligent at theirs. The story is characteristic
of the king, if not of the post-office people.
Political freedom is almost grotesquely unrestricted. In our American
republic we should scarcely tolerate a party in favor of a monarchy, but
in the Spanish monarchy a republican party is recognized and
represented. It holds public meetings and counts among its members many
able and distinguished men, such as the novelist Perez Galdos, one of
the most brilliant novelists not only in Spain but in Europe. With this
unbounded liberty in Andalusia, it is said that the Spaniards of the
north are still more radical.
Though the climate is most favorable for consumptives, the habits of the
people are so unwholesome that tuberculosis prevails, and there are two
or three deaths a day from it in Seville. There is no avoidance of
tuberculous suspects; they cough, and the men spit everywhere in the
streets and on the floors and carpets of the clubs. The women suffer for
want of fresh air, though now with the example of the English queen
before them and the young girls who used to lie abed till noon getting
up early ta play tennis, it will be different. Their mothers and aunts
still drive to the Delicias to prove that they have carriages, but when
there they alight and walk up and down by their doctor's advice.
I only know that during our fortnight in Seville I suffered no wound to
a sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not
for humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is
notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it
is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces.
The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for
comfort in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot;
it is an agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have found
the sun too hot during the next three days in Granada. If the 5th of
November had been worse for heat than it was it must still remain dear
in our memory, because in the afternoon we met once more these Chilians
of our hearts whom we had met in San Sebastian and Burgos and
Valladolid and Madrid.
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