"Philip II. had threatened with death and confiscation anyone who published foreign books or who circulated ma.n.u.scripts, and his successors forbade any Spaniard to write on political subjects, so, finding no ways of expansion for thought, they devoted themselves to fine arts and poetry; painting and the theatre rose to a higher level than in any other country; they were the safety valves of the national genius; but this spring of art was only ephemeral, for in the midst of the seventeenth century a grotesque and debasing decadence overwhelmed everything.
"The poverty in those centuries was horrible; that same Philip II., though he was lord of the world, put up t.i.tles of n.o.bility for sale for the sum of six thousand reals, noting on the margin of the decree "that it was not necessary to inquire much into the quality and origin of the people." In Madrid the people sacked the bakeries, fighting with their fists for the bread. The president of Castille travelled through the province with the executioner to wring the scanty harvest from the peasants. The collectors of taxes, finding nothing that they could collect in the towns, tore off the roofs of the houses, selling the woodwork and the tiles. The families fled to the mountains whenever they saw in the distance the king"s representative, and so the towns remained deserted and fell into ruins. Hunger came in even to the royal palaces, and Charles II., Lord of Spain and of the Indies, was unable on several occasions to procure food for his servants. The amba.s.sadors of England and Denmark were obliged to sally forth with their armed servants to seek for bread in the suburbs of Madrid.
"And amidst all this the innumerable convents, masters of more than half the country and the sole possessors of wealth, showed their charity by distributing soup to those who had strength to fetch it, and by founding asylums and hospitals, where the people died of misery though they were certain of reaching heaven. The ancient manufactures had all disappeared. Segovia, so famous for its cloth, that had employed over 40,000 persons in its manufacture, only held 15,000 inhabitants, and these had so completely forgotten the art of weaving wool that when Philip V. wished to re-establish the industry, he was obliged to import German weavers.
"And it was the same thing in Seville, in Valencia, and in Medina del Campo, so famous for their fairs and their manufactures," continued Gabriel. "Seville which in the fifteenth century had 16,000 silk weavers, at the end of the seventeenth could only produce 65. Though it is true in exchange its Cathedral clergy numbered 117 canons, and it had 78 convents, with more than 4,000 friars and 14,000 priests in the diocese. And Toledo? At the close of the fifteenth century it employed 50,000 artisans in its silk and wool weaving and in its factory of arms, to say nothing of curriers, silversmiths, glovers, and jewellers; at the end of the seventeenth century it had hardly 15,000 inhabitants. Everything was decayed, everything was ruined; twenty-five houses belonging to ill.u.s.trious families had pa.s.sed into the hands of the convents, and the only rich people in the town were the friars, the archbishop and the Cathedral. Spain was so exhausted at the end of the Austrian rule that she saw herself nearly divided among the different powers of Europe, like Poland, another Catholic country like ours. The quarrels among the kings were the only thing that saved her."
"If those times were so bad, Gabriel," said Silver Stick, "how was it the Spaniards showed such unanimity? How was it there were no "p.r.o.nunciamientos" and risings in these deplorable times?"
"What could they do? The despotism of the Caesars had imposed on the Spaniards a blind obedience to the kings as the representatives of G.o.d, and the clergy had educated them in this belief from the community of interests between the Church and the throne. Even the most ill.u.s.trious poets corrupted the people, exalting servility to the monarchy in their plays. Calderon affirmed that the property and life of a citizen did not belong to himself but to the king. Besides, religion filled everything; it was the sole end of existence, and the Spaniards meditating always on heaven, ended by accustoming themselves to the miseries of earth. Do not doubt but the excess of religion was our ruin, and came very near exterminating us as a nation. Even now we are dragging along the consequences of this plague which lasted for centuries. To save this country from death what had to be done? The foreigners had to be called in, and the Bourbons came. See how low we had fallen that we had not even soldiers. In this land, even if we were wanting in other advantages, we could from the earliest days reckon on good warlike leaders; but look, in the war of succession we had to have English and French generals, and even officers, for there was not a Spaniard who could train a cannon or command a company; we had no one to serve us as a minister, and under Philip V. and Fernando VI. all the Government were foreigners, strangers called in to revive the lost manufactures, to reclaim the derelict lands, to repair the ancient irrigation channels, and to found colonies in the deserts inhabited by wild beasts and bandits. Spain, who had colonised half the world after her own fashion, was now re-discovered and colonised by Europeans.[1] The Spaniards seemed like poor Indians, guided by their Cacique the friar, with their rags covered with scapularies and miracle-working relics. Anti-clericalism was the only remedy against all this superst.i.tion and ruin, and this spirit came in with the foreign colonists. Philip V. wished to suppress the Inquisition and to end the naval war with the Mussulman nations which had lasted for a thousand years, depopulating the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean with the fear of the Barbary and Turkish pirates. But the natives resisted any reform coming from the colonists, and the first Bourbon had to desist, finding his crown in danger. Later on his immediate successors, having deeper roots in the country dared to continue his work. Carlos III.
in his endeavour to civilise Spain laid a heavy hand on the Church, limiting its privileges and curtailing its revenues, being careful of earthly things and forgetful of the heavenly. The bishops protested, speaking in letters and pastorals "of the persecutions of the poor Church, robbed of its goods, outraged in its ministers, and attacked in its immunities," but the awakened country rejoiced in the only prosperous days it had known in modern times before the disestablishment. Europe was ruled by philosophic kings and Charles III. was one of them. The echo of the English revolution still vibrated through the world; the monarchs now wished to be loved and not feared, and in every country they struggled against the ignorance and brutality of the ma.s.ses, bringing about progressive reforms by royal enactment and even by force. But the great evil of the monarchical system was its heredity, the power settled in one family, for the son of a clever man with good intentions might be an imbecile.
After Charles III. came Charles IV., and as if this were not sufficient, in the year of his death the French revolution broke out, which made all the kings in Europe tremble, and the Bourbons of Spain quite lost their heads, which they were never able to recover. They went astray, wandering from the right way, throwing themselves once more into the arms of the Church as the only means of avoiding the revolutionary danger, and they have not yet returned, nor will they, to the right track. Jesuits, friars and bishops became once more the counsellors at the palace, as they still are, as in the times when Carlos II. concocted his military and political plans with a council of theologians. We have had false revolutions which have dethroned people, but not ideas. It is true we have advanced a little, but timidly, with halting footsteps and disorderly retreats, like one who advances fearfully, and suddenly, at the slightest noise, rushes back to the point of departure. The transformation has been more exterior than interior. The minds of the people are still in the seventeenth century; they still feel the fear and cowardice engendered by the inquisitorial bonfires. The Spaniards are slaves to their very marrow; their pride and their energies are all on the surface; they have not lived through three centuries of ecclesiastical servitude for nothing.
They have made revolutions, they are capable of rebelling, but they will always stop short at the threshold of the Church, who was their mistress by force and remains so still, even though its power has vanished. There is no fear of them entering here. You may remain quite easy, Don Antolin, though in justice many accounts might be required of her from the past. Is it because they are as religious as formerly?
You know that this is not the case, though they complain with reason of the way in which the ancient grandeur of the Church has been extinguished without popular aid."
[Footnote 1: In 1897 an Act was pa.s.sed "to colonise derelict land in Spain."]
"That is true," said Silver Stick; "there is no faith. No one is capable of making any sacrifice for the house of G.o.d. Only in the hour of death, when fear comes in, do some of them remember to a.s.sist us with their fortune."
"There is no faith, that is the truth. The Spaniard, after that religious fever that nearly killed him, lived in a state of perfect indifference, not from scientific reflection but from inability to think at all. They know they will go either to heaven or h.e.l.l; they believe it because they have been taught so, but they let themselves be carried on by the stream of life, without the strength to choose either one place or the other. They accept the established, living in a sort of an intellectual somnambulism. If now and then thought awakening suggests some criticism it is smothered at once by fear; the Inquisition still lives among us though we have no longer the bonfires, but we are terribly afraid of "what will be said." A stationary and narrow-minded society is our modern holy office. He who raises his protest, rising above the general and common monotony, draws upon himself the stupid anger of scandalised man, and suffers punishment; if he is poor he is put to the proof of hunger, his means of life being cut away from him, and if he is independent he is burned in effigy, creating emptiness around him. Everyone must be correct and agree to what is established, and hence it arises, that, bound to one another by fear, never an original thought arises, there is no independent thought, and even the learned keep to themselves the conclusions they draw from their studies. As long as this goes on the task of the revolutionary is useless in this country; they may change the apparent nature of the soil, but when the pickaxe strikes they come at once on the stones of ages, solid and compact. The national character though it has lost its religious faith is unchanged. Faith is dead, but the corpse still remains with the appearance of life, occupying the same place and obstructing the pathway. The Church is poor and driven into a corner compared to what it was formerly, Don Antolin, but do not fear, its situation will not be aggravated, the tide has risen to its full height and will not overflow; as long as the people in this country are afraid to say what they think, as long as they are scandalised by a new idea, and tremble at what their neighbours will say, so long will they laugh at revolutions, for however much they break out, none of these will bring the water to your mouths."
Don Antolin laughed on hearing this.
"But Gabrielillo, man--you must be mad. All this reading and travelling has turned your head. At first I was indignant, thinking you were among those who wished for another revolution to take away the little that is left to us, proclaiming the republic and suppressing all ecclesiastical things, but I see that you go much beyond this, that you conform to nothing, and that everything seems to you the worst; and this rather pleases me, because I see you are not a terrible enemy to be feared as you fire from too far. It seems to me that your head is as much affected as your chest. But do all these revolutions we have had seem as nothing to you? Do you think the country is still as savage as you have described it in past years? But I," continued the priest ironically, "hear a great deal said about the progress of the country, and I know that we have railways, and that the long chimneys are arising in all the town suburbs, and many of the impious are delighted at this, comparing them to the church belfries."
"Bah!" exclaimed Gabriel indifferently. "There is a little of this progress; the revolutions have placed Spain in touch with other countries, the progressive current has caught this country and is carrying it along as the Asiatics and others are carried; no one can escape it nowadays. But we advance at very low water, inert and without strength; if we advance it is with the current, and not by our own energy, while other people stronger than we swim and swim, advancing at every stroke. How have we contributed to this progress?
Where are our manifestations of modern life? The railways, few and bad, are the work of foreigners, and are their property; the gra.s.s grows between the rails, which shows that we still follow the holy calm of carts and wagons. The most important industries, metallurgy and mines, are all in the hands of foreigners or of Spaniards who are subject to them, living under their bountiful protection. Commerce languishes under an old-fashioned protection which enhances the price of all commodities, and so there is no capital forthcoming; money remains hidden in earthen jars in the fields as treasure, or in the towns is devoted to usury as in past times; the most daring venture to invest in public stock; Government continues the mismanagement, certain of always finding someone to lend, and pointing to this credit as a proof of the country"s prosperity. There are in Spain two million hectares of uncultivated land, twenty-six millions of unirrigated arable land, and only one million irrigated. This cultivation of unirrigated land, which has come to be almost our only agriculture is a concession that Spanish indolence makes to hunger, a perpetual demonstration of the fanaticism that trusts in prayer or in the rain from heaven more than in human progress. The rivers rush to the sea through scorched-up provinces overflowing in winter, not to fertilise, but to carry away everything in the volume of the inundation; there is plenty of stone for churches and new convents, but none for d.y.k.es and reservoirs; they build belfries and cut down the trees that attract the rain. And do not tell me again, Don Antolin, that the Church is poor and in no ways in fault; the poor are yourselves, you of the old and traditional Church, you of the religion "a la Espanola," for in this as in everything else there are fashions, and the faithful follow the most recent; for here are the Jesuits, the most modern manifestation of Catholicism, the "latest novelty," with their Sacred Heart of Jesus and other French idolatries, building palaces and churches in all directions, diverting the money that formerly went to the Cathedrals, the only evidence of wealth in the country. But let us return to our progress. Worse even for agriculture than the drought is the ignorance and routine of the labourers, every new invention or scientific appliance repels them, thinking it evil. "The old times were the good ones, our ancestors cultivated in this way and so ought we"; and so ignorance is turned into a sort of national glory, and we cannot hope for any remedy at present. In other countries the universities and high schools send out reformers, men fighting for progress; here the centres of learning only send out a proletariat of students who must live, besieging all the professions and public appointments, with the sole desire to open themselves a way to continuous employment. They study (if you can call it study) for a few years, not to learn, but to gain a diploma, a sc.r.a.p of paper which authorises them to earn their bread. They learn anything that the professor teaches, without the slightest desire to inquire any further. The professors are for the greater part doctors or barristers practising their profession, who come between whiles and sit for an hour in their chairs, repeating like a phonograph what they have said for many previous years, and then they return to their sick or their lawsuits, without caring in the least what is being said or written in the world since they got their appointments. All Spanish culture is at second hand, purely on the surface, "translated from the French," and even this is only for the scanty minority who read, for the rest of those so-called intellectuals have no other library but the text-books they studied as children, and all they learn of the progress of human thought is from the newspapers. The parents who are desirous of securing as soon as possible the future of their sons who are seeking a career, send them to these centres of learning when they scarcely know how to speak; the man-student of other countries, in the full plenitude of his thinking powers, does not exist here. The universities are full of children, and in the different inst.i.tutes you only see short trousers, and the Spaniard, before he shaves himself for the first time, is a licentiate and on the high road to become a doctor; the wet nurse will end by sitting by the professor. These children who receive the baptism of science at an age when in other countries they are playing with their toys, being confirmed in the t.i.tle that proclaims their scientific acquirements, study no more; these are the intellectuals who are to direct and save us, and who to-morrow may be legislators and ministers. Come, my good man, it is enough to make one laugh!"
Gabriel did not laugh, but Silver Stick and the others applauded his words. Any criticism against the present times delighted the priest.
"This country is drained, Don Antolin, nothing remains standing. The number of towns which have vanished since our decadence commenced is incalculable. In other countries ruins are carefully preserved, as so many stone pages of their history; they are cleaned, preserved, supported and strengthened, and paths opened round them so that all can examine them. Here, where Roman, Byzantine and Arab art have pa.s.sed, and also the Mudejar, the Gothic and the Renaissance--in fact, all the styles of Europe--the ruins in the country are hidden and disfigured by herbage and creepers, and in the towns they are mutilated and disfigured by the vandalism of the people. They are constantly thinking of the past, and yet they despise its remains; what a country of dreams and desolation! Spain is no longer a country, it is an ill-arranged and dusty museum, full of old things that attract all the curious of Europe, but in which even the ruins are ruined."
The eyes of Don Martin, the young curate, fastened themselves on Gabriel. They seemed to speak to him and express the pleasure with which he heard his words. The other listeners, silent and with bowed heads, did not feel less the enchantment of those propositions which sounded so audaciously in the restful and rank atmosphere of the cloister. Don Antolin was the only one who laughed, finding Gabriel"s ideas quite charming but absolutely crazy It was getting late and the sun had sunk below the roofs of the Cathedral. Silver Stick"s niece called to them once again from the door of her house.
"We are coming, child," said the priest, "but I have one thing first to say to this gentleman."
And addressing himself to Luna, he continued:
"But, Hombre de Dios![1]--but I ought not to call you that as you are so turbulent--you think everything is out of joint. The Spanish Church, worn out as you say, has become very poor, and still you say this revolution is a very small affair. What do you wish for? What is it that you desire so that things might be settled? Tell us your secret quickly and let us go, for the cold is very sharp."
[Footnote 1: Man of G.o.d.]
And he laughed again, looking at Gabriel with paternal pity as though he were a child.
"My remedy!" exclaimed Gabriel, taking no notice of the priest"s gesture. "I have no remedy whatever, it is the progress of humanity that alone offers one. All the nations on earth have pa.s.sed through the same evolutions; first of all they were ruled by the sword, then by faith, and now by science. We ourselves have been ruled by warriors and priests, but now we tarry at the gate of modern life, without the strength or wish to take science by the hand, who is the only guide we could have, hence our sad situation. Science is nowadays in everything--in agriculture, in all manufactures, in arts and crafts, in the culture and well-being of the people; it is even in war. Spain still lives far from the sun of science, at most she knows a pale reflection, cold and feeble, that comes to us from foreign countries.
The failure of faith has left us without strength, like those creatures who, having suffered from a severe illness in their youth, remain anaemic for ever, without possible recuperation, condemned to premature old age."
"Bah! Science!" said Silver Stick, turning towards his house; "that is the eternal cry of all the enemies of religion. There is no better science than to love G.o.d and His works. Good evening."
"Very good evening, Don Antolin; but remember this, we have not yet done with faith and the sword; sometimes one directs us or the other drives us; but of science, never a word, unless Spain has changed in the last twenty-four hours."
CHAPTER VII
After this evening Gabriel avoided the meetings in the cloister, so as to have no more discussions with Silver Stick. He repented of his audacity, and when he was alone reflected on the danger to which he had exposed himself in expressing his views so freely. He felt terrified at the possibility of being expelled from the Cathedral to roam the world afresh; he reproached himself, throwing in his own teeth his folly in hurling himself against the prejudices of the past.
What could he hope to effect by changing the thoughts of these poor people? What weight could the conversion of these few men, stuck like limpets to the stones of the past, have in the emanc.i.p.ation of humanity?
The Cathedral was to Gabriel like a gigantic tumour, which blistered the Spanish epidermis, like scars of its ancient infirmities. It was not a muscle capable of development, but an abscess which bided its time either to be extirpated, or to disappear of itself through the working of the germs it contained; he had chosen this ruin as his refuge and he ought to be silent, to be prudent so that his ingrat.i.tude should not be flung in his face.
Moreover, his brother Esteban, breaking the cold reserve into which he had retired since the arrival of his daughter, counselled prudence.
"His mind seems possessed by the demon, Esteban," said the priest, "and he explains his views with the most perfect calmness in this holy house, as though he were in one of those infernal clubs which exist in foreign countries. Where on earth has your brother been to learn such things? Never have I heard such frightful heresies. Tell him that I shall forget it all as I have known him since his childhood, and that I remember he was the pride of our seminary, but more especially because he is ill, and it would be inhuman to drive him out of the Cathedral; but he must not repeat this scandal. Silence! Let him keep all those atrocities in his own head, if it so pleases him to lose his soul; but in this holy house, and especially before its staff, not a word. Do you understand? not a word. The next thing will be that he will hold meetings in the Holy Metropolitan Church. Besides, your brother must remember that, after all, at this moment, he is eating the bread of the Church, as he lives on you, and is supported by you, and it is not right to speak in this way of the most excellent work of G.o.d, and try to point out all its defects."
This last consideration weighed the most with Gabriel, and it wounded his dignity. Don Antolin said rightly, he was no more than a parasite of the Cathedral, and having taken refuge in her lap, he owed her grat.i.tude and silence. He would keep silence. Had he not decided when he took refuge there to live as one dead? He would live like an animated corpse, which in some religious orders is the supreme of human perfection. He would think like everyone else, or rather, he would try not to think at all, but would simply vegetate there till his last hour came, like the plants in the garden or the fungus on the b.u.t.tresses of the cloister.
The Cathedral servants seated themselves round the sewing machine, hoping in vain that their master would come down, but content on the whole, though they did not see him, to be near him, to look at his empty seat, and to talk to the girl who expressed such ingenuous admiration for her uncle"s conversation. The Chapel-master was delighted that Luna, his sole admirer, had returned to visit him; during his temporary eclipse the poor musician had suffered all the bitterness of solitude, despairing with almost infantile rage, as though an immense audience had turned its back on him. He caressed Gabriel as though he was the woman he loved, listening to his coughing, and recommending all sorts of fantastic remedies imagined by himself, uneasy at the progress of his malady and trembling at the idea that death might tear from him his only listener.
He told Gabriel of all the music he had studied during his absence.
When the sick man coughed much, he would cease playing his harmonium, and begin long talks with his friend, always on the subject of his constant preoccupation, musical art.
"Gabriel," said the musician one evening; "you who are so keen an observer, and who knows so much, has it ever struck you that Spain is sad, and has not the sweet sentimentality of true poetry? She is not melancholy, she is sad, with a wild and savage silence. She either laughs in wild peals, or weeps moaning. She has not the gentle smile, the joyful brightness that distinguishes the man from the animal. If she laughs it is showing all her teeth; her inner meaning is always gloomy, with the obscurity of a cavern in which all pa.s.sions rage like wild beasts seeking for an outlet."
"You say truly, Spain is sad," replied Luna. "She does not now go dressed in black, with the rosary hanging to the pommel of her sword as in former years. Still in her heart she is always dressed in mourning and her soul is gloomy and wild. For three hundred years the poor thing has endured the inquisitorial anguish of burning or being burnt, and she still feels the spasm of that life of terror. There is no joy here."
"There certainly is not, and you find this more in music than in any other phase of Spanish life. The Germans dance the gay and voluptuous waltz with a "bock" in their hand, singing the _Gaudeamus igitur_, that students" hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause their fantastic and monkey-like movements. The English have turned their dance into gymnastics, with the energy of a healthy body delighting in its own strength. But all these people, when they feel the sweet sadness of poetry, sing Lieds, romances, ballads, something soft and flowing, that rests the soul and speaks to the imagination. Here even the popular dances have much that is priestly, recalling the priestly stiffness of the sacred dances, and the circling frenzy of the priestess, who ended by falling in front of the altar with foaming mouth and bloodshot eyes. And our songs? They are most beautiful, the products of many civilisations, but most sad, despairing, gloomy, revealing the soul of a sick and tainted people, who find their greatest pleasure in human bloodshed, or urging on dying horses in the enclosure of a circus. Spanish joy! Andalusian merriment! I cannot help laughing at it. One night in Madrid I a.s.sisted at an Andalusian fete, all that was most typical, most Spanish. We went to enjoy ourselves immensely. Wine and more wine! And accordingly the bottle went round, with ever frowning brows, gloomy faces, abrupt gestures.
"Ole! come along here! This is the joy of the world!" but the joy did not appear in any part. The men looked at one another with scowling brows, the women stamped their feet and clapped their hands with a stupid vacuity in their looks, as though the music had emptied their brains. The dancers swayed like erect serpents, with their mouths open, their looks hard, grave, proud, unapproachable, like dancers who were performing a sacred rite. Now and then above the monotonous and sleepy rhythm, a song, harsh and strident like a roar, like the scream of one who falls with his body run through. And the poetry? As dreary as a dungeon, sometimes very beautiful, but beautiful as might be the song of a prisoner behind his bars, dagger thrusts to the faithless wife, offences against the mother washed out in blood, complaints against the judge who sends to prison the caballeros[1] of the broad-brimmed sombreros and sashes. The adieus of the culprit who watches in the chapel the light of his last morning dawn. A poetry of death and the scaffold that wrings the heart and robs it of all happiness; even the songs to the beauty of women contain blood and threats. And this is the music that delights the people in their hours of relaxation and that will go on "enlivening" them probably for centuries. We are a gloomy people, Gabriel, we have it in our very marrow, we do not know how to sing unless we are threatening or weeping, and that song is the most beautiful which contains most sighs, most painful groans and gasps of agony."
[Footnote 1: Highwaymen.]
"It is true, the Spanish people must necessarily be so. It believes with its eyes shut in its kings and priests as the representatives of G.o.d, and it moulds itself in their image and likeness. Its merriment is that of the friars--a coa.r.s.e merriment of dirty jests, of greasy words and hoa.r.s.e laughs. Our spicy novels are stories of the refectory composed in the hours of digestion, with the garments loosened, the hands crossed on the paunch, and the triple chin resting on the scapulary. Their laughter arises always from the same sources--grotesque poverty, the troublesome hangers on, the tricks of hunger to rob a companion of his provision of begged sc.r.a.ps. The tricks to filch purses from the gaily-dressed ladies who flaunt in the churches, who serve as models to our poets of the golden age to depict a lying world devoid of honour. The woman enslaved behind iron bars and shutters, more dishonest and vicious than the modern woman with all her liberty. The Spanish sadness is the work of her kings, of those gloomy invalids who dreamt of conquering the whole world while their own people were dying of hunger. When they saw that their deeds did not correspond to their hopes, they became hypochondriacs and despairingly fanatical, believing their ruin to be a punishment from G.o.d, giving themselves over to a cruel devotion in order to appease the divinity. When Philip II. heard of the wreck of the _Invincible_, the death of so many thousand men, and the sorrow of half Spain, he never even winked an eyelid. "I sent it to fight with men, not with the elements," and he went on with his prayers in the Escorial. The imperturbable gloom and ferocity of the kings re-acted on the nation, and this is why for many centuries black was the favourite colour at the court of Spain. The sombre groves in the royal palaces, with their gloomy winter foliage, were and still are their favourite resorts; the roofs of their country palaces are black, with towers surmounted by weather-c.o.c.ks, and dark cloisters like monasteries."
Shut into that small room with no other listener than the Chapel-master, Gabriel forgot the discretion he had imposed on himself with a view to the continuance of his quiet existence in the Cathedral. He could speak without fear in the presence of the musician, and he spoke warmly about the Spanish kings and of the gloom that from them had filtered through the country.
Melancholy was the punishment imposed by Nature on the despots of the Western decadence. When a king had any artistic predispositions, like Fernando VI., instead of tasting the joy of life he nearly died of weariness listening to the airs on the guitar feebly tinkled by Farinelli. As they were born with their minds closed to every inspiration of beauty or poetry, they spent their lives gun in hand in the woods near Madrid, shooting the deer and yawning with disgust at the fatigues of the chase, while the queens amused themselves at a distance hanging on to the arm of one of the bodyguard. They could not live with impunity for three centuries in close contact with the Inquisition, exercising power simply as papal delegates, under the direction of bishops, Jesuits, confessors, and monastic orders, who only left to the Spanish monarchy the appearance of power, turning it, in fact, into an oppressed theocratic republic. The gloom of Catholicism penetrated into their very bones, and while the fountains of Versailles were playing among their marble nymphs, and the courtiers of Louis XIV. were decked like b.u.t.terflies in their multi-coloured garments, as shameless as pagans among the beautiful G.o.ddesses, the court of Spain, dressed in black, with a rosary hanging at its girdle, a.s.sisted at the burnings and, girt with the green scarf of the holy office, honoured itself by undertaking the duties of alguacil at the bonfires of heretics. While humanity, warmed by the soft breath of the Renaissance, was admiring the Apollos and adoring the Venus" discovered by the plough amid the ruins of mediaeval catastrophes, the type of supreme beauty for the Spanish monarchy was the criminal of Judea. The black and dusty Christs in the old cathedrals, with the livid mouth, the skeleton and distorted body, the feet bony, and dripping with blood, much blood,--that liquid so loved by the religious when doubt begins and faith weakens, and to impose dogma they place their hand on the sword.
"For this reason the Spanish monarchy has been steeped in gloom, transmitting its melancholy from one generation to another. If by any chance there appeared among them anyone happy and pleased with life, it was because in the blue blood of the maternal veins there was a plebeian drop, which pierced like the rays of the sun into a sick room."
Don Luis listened to Gabriel, receiving his words with affirmative gestures.
"Yes, we are a people governed by gloom," said the musician. "The sombre humour of those dark centuries lives in us still. I have often thought how difficult life must have been to an awakened spirit. The Inquisition listening to every word, and endeavouring to guess every thought. The conquest of heaven the sole ideal of life! And that conquest becoming daily more difficult! Money must be paid to the Church to save one"s self, and poverty was the most perfect state; and again, besides the sacrifice of all comfort, prayers at all hours, the daily visits to the church, the life of confraternities, the disciplines in the vaults of the parish church, the voice of the brother of Mortal Sin interrupting sleep to remind one of the approach of Death; and added to this fanatical and weary life the uncertainty of salvation, the threat of falling into h.e.l.l for the slightest fault, and the impossibility of ever thoroughly appeasing a sullen and revengeful G.o.d. And then again, the more tangible menace, the terror of the bonfire, engendering cowardice and debasing suspected men."
"In this way we can understand," said Gabriel, "the cynical confession of the Canon Llorente explaining why he became secretary to the Holy Office: "They began to roast, and in order not to be roasted I took on me the part of roaster." For intelligent men there was nothing else to be done. How could they resist and rebel? The king, master of all lives and property, was only the servant of bishops, friars, and familiars. The kings of Spain, except the first Bourbons, were nothing but servants of the Church; in no country has been seen as palpably as in this one the solidarity between Church and State. Religion succeeded in living without the kings, but the kings could not exist without religion. The fortunate warrior, the conqueror who founded a throne, had no need of a priest. The fame of his exploits and his sword were enough for him, but as death drew near he thought of his heirs, who would be unable to dispose of glory and fear to make themselves respected as he had done, and he drew near to the priest, taking G.o.d as a mysterious ally who would watch over the preservation of the throne. The founder of a dynasty reigned "by the grace of strength" but his descendants reigned "by the grace of G.o.d." The king and the Church were everything for the Spanish people. Faith had made them slaves by a moral chain that no revolutions could break; its logic was indisputable--the belief in a personal G.o.d, who busied Himself with the most minute concerns of the world, and granted His grace to the king that he might reign, obliged them to obey under pain of going to h.e.l.l. Those who were rich and well placed in the world grew fat, praising the Lord who created kings to save men the trouble of governing themselves; those who suffered consoled themselves by thinking that this life was but a pa.s.sing trial, after which they would be sure to gain a little niche in heaven. Religion is the best of all auxiliaries to the kings; if it had not existed before the monarchs these last would have invented it. The proof is that in these times of doubt they are firmly anch.o.r.ed to Catholicism, which is the strongest prop of the throne. Logically the kings ought to say, "I am king because I have the power, because I am supported by the army."
But no, senor, they prefer to continue the old farce and say, "I, the king, by the grace of G.o.d." The little tyrant cannot leave the lap of the greater despot; it is impossible to them to maintain themselves by themselves."
Gabriel was silent for some time; he was suffocating, his chest was heaving with the spasms of his hollow cough. The Chapel-master drew near alarmed.