informal receptions on sunny benches for all the tatterdemalions within sight. Swarthy boys, wearied with much loafing, would thriftily lay aside their cigarettes to favor us with conversation, asking many questions about America, for whose recent action they gallantly declined to hold us responsible. "It was not the ladies that made the war," said these modern cavaliers of the Alhambra.
Their especial spokesman was a shambling orphan lad of some fifteen summers, with shrewd and merry eyes. Nothing pleased him better than to give an ornamental hitch to the shabby, bright-colored scarf about his thin, brown throat, and proceed to expound the political situation.
"You admire the Alhambra? I suppose you have no palaces in America because your Government is a republic. That is a very good thing. Our Government is the worst possible. All the loss falls on the poor. All the gain goes to the rich. But there are few rich in Spain. America is the richest country of all the world. When America fought us it was as a rich man, fed and clothed, fighting a poor man weak from famine. And the rich man took from the poor man all that he had. Spain has nothing left – nothing."
"Oh, don't say that! Spain has the Alhambra, and beautiful churches, beautiful pictures."
"Can one eat churches and pictures, my lady?"
"And a fertile soil. What country outblooms Andalusia?"
His half-shod foot kicked the battle-trampled earth of the immortal hill contemptuously.
"Soil! Yes. All the world has soil. It serves to be buried in."
This budding politician graced us with his company one Sunday afternoon, when we went down into Granada to see a religious procession. Our Lady of Lourdes, escorted by a distinguished train of ecclesiastical and civic dignitaries, with pomp of many shining lights and sonorous instruments, with peal of church bells and incongruous popping of fireworks, passed through extended ranks of candle-bearing worshippers, along thronged streets, where every balcony was hung with the national red and yellow, to the Church of Mary Magdalene. There the sacred guest was entertained with a concert, and thence conducted, with the same processional state, amid the same reverent salutations of the multitude, back to her own niche. Our youthful guide showed himself so devout on this occasion, kneeling whenever the image, borne aloft in a glory of flowers and tapers, passed us, and gazing on every feature of the pageant with large-eyed adoration, that we asked him, as we climbed the hill again, if he would like to be a priest. But he shrugged his shoulders. "There are better Christians in Spain than the priests," he answered.
The son of the house, Don Pepe, a young man of five and twenty, who usually attended us on any difficult excursion, was also frankly outspoken in his disapproval of the clergy. He could hardly hold his countenance in passing a Franciscan friar. "There walks the ruin of Spain," he muttered once, with bitter accent, turning to scowl after the bareheaded, brown-frocked figure so common in Granada streets. We had, indeed, our own little grudge against the friars, for they were the only men of the city who forced us off the narrow sidewalks out into the rough and dirty road. All other Granadines, from dandies to gypsies, yielded us the strip of pavement with ready courtesy, but the friars, three or four in Indian file, would press on their way like graven images and drive us to take refuge among the donkeys.
This escort of ours, formally a Catholic, was no more a lover of State than of Church. He was eager to get to work in the world and, finding no foothold, charged up his grievance against the Government. He was firmly persuaded that Madrid had sold the Santiago and Manila victories to Washington for sums of money down, – deep down in official pockets. But his talk, however angry, would always end in throwing out the hands with a gesture of despair.
"But what use in revolutions? Spain is tired – tired of tumult, tired of bloodshed, tired of deceit and disappointment. A new government would only mean the old dogs with new collars. We, the people, are always the bone to be gnawed bare. What use in anything? Let it go as God wills."
The Silvela and Polavieja ministry came in during our stay at Granada, and the Liberal and Republican chorus against what was known as the Reactionary Government swelled loud. "It means the yoke of the Jesuits," growled our burly host. Our Alhambra dream suffered frequent jars from these ignoble confusions of to-day. When we were musing comfortably on the melancholy fortunes of Boabdil, a cheap newspaper would be thrust before our eyes with an editorial headed "Boabdil Sagasta." It is always best to do what one must. Since we could not be left in peace to the imagination of plumy cavaliers, stars of Moslem and Christian chivalry, who sowed this mount so thick with glorious memories, we turned our thoughts to the poor soldiers from Cuba, especially during the week throughout which they paraded the cities of Spain in rag-tag companies under rude flags with the ruder motto: "Hungry Repatriados." Their appearance was so woful that it became a by-word. A child, picking up from a gutter one day a mud-stained, dog-eared notebook, cried gleefully, "It's a repatriado." There was no glamour here, but the courage and sacrifice, the love and anguish, held good.
Granada had borne her share in Spain's last war sorrow. So many of her sons were drafted for the Antilles that her anger against America waxed hot. A few months before our arrival every star-spangled banner that could be hunted out in shop or residence was trampled and burned in the public squares. The Washington Irving Hotel hastened to take down its sign, and even the driver of its omnibus was sternly warned by the people to erase those offensive American names from his vehicle on pain of seeing it transformed into a chariot of fire. A shot, possibly accidental, whistled through the office of the English consul, who was given to understand, in more ways than one, that Spain made little difference between "the cloaked enemy" and the foe in the field. Meanwhile, month after month, the recruits were marched to the station, and the City Fathers, who came in all municipal dignity to bid the lads godspeed, were so overwhelmed by the weeping of the women that they forgot the cream of their speeches.
Among the new tales of Spanish valor told us on the Alhambra hill was this: —
When lots were drawn for military service, one blithe young scapegrace found in his hand a fortunate high number, but, walking away in fine feather over his luck, he met the mother of a friend of his, sobbing wildly as she went. Her son had been drafted, and the two hundred dollars of redemption money was as far beyond her reach as those dazzling crests of the Sierra Nevada are above the lame beggar at the Alhambra gate. Then the kindly fellow, troubled by her grief and mindful of the fact that, orphan as he was, his own parting would be at no such cost of tears, offered to serve in her boy's stead. Her passion of gratitude could not let his service go all unrecompensed. Poorest of the poor, she went about among her humble friends, lauding his deed, until she had collected, peseta by peseta, the sum of sixteen dollars, which she thrust into his hands to buy comforts for the campaign. But another sobbing mother sought him out. He had saved her neighbor's son; would he not save hers? Laughing at her logic and moved by her faith in him, he answered: "I am only one man, señora. I cannot go in place of two. But here are sixteen dollars. If you can find a substitute at such a price, the money is yours."
Sixteen dollars is a fortune to hunger and nakedness, and the substitute was found. As the year wore on those two mothers did not let the city forget its light-hearted hero, and a great assembly gathered at the station to honor his return. A remnant of his comrades descended from the train, but as for him, they said, he had died in Cuba of the fever months before.
His was no poetic death like that of the Abencerrages. Happy Abencerrages! They knew the Alhambra in the freshness of her beauty. Their last uplifted glances looked upon the most exquisite ceilings in the world. Their blood left immortal stains on the marble base of the fountain. But this young Spaniard, in his obscure Cuban grave, only one out of the eighty thousand, will promptly be forgotten. No importa. There must be something better than glory for the man who does more than his duty.
IV
A FUNCTION IN GRANADA
"O Love Divine, Celestial Purity,
Pity
