Seis crónicas inéditas - THE COURT OF SPAIN

I ) THE COURT OF SPAIN

Is this Boy King anything but an old man? Is this rehabilitated throne not on the point of crumbling forever? The dull murmur of the people; the incapacity of the higher classes, tempered by the intrusion of military chieftains and of plebeians who have got rich; the anti-royal instinct of modern nations, strengthened by the hatred which those who have become rich and powerful cherish against those who have always been so; the caricaturesque admired only by vulgar minds displayed in the pomp of the Bourbons; the revealing glances exchanged at every step among the pontiffs of conservatism; and that persistent and fearless struggle inspired by the courage of fear are all these anything but symptoms of the deadly disease gnawing at the root of the monarchy? Such a struggle is possible only on the brink of an abyss. If we do not fear a storm, we make no effort at shelter.

The Spanish Court dines, sports and shines. This young King exhibits himself a perfect horseman. These great ladies wear their coronets gracefully. They amuse themselves at La Granja; they enjoy the fair day at Aranjuez; they whisper of scandals; they pity Queen Mercedes, late wife of the King; on the sister of Alphonse they bestow looks of hatred, while with servility they kiss her hand; they study the Austrian, the now Queen, whose simple pride they can never subdue; they accuse this or that Minister of being the too faithful guardian of the King; and they say that the dukes aid in killing husbands who were not sufficiently complaisant. The Queen mother has her party, the Queen sister hers, and so has the Queen wife, and the other Queen who is dead, though the last has now the fewest partisans of all; but on the very day when the Princess Marie Christine was married to that elegant young man who is called, and always with a smile, the King, mass was celebrated in honor of that poor girl whom the people loved so well.

Why did the people, in whom scorn and hatred of their Kings are always active, love her? Because they saw in the eyes of Mercedes all those beautiful qualities which are strangers to palaces. She was a white soul, without spot and without bitterness, her eyes all life, her movements all simplicity. She would never have been as courageous as Maria de Molina, nor as brave as Isabella the Catholic. She was one of those doves created to give the idea of gentle colors, to charm all eyes, and to perish. The Court devoured the dove. She, so destitute of ambition, became the object of hatred among all those with whom ambition was the ruling motive. Nobility, serenity, freshness of heart, are resented, like a personal injury, by those who do not possess them. This young woman seemed to have been born only to breathe the pure air and to live under the blue sky. Her angelic face, a magnet of sympathy and love, was the face of a suffering wife, a gentle invalid, a violet of Parma, dying far away from her favorite friends, the orange trees of Seville. Her perfumed soul was smothered in an atmosphere where the miseries of showy poverty and of crushed pride still excite the ambition, the appetites, and the passions of those who are in haste to make their way, lest the ruins of the coming storm may debar them forever.

Queen Mercedes was, as it were, a standard set up in the arena by the partisans of her father and the frustrated aspirants for royal power. She had been chosen as the symbol of a political programme. She was the signal for the return of Spanish history to September 1868, when those who afterward prepared this political marriage tried to raise her father to the throne, and at what cost!

Whenever she went out to take the free air, the crowd gathered in public places. They saluted her with their eyes even more than with their hats. For the mothers she was a daughter; for the young men a sister. A sort of halo surrounded her simple and kindly features. The truth is that misfortune always has a right to public sympathy. There is a fraternity among the unhappy. The weak lean eyes upon each other. The conspiracy of saddened eyes and of sealed lips is most formidable. In politics the heart often gains causes that force has lost. Was the young Queen unhappy? The eyes were apparently brightened with gathering tears, but did they ever really weep? Did the plaintive smile come from the heart? She languished; she grew weaker; she was dying. People said so many things. They spoke of the rudeness of the King, of his sister, that haughty widow; of the harsh manner in which she endeavored to crush the authority of her cousin, Mercedes, and of the submission of the one contrasted with the cruelty of the other. They spoke of the sorrows of the wife, of the amorous intrigues of Alphonso, of the discouragement of the deceived woman, of that accusation of provincialism of which she was constantly the object at the palace, of a phrase of the King's sister: "Here I am the Queen, and you are only the Queen consort." The pallor of the young girl seemed to justify the public fear. If the expressions of the countenance translated the feeling of the soul, what was said was true. A courteous and disdainful indifference is the characteristic expression of the King. A hostile severity is always marked in the features of his sister, and there was always a kind of cloud over the patient countenance of Queen Mercedes. Did she die of the evil of life? Did she die of fever. Did she die, according to a current calumny, of some one of the resources of ancient tragedy? Was she the victim of the culpable vanity of the first physician, a man of science, who was not willing to yield to another the honor of the last certificate? However this may be, she died, and her sister who was also destined to the King, died after her; and the King took for his second wife an Austrian princess.

"The princess was his true love," said those who had formerly painted in the most epithalamic colors the youthful love of the daughter of Montpensier. But whence came this first love? When the King was at Vienna, he was but a child. At the age of 14, a palace-bred girl is a woman; in exile she is a child. Magicians only can make an Alexander and a Louis Egalité out of a young man who mounts his fine horses gracefully and drives them skillfully. The young King's hand is sure. Riding at his side or driving with him, you may safely confide in his skill. He drives out with the blonde Marie Christine nearly every evening. She reclines in a corner of the carriage and austerely smiles. Outward accidents and the conditions of life give to the eyes an expression which reveals the habits and the nature of the person. Thus it is that this young Queen appears to have been Queen for a long time, and this young King appears as one who has but this moment become King.

On Saturdays they go to the Salve. All the royal family, preceded by those elegant Spanish cavaliers, on magnificent black horses, traverse the street of the Arenal, where the good King Amadeus narrowly escaped assassination; the Carrier of San Geromino, leading to the Cortes; and that long promenade of the Prado, sown thick with fountains and mythological figures. The crowd does not gather to see the man whom it does not regard as definitely its sovereign. The less frivolous, piqued with curiosity or spurred by a spirit of fault-finding, fringe the sidewalks to see the splendid cortége pass. On this occasion the King does not drive. He watches the uncovered heads. Here and there a respectful partisan salutes his young master with a Chinese inclination. On these great festival days the women who sell chestnuts on the streets and boys, well paid for their enthusiasm, shout with all their throats, "Viva el Rey!" or, as we once heard a poor old woman, entirely devoted to the work, exclaim, "Viva su Majestad Alfonso XII, Rey de Espagna para toda la nacion!"

In the days of the Salve picturesque groups fill the environs of the Royal Church of the Atocha. The Spaniards, with their loud laughter, in bright-colored robes, supple and graceful, always form such groups. This church is the oldest and most miserable of the temples of Spain, the country of temples. Tattered banners, souvenirs of bygone days, tempí passati, as Victor Emanuel used to say, are hung out on the summit of the walls. But how old are these flags of victory, how ancient is the old church of kings, how rusty is all this splendid pomp of the palace, and how difficult it must be for the politicians to raise up a young monarchy in a cradle of ruins! The whole thing, the sombre nave, the dilapidated old church, the sterile surroundings, the arid plain, have somewhat the air of winding sheets. It must be cold indeed for children wrapped in such old linen.

There in that old church repose the remains of Gen. Prim, the man of the iron arm, of the fearless eye, and the statesman's head. There he lies under his own statue, made of iron like himself, and outlined in gold and silver, shining as though the artists wished to symbolize the heroic and magnificent traits that illuminated at intervals the life of a soldier who was the conqueror of kings. This monument, the wonderful work of the factory of Eibar, where they make the handsomest revolvers and the most marvellous sword canes in the world, is visited by all friends of art; and it is there, in fine, where nearly all those who now kneel before Queen Isabella, because her son, like a king of the nineteenth century, does not permit people to bend the knee to him, kneel also with bitter regrets before the tomb of the man who drove the Queen from Spain.

A month or more ago the court celebrated the official news of the approaching birth of the Prince of Asturias, and went to Atocha to pray. They covered the iron monument with a rich drapery. Useless precaution. They cover with draperies the human dust, but the spirit which animated it, turned into a storm, thunders at the gate. The sword of Gen. Prim flashes in the clouds.

But the days of the bull fights los dias de toros are the real festivals. "The King! the King!" the people shout in the streets. He must then go to the bull fights to see a genuine monarch! What a crowd and what noise! The dust during those days is like powder. The entire room is like one family. All are in the streets. One catches something of the odor of battles. These bull fighting festivals must be good for making soldiers. Is it cruelty, or is it courage? During those evenings when the summer sky is streaked with blood red, the Spaniards speak better and the Spanish ladies look better. One would think that the people had just awoke and were greeting each other. Fraternity, somewhat wanting outside of the circus, exists within it to perfection. It is a sad reflection. They are brothers in the face of death, but they deny each other when living in peace.

It is true that these festivals, so well beloved by the sons of the Tagus, have been hardships for strangers. The Archduchess Isabelle, the mother of Marie Christine, arriving in the first day at the Plaza de Toros, did not even try to conceal her disgust when blood began to flow, and abandoned the royal box. On the following day, when the procession, made brilliant under the rays of a Madrid sun, with the diamonds of the ladies and the decorations of the cavaliers, went to the plaza, the Archduchess Isabelle, in a modest carriage, visited the Museum del Prado; and while the poor daughter, doing her duty as Queen of the Spaniards, forced upon her countenance contracted smiles and with the ivory of her fan concealed her horror, the mother was admiring the "Drunkards" of Velazquez and the "Spasimo" of Raphael.

During these days the Austrian visitors saw queer specimens of the manners of the country. One is well worth notice. In those dark cafés, where the thick smoke of Spanish cigar fills the atmosphere; in ill-looking salons, such as are to be found in all great cities, where the weariness of honesty and the temptations of vice suggest the thoughts of crime made easy by the probability of success; amid the vapors of wine and the love of women, they dance and sing in a matter quite genuine, somewhat Andalusian, somewhat Bohemian, and somewhat Arabian. It is the dance of sensuality. It is the song of a licentiousness proud and indomitable. It is the woman brute that lives in the sunlight. It is the Adam of Espronceda in his philosophical elevation. It is the stormy passion of the Salada, that other creation of the poet, under the perfume with which genius envelops its monsters. It is the unbridled jubilee of coarse desires. It is the melodious song of the appetite. But all that is charming in the homes of the Bohemians, of the Gitanos, in the Quartier de Triana at Sevilla, in the old retreats of Malaga, and in the sombre houses of Saragossa, becomes revolting when the Oriental and languishing poetry of the vassals of Hassan is converted into the shameless provocations of meretricious women. These are the people, and among them are many extremely handsome, who are quietly brought into the presence of the King at night. They say that he is always most affable. We have the report of a handsome singer on that point. There is at Madrid a director of a theatre who knows very well what pleases kings. With closed doors he prepares this little national festival. The women dance with the upmost artistic indecency. It is impossible for them, from the force of habit, to dance in any other way. The men sing couplets, sometimes deep, sometimes witty, filled with a sweet sadness, and occasionally overseasoned with indecorum. They refresh themselves with Xerez and Mansanilla. The King drinks, touching glasses with the male singers in black jackets and with the women in linen dresses and red cloaks. He jokes in the piquant language of the people, and even goes so far as to flatter the instinct of mockery, which the lower classes cultivate toward foreigners. Next day the Flamencos, as they are called, as though they were all born in Flanders, declare that there is no better king than King Alfonso. It is a pity that Queen Isabella his mother, the Duc de Montpensier his uncle, and the Spanish people, his people, do not think so. These danseuses, with unusual developments, and dresses hardly clean, are the same that failed to be successful in the feast of Paris-Murcia.

During the months that followed the marriage of the King, the royal couple were seen everywhere. Calderon received more honor than Cervantes in the Theatre Espagnol, which is to Madrid what the Comedie Francaise is to Paris, the sacred home of national art. Sometimes the royal couple went to the Comedia, a very pretty little theatre. There the ladies go in charming negligé. It is a tacit rendezvous. Nobody fails to be present. The fans of the ladies and the hats of the young men are there the real actors. Nevertheless there are in this theatre some very fine actors after the simple and elegant French style. Mario, who dresses so well, is there. La Tubau, as they call her in the language of the theatre, knows how to wear a low-neck dress becomingly, and plays with true dignity. La Valverde, a woman with a voice like a cannon, always causes laughter. It is here to this sort of Palais Royal that the Spanish Kings go during those happy days when life has the perfume of orange blossoms, which soon dies away.

One evening I remember it well the Queen, who is handsome, succeeded in making herself pretty. Beauty has a duty. It pleases. She wished to please. It is a genuine talent that can bring down nature itself to the needs of politics. Christine has learned the difficult art of making herself up skilfuly. She does not follow the fashion. She makes it follow her. She chooses what becomes her best. Her complexion is sometimes reddish an Austrian reminiscence that should be forgotten when a woman wishes to be Queen of the Spaniards. She loves light colors, the crème legère, the rose Pompadour, and the beautiful blue sky. She likes long corsages and simple dresses. She dresses her hair very plainly. In her blonde tresses she plants white flowers and sometimes diamonds. Flowers, enriched with diamonds like dewdrops, always constitute her decorations. They are simple. They are pretty. It is not that she despises la toilette. On the contrary, she shows that she understands it. The way to attract attention is not to seek it.

When they do not go to applaud the dramatic authors or the toreros, these spoiled children of the people go into the private box of the great Theatre d'Orient. There they hear Gayarre, of whom they are so justly proud. This short and heavy Spaniard, modest and amiable, has the voice of Bubini. He has not the wonderful skill of Tamberlik, the Moses of song, nor the masterly power of Nicolini, nor the steel-like voice of Stagno, but when one hears him all the troubles of the world are forgotten. Nilsson calls him "the greatest tenor in the world." The King always applauds him. When they call up the curtain to salute him, which happens eight or ten times in an evening, he gives two bows, one for the King and the other for a lady in a box under the King. The lady is Mme. Buchental. She knows how to chat and to listen. She is unostentatious and somewhat like Mme. Edmond Adam is at Paris. The high society of intelligence is always at her house. She is the only woman that applauds in the theatre. At her house one is sure to find, in the most friendly conversation, those who have just crossed their words like flashing swords in the tribune. Realism, idealism, prejudice, and free thought, academical and revolutionary art, all shake hands at Mme. Buchental's. She is never importuned by that interested homage which takes away the true charm of worldly friendship. She is respected and loved. She is rich and she is good. Echegaray, Castelar, Nunez de Arce, Campoamor, the chiefs of all schools, the heads of all parties, take at her table the good soup of friendship.

The King enters the theatre at 9 o'clock in the evening. The orquestra do not play the Marcha Real. They play it only when he is going out. He garrotes Otero, he garrotes Oliva, he dismembers, by menaces and persecutions applied by the mysterious European royal hands in the final struggle of peoples with their kings, the grand modern ideas. The workingmen are persecuted, journals are suppressed, the republic is called a crime, the destruction of human freedom is attempted, the language used in Parliament is the language of scourges; but for all that the King must appear to be a little democratic. He must dress himself like a young man of the world, drink the wine of the country with the singers, send the Ministers to visit the wounded matadors, and only listen to the Marcha Real once in the evening.

A great deal might be said of this Court of Spain. At the close of the last year a grave question arose: Whether the Queen's linen should be washed by her own Austrian washerwoman or by a Spanish washerwoman? It was proclaimed that it would wound the national dignity to the heart's core if a Spanish washerwoman did not get the job. In this grave question the sister of the King, naturally enough, maintained the rights of Spain.

In the streets the gamins insulted ladies who wore the big plumed hats with the side thrown back, in imitation of the one that Makart, the Vienna painter, designed for Christine. The gamins shouted to the ladies: "Anda Austriaca!" In the shops the portraits of Martinez Campos, the political lion of the day, are found beside those of the matador Frascuelo, the most popular man in Spain, who kneels with arms folded before the bull or throws himself upon the ground at the feet of the brute, to arouse the enthusiasm of the crowd.

They are worthy of being known, these people who have strength and grace without unmerited happiness. They suffer from the evils they do. The storm which thunders in the distance, the elements composing it, the Queen mother who, in spite of everything, still remains Queen, the Virgin of Paloma, who a few months since became a political personage, the smell of powder that is breathed, the slow but threatening movements of the Spanish democracy, the recent great feast of the approaching birth of the son of the King, who will never be King, the marriage feast where Christine was so charming, and where Queen Isabella cried so much, and where Mercedes was so much regretted, and the astonishing renown of the two heroes of the arena Frascuelo and Lagartijo more than once saluted from the private boxes by the pretty little shoe of a Countess, thrown into the arena all these are worth a future chapter.

The Sun, June 27, 1880.