We know where he was christened and where he died. So that
there are sufficiently authentic shrines in Alcala and Madrid to satisfy
the most sceptical pilgrims.
I went to Alcala one summer day, when the bare fields were brown and dry
in their after-harvest nudity, and the hills that bordered the winding
Henares were drab in the light and purple in the shadow. From a distance
the town is one of the most imposing in Castile. It lies in the midst of
a vast plain by the green water-side, and the land approach is fortified
by a most impressive wall emphasized by sturdy square towers and
flanking bastions. But as you come nearer you see this wall is a
tradition. It is almost in ruins.
The crenellated towers are good for nothing but to sketch. A short walk
from the station brings you to the gate, which is well defended by a
gang of picturesque beggars, who are old enough to have sat for Murillo,
and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionaires by this time, if
Castilians had the cowardly habit of sponging out disagreeable
impressions with pennies. At the first charge we rushed in panic into a
tobacco-shop and filled our pockets with maravedis, and thereafter faced
the ragged battalion with calm.
It is a fine, handsome, and terribly lonesome town. Its streets are
wide, well built, and silent v as avenues in a graveyard. On every hand
there are tall and stately churches, a few palaces, and some two dozen
great monasteries turning their long walls, pierced with jealous grated
windows, to the grass-grown streets. In many quarters there is no sign
of life, no human habitations among these morose and now empty barracks
of a monkish army. Some of them have been turned into military casernes,
and the bright red and blue uniforms of the Spanish officers and
troopers now brighten the cloisters that used to see nothing gayer than
the gowns of cord-girdled friars. A large garrison is always kept here.
The convents are convenient for lodging men and horses. The fields in
the vicinity produce great store of grain and alfalfa, - food for beast
and rider. It is near enough to the capital to use the garrison on any
sudden emergency, such as frequently happens in Peninsular politics.
The railroad that runs by Alcala has not brought with it any taint of
the nineteenth century. The army is a corrupting influence, but not
modern. The vice that follows the trail of armies, or sprouts,
fungus-like, about the walls of barracks, is as old as war, and links
the present, with its struggle for a better life, to the old mediaeval
world of wrong.
