This performance is apparently his only object
and mission in life. This one sacrifice to tradition is what he is born
for.
The most important part of a Spaniard's signature is the rubrica or
flourish with which it closes. The monarch's hand is set to public acts
exclusively by this parafe. This evidently dates from the time when
none but priests could write. In Madrid the mule-teams are driven tandem
through the wide streets, because this was necessary in the ages when
the streets were narrow.
There is even a show of argument sometimes to justify an adherence to
things as they are. About a century ago there was an effort made by
people who had lived abroad, and so become conscious of the possession
of noses, to have the streets of Madrid cleaned. The proposition was at
first received with apathetic contempt, but when the innovators
persevered they met the earnest and successful opposition of all
classes. The Cas-tilian savans gravely reported that the air of
Madrid, which blew down from the snowy Guadarra-mas, was so thin and
piercing that it absolutely needed the gentle corrective of the
ordure-heaps to make it fit for human lungs.
There is no nation in Europe in which so little washing is done. I do
not think it is because the Spaniards do not want to be neat. They are,
on the whole, the best-dressed people on the Continent. The hate of
ablutions descends from those centuries of warfare with the Moors. The
heathens washed themselves daily; therefore a Christian should not. The
monks, who were too lazy to bathe, taught their followers to be filthy
by precept and example. Water was never to be applied externally except
in baptism. It was a treacherous element, and dallying with it had
gotten Bathsheba and Susanna into no end of trouble. So when the cleanly
infidels were driven out of Granada, the pious and hydrophobic Cardinal
Ximenez persuaded the Catholic sovereigns to destroy the abomination of
baths they left behind. Until very recently the Spanish mind has been
unable to separate a certain idea of immorality from bathing. When
Madame Daunoy, one of the sprightliest of observers, visited the court
of Philip IV., she found it was considered shocking among the ladies of
the best society to wash the face and hands. Once or twice a week they
would glaze their pretty visages with the white of an egg. Of late years
this prejudice has given way somewhat; but it has lasted longer than any
monument in Spain.
These, however, are but trivial manifestations of that power of
tradition which holds the Spanish intellect imprisoned as in a vice of
iron.
