This Fine Old Ruin, In Obedience To This
Instinct Of Jealous Distrust, Has But One Entrance, And That So Narrow
That Sir John Falstaff Would Have Been Embarrassed To Accept Its
Hospitalities.
In the shade of the broken walls, grass-grown and gay
with scattered poppies, I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear in the early
day.
On the extreme right lay the new spick-and-span bull-ring, then the
great hospice and Chapel of St. John the Baptist, the Convent of the
Immaculate Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel of Santa
Cruz, whose beautiful fagade lay soft in shadow; the huge arrogant bulk
of the Alcazar loomed squarely before me, hiding half the view; to the
left glittered the slender spire of the Cathedral, holding up in the
pure air that emblem of august resignation, the triple crown of thorns;
then a crowd of cupolas, ending at last near the river-banks with the
sharp angular mass of San Cristobal. The field of vision was filled with
churches and chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk. Behind
me the waste lands went rolling away untilled to the brown Toledo
mountains. Below, the vigorous current of the Tagus brawled over its
rocky bed, and the distant valley showed in its deep rich green what
vitality there was in those waters if they were only used.
A quiet, as of a plague-stricken city, lay on Toledo. A few mules wound
up the splendid roads with baskets of vegetables. A few listless
fishermen were preparing their lines. The chimes of sleepy bells floated
softly out on the morning air. They seemed like the requiem of municipal
life and activity slain centuries ago by the crozier and the crown.
Thank Heaven, that double despotism is wounded to death. As Chesterfield
predicted, before the first muttering of the thunders of '89, "the
trades of king and priest have lost half their value." With the decay of
this unrighteous power, the false, unwholesome activity it fostered has
also disappeared. There must be years of toil and leanness, years
perhaps of struggle and misery, before the new genuine life of the
people springs up from beneath the dead and withered rubbish of temporal
and spiritual tyranny. Freedom is an angel whose blessing is gained by
wrestling.
THE ESCORIAL
The only battle in which Philip II. was ever engaged was that of St.
Quentin, and the only part he took in that memorable fight was to listen
to the thunder of the captains and the shouting afar off, and pray with
great unction and fervor to various saints of his acquaintance and
particularly to St. Lawrence of the Gridiron, who, being the celestial
officer of the day, was supposed to have unlimited authority, and to
whom he was therefore profuse in vows. While Egmont and his stout
Flemings were capturing the Constable Montmorency and cutting his army
in pieces, this young and chivalrous monarch was beating his breast and
pattering his panic-stricken prayers. As soon as the victory was won,
however, he lost his nervousness, and divided the entire credit of it
between himself and his saints. He had his picture painted in full
armor, as he appeared that day, and sent it to his doting spouse, Bloody
Mary of England. He even thought he had gained glory enough, and while
his father, the emperor-monk, was fiercely asking the messenger who
brought the news of victory to Yuste, "Is my son at Paris?" the prudent
Philip was making a treaty of peace, by which his son Don Carlos was to
marry the Princess Elizabeth of France. But Mary obligingly died at this
moment, and the stricken widower thought he needed consolation more than
his boy, and so married the pretty princess himself.
He always prided himself greatly on the battle of St. Quentin, and
probably soon came to believe he had done yeoman service there. The
childlike credulity of the people is a great temptation to kings. It is
very likely that after the coup-d'etat of December, the trembling puppet
who had sat shivering over his fire in the palace of the Elysee while
Morny and Fleury and St. Arnaud and the rest of the cool gamblers were
playing their last desperate stake on that fatal night, really persuaded
himself that the work was his, and that he had saved society. That the
fly should imagine he is moving the coach is natural enough; but that
the horses, and the wooden lumbering machine, and the passengers should
take it for granted that the light gilded insect is carrying them
all, - there is the true miracle.
We must confess to a special fancy for Philip II. He was so true a king,
so vain, so superstitious, so mean and cruel, it is probable so great a
king never lived. Nothing could be more royal than the way he
distributed his gratitude for the victory on St. Lawrence's day. To
Count Egmont, whose splendid courage and loyalty gained him the battle,
he gave ignominy and death on the scaffold; and to exhibit a gratitude
to a myth which he was too mean to feel to a man, he built to San
Lorenzo that stupendous mass of granite which is to-day the visible
demonstration of the might and the weakness of Philip and his age.
He called it the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, but the nomenclature
of the great has no authority with the people. It was built on a site
once covered with cinder-heaps from a long abandoned iron-mine, and so
it was called in common speech the Escorial. The royal seat of San
Ildefonso can gain from the general public no higher name than La
Granja, the Farm. The great palace of Catharine de Medici, the home of
three dynasties, is simply the Tuileries, the Tile-fields. You cannot
make people call the White House the Executive Mansion. A merchant named
Pitti built a palace in Florence, and though kings and grand dukes have
inhabited it since, it is still the Pitti.
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