She Was
A Jewish Lady, Whose Husband Had Doubts Of Her Discretion, And So Threw
Her From A Local Tarpeian Rock.
As she fell she invoked the Virgin, and
came down easily, sustained, as you see in the picture, by her faith and
her petticoats.
As we parted from the good fathers and entered our carriages at the door
of the church, the swarm of mendicants had become an army. The word had
doubtless gone through the city of the outlandish men who had gone into
the Cathedral with whole coats, and the result was a levee en masse of
the needy. Every coin that was thrown to them but increased the clamor,
as it confirmed them in their idea of the boundless wealth and
munificence of the givers. We recalled the profound thought of Emerson,
"If the rich were only as rich as the poor think them!"
At last we drove desperately away through the ragged and screaming
throng. We passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of the
Parral, which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later years
has been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined churches;
past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with its round-arched
cloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence the Bishop of Segovia,
and the elegant tower of St. Esteban, where the Roman is dying and the
Gothic is dawning; and every step of the route is a study and a joy to
the antiquarian.
But though enriched by all these legacies of an immemorial past, there
seems no hope, no future for Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of the
Plain. Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay company is gone.
Its streets are too large for the population, and yet they swarm with
beggars. I had often heard it compared in outline to a ship, - the
sunrise astern and the prow pointing westward, - and as we drove away
that day and I looked back to the receding town, it seemed to me like a
grand hulk of some richly laden galleon, aground on the rock that holds
it, alone, abandoned to its fate among the barren billows of the
tumbling ridges, its crew tired out with struggling and apathetic in
despair, mocked by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that ever
shone, and gazing always forward to the new world and the new times
hidden in the rosy sunset, which they shall never see.
THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS
Emilio Castelar said to me one day, "Toledo is the most remarkable city
in Spain. You will find there three strata of glories, - Gothic, Arab,
and Castilian, - and an upper crust of beggars and silence."
I went there in the pleasantest time of the year, the first days of
June. The early harvest was in progress, and the sunny road ran through
golden fields which were enlivened by the reapers gathering in their
grain with shining sickles. The borders of the Tagus were so cool and
fresh that it was hard to believe one was in the arid land of Castile.
From Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes of dun hillocks
and pale-blue vegetation, such as are only seen in nature in Central
Spain, and only seen in art on the matchless canvas of Velazquez.
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