Kitabı oku: «Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 2», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XIX
The Black Prince Defeats Don Enrique and Reinstates Don Pedro. – Don Enrique Murders Don Pedro. – Death of Don Enrique

WE are in a romantic age of youth and fanfaronnade. Our dramatis personæ are overflowing with the sap of life. Of the three Plantagenets, the Black Prince is in the prime of life and fame, his two young brothers in the heyday of valour and love. Don Pedro, little past thirty, a professed lady killer and seducer, and Enrique de Trastamare, the ideal Caballero, a few years older. Add to these those who have vanished from the scene, Blanche of Castile, but fifteen when she was married, and Maria de Padilla, dying in the flower of her days, there results a circle of youth, beauty, and romance unparalleled in history.

As for a tournament these ardent spirits prepare for battle. Only Du Guesclin is wise and old, also Chandos, who endeavours to allay the universal ferment in men’s blood. But what is their influence against the spirit of the age?

When Don Enrique finds himself on the 3d of

April, 1367, face to face with the Black Prince, he has but one idea, to rush on him at once and make an end! Strategy and prudence are cast to the winds. “Let us fight like true knights and carry the crown upon a lance!” is his idea.

Envoys arrive from France and entreat him to avoid a general engagement with the English chivalry, the finest in the world, led by the Prince of Wales, but he will have none of their advice. He will fight at once, and even shifts his advantageous position, against the counsel of Du Guesclin, on the other side of a small river which divides the camps – to deal his blows nearer.

“Your Grace will be beat,” says Du Guesclin, scanning with well-practised eye the battle-field.

“I tell you that this very night I shall be either dead or a prisoner.”

“I shall win!” cries the enthusiastic Caballero. “Santiago and Spain are with me. But as the Prince of Wales is a valiant knight, and my brother a lying traitor, that he may know the realm is mine, and that I am fighting in support of my right, I will send him a cartel to tell him what is my intent.”

“I well perceive,” said the Black Prince, more prudent in his councils, but as enthusiastic as the rest, when informed of this intention, “that the bastard Enrique is a valiant prince and shows good courage; so, not to be behind him in courtesy, I will also address to him a letter in which I will call on him, according to the laws of honour, to relinquish the crown which he has unjustly seized.”

Upon which – always following out the idea of a knightly encounter in which each side sets forth their right by the voice of a herald or trumpeter – Enrique replies: “To the most puissant Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Aquitaine and Guienne: that King Don Pedro has not, as he pretends, and as the prince imagines, governed his kingdom well, but as a tyrant and a traitor, verily giving orders to murder the Lady Blanche, his lawful wife, and Doña Leonora d’Aragon, his aunt – also his cousins of the royal blood – and Doña Bianca de Villena for her goods; that also he killed his three brothers, Don Fadique, Juan, and Pedro, as well as Martin Gil d’Albuquerque his minister, Don Juan d’Aragon and others; and that neither did he respect the wives and daughters of divers nobles, or the rights of the Pope and the Church, —for which cause and others too long to be detailed, and having no allegiance or followers in the kingdom, his subjects, to deliver themselves from so dangerous a ruler, have been pleased to name us his successor with universal acclamation.”

But this royal exchange of courtesies did not deter the Black Prince from fighting desperately. A complete victory was gained at Navarrete. Enrique lost all his train and equipage, the great Constable Du Guesclin being the victim as he had foretold, and taken prisoner.

Prostrate on his knees, Don Pedro thanks the Black Prince, who modestly replies as he raises and embraces him:

“Not to me, but to God, who has given us the victory, give praise.”

This happened on a Saturday. Next day Don Pedro formally requested the Black Prince to allow him “to put to death all his rebellious soldiers, so that they might raise no more disturbance in the kingdom against him.”

“Never, by the blood of Christ!” cried the indignant Plantagenet, horrified at his bloodthirsty ally; “I did not come into the kingdom of Spain to act as your Grace’s headsman, but as your defender.” And from that moment their cordial relations ceased, and the germs of that coolness and suspicion were sown which so soon led to a formal breach between them.

“You will find that the King of Castile is not worth the trouble you have taken to reinstate him,” observed Du Guesclin to the Black Prince, who, treated him, as his prisoner, with every kind of distinction and soon after set him at liberty without ransom.

“I begin to think you are right,” was the prince’s answer, deeply moved at Don Pedro’s cruelty.

Nor did he in this only show the cloven foot. The subsidies he had promised for the troops were unpaid; all his engagements were broken. As soon as he found himself once more safe in Seville and reinstated in his rights, incessant expresses were sent to Burgos, where the prince lodged, in the ancient monastery of Las Huelgas, outside the gates, still remaining a most interesting monument of that chivalric time, and to Valladolid where he moved later – but no money.

Nor was the province of Biscay ever ceded to him. In fact the only item that was fulfilled of the agreement was the marriage of the ardent young Lancaster with Costanza de Castila.

At length, after the delay of many months, disgusted and disillusioned, the Black Prince led back his army to Bordeaux, bearing the germs of the fatal malady of which he died soon after.

Again the scales of fortune turn in this strife between brother and brother. Deprived of the support of the English, the monstrous cruelties of Don Pedro again alienate all his subjects, and Don Enrique, supported by France and Aragon, in company with Du Guesclin, again leads an army into the field.

“I swear, by the cross of Christ,” cries the romantic Caballero, so apt a prototype of that fantastic time, “that alive I will never again leave Castile!” And by a succession of events too complicated to detail, he does again possess the kingdom, and Don Pedro, defeated and driven at bay, finds himself blockaded in the castle of Montiel, Don Enrique and Du Guesclin holding the country round.

The castle of Montiel lies on the side of an escarped and precipitous rock, amid the rugged flanks of the Sierra Morena, that lofty barrier which divides Spain from Portugal. It is a fortress of no great size, but at that time it was surrounded by strong walls, and from its position deemed impregnable.

Beneath open dark caves, the refuge of hunters and shepherds, emerald breasted valleys musical with streams, and arrowy peaks known only to the eagle and the heron; the black defiles of the Despeñaperros break between where the dead bodies of Moors once carpeted the soil – and beyond the bare corn tracts of La Mancha open out, and smiling vine terraces purple with fruit.

(Dear to the modern mind is the name of the Sierra Morena, as Don Quixote’s country, where you may follow him as a living man between Montiel and Toledo. The Cueva de Montesino, where he sojourned with Sancho Panza, the Posada de la Melodia, where he cut the necks of the wine-skins for Moors, the Venta de las Cardenas, where Dorothea and her lover were wounded, the scene of his penance in the mountain cleft, and Sierra Nueva, where he liberated the slaves.)

Below, in the Campo de Montiel, beside the bare shores of a chain of lakes bordering the course of the river Guadiana, Don Enrique and Du Guesclin are watching in their tents. How can they seize the king?

This question is asked twenty times a day. No one answers; and, if they seize him, what will they do with him? To this there is no answer either.

There are no traitors in the castle of Montiel. Mem Rodrigues is with the king, along with the faithful Emanuel, and the governor, Garcia Morano, is a true man.

Now it happens that Mem Rodrigues is very friendly with Du Guesclin, in that in-and-out fashion common between foes who drink out of the same wine cup to-day and run at each other’s throats to-morrow.

Hearing that he, Du Guesclin, commands a detachment of the troops below, Rodrigues sends him a message, requesting a private meeting, which Du Guesclin willingly grants, along with a safe conduct.

Within his tent they meet and exchange mutual compliments. Mem Rodrigues does not affect to deny the straits in which his master lies, or Du Guesclin his determination to take him.

Then Mem Rodrigues, in a casual way, observes to the great leader, who sits in deep thought, leaning his forehead on his hand at a table with weapons ranged at his touch: “That whatever reward Don Enrique may have offered him in treasure, titles, or lands, the dukedom of Soria for instance (an entire province lying under Navarre, almost a kingdom in itself), my master, Don Pedro, will make good and more, if you will let him go.”

Encouraged by the silence of Du Guesclin, who has never moved, Mem Rodrigues continues: “Surely, it will redound more to your honour, Señor Condestable, to release so great a king, rather than to set up a pretender.”

As if touched by a scorpion, the burly Breton starts, his rugged features darken, and a dangerous glitter lights up his deep-set eyes.

“By my troth, Sir Knight,” he answers, clenching his fist and letting it fall heavily on the table, causing the arquebuse and daggers on it to rattle ominously, “do you take me, Bertrand Du Guesclin, for a knave or for a fool, to act such a traitor’s part? Speak to me no more on such a subject, if you desire to continue my friend.”

So Mem Rodrigues says no more, and returns to the castle discomfited.

Of all this Don Enrique is informed. “I thank you, gallant Du Guesclin,” is his answer, “for this and all other marks of your regard. Methinks, all the same, I am better able to reward your service than Pedro, without a rood of land, now for the second time driven forth by his people. Further pleasure me now, I pray you, in this matter, by informing your friend Mem Rodrigues, that you will do all you can to forward his desire if he will prevail on the king to come to your tent to arrange means of escape.”

Now the drift of this speech was plain to the Breton leader, neither wanting in cunning nor foresight. He had sent back Mem Rodrigues with an angry denial, now he is bidden to call him again, and eat his own words in a treacherous message. Can he doubt the purpose of Don Enrique?

A look passes between them. Death is in their eyes. Nothing more is said.

The treason is obvious; Du Guesclin asks time for reflection.

Reflect he did, and decided, and by that act fouled his glorious blazon with a blot never to be effaced!

Abandoned by all, without winter provisions or friends, those still with him unable to help him, the unfortunate Don Pedro, upon the strength of a safe conduct, sworn to by Du Guesclin, determines to capitulate.

It is in the month of March, on the 23d. In those elevated peaks winter still reigns. Snow lies thick on the mountains, blocking the deep ravines, and rending giant cliffs.

Far below, in a cold mist, lies the wide-spreading plains of La Mancha. No ray of sun breaks the veil, as Don Pedro, on horseback, emerges from the portcullis of the castle, clad in a heavy mantle which entirely conceals his figure, the hood pressed over his face. As he passes beneath, his eye catches the figure of an eagle over the arch, and under it the words “Torre de Estrella.” With horror he remembers that in the letter which Blanche addressed to him before her execution (where she solemnly calls on him to meet her beyond the grave), it is at the “Torre de Estrella” she foretells that he shall die.

Great as is the shock at that moment, he tries to laugh it off. He never has cared for prophecies, why now? But something about it strikes his senses with awe. Words from the dead are certain to come true. This is distinctly a message. What matter? And the same reckless courage comes over him as of old. If to die, he will sell his life dearly. Perhaps it is a dream. Who knows?

So, carefully guiding his steed, he passes down the narrow path, zigzagging the descent in wide-lying circles. The wind rises and howls in his face, the crannies of the rocks groan as if haunted by demons, and a storm of sleet and hail strikes full upon him, driving him back each step he takes. Hardly can the wiry little horse he bestrides make way against the blast. But, in one of those rapid changes so common in the south, before he has reached the plain the fleecy clouds have lifted, driven back by the raging wind, the sky clears, and a sickly sun shines out on the surface of the lakes, beside which the tents of the encampment lie, protected by strong barricades, under groups of low scrub and tempest-torn oaks.

No guard turns out to receive him, no flourish of trumpets heralds his approach; the sentinels, enveloped in heavy garments to shield them from the cold, pass to and fro indifferent beneath the banner of Castile, floating wildly in the wind, nor do they salute him as he enters the tent.

After a few words have passed between Don Pedro and Du Guesclin, whose embarrassment is apparent as he parries his questions as to the plan formed for his escape, and alarmed at the manner in which he is received, he moves forward and calls to Mem Rodrigues, who has remained outside the tent, in a loud voice.

“Let us go!” are his words; “it is time.”

Seizing the bridle of his horse he is about to mount, when he is intercepted by one of Du Guesclin’s cousins.

“Wait a moment, my lord,” he says; “there is no haste,” and he draws him again into the tent.

Before he can reply, Don Enrique, who is watching, appears close to Don Pedro, armed at all points.

At first Don Pedro does not recognise him, not having seen him for many years, until the same cousin who seized the bridle of his horse, whispers:

“Sire, take care, your enemy is upon you,” and Enrique, now face to face with his brother, calls out in a voice which comes to him as a sinister echo out of long past years:

“Where is that son of a Jew who calls himself King of Castile?”

Upon which, dropping his mantle, Don Pedro, his face convulsed with passion, shouts out:

“You are a liar, Enrique de Trastamare. It is I who am king, the lawful son of King Alonso.”

Then, with all the concentrated fury of years of ferocious hate, the brothers fall upon each other in a death grapple.

Don Pedro, being the stronger of the two, throws Don Enrique on the floor. Laying his hand on his dagger, he is about to finish him, when the powerful form of Du Guesclin is thrust forward. For a moment his dark scathed face gazes down on the deadly struggle; then with the words, “Mi quito in pungo rey freza seriva, mon Señor, ye n’ote et ne mets pas Roi mars u’ters, mon seigneur,” he seizes Don Pedro by the leg and turns him over on the undermost side. Enrique, thus freed from his grasp, drawing out a long poniard, instantly stabs him in the breast, after which the whole party fall to and finish him.

Thus was Blanche’s prophecy fulfilled, “That at the Torre de Estrella by a violent death Don Pedro should die and answer for her murder in another world.” As Don Pedro had left unburied the body of his brother, Don Fadique, in the court of the Alcazar, so was his own body left exposed for three days on the earth, bathed in blood, that all might see he was really dead; also the bodies of Mem Rodrigues and Emanuel, who had rushed in to aid their master, and were killed in the struggle.

The governor of Montiel at once surrendered, and was pardoned by Enrique, as was the chancellor Fernando de Castro, over whose tomb was placed this inscription: —

“Aqui yace Don Fernando Perez de Castro, toda la fedelidad de España.”

Thus all that remained of this “high and mighty king, Don Pedro,” as set forth on his portal in Alcazar of Seville, were his three illegitimate daughters, Costanza and Isabel, married to the brothers of the Black Prince, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund of Cambridge, Duke of York; Beatrix, the oldest, becoming a nun.

After all, El Caballero died young, reigning but eleven years, and it is recorded that on his deathbed he heartily repented of his rebellion and the murder of his brother.

“Be faithful to France,” said he to his son Juan, who succeeded him, 1380; “but above all, draw to your side the followers of my brother Pedro. They are true hidalgos, who were faithful to him on the losing side.”

Bertrand Du Guesclin, or Claquin, received the price of his baseness in the Dukedoms of Molinos and Soria, but, as with Judas, the possession of great riches gave him no pleasure. He afterwards sold them for a small sum and returned to France, a sorrowing and a dishonoured man; and Charles the Bad received, I am happy to say, the reward of his treason in a series of defeats at the hand of Enrique de Trastamare.

CHAPTER XX
Juan I. – Enrique el Enfermo

THE Court vacillates between Burgos and Valladolid, both cities of the plain. Since the death of Don Pedro the charms of Seville are neglected.

All the fighting is in the north, mostly with Aragon and Portugal.

Valladolid (Belad-Waled of the Moors) remains much the same dull, ugly town, without a charm; to be greatly favoured by-and-by by Philip the Second, when his time comes to reign, as one of the centres of the Inquisition, and a convenient place to burn heretics in the great Plaza.

But Burgos has become a noble city, much altered and embellished since the homely days of the Cid Campeador, when his Suelo stood on the ridge of the hill facing east, near the royal castle where he and Doña Ximena were received at their marriage with such honour by King Fernando and the queen.

The king was always talking, but Ximena held down her head and seldom gave an answer to anything he said. “It is better sure to be silent than meaningless,” she said.

Fernando el Santo, in succession to Fernando the First, afterwards laid the foundations of the cathedral standing at the base of the hill, and his successors finished it; that gracious sanctuary which rears itself, so pure and white, out of the tawny land. Too ornate and minute perhaps, but lovely all the same – pointed steeples transparent in fine stone-work and open to the sky, an army of statues glistening in the sun up to the spandrels and the dome, and semicircles, colonettes, and arches by the score – every ledge and cornice filled, until the eye turns away fatigued by the prodigality of ornament. Inside the coro a mass of golden entablatures is lighted with ranges of painted windows, filling the nave with a kaleidoscope of colour, and the fourteen chapels which line the walls, each complete in itself – Condestable and Santiago, San Enrique and San Juan, each with carved retablos, a statue or a monument in the midst. That of Condestable, so named from Don Pedro de Velasco, Grand Constable of Spain, where he and his wife are extended on an alabaster tomb in the elaborate costume of the day, necklace, ruff, brocade, and head-dress; even to the tiny curls on the back of the little spaniel lying at the lady’s feet, half hidden by the folds of her dress, in so natural a position one asks oneself what will the little creature do when he wakes and finds his mistress dead?

Outside, the gaily-tinted streets are variegated as in a patchwork of colour, and over against the dried-up banks of the river Arlanzon (where the tournament was held for the marriage of Don Pedro and Queen Blanche), the grand old gothic gateway of Santa Maria appears, from out of which the Cid rode to join the Moors when no one dared to give him a crust of bread in Burgos.

The time is morning, and an unclouded sun has just risen above the horizon. Already the idlest and the most eager are afoot, to secure a good position for the review to be held by King Juan I.

Before the clock has struck ten from the cathedral, the crowd has so increased that the whole plain is alive with horsemen and foot-passengers, cabelleros splendidly mounted, ricoshombres in chariots and portantini, and peasants with sturdy stride: every one muffled up to the eyes, which is the fashion of Castilians, even when it is hot – all making their way, on the grass or by country roads and foot-paths, to the Cartuga de Miraflores seen from afar on the summit of a chalky down, sweet with the perfume of thyme and rosemary, over which the summer clouds strike light shadows. Flourishes of trumpets announce the passage of knights with glistening helmets, and the glitter of gold-embroidered banners, masses of moving horsemen and squadrons of troops, mixed with crescent flags and turbans of many colours, the light Barbary horses caracoling here and there, covered with nets of coins and chains, catching the sunbeams; announcing the presence of an army and the evolutions of many troops, especially of a picked body habited like Berbers, who gallop forward in gallant style, brandishing their scimitars to the rattle of drums and fifes. Anon a mounted figure dashes out from the main body of troops, wearing a suit of light chain armour in which gold is the chief metal, a spiked crown mixing with the feathers of his casque, mounted on a heavy-flanked charger of the old gothic breed so loved by the sovereigns of Spain, which he fiercely urges forward with spur and heel in front of the rapidly riding Berbers, until the unwieldy animal, gored by the sharp rowels of steel, rears and turns aside, dashing the crowned rider onto the ground, where he lies motionless!

A cry of horror rises from the field. The king is wounded! The king is unhorsed; he is dead! Knights in their light panoply are arrested in their charge; courtiers in jewelled mantles on ambling jennets rein up; men-at-arms, young pages with nodding plumes on silken caps, all, all, in one dense mass, gathering around the fallen figure of the king, Juan I., son of Henry of Trastamare (1379), who came out to review some regiments just arrived from Africa habited to represent the Moors, and going through their graceful evolutions with lance and scimitar.

Unhappy king! There he lies, a corpse! He never moved, and is borne off from the field on a trestle hastily formed of gilded lances laid across, covered with the flag of Castile, a melancholy spectacle, his soldiers following with many a moistened eye, to be buried in the cathedral, beneath gorgeous gold panels in the coro.

The race of Trastamare, destined soon to end, brings short and troubled reigns, in which the superstitious may read an ever-present curse in the fratricide of Don Pedro.

The last words of Don Enrique el Caballero were a warning to his son Juan not to follow his footsteps, “but to cherish the followers of Don Pedro, who were faithful in adversity” – a curious glimpse into the idiosyncrasy of his mind at the moment when the crown for which he had sacrificed his honour as a knight and his fealty as a brother is fading from him as he approaches the misty confines of another world. “Verily his sin will find him out,” says the Bible, and so it was with Henry of Trastamare. Juan I., his son, dies a miserable death at thirty-four (A.D. 1390) on a mimic battle-field.

He had none of the bloodthirsty instincts of his family. He fought with English and Portuguese because it was the duty of kings of that day to fight, but with no ferocity of temperament or greed of conquest. He had inherited the softer qualities of the winning Caballero whom all men loved, before the unnatural cruelty of his brother, and the sting of repeated reverses drove him to the commission of a crime which will ever cling to his name.

Juan is succeeded by his young son Enrique, known as El Enfermo, under a Council of Regency, presided over by the Archbishop of Toledo and the Marqués de Villena.

No wonder the child of eleven is sick and tired of life under the oppressive surroundings in which he lives.

The Marqués de Villena, a grandee with the privilege of wearing his hat in the royal presence, and irritable and sarcastic when he dares, turns the royal boy’s blood cold when he rivets upon him his keen black eyes. Under the guise of devotion to his person he exercises over him every species of petty tyranny, and when, driven beyond his patience, the gentle Don Enrique pouts his lip and knits his young brow, he calls in the archbishop to help him, who, in his turn, exhorts the unhappy young king to conform in all things to the will of “the Regents” placed over him under God. Else – here the stately prelate pauses with a significant glance upwards, not to the sky, for these scenes generally take place within the palace, but all the same invoking the Divine wrath upon the disobedient child, who, well understanding what the archbishop means, is seized with such an access of unknown and mysterious terror as leaves him a helpless victim in their hands.

According to these two (there are other nobles in the Council of Regency, such as Don Pedro de Mendoza, the treasurer who disposes of the revenue, but the archbishop and Villena chiefly rule Castile) Enrique is to have no eyes, ears, or senses, but at their bidding. If he asks a question as to the matters of his kingdom, commands a largess to be disbursed, or expresses a wish for liberty to hunt or exercise himself in arms, or to entertain his friends, he is at once treated like a troublesome child and silenced.

Little by little, as time goes on, a sense of wrong and injustice rankles in his heart which neither the marquess nor the archbishop understands, but they continue assiduously to divide between them the power and the revenues of Castile.

Don Enrique is now sixteen; yet, as the years pass, the strength of his young life does not come to him in robustness of frame or sinew. Music is his passion – the old ballads which we hear as dance tunes in modern Spain, gallardas and seguidillas set to words – and the chase, a strange taste in one so weak. Between these pursuits his time is chiefly passed; nor are those who govern him at all displeased that such simple pleasures should occupy his thoughts and divert him from any possible interference in affairs of state.

One other comfort he has in life, the company of Don Garcia de Haro. He is a few years older than himself, and was placed with him as a companion by his father, almost from his birth, to cheer him in his many childish ailments, and share in the amusements of his solitary childhood. And now, in his dull life as king, with no one to sympathise with or love him, he clings to Garcia as to a kindred soul. With this intercourse the Regents dare not meddle, although Garcia, who is much more experienced than the king, may, in course of time, become dangerous to their interests. But a certain martinet warns them not to rouse by interference the latent passions of the young king, whose reserved and silent nature is as a sealed book to their understanding.

Now the two friends are riding side by side down the steep hill from the ancient castle of Sahagun, a stronghold belted in by machicolated walls, situated to the north of Burgos, where the court has gone for the enjoyment of hunting in the abundant Vega watered by the river Cea. A capital place for snipe, partridge, and woodcock, with the chance of stags or even of wild boars driven down by cold or hunger from the adjacent mountains.

A slender retinue follows Don Enrique, for it is not in the policy of the Regents to indulge him in much state, “the revenues being needed for the necessities of the kingdom,” he is told, and the court expenses, consequently, must be curtailed.

“But what matters!” is his thought, as he loosens the reins on the neck of the noble Andalusian barb on which he is mounted, with a coat as sleek as silk, as it bounds forward, swift as the wind, over the turf. Garcia is with him, and they are hastening at the top of their speed to spend a happy afternoon together with music and song in an old pavilion, built by the Moors as a garden house or delicias, at some miles distant from Sahagun.

“Now, Garcia, I do feel like a king,” shouts Don Enrique, turning in his saddle, the wind catching his words and flinging them back to his companion, a little in the rear. “I am out of reach of the marquess. No, not even the awful archbishop can threaten me here.”

“Ah! my lord,” returns Garcia de Haro, speaking under the influence of the same rapid movement, his words barely reaching the ear for which they are intended, “may it ever be so!”

“It shall!” cries the king, turning carelessly on his saddle to cast a hurried glance, full of affection, at him. “It shall, it shall!”

Now they are passing on a true Spanish road, full of holes and overlaid with stones, on by the aqueduct into a cool avenue, all fluttering with elm leaves, past the Cruz del Campo– and what a campo, as flat as my hand – the sky glowing over them like an opal, to the murmur of many waters and a rush of streams, onto a high plateau, where the pleasant air cheerfully fills the lungs as with the flavour of new wine; through corn fields and olive grounds and fig gardens and vineyards, bordered by low banks; the pleasant songs of the farmers in their ears, as with a lazy team of fat oxen they plough the fertile earth. A scent as of blossoming beans is in the air; the berries of the ripening olives toss over their heads; folks pass and repass on donkeys, and rough men lead files of mules, all with a “Vaya con Dios,” open-eyed at the young king, uncovering his head in silent courtesy, though the hoofs of his horse scatter pebbles in their faces.

Now they are passing a lonely village, the whole population sitting at their doors, a stool placed close by, with a white cloth and a plate for charity, round which gather the blind and the cripples, impelling themselves forward at the risk of their lives, but the cavalcade rushes by too quickly to stop to relieve them.