Wanderings in Spain. Theophile Gautier

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      PASS OF PANCORBO.

      Between Ameyugo and Cubo, small insignificant towns, where we changed mules, the landscape is extremely picturesque; the mountains contract and draw near one another, while immense perpendicular rocks, as steep as cliffs, rise up at the road-side. On the left, a torrent, crossed by a bridge with a truncated ogive arch, whirls round and round at the bottom of a ravine, turns a mill, and covers with spray the stones that stop its course. That nothing may be wanting to complete the effect, a gothic church, falling to ruin, with its roof staved in, and its walls covered with parasite plants, rises in the midst of the rocks; in the background is seen the vague and bluish outline of the Sierra. The view is certainly very fine, but the passage of Pancorbo carries off the palm for singularity and grandeur. There the rocks leave only just room enough for the road, and there is one point where two immense granite masses, leaning towards one another, give you the idea of a gigantic bridge, which has been cut in the middle, to stop the march of an army of Titans. A second, but smaller, arch, pierced through the thickness of the rock, adds still more to the illusion. Never did a scene-painter imagine a more picturesque and more admirably-contrived scene. When you are accustomed to the flat views of plains, the astonishing effects met with at every step, in the mountains, appear impossible and fabulous.

      The posada where we stopped to dine had a stable for a vestibule. This architectural arrangement is invariably repeated in all Spanish posadas, and to reach your room you are obliged to pass behind the cruppers of the mules. The wine, which was blacker than usual, had a certain taste of goat-skin sufficiently local. The maidservants of the inn wore their hair hanging down to the middle of their backs, but, with this exception, their dress was the same as that of French women of the lower classes. The national costumes are, in general, seldom preserved, save in Andalusia, and, at present, there are very few ancient costumes in Castile. The men wore the pointed hat, edged with velvet and silk tufts, or a wolf-skin cap of rather ferocious shape, and the inevitable tobacco or dirty-coloured mantle. Their faces, however, had nothing characteristic about them.

      Between Pancorbo and Burgos we fell in with three or four little villages, such as Briviesca, Castil de Peones, and Quintanapalla, half in ruins, as dry as pumice-stone, and of the colour of a toast. I doubt whether Decamps ever found in the heart of Asia Minor, any walls more roasted, more reddened, more tawny, more seedy, more crusty, and more scratched over, than these. Along these said walls wandered carelessly certain asses, who are decidedly well worth the Turkish ones, and which I would advise him to go and study. The Turkish ass is a fatalist, and, as is evident from his humble air, resigned to the blows which Fate has in store for him, and which he endures without a murmur. The Castilian ass has a more philosophical and deliberate look; he is aware that people cannot do without him; he makes one of the family; he has read Don Quixote, and he flatters himself that he is descended in a straight line from the celebrated donkey of Sancho Panza. Side by side with these asses were also dogs of the purest blood and most superb breed, with splendid claws, broad backs, and beautiful ears, and among the rest some large greyhounds, in the style of Paul Veronese and Velasquez, of most magnificent size and beauty, not to speak of some dozen muchachos, or boys, whose eyes glistened in the midst of their rags, like so many black diamonds.

      Old Castile is, doubtless, so called, on account of the great number of old women you meet there; and what old women! The witches in "Macbeth" crossing the heath of Dunsinane, to prepare their diabolical cookery, are charming young girls in comparison: the abominable hags in the capricious productions of Goya, which I had till then looked upon as monstrous nightmares and chimeras, are but portraits frightfully like; most of these old women have a beard like mouldy cheese, and moustaches like French grenadiers; and then, their dress! You might take a piece of cloth, and work hard ten years to dirty, to rub, to tear, to patch, and to make it lose all traces of its original colour, and you would not even then attain the same sublimity of raggedness! These charms are increased by a haggard and savage look, very different from the humble and piteous mien of the poor wretches in France.

      A little before reaching Burgos, a large edifice, situated upon a hill, was, in the distance, pointed out to us. It was the Cartuja de Miraflores (Carthusian convent), of which I shall have occasion, later, to speak more at length. Soon afterwards the spires of the Cathedral displayed their embrasures more and more distinctly against the sky, and in another half-hour we were entering the ancient capital of Old Castile.

      The public place of Burgos, in the midst of which stands a very middling bronze statue of Charles III., is large, and not without some character. Red houses, supported by pillars of bluish granite, inclose it on all sides. Under the arcades and on the place, are stationed all sorts of petty dealers, besides an infinite number of asses, mules, and picturesque peasants who promenade up and down. The rags of Castile are seen there in all their splendour. The poorest beggar is nobly draped in his cloak, like a Roman emperor in his purple. I know nothing better with which to compare these cloaks, for colour and substance, than large pieces of tinder jagged at the edges. Don Cæsar de Bazan's cloak, in the drama of "Ruy Blas," does not come near these proud and haughty rags. They are all so threadbare, so dry, and so inflammable, that it strikes you the wearers are very imprudent to smoke or strike a light. The little children, also, six or eight years old, have their cloaks, which they wear with the most ineffable gravity. I cannot help laughing at the recollection of a poor little wretch, who had nothing left but a collar which hardly covered his shoulder, and who draped himself in the absent folds with an air so comically piteous, that he would have unwrinkled the countenance of the Spleen in person. The men condemned to the presidio (convicts) sweep the town and clear away the filth, without quitting the rags in which they are swathed. These convicts in cloaks are the most astonishing blackguards it is possible to behold. After СКАЧАТЬ