Wanderings in Spain. Theophile Gautier
Royane, which is a little further on, I observed a magical effect in optics. A snowy mountain-top (Sierra Nevada), that the proximity of the other mountains had till then veiled from our sight, suddenly appeared standing out from the sky, which was of a blue so dark as to be almost black. Soon afterwards, at all the edges of the table-land we were traversing, more mountains raised, in a most curious manner, their summits loaded with snow and bathed in clouds. This snow was not compact, but divided into thin veins like sides of gauze worked with silver; it appeared still whiter from the contrast it formed with the azure and lilac tints of the precipices. The cold was tolerably severe, and became more intense in proportion as we advanced. The wind had not warmed itself by caressing the pale cheeks of these beautiful and chilly virgins, and came to us as icy as if it had arrived direct from the North or South Pole. We wrapped ourselves up as hermetically as we could in our cloaks, for it is extremely scandalous to have your nose frost-bitten in a torrid clime; I should not have cared had we been merely fried.
The sun was setting when we entered Vittoria; after threading all sorts of streets, of but middling architectural style and very bad taste, the coach stopped at the parador vejo, where our luggage was scrupulously examined. Our Daguerreotype especially alarmed the worthy custom-house officers a good deal; they approached it with the greatest precautions, like people who are afraid of being blown up; I think they imagined it to be an electrifying machine, and I took care not to undeceive them.
As soon as our things had been searched and our passports stamped, we had the right to scatter ourselves over the pavement of the town. We immediately took advantage of this, and, crossing a fine square surrounded by arcades, proceeded straightway to the church. The shades of night already filled the nave, and lowered with a mysterious and threatening look in obscure corners, where phantom-like forms might now and then be seen. A few small lamps, yellow and smoky, trembled ominously like stars in a fog. A sort of sepulchral chill came over me, and it was not without a slight feeling of dread that I heard a mournful voice murmur, just at my elbow, the stereotyped formula "Caballero, una limosina por l'amor de Dios." It was a poor wretch of a soldier who had been wounded, and who was asking an alms of us. In this country the soldiers beg; this is excusable on account of their miserable state of destitution, for they are paid very irregularly. In the church at Vittoria I became acquainted with those frightful sculptures in coloured wood, the use of which the Spaniards carry to such excess.
After a supper (cena) which caused us to regret that at Antigarraga, we suddenly thought of going to the play. We had been allured, as we passed along, by a pompous poster announcing the extraordinary performances of two French Herculeses, which were to terminate with a certain baile nacional (national dance), which we pictured to ourselves big with cachuchas, boleros, fandangos, and other diabolical dances.
The theatres in Spain have generally no façade, and are only distinguished from the houses around by two or three smoky lamps stuck before the door. We took two orchestra-stalls, surnamed places de lunette (asientos de luneta), and bravely precipitated ourselves into a corridor, where the floor was neither planked nor paved, but was nothing more or less than the bare earth. The frequenters of the place are not very particular about the uses to which they turn the walls of the corridor, but, by hermetically sealing our noses, we reached our places not more than half suffocated. When I add that smoking is perpetually practised between the acts, the reader will not have a very fragrant idea of a Spanish theatre.
The interior of the house is, however, more comfortable than the approaches to it promise; the boxes are tolerably arranged, and although the decorations are simple, they are fresh and clean. The asientos de luneta are armchairs placed in rows and numbered; there is no checktaker at the door to take your tickets, but a little boy comes round for them before the end of the performance; at the outer door you are merely asked for the card that admits you within the theatre.
We had hoped to find the true type of the Spanish woman, of which we had as yet seen but few specimens; but the ladies who filled the boxes and galleries had nothing Spanish about them save the mantilla and the fan: this was a good deal, it is true, but not sufficient. The audience was mostly composed of the military, which is the case in all garrison towns. In the pit, the spectators stand as in the most primitive theatres. There was, in truth, but a row of candles and a candle-snuffer wanting to give the place the appearance of the Hôtel de Bourgogne; the lamps, however, were enclosed by thin plates of glass, disposed in the shape of a melon, and united at the top by a circle of tin: this was certainly no great sign of an advanced state of the industrial arts. The orchestra, which consisted of one row of musicians, almost all of whom played brass instruments, blew most valiantly on their cornets-à-piston an air which was always the same, and recalled to one's recollection the flourishes of the band at Franconi's.
Our Herculean compatriots raised immense weights, and bent a considerable number of iron bars, to the great delight of the assembly; while the lighter of the two made an ascent upon the tight rope, and performed a variety of other feats, rather stale in Paris, but new, probably, to the population of Vittoria. During this time we were dying with impatience in our stalls, and I was cleaning the glass of my lorgnette with a furious degree of activity, in order not to lose anything of the baile nacional. At last, the supports of the tight-rope were loosened, and the stage-carpenters, dressed as Turks, cleared away the weights and all the other paraphernalia of the Herculeses. Think, dear reader, of the frightful anxiety of two enthusiastic and romantic young Frenchmen about to behold, for the first time, a Spanish dance ... in Spain!
At last the curtain rose upon a scene which seemed to entertain a feeble desire, which was certainly not gratified, of being enchanting and fairy-like. The cornets-à-piston played, with more fury than ever, the strain already described, and the baile nacional advanced in the form of a danseur and danseuse, armed with a pair of castagnettes each. Never have I seen anything more sad and lamentable than these two miserable ruins qui ne se consolaient pas entre eux: a penny theatre never bore upon its worm-eaten boards a couple more used-up, more worn-out, more toothless, more blear-eyed, more bald, and more dilapidated. The wretched woman, who had besmeared herself with bad Spanish white, had a sky-blue complexion, which recalled to your mind the Anacreontic pictures of a person who had died of cholera, or been drowned some time; the two dabs of rouge that she had placed upon her prominent cheek-bones, to add a little brilliancy to her fishy eyes that seemed as if they had been boiled, contrasted strangely with the aforesaid blue. With her veiny and emaciated hands she shook a pair of cracked castagnettes, which chattered like the teeth of a man who has got a fever, or like the wires of a skeleton in motion. From time to time, she stretched, with a desperate effort, the relaxed fibres of her calves, and managed to raise her poor old baluster-looking leg, so as to produce a nervous little capriole, like a dead frog submitted to the operation of the voltaic battery, and, for a second, to cause the copper spangles of the doubtful rags which served her for a robe, to sparkle and glisten. As for the man, he kept fluttering about most horribly in his own corner; he rose and fell flatly, like a bat crawling along upon its stumps; he looked like a grave-digger burying himself. His forehead, wrinkled like a boot, and his goat-like cheeks, gave him a most fantastic air: if, instead of castagnettes, he had only had a Gothic rebec in his hands, he might have set up to lead the Dance of Death at Basle.
During all the time the dance lasted, they did not once raise their eyes on one another; it struck you that they were frightened of their reciprocal ugliness, and feared lest they should burst into tears at seeing themselves so old, so decrepit, and so mournful. The man, especially, avoided his companion as if she had been a spider, and appeared to shiver in his old parchment skin every time the figure of the dance forced him to approach her. This lively bolero lasted five or six minutes, after which the fall of the curtain put an end to the torture of these two wretched beings, ... and to ours.
Such was the specimen of the bolero which greeted our poor eyes, so enamoured of "local colouring." Spanish dancers exist only at Paris, like the shells which are only found at the curiosity-shops, and never on the sea shore. O Fanny Elssler, who art now in America, among the savages! even before going to Spain, we always had an idea that it was thou who inventedst the cachucha!
We went to bed rather disappointed. In the middle of the night we were woke up to resume our journey. The cold was still intense, to