Spanish Highways and Byways

She lifts her eyebrows half incredulously, all bewitchingly.

"At five pesetas, señor."

He runs his hand through his black hair in chivalrous distress.

"But the peerless work, señorita! And this other, too! I sacrifice it at four pesetas."

She touches both fans lightly.

"You will let us have the two at seven pesetas, señor?"

Her eyes dance over his confusion. He catches the gleam, laughs back, throws up his hands.

"Bueno, señorita. At what you please."

It takes a Spaniard to depict a throng of Spanish ladies, – "fiery carnations or starry jasmine in their hair, cheeks like blush roses, eyes black or blue, with lashes quivering like butterflies; cherry lips, a glance as fickle as the light nod of a flower in the wind, and smiles that reveal teeth like pearls; the all-pervading fan with its wordless telegraphy in a thousand colors." In such a throng one sees not only the typical "eyes of midnight," but those "emerald eyes" which Cervantes knew, and veritable pansy-colored eyes dancing with more than pansy mischief. But the voices! In curious contrast to the tones of Spanish men, soft, coaxing, caressing, the voices of the women are too often high and harsh, suggesting, in moments of excitement, the scream of the Andalusian parrot. "O Jesus, what a fetching hat! The feather, the feather, see, see, see, see the feather! Mary Most Pure, but it must have cost four or five pesetas! Ah, my God, don't I wish it were mine!" The speaker who gets the lead in a chattering knot of Spanish women is a prodigy not only of volubility, but of general muscular action. She keeps time to her shrill music with hands, fan, elbows, shoulders, eyebrows, knees. She dashes her sentences with inarticulate whirs and whistles, and countless pious interjections: Gracias á Dios! Santa Maria! O Dios mio! The others, out-screamed and out-gesticulated, clutch at her, shriek at her, fly at her, and still, by some mysterious genius, maintain courtesy, grace, and dignity through it all. Yet it is true that the vulgar-rich variety is especially obnoxious among Spaniards. An overdressed Spanish woman is frightfully overdressed, her voice is maddening, her gusts of mirth and anger are painfully uncontrolled. This, however, is the exception, and refinement the rule.

The legendary Spanish lady is forever sitting at a barred window, or leaning from a balcony, coquetting with a fan and dropping arch responses to the "caramel phrases" of her guitar-tinkling cavalier.

"You're always saying you'd die for me.
I doubt it nevertheless;
But prove it true by dying,
And then I'll answer yes."

For, loving as they are, Spanish sweethearts take naturally to teasing. "When he calls me his Butterfly, I call him my Elephant. Then his eyes are like black fire, for he is ashamed to be so big, but in a twinkling I can make him smile again." The scorn of these dainty creatures for the graces of the ruling sex is not altogether affected. I shall not forget the expression with which a Sevillian belle, an exquisite dancer, watched her novio as, red and perspiring, he flung his stout legs valiantly through the mazes of the jota. "Men are uglier than ever when they are dancing, aren't they?" she remarked to me with all the serenity in the world. And a bewitching maiden in Madrid, as I passed some favorable comment upon the photographs of her two brothers, gave a deprecatory shrug. "Handsome? Ca!" (Which is no many times intensified.) "But they are not so ugly, either, —for men."

The style of compliment addressed by caballeros to señoritas is not like "the quality of mercy," but very much strained indeed. "Your eyes are two runaway stars, that would rather shine in your face than in heaven, but your heart is harder than the columns of Solomon's temple. Your father was a confectioner and rubbed your lips with honey-cakes." Little Consuelo, or Lagrimas, or Milagros, or Dolores, or Peligros laughs it off, "Ah, now you are throwing flowers."

The coplas of the wooer below the balcony are usually sentimental.

"By night I go to the patio,
And my tears in the fountain fall,
To think that I love you so much,
And you love me not at all."

"Sweetheart, little Sweetheart!
Love, my Love!
I can't see thy eyes
For the lashes above.
Eyes black as midnight,
Lashes black as grief!
O, my heart is thirsty
As a summer leaf."

"If I could but be buried
In the dimple of your chin,
I would wish, Dear, that dying
Might at once begin."

"If thou wilt be a white dove,
I will be a blue.
We'll put our bills together
And coo, coo, coo."

Sometimes the sentiment is relieved by a realistic touch.

"Very anxious is the flea,
Caught between finger and thumb.
More anxious I, on watch for thee,
Lest thou shouldst not come."

And occasionally the lover, flouted overmuch, retorts in kind.

"Don't blame me that eyes are wet,
For I only pay my debt.
I've taught you to cry and fret,
But first you taught me to forget."

"I'll not have you, Little Torment,
I don't want you, Little Witch.
Let your mother light four candles
And stand you in a niche."

The average Spaniard is well satisfied with his señora as she is. He did her extravagant homage as a suitor, he treats her with kindly indulgence as a husband, but he expects of her a life utterly bounded by the casa. "What is a woman?" we heard one say. "A bottle of wine." And those few words tell the story why, with all their charm, home-love, and piety, the Spanish women have not availed to keep the social life of the Peninsula sound and sweet.

"But to admire them as our gallants do,
'Oh, what an eye she hath! Oh, dainty hand!
Rare foot and leg!' and leave the mind respectless,
This is a plague that in both men and women
Makes such pollution of our earthly being."

The life of the convent is attractive to girls of mystic temperament, like the Maria of Valdés, but many of these lively daughters of the sun regard it with frank disfavor. One of the songs found in the mouths of little girls all over the Peninsula is amusingly expressive of the childish aversion to so dull a destiny.

"I wanted to be married
To a sprightly barber-lad,
But my parents wished to put me
In the convent dim and sad.

"One afternoon of summer
They walked me out in state,
And as we turned a corner,
I saw the convent gate.

"Out poured all the solemn nuns
In black from toe to chin,
Each with a lighted candle,
And made me enter in.

"The file was like a funeral;