The Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in these
matters. The people always fill the line of march, and a rivulet of
procession meanders feebly through a wilderness of mob. It is fortunate
that the crowd is more entertaining than the show.
The Church has a very indifferent part in this ceremonial. It does
nothing more than celebrate a mass in the shade of the dark cypresses in
the Place of Loyalty, and then leaves the field clear to the secular
power. But this is the only purely civic ceremony I ever saw in Spain.
The Church is lord of the holidays for the rest of the year.
In the middle of May comes the feast of the ploughboy patron of
Madrid,--San Isidro. He was a true Madrileno in tastes, and spent his
time lying in the summer shade or basking in the winter sunshine, seeing
visions, while angels came down from heaven and did his farm chores for
him. The angels are less amiable nowadays, but every true child of
Madrid reveres the example and envies the success of the San Isidro
method of doing business. In the process of years this lazy lout has
become a great saint, and his bones have done more extensive and
remarkable miracle-work than any equal amount of phosphate in existence.
In desperate cases of sufficient rank the doctors throw up the sponge
and send for Isidro's urn, and the drugging having ceased, the noble
patient frequently recovers, and much honor and profit comes thereby to
the shrine of the saint.
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