Some of us laughed
thoughtlessly, and narrowly escaped the knives of the orthodox ruffians
who followed the procession."
The most striking fact in this species of exhibition is the evident and
unquestioning faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show is at
first shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a
sermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons
who attend these spectacles is very different from that which you find
at the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious
bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who come
to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They would
not dream of such an indiscretion as reading the Bible. Their doctrinal
education consists of their catechism, the sermons of the curas, and the
traditions of the Church. The miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping the
brow of the Saviour in the Street of Bitterness, finds his portrait on
her handkerchief, is to them as real and reverend as if it were related
by the evangelist. The spirit of inquiry which has broken so many idols,
and opened such new vistas of thought for the minds of all the world, is
as yet a stranger to Spain. It is the blind and fatal boast of even the
best of Spaniards that their country is a unit in religious faith. Nunca
se disputo en Espana,--"There has never been any discussion in
Spain,"--exclaims proudly an eminent Spanish writer.
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