icious than the modern woman with
all her liberty. The Spanish sadness is the work of her kings, of
those gloomy invalids who dreamt of conquering the whole world while
their own people were dying of hunger. When they saw that their deeds
did not correspond to their hopes, they became hypochondriacs and
despairingly fanatical, believing their ruin to be a punishment from
God, giving themselves over to a cruel devotion in order to appease
the divinity. When Philip II. heard of the wreck of the _Invincible_,
the death of so many thousand men, and the sorrow of half Spain, he
never even winked an eyelid. 'I sent it to fight with men, not with
the elements,' and he went on with his prayers in the Escorial. The
imperturbable gloom and ferocity of the kings re-acted on the nation,
and this is why for many centuries black was the favourite colour at
the court of Spain. The sombre groves in the royal palaces, with their
gloomy winter foliage, were and still are their favourite resorts; the
roofs of their country palaces are black, with towers surmounted by
weather-cocks, and dark cloisters like monasteries."

Shut into that small room with no other listener than the
Chapel-master, Gabriel forgot the discretion he had imposed on
himself with a view to the continuance of his quiet existence in
the Cathedral. He could speak without fear in the presence of the
musician, and he spoke warmly about the Spanish kings and of the gloom
that from them had filtered through the country.

Melancholy was the punishment imposed by Nature on the despots of the
Western decadence. When a king had any artistic predispositions, like
Fernando VI., instead of tasting the joy of life he nearly died of
weariness listening to the airs on the guitar feebly tinkled by
Farinelli. As they were born with their minds closed to every
inspiration of beauty or poetry, they spent their lives gun in hand in
the woods near Madrid, shooting the deer and yawning with disgust at
the fatigues of the chase, while the queens amused themselves at a
distance hanging on to the arm of one of the bodyguard. They could
not live with impunity for three centuries in close contact with the
Inquisition, exercising power simply as papal delegates, under the
direction of bishops, Jesuits, confessors, and monastic orders, who
only left to the Spanish monarchy the appearance of power, turning
it, in fact, into an oppressed theocratic republic. The gloom of
Catholicism penetrated int