CHAPTER ONE

The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa De Mier

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Edited by SUSANA ROTKER
Oxford University Press

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From the Time That the Resolution of the
Council Was Confirmed in Modified Form
to My Arrival in Paris

    It is certain that I no longer had any intention of bowing to the iniquity of the Council or to the whims of Leon, whose one thought was also to win time. Promising to do me justice after having forced me to serve out the archbishop's sentence was a mockery. But I had no money to live on. The Council, as a result of the royal decree, issued an order to the representative of my Province to provide for my needs in Salamanca and make arrangements for my journey, giving me the money necessary to meet my expenses. In order to collect this aid, I hatched a plan with a calash driver, who went with me to the representative's; early the following morning I made as if I were leaving, left my cell in the Indies block of San Francisco monastery, received an ounce of gold from the representative and went into hiding. But the calash driver was craftier still; he found the lodging where I was hiding out and demanded that I give him the money, which he told me they were asking him for. How could they have been asking him for what had not been given to him? Out of fear, however, that he would give me away, I gave him twelve duros, which was what I had left after four days. It is more than likely that he kept the money for himself, since he told the representative that I had made him wait for me all day, telling him that I had a certain errand to run, as I found out because Leon later confronted me with the calash driver's lie. This is the only plot I ever attempted to carry off in my life, and it turned out as badly as has been seen. My naivete rules out any sort of dishonest dealings. My friends have always urged me in vain to adopt just a touch of Christian slyness, as they put it. I am incapable of cunning.

    I remained in hiding with the help of some Americans, undecided as to my fate, when I found out that the Council had consulted the ministry as to what should be done with me once I had been caught, and that Leon, in order to arouse Minister Caballero's wrath against me, had told him that I wanted to kill him. Poor me, a person who, when there are little ants on my path, go hopping about from one foot to the other so as not to crush their little features! To save my own face, which when all was said and done could not be kept hidden for very long, I hired a mule and left for Burgos, to see whether among the friends I had there I could get a little money together and enter France. All I could raise was an ounce of gold, and after two days I decided to go on foot to Agreda, where there was a French priest who was both a smuggler and a friend of mine, so that he could help me out with more money and the means to make my way through France and reach Rome, with the aim of secularizing myself. As long as I wore the habit I had no doubt that they would be tossing me back and forth as though I were a pelota, since friars in Spain are looked upon with the utmost scorn, as being the scum of society; their honor is of no importance, and they are regarded as proper targets of all the evil done them. All the difficulty in finding the right niche for someone lies in providing him with the means to maintain himself, and inasmuch as the Province has people who can be ordered to offer him such means, oppressors can easily wreak their will.

    Just as I was about to mount the mule to set out for Agreda, the Chief Magistrate of Burgos appeared at the inn. On account of the plague that was raging in Andalusia, he was taking many precautions at the time with regard to people passing through the city, and since the wretch of an innkeeper saw that I went out only at night because I was well-known in Burgos, he had reported that I was suspect. I made my answers brief, believing that there was a warrant out for my arrest; my fear and my replies aroused the magistrate's suspicions; he flung himself on my papers, found the order of the Council sending me to Salamanca, and while he was sending word to the court he had me taken off to the monastery of San Francisco. As I left for the latter, I gave the ounce of gold to the lad who had brought me from Madrid and told him not to go off, because I would be leaving San Francisco during the night and we would be going to Agreda. He reported this to the magistrate, who ordered me confined to a cell in the aforementioned San Francisco. Inasmuch as I was highly respected in Burgos, this caused great scandal.

    On the following day a friar offered to get me out by pulling me up to a corridor above through the window. But I did not agree to his doing so because, being as naive and stupid as ever, I had not yet learned everything there was to know about Leon, and believed that he would be content with having me brought to Salamanca, since I had declared before the magistrate that I was only passing through Burgos so as to collect a bit of money with which to set up my cell there and provide myself with utensils. But that ferocious Leon, who realized that I had fallen into his clutches once again, went back to his old refrain about making me serve out the archbishop's sentence to the letter, and saw to it that an order was issued to take me to Las Caldas and bury me in a prison cell there for the four years it would take me to serve out the sentence.

    That pen pusher from the ministry passed the secret on to don Juan Cornide, my friend, who sent me word of what awaited me through the intermediary of a merchant in Burgos who delivered the letter to me, despite the warden of the convent, who intercepted my correspondence, since friars have no scruples about doing so. A bolt of lightning paralyzed my faculties and my senses for four hours. Everything is going to be lost, I said on coming round; I must risk everything; and I began to ponder ways of escaping. My first thought was to take off with an open umbrella, whose ribs I had opened and made fast, and fly down to the patio formed by a block of three rows of cells, where a door was within sight. But I was very high up; waiting to receive me down below were enormous stones, and my flight risked meeting with the same success as Simon Magus. I fell back on the monk who had offered to get me out in the beginning but was afraid now, having seen how closely I was guarded, with friars taking turns keeping watch over me day and night. But he suggested to me that I could let myself down with the thin rope that formed the mattress frame of my cot.

    Once I had tied the rope from the window, I began to let myself down on the stroke of midnight, the hour at which the friar on guard went off to say matins; and since there were windows on which to support myself, I descended nicely; but then my hands split open from the weight of my body, and before l knew it I came down faster than I wanted to. Just as the thought came to me that I was going to end up on the ground as flat as a tortilla, I found myself astride the end of the rope, which was tied in a loop. I was badly battered by the time my flight ended, and after that I made my way out through a door that opened onto a yard; the door was closed, but with great effort I wriggled through a gap in it. I fled through the yard and ran a good quarter of a league away from Burgos, to the hospital of the royal knights commanders, who hid me that day.

    I hung up my habit there out of necessity, and with a hunter's pouch full of provisions and eight duros, I left at eight that night, heading for Madrid, conveyed by Saint Francis's coach, as the saying goes. It would make a long story were I to tell of the trials I went through, resting by day, walking by night, flinging myself to the side of the road at every noise I heard, fighting off the dogs that occupy the towns in battalions, and trembling from fear of the highwaymen who, led by Chafaldin, were ravaging Old Castile. This was my first attempt at journeying on foot, and my feet and legs swelled up so badly that after walking for two nights it took me nearly a day to go just one league, reaching at last a town three leagues distant from Torquemada, where I burst into tears. Taking pity on me, a muleteer who was going toward Torquemada put me astride a donkey and took me to the house of a good man, his benefactor, who gave me lodging.

    The latter, in exchange for my money, provided me with a mule and a boy to guide me to Valladolid. On the way we met several people who were going to Burgos, and they said: "That's the padre who was in San Francisco," which made me quicken our pace, since through them it might become known that I was in the environs of Burgos and the authorities might then catch up with me with a warrant for my arrest. In Valladolid I was taken in by two students, erstwhile pupils of rhetoric of mine in Burgos, and we took the precaution of having me go out into the countryside on the days when the mail arrived in that city, in case any news concerning me arrived in the morning, until such time as they came to tell me to come eat. I learned there that Leon had sent to Burgos for all my papers that the magistrate had taken from me, the ones that were most important, which I had been carrying with me; I had left the rest behind in my trunk in Madrid. It had been a constant concern of Leon's: to take my papers and documents away from me, so as to attack me when I no longer had them in my possession, or find some incriminating evidence against me among them. My letters of holy orders, my certificates of ordination, my defense, and so on, are being kept there; and Leon did not deposit them in the secretariat, because later on I asked don Zenon to look for them, and they were not there.

    After having rested eight or ten days in Valladolid, I went on my way, again passing myself off as an emigre French priest, in a Catalan cart, a most uncomfortable vehicle that addled my brain. On arriving in Madrid, I betook myself to the home of don Juan Cornide, who lived with Filomeno, today the public prosecutor of Havana, his native city. I was told that Leon, furious that his prey had escaped his clutches, had ordered the arrest of the entire monastery of San Francisco in Burgos; but the chief magistrate had sent word that the monks had shown him my bloody handprints on the wall, which proved that I had escaped without their cooperation. I also found out that Leon had ordered warrants for my arrest issued throughout Spain. Can such attacks on me be believed? In view of these scandalous events would I not be taken for a murderer, a highwayman or a traitor judged guilty of the crime of lesemajeste? Later on, Leon accused me of being the latter, a charge based solely on the fact that I had been brought to trial by two viceroys, even though Leon had in his possession the letter in which the Count of Revillagigedo gave the lie to the archbishop. Naturally all this was merely evildoing on the part of this wicked pen pusher from the ministry.

    The official of the ministry for Mexico, don Zenon, sent me word that he had purposely not issued a warrant for my arrest in Catalonia, in order that I might make my escape to France from there; but in Catalonia I would have no means whatsoever of supporting myself. The lack of money was what put me at greatest risk. My good brother don Froilan, may God rest his soul, kept writing from Monterrey that there were no bills of exchange for Spain to be had there, but that I should get money in Spain and draw a sight draft on it. It is much more difficult to find someone to give money in Spain to be received in America; and in wartime--and Spain had been at war with England almost continually every since I had been in the Peninsula--it is almost impossible. Spain lives off America as Rome lives off papal bulls; and as soon as maritime transport becomes difficult, there is nothing to be found there save hunger and poverty. In order to reach his new diocese, to which he had been given strict orders to proceed on the grounds that he was guilty of being a Jansenist and a friend of Urquijo's, the bishop of Havana, Espiga, had raised the necessary funds to do so by paying 200 percent interest. How, then, was I to find money!

    By making my escape by way of Navarre, I could call on the help of the French priest-smuggler who was in Agreda. He was also a friend of don Juan Cornide, who had powerful connections in the region because his brother don Gregorio was a vicar-general in France. He therefore spoke with some muleteers from Agreda to arrange to have them transport me, and he and Filomeno got me out of town via the Fuencarral gate, in a horse-drawn carriage, making a great commotion as they passed through so as to keep the guards from suspecting anything. After proceeding for a quarter of a league, they handed me over in my guise of a French emigre priest to the muleteers, who were already transporting my trunk; and to replace my letters of holy orders et cetera, Cornido gave me those of the late Dr. Maniau, whose executor he was, and they fit me perfectly, since Dr. Maniau had been my age and held the same ecclesiastical rank. The new Maniau mounted a mule, and at nightfall we put up at the muleteers' inn, outside the walls of Alcala de Henares.

    At eight o'clock that night, people arrived in a mad rush, giving me a scare, and it was none other than Cornide and Filomeno, who, having obtained a copy of the warrant from don Zenon, were coming to alter my appearance. And in fact they diabolically transformed me, going so far as to make a black mole on my nose and another on my upper lip with an infernal stone. The mother who bore me would not have recognized me. Nonetheless, in view of the fact that Leon stated in the warrant that I was good-looking, cheerful and affable, they exhorted me to make myself appear to be taciturn, melancholy and ugly. On spying guards, I therefore contorted my chops, looked cross-eyed and carried out to the letter the last battle cry of the Portuguese army: "Make fierce faces at the enemy!" We did not dare, however, to enter via the Agreda gate, since two warrants had been issued: one by the government and another by the chief magistrate of Burgos; and the muleteer led me through a gap in the wall and home with him.

    He was one of the close friends of my priest-smuggler, who came to see me. I entrusted my trunk to him, which he still has in his possession, and he put me in the hands of another confidant of his who was to take me to Pamplona, with a recommendation to a French commercial house, which I too knew of, to get me into France. As I left Aragon for Navarre, I was witness to one of the despotic and ruinous peculiarities of Spain, for a more rigorous search is made for the money that a person is taking from one kingdom to another than the inspection at the frontiers of the country. Even though my only baggage consisted of one small sack of clothing, which the guards emptied out onto the ground, and eight duros that I had declared, they also poked a shoemaker's awl through the cover of my breviary, to see if I had any gold coins hidden there.

    I reached Pamplona four days after Urquijo had arrived as a prisoner at its citadel, and from the inn I proceeded to the house of the French merchant. "Don't go back to the inn," he told me, "because they have just arrested two men, believing them to be you and Cuesta, the archdeacon of Avila, a fugitive because of the pastoral doctrine that he preached and his bishop published." This was the crucial period of the persecution carried out against the Jansenists by Godoy (who for this reason was called a pillar of religion in a brief issued by Rome). In Europe that is what all men with solid religious training who are friends of the age-old legitimate discipline of the Church are called.

    My Frenchman immediately summoned a muleteer who had taken many priests to France across the Pyrenees. He came with his mule, and following along after it, the merchant and I left, handing out a number of pesetas to the guards. I mounted the mule at the far end of the Paseo de la Taconera, and the muleteer advised us to go as far into the Pyrenees as we could, which we did, journeying on till two in the morning, at which time we arrived in Hostia, frozen to the bone. The next day we went through the valley of Bastan, and on the third day we slept in Cincovillas; from there we could see the ocean, Bayonne and all its environs, looking as white as a herd of cows in the countryside. I was not very happy at the inn, because there were guards there and they had the warrant; but the information volunteered by the muleteer, who was very well-known, that I was a French priest, together with the confirmation offered by my physiognomy and my hair, my moles and my Mexican accent (which they said was a foreign one, the one that causes Mexicans to be taken for Portuguese or Castilians in Andalusia and for Andalusians in Castile) got me safely past them.

    The following day we went through Ordaz, the last little Spanish village on that side, and I was eager to find out what marked the boundary of France. "That's it there," the muleteer said to me, pointing to a very small, shallow stream. I went across it, dismounted and stretched out face down on the ground. "What are you doing?" he asked me. "I have crossed the Rubicon," I answered him. "I am not an emigre, but a Mexican, and I am carrying only this passport (the one that had been Maniau's) from Mexico to Spain." "It doesn't matter," he said. "The gendarmes don't understand Castilian, and when they see your grand manner they will take their hats off to you as to a grandee." And that was what happened.

    We slept that night in Anoa, the first French village; that is to say, the first Basque or French Biscayan one, for the province of Vizcaya is at once part of Spain and part of France, and immigrants from both sides come to America as Spaniards, just as they do from French and Spanish Catalonia. The next day, in order to enter Bayonne, which is a walled city, the muleteer had me dismount and enter the town by mingling with the people on the public promenade, where for the first time I saw carriages drawn by oxen. This precaution was of no avail, for the guard's suspicion was aroused because of the way I was dressed and because I was wearing boots and was covered from head to foot with dust from the road. He took me to the city hall, where I presented my Mexican passport, and since no one could understand it, they gave me my entry card, or safe-conduct pass. All this was quite necessary at that time because of the disturbances, which still had not died down altogether, in the Republic. It was still a republic, though governed by consuls, with Bonaparte as First Consul. That day was Good Friday of the year 1801.

    What to do to make a living, especially since I was possessed of a strong sense of pride, as befitted my highborn station, and incapable not only of begging, but of allowing my poverty to show? I went through some terrible experiences, and would never have survived them had I been a libertine. By sheer chance, I unwittingly entered the Jewish synagogue in the Sancti-Spiritus quarter. The psalms were being sung in Spanish, and the sermon was preached in Spanish. All the Jews in France, and in almost all of Europe, save for Germany, are Spanish by descent and many by birth; because I saw them as they came to Bayonne to be circumcised; all of them speak Spanish, men and women alike; their Bibles, all their prayers are in Spanish, and above all they observe conventions such that, when a German Jew who didn't understand Spanish was married in Bayonne, even though the marriage contract was also written in Hebrew so that he would understand it, it was first read to him in Castilian, and this was the one he signed. And they still follow Spanish customs, and are also the ones who carry on the principal commercial dealings with Spain, which they all have visited. The reason behind this stubborn insistence on preserving all things Spanish is their claim that those who came to Spain because they were sent there by the emperor Hadrian belong to the tribe of Judah.

    I entered the synagogue the very next day after I arrived, and that day was none other than the Passover of unleavened bread and lamb. The rabbi preached, proving, as is always done on Passover, that the Messiah had not yet come, because the sins of Israel are holding him back. As I left the synagogue, everyone flocked about me to find out what I had thought of the sermon. They had been surprised to see me, because I was wearing a clerical collar, and because I removed my hat, whereas all of them had kept theirs on inside the synagogue, and the rabbis who were officiating were wearing a prayer shawl over their heads as well. The greatest mark of respect in the Orient is to cover one's head. Only at Kaddish, or the ceremony in commemoration of the dead, which is always recited by an orphan, do worshipers bare their heads in the synagogue. And the way they have of telling whether a person is Jewish is to ask him in Hebrew: "What is your name?" In a moment's time I demolished all the arguments of the rabbi who preached the sermon, and they challenged me to a public debate. I agreed, and since I had at my fingertips Bishop Huet's evangelical proof, I made such an impression at the debate that they offered me in marriage a beautiful, wealthy young maiden named Rachel, whose name in French was Fineta, because all of them use two names, one for among themselves and another for outsiders; and they even went so far as to offer to pay for my journey to Holland to marry there, if I did not care to do so in France.

    I naturally refused their offer; but from that day on I enjoyed such credit among them that they called me Japa, that is to say, learned one; I was the first one invited to all their ceremonies; the rabbis came to consult me about their sermons, to have me correct their Castilian, and made me a new habit. When out of curiosity I went to the synagogue like other Spaniards, the rabbis bade me seat myself on their dais or in their pulpit. And once the ceremony had ended at nightfall, I remained behind by myself with the officiating rabbi, watching him as he studied what was to be read the following day. He then brought out the law of Moses, which when the congregation is present is brought out with great ceremony and reverence, as everyone bows before it. It is written on scrolls, without accent marks for the vowels, with only the consonants, and the rabbi would study it, as meanwhile I read it in the Bible with accent marks. And then I would snuff out the candles of the votive lamps, because they are forbidden to do so, nor are they permitted to light a fire to cook or to warm themselves on the Sabbath. They use Christian maidservants to do all this, and I told them that for that reason their religion was incapable of being a universal one.

    Since I was still good-looking, I did not lack for young Christian ladies seeking to marry me either, none of whom found it difficult to explain what they had in mind, and when I answered that I was a priest, they would say that that was no obstacle if I were willing to abandon my calling. The horde of priests who contracted a marriage out of terror of the revolution, which forced them to marry, had left them without scruples. In Bayonne and all of the administrative district of the Lower Pyrenees as far north as Dax the women are fair-skinned and pretty, particularly the Basque ones; but I was never more aware of the influence of climate than when I began journeying on foot to Paris, because I saw, quite evidently, all the way from Montmarsan, some eight or ten leagues from Bayonne, to Paris, men and women who were dark-skinned, and the latter were ugly. French women as a general rule are ugly, and physically resemble frogs. Misshapen, short and squat, big-mouthed and slant-eyed. As one goes farther north in France, they get better-looking.

    In order to support myself in Bayonne, I had recourse to the priests who had emigrated to Spain whom I had helped move from Burgos to La Coruna. After consideration by the French Government, an order was issued in 1797 directing the poor French priests to leave Spain for the Canary and Balearic islands; those from Burgos were to go by way of La Coruna. I sent a circular petition in their name to the clergy of Burgos, asking them to help raise money for the French priests' journey. It was received so favorably that the clergy went out into the streets with trays to take up a collection, and more than enough money was raised to decently transport sixty priests, who, to show their gratitude to me, came to the monastery of San Pablo, where I was, to mount up for their journey. The poor wretches sent me forty francs in Bayonne, on receiving which I decided, after two months, to enter France. What I needed was a passport; but the Jews pointed out to me that in the one I had from Mexico for Spain the latter word was written out in a shortened form and was followed by a little blank space at the end of the line. I added the words "and France" then, and took to the riverbed to walk to Dax, four leagues away.

    From there I set out on foot for Bordeaux, more than thirty leagues away, in the company of two shoemakers who were deserters from the Spanish army. Since the road is nothing but sand all the way, I suffered immeasurably, and in the end I would not have been able to reach Bordeaux, inasmuch as my feet were badly inflamed, had I not taken to yet another riverbed to go the rest of the way. The shoemakers set to work forthwith, and began piling up money as though it were heaps of dirt, whereas I, stuffed full of Theology, was dying of hunger and envy. I realized then how right fathers were to have their sons, however highborn they might be, taught a trade in their early years, especially one that was so easy and so necessary anywhere in the world. This would enable them to earn their daily bread amid all of life's vicissitudes.

    I had received a letter from the ambassador of Spain in Paris, don Nicolas Azara, and another from the botanist Francisco Zea, for in the midst of all my trials and miseries I had never lacked for attention from European savants and correspondence with them. In view of these letters, the Spanish consul, who needed to have his accounts approved by the ambassador, ordered the secretary of the consulate to put me up. The secretary was a Spaniard who made every effort to make an atheist of me through the writings of Freret, as though a certain Italian had not reduced his sophisms to dust. I have observed that impious books are read with pleasure, because they look with favor on the passions, and allegations against such works not only go unread, but are viewed with scorn, because the swaggeringly boastful and perfectly self-satisfied tone of those authors who are unbelievers penetrates the minds of their readers. And the truth is that these braggarts are ignoramuses and impostors. They speak with a self-satisfaction they do not possess within themselves, in order to impose their point of view, and if they do possess it, it is owing to their very ignorance. Qui respicit ad pauca, de facili pronuntiat.

    As soon as the aforementioned secretary discovered that I had money he pretended that by order of the consul I was to pay the sum of twenty duros for my lodging, which he pocketed. The money that I had came to me through the generosity of don Jose Sarea, the Count of Gijon, a native of Quito, who disembarked in Bordeaux after having invested all his money in Havana sugar, expecting to make a large profit. And in point of fact, at that time there was no sugar in Bordeaux. I talked him into visiting Paris before passing over into Spain, and he took me along as his interpreter. He tossed money about as though he were in America, and I, being of the opinion that he was about to be in very serious straits in Europe, where one and all conspire to fleece a newcomer from America, reined him in, even when I was the one on whom he chose to lavish money. This made him angry and he abandoned me almost the moment we arrived in Paris. Later on he deeply regretted having done so, for he was overtaken by all the trials that I had predicted for him. Instead of selling the sugar immediately, the merchant from Bordeaux with whom he had dealt waited until the market was glutted with it, following the peace treaty of Amiens, and then, selling it for nothing, or pretending to have sold it, kept the money as payment for having stored it. The count finally realized that I was a man of integrity, and I have not had a better friend since.

    I do not want to neglect to mention that a Frenchman in the service of Spain, who became my friend in Bayonne, sent a letter from Bordeaux to his brother, who had an influential position in Paris, roundly recommending me to him because "despite his being a priest, he is an upright man," as he put it in the letter. The brother showed me this phrase and told me that it was necessary to write that, because all priests were libertines. Later on I noted that this phrase was commonly used when recommending a priest. Unbelievers had inveighed against religion and its ministers as being impostors to such a point that they succeeded in impressing the people, who went out into the woods to which priests fled during the revolution so as to hunt them down, saying that they were going out to kill black beasts.

    If the Frenchman had known that I was a monk, he would not have recommended me, because the word friar appended to my name made me a good-for-nothing. Among Catholics and unbelievers alike, it is a term of opprobrium, or better put, it sums up all such terms, and when people call someone a friar, they think that they have exhausted their store of insults. It is tantamount to calling him a base, crude, ill- mannered, lazy, begging, abysmally ignorant man, an impostor, a hypocrite, a liar, a superstition-ridden fanatic, capable of any and every despicable deed and incapable of honor and uprightness. It seems incredible, yet it is quite true. Even on Catholic vessels it is necessary to refrain from revealing that one is a friar, because if a storm comes up he is thrown overboard, as has happened a number of times. So in Spain the French killed them without remorse, within and without the monasteries. Hence there are almost none left in Europe. Joseph Napoleon had wiped them out in Spain, and the Cortes did likewise. In places where there are still a few left, they are looked upon with the greatest contempt and reviled, and are not allowed entree into any decent house. In Madrid I chanced to go to pay a call on the daughter of a merchant named Teran, because she was a countrywoman of mine, and when I sent word to her that I was outside, I was told to leave her a written message. The worst part is that being a friar is an indelible mark against a person. It does not help in the least if one has been secularized, if one is a bishop or even the Pope. People disdainfully go on calling such a person friar, and in Rome, to show their scorn for the Pope or for some measure that he has taken, men and women say: "Oh e un frate."

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