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SEVILLE 37
with shame, showed his majesty the customary honors,
the self-respect of the city was saved by the five thou-
sand tobacco girls, who received the king with merci-
less laughter when he visited the great tobacco factory.
On a later occasion, being unable to arrive at a satis-
factory agreement with the powerful director of the
factory on the wage question, they carried the hearts
of the working people by storm with their convincing
and logical action. They simply slung a rope about
their director’s body and suspended him down a deep
well. More than once Jas cigarreras, crawling on all
fours, have picked up the offal of the streets as their
only weapon against the swords and revolvers of the
mounted police. And it is largely due to the behavior
of these insolent creatures that it is now impossible to
secure admission to the great church festivals without
first obtaining a certificate from the priest of the
church.
But all these things require no forgiving. ‘The peo-
ple themselves, who have been maltreated both by the
state and the church, and who find their revolutionary
tendencies and their love of blasphemy so well em-
bodied in these pock-marked, one-eyed Valkyries, are—
contrary to all tradition—decent enough not to leave
them in the lurch.
The tobacco girl is the spoiled child of the nation for
another reason also: her economic function. The
Spaniard associates with her the fragrance which he
values above all things—the smell of nicotine. How
highly the Spaniard estimates tobacco may be judged
from the fact that a beggar is just as certain to receive
alms when he asks for a penny for tobacco, as when he
states that he is starving.
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