An altar has been decked out on the façade of a house in the Plaza. Under a bower of gilt, the priest harangues in _vascuence_.[28] His theme is the curse of Modernism and Socialism, the hellish lust which hides in the laborer’s appetite for better wages. (The Basques are the industrialists of Spain: the ore and factories of Bilbao are not far off.) On one side of the Square is the summer palace of an Andalusian Duke. His balconies are hung with great mantones; gorgeous splotches of gold and green and crimson in the sun. The altar faces an esplanade which steps down to the sea. But the Basque throng is aloof from the priest in his garish altar, from the flash of Spain on the walls of the Duke’s palace, aloof even from the sea. It is a packed, resilient body. It is waiting to play. Its mood is very like the mood of a sporting crowd in England. Here is none of the hot dark fervor which Spain brings even to the bull fight. The races are over, and the last Mass. The crowds circle the platform for the dance contest. There is a piper and a drummer. The cadences of the _chistu_ are thin and cool. The drummer weaves a tattoo that becomes the matted background for the imponderous figures of the pipe. When the dancer and piper cease, the drum goes on in an incantation which is moving precisely because it is so unemphatic, so subhumanly cool, so pale. It reminds one, indeed, of the nixies of the Celt, the blond green creatures of the northern marshes. It seems as far from Spain as are the braes of Scotland. The designs of the dance are brief. Here is grace in line and point: daintiness; above all spiritual aloofness. In the pauses of dance and music, ever unceasing the weave of the drum. The elves also of the Atlas are around the corner: but Spain is miles away. _Agura_, _contrapas_, _anarxuma_, _zaspi_, _trititzka_, _soka_, _aguruku_, _taladera_--numberless Basque dance-figures. What distinguishes them is that they are all social: that they are stylized from details of the common life. The dance of Andalusia is a plastic form for the soul. These dances are scenes of bodily acts. Their stuff is not spirit, nor essence of emotion. It is a synthesis of homely gestures taken from farm or field. Here is an _apple dance_, an intricate elaboration of the bestowal of apples. Here is a _chair dance_, a design of men and women in easy social converse. The _Siete Saltos_ is a stylization of the walk--of men walking together. The music is major; the dance is comedic. Indeed, it holds the trait of social comedy which in France produced Molière. But also, it has a purity of abstract line which recalls the classic dance of the Pueblo Indians or of the Pacific Negroes. With, again, a difference of tone and subject: the dances of the “savage” are elemental, they call rain, they invoke harvest, they enact sexual passion.