Caesar had no other recourse but to buy a Baedeker and read it and learn a lot of things quite devoid of interest for him.

The next day Don Calixto was waiting for him in a carriage at the door, and they went to see the sights.

Don Calixto was a man that made phrases and ornamented them with many adverbs ending in -ly.

"Verily," he said, after his first archeological walk in Rome, "verily, it seems strange that after more than two thousand years have passed, all these monuments should still remain."

"That is most true," replied Caesar, looking at him with his impassive air.

"I understand why Rome is the real school for learning, integrally, both ancient and modern history."

"Most certainly," agreed Caesar.

Don Calixto, who knew neither Italian nor French, found a source of help, for the days he was to spend in Rome, in Caesar's friendship, and made him accompany him everywhere. Caesar was able to collect and preserve, though not precisely cut in brass, the phrases Don Calixto uttered in front of the principal monuments of Rome.

In front of the Colosseum, his first exclamation was: "What a lot of stone!" Then recalling his role of orator, he exclaimed: "The spirits are certainly daunted and the mind darkened on thinking how men could have sunk to such abysses of evil."

"Don Calixto is referring to those holes," thought Caesar, looking at the cellars of the Circo Romano.

From the Colosseum the carriage went to the Capitol, and then Don Calixto asserted with energy:

"One cannot deny that, say what you will, Rome is one of the places most fertile in memories."

Don Calixto was an easy traveller for his cicerone. He far preferred talking to being given explanations; Caesar had said to him: "Don Calixto, you understand everything, by intuition." And being thus reassured, Don Calixto kept uttering terrible absurdities.

One day Don Calixto went to see the Pope, in evening clothes and with his abdomen covered with decorations, and he asked Caesar if a photographer couldn't take his picture in the act of leaving the carriage, so that the photograph would have Saint Peter's as a background.

"Yes, I think so. Why not? The only thing will be that the photographer will charge you more."

"I don't mind that. Could you arrange it for me?"

"Yes, man."

What Don Calixto desired was done.

"How did the Pope impress you?" Caesar asked him as he came out

"Very favourably, very favourably indeed."

"He has a stupid face, hasn't he?"

"No, man, not at all. He is like a nice country priest. His predecessor was no doubt more of a diplomat, more intelligent."

"Yes, the other seemed more of a rogue," said Caesar, laughing at the precautions Don Calixto took in giving his opinion.

The proofs of the photographs came in the evening, and Don Calixto was enchanted with them. In one of them you could see the Swiss guard at the door, with his lance. It was splendid. Don Calixto would not permit Caesar to go to his hotel, but invited him for dinner; and after dinner told him he was so indebted that he would be delighted to do anything Caesar asked him.

"Why don't you make me a Deputy?" said Caesar, laughing.

"Do you want to be one?"

"Yes, man."

"Really?"

"I should think so."

"But you would have to live in Madrid."

"Certainly."

"Would you leave here?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Then, not another word, we will say no more about it. When the time comes, you will write to me and say: 'Don Calixto, the moment has arrived for you to remember your promise: I want to be a Deputy.'"

"Very good. I will do it, and you shall present me as candidate for Castro... Castro... what?"

"Castro Duro."

"You will see me there then."

"All right. And now, another favour. There is a Canon from Zamora here, a friend of mine, who came on the pilgrimage and who desires nothing so much as to see Saint Peter's and the Catacombs rather thoroughly. I could explain everything to him, but I am not sure about the dates. Will you come with us?"

"With great pleasure."

"Then we shall expect you here at ten."

"That will be fine."

Sure enough, at ten Caesar was there. Don Calixto and his friend the Canon Don Justo, who was a large gentleman, tall and fleshy and with a long nose, were waiting. The three got into the carriage.

"I hope this priest isn't going to be one of those library rats who know everything on earth," thought Caesar, but when he heard him make a couple of mistakes in grammar, he became tranquil.

THEODORA AND MAROZIA

As they passed the Castel Sant' Angelo, Caesar began to tell the story of Theodora and her daughter Marozia, the two women who lived there and who, for forty odd years, changed the Popes as one changes cooks.

"You know the history of those women?" asked Caesar.

"I don't," said the Canon.

"Nor I," added Don Calixto.

"Then I will tell it to you before we get to Saint Peter's. Theodora, an influential lady, fell in love with a young priest of Ravenna, and had him elected Pope, by the name of John X. Her daughter Marozia, a young girl and a virgin, gave herself to Pope Sergius III, a capricious, fantastic man, who had once had the witty idea of digging up Pope Formosus and subjecting him, putrefied as he was, to the judgment of a Synod. By this eccentric man Marozia had a son, and afterwards was married three times more. She exercised an omnipotent sway over the Holy See. John X, her mother's lover, she deposed and sent to die in prison. With his successor, Leo VI, whom she herself had appointed Pope, she did the same. The following Pope, Stephen VII, died of illness, twenty months after his reign began, and then Marozia gave the Papal crown to the son she had had by Sergius III, who took the name of John XI. This Pope and his brother Alberic, began to feel their mother's influence rather heavy, and during a popular revolt they decided to get Marozia into their power, and they seized her and buried her alive in the in pace of a convent."

"But is all this authentic?" asked the Canon, completely stupefied.

"Absolutely authentic."

The Canon made a gesture of resignation and looked at Don Calixto in astonishment.

While Caesar was telling the story, the carriage had passed down a narrow and rather deserted street, called Borgo Vecchio, in whose windows clothes were hanging out to dry, and then they came out in the Piazza di San Pietro. They drove around one edge of this enormous square. The sky was blue. A fountain was throwing water, which changed to a cloud in the air and produced a brilliant rainbow.

"One certainly wonders," said Caesar, "if Saint Peter's is not one of the buildings in the worst taste that exist in the world."

They got out in front of the steps.

"Your friend is probably well up on archeological matters?" asked Caesar.

"Who? Don Justo? Not in the least."

Caesar began to laugh, went up the steps ahead of the others, lifted the leather curtain, and they all three went into Saint Peter's. THERE IS NO PERFORMANCE

Caesar began his explanations with the plan of the church. The Canon passed his hand over all the stones and kept saying:

"This is marble too," and adding, "How expensive!"

"Do you like this, Don Calixto?" Caesar asked.

"What a question, man!"

"Well, it is obviously very rich and very sumptuous, but it must give a fanatic coming here from far away the same feeling a person gets when he has a cold and asks for a hot drink and is given a glass of iced orgeat."

"Don't let Don Justo hear you," said Don Calixto, as if they ought to keep the secret about the orgeat between the two of them.

They came to the statue of Saint Peter, and Caesar told them it is the custom for strangers to kiss its foot. The Canon piously did so, but Don Calixto, who was somewhat uneasy, rubbed the statue's worn foot surreptitiously with his handkerchief and then kissed it.

Caesar abstained from kissing it, because he said the kiss was efficacious principally for strangers.

Then they went along, looking at the tombs of the Popes. Caesar was several times mistaken in his explanations, but his friends did not notice his mistakes.

The thing that surprised the Canon most was the tomb of Alexander VII, because there is a skeleton on it. Don Calixto stopped with most curiosity before the tomb of Paul III, on which one sees two nude women. Caesar told them that popular legend claims that one of these statues, the one representing Justice, is Julia Farnese, sister of Pope Paul III, and mistress of Pope Alexander VI; but such a supposition seems unlikely.

"Entirely," insisted the Canon gravely; "those are things invented by the Free Thinkers."

Don Calixto allowed himself to say that most of the Popes looked like drum-majors.

Don Justo continued appraising everything he saw like a contractor. Caesar devoted himself to retailing his observations to Don Calixto, while the Canon walked alone.

"I will inform you," he told him, "that on Saturday one may go up in the dome, but only decently dressed people. So a placard on that door informs us. If by any chance an apostle should re-arise and have a fancy to do a little gymnastics and see Rome from a height, as he would probably be dirty and badly dressed, he would get left, they wouldn't let him go up. And then he could say: 'Invent a religion like the Christian religion, so that after a while they won't let you go up in the dome.'"

"Yes, certainly, certainly," replied Don Calixto. "They are absurd. But do not let the Canon hear you. To be sure, all this does not look very religious, but it is magnificent."

"Yes, it is a beautiful stage-setting, but there is no performance," said Caesar.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Don Calixto.

"That this is an empty place. It would have been well to build a temple as large and light as this in honour of Science, which is humanity's great creation. These statues, instead of being stupid or warlike Popes, ought to be the inventor of vaccination or of chloroform. Then one could understand the chilliness and the fairly menacing air that everything in the place wears. Let people have confidence in the truth and in work, that is good; but that a religion founded on mysteries, on obscurities, should build a bright, challenging, flippant temple, is ridiculous."

"Yes, yes," said Don Calixto, always preoccupied in keeping the Canon from hearing, "you talk like a modern man. I myself, down in my heart, you know.... I believe you follow me, eh?"

"Yes, man."

"Well, I think that all this has no transcendency.... That is to say...."

"No, it has none. You may well say so, Don Calixto."

"But it did have it. That cannot be doubted, can it? And a great deal. This is undeniable."



IT IS A MAGNIFICENT BUSINESS CONCERN

"It was really a magnificent business concern," said Caesar. "Think of monopolizing heaven and hell, selling the shares here on earth and paying the dividends in heaven! There's no guarantee trust company or pawn-broker that pays an interest like that. And at its height, how many branches it developed! Here, in this square, I have a friend, a Jewish dealer in rosaries, who tells me his trade is flourishing. In three weeks he has sold a hundred and fifty kilos of rosaries blessed by the Pope, two hundred kilos of medals, and about half a square kilometre of scapulars."

"What an exaggeration!" said Don Calixto.

"No, it is the truth. He is glad that these things, which he considers accursed, sell, because after all, he is a liberal and a Jew; the only thing he does, if he can, to ease his conscience, is to get ten per cent. profit on everything, and he says to himself: 'Let the Catholics worry!'"

"What tales! If the Canon should hear you!"

"No, but all this is true. As my friend says: Business is business. And he has made me take notice that when the Garibaldini come here, they spend the price of a few bottles of Chianti, and then they sleep in any dog-kennel, and spend nothing more. On the contrary, the rich Catholics buy and buy... and off go his kilos of rosaries and of medals, his tons of veils for visiting the Pope, his reams of indulgences for eating meat, and for eating fish and meat, and even for blowing your nose on pages of the Bible if you like."

"Do not be so disrespectful."

When the Canon had made sure of all the square metres of marble there are in Saint Peter's they went out into the square again. Caesar indicated the heap of irregular edifices that form the Vatican.

"That ought to be the Pope's room," said Caesar, pointing to a window, at random. "You must have been there, Don Calixto?" "I don't know. Really," he said, "I haven't much idea where I was."

"Nor has he any idea how he went," thought Caesar, and added: "That is the Library; over there is the Secretary of State's apartment; there is where the Holy Office meets"; and he said whatsoever occurred to him, perfectly tranquilly.

They took their carriage, and as they passed a shop for objects of religion, Don Calixto said to the Canon:

"What do you say to this, Don Justo? According to Don Caesar, the proprietors of the shops where they sell medals, are Jews."

"Bah! that cannot be so," replied the Canon roundly.

"Why not?"

"Bah!"

"Why should it shock you?" exclaimed Caesar. "If they sold Jesus Christ alive, why are they not to sell him dead?"

"Well, I am glad to know it," Don Justo burst forth, "because I was going to buy some medals for presents, and now I won't buy them."

Don Calixto smiled, and Caesar understood that the good Canon was taking advantage of the information to save a penny.



XXI. DON CALIXTO IN THE CATACOMBS

Don Calixto and the Canon were very anxious to visit the Catacombs. Caesar knew that the visit is not entirely agreeable, and attempted to dissuade them from their intention.

"I don't know whether you gentlemen know that one has to spend the entire day there."

"Without lunch?" asked the Canon.

"Yes."

"Oh, no; that is impossible."

"One has to sacrifice oneself for the sake of Christianity," said Caesar.

"You haven't much desire to sacrifice yourself," retorted Don Calixto.

"Because I believe it is damp and unwholesome down there, and a Christian bronchitis would not be wholly pleasant, despite its religious origin. And besides, as you already know, one must go without food."

"We might eat something there," said Don Justo.

"Eat there!" exclaimed Caesar. "Eat a slice of ham, in front of the niches of the Catacombs! It would make me sick."

"It wouldn't me," replied the Canon.

"In front of the tombs of martyrs and saints!"

"Even if they were saints, they ate too," replied the Canon, with his excellent good sense.

Caesar had to agree that even if they were saints, they ate.

There was a French family at the hotel who were also thinking of going to see the Catacombs, and Don Calixto and Don Justo decided to go the same day with them. The French family consisted of a Breton gentleman, tall and whiskered, who had been at sea; his wife, who looked like a village woman; and the daughter, a slender, pale, sad young lady. They had with them, half governess, half maid, a lean peasant-woman with a suspicious air.

The young lady confessed to Caesar that she had been dreaming of the Catacombs for a long while. She knew the description Chateaubriand gives of them in Les Martyres by heart.

The next day the French family in one landau, and Don Calixto with the Canon and Caesar in another, went to see the Catacombs.

The French family had brought a fat, smiling abbe as cicerone.

Five persons couldn't get inside the landau, and the Breton gentleman had to sit by the driver. Don Calixto offered him a seat in his carriage, but the Breton, who must have been obstinate as a mule, said no, that from the driver's seat he enjoyed more of the panorama.

They halted a moment, on the abbe's advice, at the Baths of Caracalla, and went through them. The cicerone explained where the different bathing-rooms had been and the size of the pools. Those cyclopean buildings, those high, high arches, those enormous walls, left Caesar overcome.

One couldn't understand a thing like this except in a town which had a mania for the gigantic, the titanic.

They left the baths and started along. They followed the Via di Porta San Sebastiano, between two walls. They left behind the imposing ruins of the Baths of Caracalla and various establishments for archeological reconstructions, and the carriage stopped at the gate of the Catacombs.

They went in, guided by the abbe, and arrived at a sort of office.

They each paid a lira for a taper which a friar was handing out, and they joined a group of other people, without quite knowing what they expected next. In the group there were two German Dominicans, a tall one whose fiery red beard hung to his waist, and a slim one, with a nose like a knife.

IRREVERENT CICERONE

It was not long before another numerous group of tourists came out of a hole in the floor, and among them was a Trappist brother who came over to where Don Calixto and Caesar were. The Trappist carried a stick, and a taper twisted in the end of the stick. He asked if everybody understood French; any one that didn't could wait for another group.

"I don't understand it," said the Canon.

"I will translate what he says, to you," replied Caesar.

"All right," answered the Canon.

"En avant, messieurs," said the Trappist, lighting his taper, and requesting them all to do the same.

They went around giving one another a light, and with their little candles aflame they began to descend into the Catacombs.

They went in by a gallery as narrow as one in a mine, which once in a while broadened into bigger spaces.

In certain spots there were openings in the roof.

Caesar had never thought about what the celebrated Catacombs would be like, but he had not expected them so poor and so sinister.

The sensation they caused was disagreeable, a sensation of choking, of suffocation, without one's really getting any impression of grandeur. The place seemed like an abandoned ant-hill. The wide spaces that opened out at the sides of the passage were chapels, the monk said.

The Trappist cicerone contributed to removing any serious feelings with his chatter and his jokes. Being familiar with these tombs, he had lost respect for them, as sacristans lose it for the saints they brush the dust off of with a feather-duster. Moreover, he judged everything by an esthetic criterion, completely devoid of respect; for him there were only sepulchres with artistic character, or without it; of a good or a poor period; and the latter sort he struck contemptuously with his stick.

The marine Breton was irritated, and asked Caesar several times:

"Why is that permitted?" "I don't know," answered Caesar.

The monk made extraordinary remarks.

Explaining the life of the Christians in the earliest eras of Christianity, he said:

"In this century the habits of the pontiffs were so lax that the Pope had to go out accompanied by two persons to insure his modest behaviour."

"Oh, oh!" said a young Frenchman, in a tone of vexation.

"Ah! C'est L'histoire," replied the monk.

Caesar translated what the Trappist had said, to Don Calixto and the Canon, and they were both really perplexed.

They followed the long, narrow galleries. It was a strange effect, seeing the procession of tourists with their burning candles. One didn't notice the modern clothes and the ladies' hats, and from a distance the procession lighted by the little flames of the candles, had a mysterious look.

At the tail of the crowd walked two men who spoke English. One was a "gentleman" little versed in archeological questions; the other a tall person with the face of a scholar. Caesar drew near them to listen. The one was explaining to his companion everything they saw as they went along, the signification of the emblems cut in the tablets, and the funerary customs of the Christians.

"Didn't they put crosses?" asked the unlearned gentleman.

"No," said the other. "It is said that for the Romans the crux represented the gallows! Thus the earliest representation of the Crucified is a drawing in the Kirchnerian museum, which shows a Christian kneeling before a man with a donkey's head, who is nailed to a cross. In Greek letters one reads: 'Alexamenes adores his God.' They say this drawing comes from the Palace of the Caesars, and it is considered to be a caricature of Christ, drawn by a Roman soldier on a wall."

"Didn't they put up images of Christ, either?"

"No. You do not consider that they were at the height of the discussion as to whether Christ was ugly or beautiful."

The tall gentleman got involved in a long dissertation as to what motives they had had, some to insist that Christ's person was of great beauty, others to affirm that it was of terrible ugliness.

Caesar would have liked to go on listening to what this gentleman said, but Don Justo joined him. The Trappist was in front of two mummies, explaining something, and he wanted Caesar to translate what he was saying.

Caesar did this bit of interpreting for him. The candles were beginning to burn out and it was necessary to leave.

The cicerone took them rapidly along a gallery at whose end there was a stairway, and they issued into the sunlight. The monk extinguished the taper on his stick, and began crying:

"Now, gentlemen, do you want any scapulars, medals, chocolate?"

Caesar looked over his companions in the expedition. The Canon was indifferent. The old maritime Breton showed signs of profound indignation, and his daughter, the little French mystic, had tears in her eyes.

"That poor little French girl, who arrived here so full of enthusiasm, has come out of these Catacombs like a rat out of a sewer," said Caesar.

"And why so?" asked Don Calixto.

"Because of the things the monk said. He was really scandalous."

"It is true," said the Canon gravely. "I never would have believed it."

"Roma veduta, fede perduta," said Don Calixto. "And as for you, Caesar, hasn't this visit interested you?"

"Yes, I have been interested in trying to keep from catching cold."

AGRO ROMANO

The landau that the Breton family was in took the Appian, Way, and Caesar and Don Calixto's carriage followed behind it.

They passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and were able to look ahead along the old road, on whose sides one sees the remains of aqueducts, which at evening-fall have a grandeur so imposing. Don Calixto and Don Justo were discussing a question of home politics.

On them magnificently indifferent, the broken sepulchres, the abandoned arches invaded by grass, the vestiges of a gigantic civilization, did not produce the least impression.

The coachman pointed out Frascati on the slope of a mountain, Albano, Grotta Ferrata, and Tivoli.

Caesar felt the grandeur of the landscape; the enormous sadness of the remnants of aqueducts, which had the colour of rusty iron, beneath a sky of pink clouds.

At dusk they turned back. Caesar felt a weight on his spirits. The walls of the Baths of Caracalla looked threatening to him. Those great towering thick walls, broken, brick-colour, burned by the sun, gave him an impression of the strength of the past. There were no trees, no houses near them; as if those imposing ruins precluded any life round about. Only one humble almond-tree held out its white flowers.

Don Calixto and the Canon continued chatting.



XXII. SENTIMENTALITY AND ARCHEOLOGY

Don Calixto and the Canon went away to Spain. Caesar thought he was wasting time in Rome and that he ought to get out, but he remained. He kept wondering why Susanna Marchmont had left and never written him.

Twice he asked about her at the Hotel Excelsior, and was told that she had not returned.

One evening at the beginning of May, when he had managed to decide to pack up and go, he received a card from Susanna, telling him of her arrival and inviting him to have tea at the Ristorante del Castello dei Cesari.

Caesar immediately left the hotel and took a cab, which carried him to the top of the Aventine Hill.

He got out at the entrance to the garden of the Ristorante, went across it, and out on a large terrace.

There were a number of Americans having tea, and in one group of them was Susanna.

"How late you come!" she said.

"I have just received your card. And what did you do in Corfu? How did things go down there?"

"Very well indeed. It is all wonderful. And I have been in Epirus and Albania, too."

Susanna related her impressions of those countries, with many details, which, surely, she had read in Baedeker.

She was very smart, and prettier than ever. She said her husband must be in London; she had had no news from him for more than a month. "And how did you know I was still here?" Caesar asked her.

"Through Kennedy. He wrote to me. He is a good friend. He talked a lot about you in his letters."

Caesar thought he noticed that Susanna talked with more enthusiasm than ordinarily. Perhaps distance had produced a similar effect on her to what wondering about her had on him. Caesar looked at her almost passionately.

From the terrace one could see the tragic ruins of the Palace of the Caesars; broken arcades covered with grass, remains of walls still standing, the openings of arches and windows, and here and there a pointed cypress or a stone pine among the great devastated walls.

Far away one could see the country, Frascati, and the blue mountains of the distance.

As it was already late, the group of Susanna's American friends decided to return by carriage.

"I am going to walk," said Susanna in a low tone. "Would you like to come with me?"

"With great pleasure."

They took leave of the others, went down the garden road, which was decorated on both sides with ancient statues and tablets, and issued on the Via di Santa Prisca, a street between two dark walls, with a lamp every once in a while.

"What a sky!" she exclaimed.

"It is splendid."

It was of a blue with the lustre of mother-of-pearl; in the zenith a stray star was imperceptibly shining; to the west floated golden and red clouds.

They went down the steep street, alongside a garden wall. In some places, bunches of century plants showed their hard spikes, sharp as daggers, over the low walls.

There was a great silence in this coming of night. Among the foliage of the trees they heard the piping of sparrows. From far away there came, from time to time, the puffing of a train.

DESOLATION

They walked without speaking, mastered by the melancholy of their surroundings. Now and again, a peasant, tanned by the sun, with his little sack full of grass, came home from the fields, singing.

Caesar and Susanna passed alongside of the Jewish cemetery, and stopped to look in through a grill. The wall hid the burning zone of twilight; a greenish blue reigned in the zenith.

They went on again. A bell began to ring.

Caesar was depressed. Susanna was silent.

They crossed a street of new, dark houses; they passed by a little square with a melancholy church. The street they took was named for Saint Theodore. To the left, down the Via del Velabro, they saw an arch with many niches on the sides of the single opening.

A band of black seminarians passed.

"Poor creatures!" murmured Caesar.

"Are you very sympathetic?" said Susanna, mockingly.

"Yes, those chaps rouse my pity."

Now, on the right, the furious ruins of the Palatine were piled up: brick walls, ruined arches, decrepit partitions, and above, the terrace of a garden with a balustrade. Over the terrace, against the sky, were the silhouettes of high cypresses almost black, of ilexes with their dense foliage, and a large palm with arching leaves.

From these so tragic ruins there seemed to exhale a great desolation, beneath the deep, green sky.

Susanna and Caesar drew near the Forum.

In the opaque light of dusk the Forum had the air of a cemetery. Two lighted windows were shining in the high dark wall of the Tabularium, and sharp-toned bells were beginning to ring.

They went up the stairway that leads to the Capitol, and on a little terrace they stopped to look at the Forum.

"What terrible desolation!" exclaimed Susanna.

"All the stones look like tombs," said Caesar. "Yes, that is true."

"What are those three high open vaults that give so strange an impression of immense size?" asked Caesar.

"That is what remains of Constantine's basilica."

For a long while they gazed at that abandoned space, with its melancholy columns and white stones.

In a street running into the Forum, there began to shine two rows of gaslights of a greenish colour.

As they passed down the slope leading to the Capitol, in a little street to the left, the Via Monte Tarpea, they saw a funeral procession ready to start. At that moment the corpse was being brought into the street. Several women in black were waiting by the house door with lighted candles.

The priest, in his white surplice and holding up his cross, gave the order to start, and pushed to the front of the crowd; four men raised the bier and took it on their shoulders, and the procession of women in black, men, and children, followed behind. Bells with sharp voices began again to sound in the air.

"Oh, isn't it sad!" said Susanna, lifting her hand to her breast.

They watched how the procession moved away, and then Caesar murmured, ill-humouredly:

"It is stupid."

"What?" asked Susanna.

"I say that it's stupid to take pleasure in feeling miserable. What we are doing is absurd and unhealthy."

Susanna burst into laughter, and when she said good-night to Caesar she squeezed his hand energetically.



XXIII. THE 'SCUTCHEON OF A CHURCH

"Susanna Marchmont," Caesar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, "is a beautiful woman, rich, and apparently intelligent. She has given me to understand that she feels a certain inclination for me, and if I please her well enough, she will get a divorce and marry me.

"I have discovered the reasons for her inclination, first in a desire to revenge herself on her husband by marrying the brother of the woman he has fallen in love with; secondly, in my not having made love to her, like the majority of the men she has known.

"Really, Susanna is a beautiful woman; but whereas other women gain by being looked at and listened to, with her it is not so. In this beautiful woman there is something cold, utilitarian, which she does not succeed in hiding by her artistic effusions. Besides she has a great deal of vanity, but stupid vanity. She has asked me if I couldn't manage to acquire a high-sounding, decorative title in Spain.

"If Susanna knew that in my heart I keep up her friendship only through inertia, because I have no plans, and that her millions and her beauty leave me cold, she would be dumfounded; I believe that perhaps she would admire me.

"At present we devote ourselves to walking, talking, and telling each other our impressions. Any one would say that we intentionally play a game of being contrary; whatsoever she finds wonderful seems worthy of contempt to me, and vice-versa. It is strange that such absolute disagreement can exist. This Sunday afternoon we have been taking a long walk, half sentimental, half archeological.

"I went to get her at her hotel; she came down, looking very smart, with an unmarried friend, also an American and also very chic.

"The three of us walked toward the Forum. We passed under the arch of Constantine. A small beggar-boy preceded us, getting ahead and turning hand-springs. I gave him some pennies. Susanna laughed. This woman, who pays bills of thousands of pesetas to her milliner, doesn't like to give a copper to a ragamuffin.

"We turned off a bit from the avenue and went up on the right, toward the Palatine. Among the ruins some women were pulling up plants and putting them into sacks. At the end of the road, on the slope, there were Stations of the Cross, and some boys from a school were playing, guarded by priests with white rabbits.

"It was impossible to go further, and we went down the hill toward the Piazza di San Gregorio. On the open place in front of the church that is in this square, some vagabonds were stretched out on the ground; an old man with a long hoary beard and a pipe with a chain, two dark youths with shocks of black hair, and a red-headed woman with silver hoops in her ears and a baby in her arms.

"The two young boys threw me a glance of hatred, and stared at Susanna and her friend with extraordinary avidity.

"What very false ideas must have been going through their minds! I might have approached them and said politely:

"'Do not imagine that these ladies are of different stuff from this red woman who has the baby in her arms. They are all the same. There is no more difference than what is caused by a little soap and some money.'

"'Let us go in and see the church,' said Susanna.

"'Good. Come along.'

"The church has a flight of stone steps and two cypresses to one side.

"We went into a court with graves in it, and stayed there a while, reading the names of the people buried in them. Susanna's friend is a sort of little devil with the instincts of a small boy, and she went springing about in all the corners.

"When we came out of the church we found the square, deserted before, now full of people. During the time we had stayed inside, a numerous group of tourists had formed a circle, and a gentleman was explaining in English what the Via Appia used to be.

"'These are the things that please you,' Susanna said to me, laughing.

"I answered with a joke. The truth is that no matter how many explanations I am given, an ancient Roman always seems a cardboard figure to me, or at most a marble figure. It is not possible to imagine how bored I used to be reading Les Martyres of Chateaubriand and that famous Quo Vadis.

"From the Piazza di San Gregorio we took a steep street, the 'Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo,' which passes under an arch with several brick buttresses.

"We came out in a little square, in an angle of which there is an ancient arcaded tower, which has tiles set into the walls, some round and others the shape of a Greek cross.

"The modern portico of the church has columns and a grated door, which we found open. Over the door is a picture of Saint John and Saint Paul; on the sides of it two shields with the mitre and the keys. On one, set round about, are the Latin words: Omnium rerum est vicisitudo; on the other is written in Spanish: Mi corazon arde en mucha llama.

"'Is it Spanish?' Susanna asked me.

"'Yes.'

"'What does it mean?'

"I translated the phrase into English: 'My heart burns with a great flame'; and Susanna repeated it several times, and begged me to write it in her card-case.

"Her friend skimmed some pages in Baedeker and said:

"'It seems that the house of two saints martyred by Julian the Apostate is preserved here.'

"I assured them that that was an error. I happen to have been reading just a few days ago a book about Julian the Apostate, and it turns out that that Emperor was an admirable man, good, generous, brave, full of virtues; but the Christians had reason for calumniating him and they calumniated him. All Julian's persecutions of Christians are logical repressions of people that were disturbing public order, and the phrase, Vencisti, Galileo, is a pious fraud. Julian was a philosopher, he loved science, hygiene, cleanliness, peace, in a world of hysterical worshipers of corpses, who wanted to live in ignorance, filth, and prayer.

"But Christianity, always a religion of hallucinated persons, of mystifiers, has never vacillated in singing the praises of parricides like Constantine, and in calumniating the memory of great men like Julian.

"Susanna and her friend considered that the question of whether Julian has been calumniated by history, or not, was of no importance.

"The truth is that I feel the same way.

"From the Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo we came out into a small square by a church, which has a little marble ship in front of its porch. We saw that his street is named after the Navicella."

A ROYAL IDYLL.

"By the side of the church of the Navicella, we passed the Villa Mattei, and Susanna wished to go in. What a beautiful property! What splendid terraces those in that garden are! What laurels! What lemon-trees! What old statues! What heavy shade of pines and live-oaks!

"Kennedy, who has an admirable knowledge of every corner of Rome, has told me that at the beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his forehead ornamented like a faun's, enchanted to watch them; I don't know whether he was playing the flute.

"Susanna's friend laughed at the thought of the good Charles IV, with his waistcoat and his long coat, and his satyr's excrescences, and his rural flute; but the allusion did not find favour with Susanna, whether because she thought of her husband's infidelities, or because she considered, that if her father gets to be the shoe-king, she will then have a certain spiritual relationship to the Bourbons. In the Villa Mattei we saw an ediculo, which rises at the edge of a terrace, amidst climbing plants. There, as an inscription says, Saint Philip Neri talked to his disciples of things divine. From the terrace one can see the Baths of Caracalla, and part of the Roman Campagna behind them.

"We came out of the Villa Mattei and left the Piazza, della Navicella and came down through a place where there is a wall with arches, under which some beggars have built huts out of gasoline cans. There is an eating-place thereabouts called the Osteria di Porta Metronia.

"Susanna's friend consulted her book, and the result was that we found we were in the Vale of Egeria.

"From there we came out by a narrow road running along a wall, not a very high one, over which green laurel branches projected. We saw an obelisk at the end of the road, and the entablature of Saint John the Lateran. The group of statues, reddish brown, silhouetted against the sky, made a very strange effect.

"We started to go down by the Via di San Sisto Vecchio, which also runs along by a wall. At the bottom of the slope there is a mill, with a deep race. Susanna's friend said she would enjoy bathing there.

"We came out, at nightfall, almost opposite the Baths of Caracalla.

"'They ought to knock these ruins down altogether,' I said.

"'Why so?' asked Susanna.

"'Because they appear to be standing here to demonstrate the uselessness of human energy.' Susanna was very little interested as to whether human energy is useful or useless.

"I am, because my own energy forms a part of human energy, and for no other reason.

"We came back past the Forum, but today we did not come upon any funerals. To demand that somebody should die every day and his corpse be carried out at twilight to feed tourists' emotions, would, I think, be demanding too much.

"When we reached her hotel, Susanna let her friend go up first; and as soon as we were alone, she looked at me expressively, placing one hand on her breast, and said to me, in nasal Spanish:

"'Mi corazon arde en mucha llama.'

"I don't believe it."



XXIV. TOURIST INTERLUDE

TRAVELLING

"Susanna said to me: 'I have some inclination for you, but I don't know you well enough. If you feel the same way, come with me. Let us travel together? I am with her, and nevertheless I am convinced that what I am doing is a piece of stupidity.

"We spent this Sunday morning in the train. In the country we saw men at work with great oxen that had long twisted horns. In a swampy field some labourers were draining the ground with great effort. From the train we saw the island of Elba, and Capraia, and the sea as blue as indigo.

"'Mare nostro,' said an elegant gentleman in a fluty voice, and pointed out something on the horizon which he said was Corsica, and he said that it can be seen from far away.

"While all we useless, unoccupied persons gathered in the dining-car, the people in the fields kept on working, bent over in the mud, draining the marshes.

"'What a lot of effort those poor devils have to make to keep us alive.' I said.

"'We are not kept alive by them,' retorted Susanna.

"'No, we live off of other slaves, who work for us,' I answered her. 'Those out there serve to feed the officers, the effeminate priestlings, all the people that take part in the theatrical performance of the Vatican. Those unfortunates help to uphold the eight basilicas and the three hundred odd churches of Rome.'

"Susanna shrugged her shoulders and smiled."

CLOSE TO

"Travelling with a woman one does not love, no matter how very pretty she is, produces a series of disenchantments. It seems as if one kept seeking defects and analysing them under the microscope. During these days that I have been accompanying Susanna, I have discovered a lot of physical and moral imperfections in her. There are moments in which she cannot conceal an egoism and brutality which are truly disagreeable; and besides, she is tyrannical, vain, and tries always to have her own way.

"We have been at Siena, which is a kind of Toledo, made up of narrow lanes. It was very hot. We were bored, especially she who has no artistic feeling.

"We have spent two days in Florence, a night in Bologna, another night at Milan, and after vacillating as to whether it would be better to go to Lake Como or to Switzerland, we have come to Geneva to spend a few days.

"Travelling like this in limited trains, one finds travelling more insipid than in any other fashion. All the sleeping-cars are alike, all the people alike, all the hotels alike. Really it is Stupid.

"It is still more stupid travelling with a woman who attracts attention wherever she goes. She attracts attention, that is all; she doesn't awaken any liking. She cannot comprehend why, being a beautiful and distinguished woman, she has nobody who cares for her disinterestedly. She notices that all the smart young men who aim for her are simply coming to the beautiful rich woman.

"And she thinks they ought to be in ecstasies over her wit and over the repertory of ready-made phrases she keeps for conversation."

A TIRESOME HOTEL.

"In this immense, luxurious hotel, situated two thousand odd metres above sea-level, as the announcement-cards stuck everywhere say, more than a hundred of us gather in the dining-room at lunch-time. The greatest coolness, the most frozen composure reigns among us.

"It is obvious that, thus harboured and united by chance in this hotel, we disturb one another; a wall of prejudices and conventionalities separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be crushed by the lugubrious silence.

"Through the windows one can see Lake Leman, closed in near here by mountains, blue like a great turquoise, ploughed by white, triangular sails. From time to time one hears the strident noise of a steamboat's siren and the murmur of the funicular train."

A MODEST FAMILY

"To this ostentatious hotel a family of modest air came two days ago. It was a family made up of five persons; two ladies, one of them plain, thin, spectacled, the other plumper and short; a merry girl, smiling and rosy, and a melancholy little girl, with a waxen face. They were accompanied by a man with a distinguished, weary manner.

"They are all in mourning. They are English; they treat one another with an attractive affability. The short lady, mother of the two girls, was pressing the man's hand and caressing it, during lunch the first day. He kept smiling in a gentle, tired way. No doubt he was unable to stay here long, for he did not appear that evening, and the four females were alone in the dining-room.

"The two ladies and the fresh, blooming girl are much preoccupied about the pale little girl, so much so that they do not notice the interest they arouse among the guests. All the old 'misses,' loaded with jewels, watch the family in mourning, as if they were wondering: 'How come they here, if their position is not so good as ours? How dare they mix among us, not being in our class?'

"And it is a fact; they cannot be; there is something that shows that this family is not rich. Besides, and this is extraordinary enough, it seems that they haven't come here to look down on others, or to give themselves airs, but to take walks and to look at the immaculate peaks of Mont Blanc. So one sees the two girls going out into the country without making an elaborate toilet, carrying a book or an orange in their hands, and coming back with bunches of flowers...."

TRAGEDY IN A HOTEL ROOM

"This morning at lunch only one of the ladies appeared in the dining-room.

"'Perhaps the others have gone off on some picnic,' thought I.

"In the evening at dinner, the tall woman with the glasses and the larger of the two girls were at table. They didn't eat, and disquietude was painted on their faces; the girl had flushed cheeks and swollen eyes.

"'What can be happening to them?' I asked myself.

"At that juncture, in came the short lady, with two vials of medicine in her hand, and put them on the table. By what I could hear of the conversation, she had just come from Lausanne, where she had gone for the doctor. The melancholy little girl, the one with the waxen face, must be ill.

"No doubt the family have come to Switzerland for the sake of the child, who is probably delicate, and have made a sacrifice to do so. That explains their modest air, and the rapid departure of the man who brought them.

"The three women gazed sadly at one another. What can the poor child have? I remember nothing about her, except her hair parted in the middle, and the pallid colour of her bloodless skin, and nevertheless it makes me sad to think that she is sick.

"I should like to offer myself to these women at this crisis; I should like to say to them: 'I am a humble person, without money; but if I could be useful to you in any way, I would do it with all my heart; and that is more than I would do for this gang covered with brilliants.'

"The German who eats at the next table to the family understands what is happening, and he leaves off eating to look at them, and then looks at me with his blue eyes. At last he shrugs his shoulders, lowers his head, and empties a glass of wine at one gulp.

"The three women rise and go to their rooms. One hears them coming and going in the corridor; then a waiter takes their dinner upstairs.

"And while the family are desolate up there, down here in the 'hall' the 'misses' keep on looking at one another contemptuously, exhibiting rings that sparkle on their fingers, and which would keep hundreds of people alive; and while they are weeping upstairs, down here a blond Yankee woman, with a large blue hat, a friend of Susanna's, who flirts with a youth from Chicago, is laughing heartily, showing a set of white teeth in which there shines a chip of gold."

SUSANNA DOES NOT UNDERSTAND

"I have spoken to Susanna about the poor English girl, who, they say, is dying; and she has bidden me not to tell her sad things. She cannot bear other people's suffering. She says she is more sensitive than others. How very comical!

"This fine lady, who thinks herself so witty and so sensitive, has an inner skin like a hippopotamus; she is covered with a magnificent egoism, which must be at least of galvanized steel. Her armour protects her against the action of other people's miseries and pains.

"This woman, so beautiful, is of a grotesque egotism; one understands her husband's despising her.

"I am leaving her with her millions and going away to Spain."



PART TWO. CASTRO DURO



I. ARRIVAL. CAESAR IN ACTION

During the night Caesar Moncada and Alzugaray chatted in the train. Alzugaray was praising this first Quixotic sally of his friend's.

"We are going to cross the Rubicon, Caesar," he said, as he got into the train.

"We shall see."

Many times Alzugaray had heard Caesar explain his plans, but he had no great confidence in their realization. Nor did this particular moment seem to him opportune for beginning the campaign. Everybody believed that the Liberal Ministry was stronger than ever; people were still away for the summer; nothing was doing.

Nevertheless, Caesar insisted that the crisis was imminent, and that it was the precise moment for him to enter politics. With this object he was taking a letter from Alarcos, the leader of the Conservatives, to Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero.

"Your Don Calixto will be at San Sebastian or at some water-cure," said Alzugaray, taking his seat in the train.

"It's all the same to me. I intend to follow him until I find him," answered Caesar.

"And you are decided to run as a Conservative?"

"Of course."

"I hope you won't be sorry later."

"Pshaw! Later one jumps into the position that suits one. On these first rungs of political life, either you have to have great luck, or you have to go like a grasshopper, first here, then there. That is the take-off, and when you are there all the ambitious mediocrities unite against you if you have any talent. Naturally, I do not intend to do anything to exhibit mine. Spanish politics are like a pond; a strong, healthy stick of wood goes to the bottom; a piece of bark or cork or a sheaf of straw stays on the surface. One has to disguise oneself as a cork."

"And later you will go on and make yourself known."

"Naturally. Since I find myself in the vein for making comparisons, I will say that in Spanish politics we have a case like those in the old comedies of intrigue, where the lackeys pretend to be gentlemen. When I am once among the gentlemen, I shall know how to prove that I am more a master than the people surrounding me."

"How conceited you are."

"The confidence one feels in oneself," said Caesar ironically.

"But have you really got it, or do you only pretend to have?"

"What matter whether I have it or haven't it, if I behave as if I had it?"

"It matters a lot. It matters whether you are calm or not in the moment of danger."

"Calmness is the muse that inspires me. I haven't it in my thoughts, but in active life you shall see me!"

The two friends stretched themselves out in their first-class compartment, and lay half asleep until dawn, when they got up again.

The train was running rapidly across the flat country; the yellow sunlight shone into the car; through the newly sowed fields rode men on horseback.

"These are not my dominions yet," said Caesar.

"We have two more stations till Castro Duro," responded Alzugaray, consulting the time-table. They took off their caps, put them into the bag, Caesar put on a fresh collar, and they sat down by the window.

"It is ugly enough, eh?" said Alzugaray.

"Naturally," replied Caesar. "What do you want; that there should be some of those green landscapes like in your country, which for my part irritate me?"

THE CLASSIC STAGECOACH

They arrived at Castro Duro. In the station they saw groups of peasants. The travellers with their baggage went out of the station. There were two shabby coaches at the door.

"Are you going to the Comercio?" asked one driver.

"No, they are going to the Espana," said the other.

"Then you two know more than we do," answered Alzugaray, "because we don't know where to go."

"To the Comercio!"

"To the Espana!"

"Whose coach is this one?" asked Caesar, pointing to the less dirty of the two.

"The Comercio's."

"All right, then we are going to the Comercio."

The coach, in spite of being the better of the two, was a rickety, worn-out old omnibus, with its windows broken and spotted. It was drawn by three skinny mules, full of galls. Caesar and Alzugaray got in and waited. The coachman, with the whip around his neck, and a young man who looked a bit like a seminarian, began to chat and smoke.

At the end of five minutes' waiting, Caesar asked:

"Well, aren't we going?"

"In a moment, sir."

The moment stretched itself out a good deal. A priest arrived, so fat that he would have filled the vehicle all alone; then a woman from the town with a basket, which she held on her knees; then the postman got in with his bag; the driver closed the little window in the coach door, and continued joking with the young man who looked a bit like a seminarian and with one of the station men.

"We are in a hurry," said Alzugaray.

"We are going now, sir. All right. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" answered the station man and the seminarian.

The driver got up on his seat, cracked his whip, and the vehicle began to move, with a noisy swaying and a trembling of all its wood and glass. A very thick cloud of dust arose in the road.

"Ya, ya, Coronela!" yelled the driver. "Why do you keep getting where you oughtn't to get? Damn the mule! Montesina, I am going to give you a couple of whacks. Get on there, Coronela! Get up, get up.... All right! All right!... That's enough.... That's enough.... Let it alone, now! Let it alone, now!"

"What an amount of oratory that man is wasting," exclaimed Caesar; "he must think that the mules are going to go better for the efforts of his throat. It would be an advantage if he had stronger beasts, instead of these dying ones."

The other travellers paid no attention to his observation, and Alzugaray said:

"These drivers drip oratory."

While the shabby coach was going along the highway which encircles Castro hill, to the sound of the bells and the cracking of the whip, it was possible to remain seated in the vehicle with comparative ease; but on reaching the town's first steep, crooked, rough-cobbled street, the swinging and tossing were such that the travellers kept falling one upon another.

The first street kept getting rapidly narrower, and as it grew narrower, the crags in its paving were sharper and more prominent. At the highest part of the street, in the middle, stood a two-wheeled cart blocking the way. The coachman got down, from his seat and started a long discussion with the carter, as to who was under obligations to make way.

"What idiots!" exclaimed Caesar, irritated; then, calmer, he murmured, addressing Alzugaray, "The truth is, these people don't care about doing anything but talk."

As the discussion between the coachman and the carter gave signs of never ending, Caesar said:

"Come along," and then, addressing the man with the bag, he asked him, "Is it far from here to the inn?"

"No; it is right here, in the house where the cafe is." THE INN

Sure enough, the inn was only a step away. They went into the damp, dark entrance, up the crooked stairs, and down the corridor to the kitchen.

"Good morning, good morning!" they shouted.

Nobody appeared.

"Might it be on the second floor?" asked Alzugaray.

"Let's go see."

They went up to the next floor, entered by a gallery of red brick, which was falling to pieces, and called several times. An old woman, from inside a dark bedroom where she was sweeping, bade them go down to the dining-room, where she would bring them breakfast.

The dining-room had balconies toward the country, and was full of sun; the bedrooms they were taken to, on the other hand, were dark, gloomy, and cavernous. Alzugaray requested the old woman to show them the other vacant chambers, and chose two on the second floor, which were lighter and airier.

The old woman told them she hadn't wanted to take them there, because there was no paper on the walls.

"No doubt, in Castro, the prospect of bed-bugs is an agreeable prospect," said Caesar.

After he had washed and dressed, Caesar started out to find and capture Don Calixto, and Alzugaray went to take a stroll around the town. It was agreed that they should each explore the region in his own way.



II. CASTRO DURO

THE MORNING

In these severe old Castilian towns there is one hour of ideal peace and serenity. That is the early morning. The cocks are still crowing, the sound of the church bells is scattered on the air, and the sun begins to penetrate into the streets in gusts of light. The morning is a flood of charity that falls upon the yellowish town.

The sky is blue, the air limpid, pure, and diaphanous; the transparent atmosphere scarcely admits effects of perspective, and its ethereal mass makes the outlines of the houses, of the belfries, of the eaves, vibrate. The cold breeze plays at the cross-streets, and amuses itself by twisting the stems of the geraniums and pinks that flame on the balconies. Everywhere there is an odour of cistus and of burning broom, which comes from the ovens where the bread is baked, and an odour of lavender that comes from the house entries.

The town yawns and awakes; some priests pass, on their way to church; pious women come out of their houses; and market men and women begin to arrive from the villages nearby. The bells make that tilin-talan so sad, which seems confined to these dead towns. In the main street the shops open; a boy hangs up the dresses, the sandals, the caps, on the facade, reaching them up with a stick. Droves of mules are seen in front of the grain-shops; some charcoal-burners go by, selling charcoal; and peasant women lead, by their halters, little burros loaded with jars and pans.

One hears all the hawksters' cries, all the clatter characteristic of that town. The milk-vendor, the honey-vendor, the chestnut-vendor, each has his own traditional theme. The candlestick-maker produces a sonorous peal from two copper candlesticks, the scissors-grinder whistles on his flute....

Then, at midday, hawksters and peasants disappear, the sun shines hotter, and the afternoon is tiresome and enervating.

FROM THE MIRADERO

Castro Duro is situated on a hill of red earth.

One goes up to the town by a dusty highway, with the remains of little trees which one Europeanizing mayor planted, and which all died; or else by zigzag paths, up which saddle-animals and beasts of burden usually go.

From the plain Castro Duro stands out in silhouette against the sky, between two high, many-sided edifices, one of a honey yellow, old and respectable, the church; the other white, overgrown, modern, the prison.

These two pillars of society are conspicuous from all sides, from whatsoever point on the plain one looks at Castro Duro.

The town was an old important city, and has, from afar, a seigniorial air; from nearby, on the contrary, it presents that aspect of caked dust which all the Castilian cities in ruin have; it is wide, spread out, formed for the most part of lanes and little squares, with low crooked houses that have blackish, warped roofs.

From the promenade beside the church, which is called the Miradero, one can see the great valley that surrounds Castro, a plain without an end, flat and empty. At the foot of the hill that supports the city, a broad river, which formerly kissed the old walls, marks a huge S with a sand border.

The water of the river covers the beach in winter, and leaves it half uncovered in summer. At intervals on the river banks grow little groves of poplar, which are mirrored on the tranquil surface of the water. A very long bridge of more than twenty arches crosses from one shore to the other.

The hill that serves as pedestal for the historic city has very different aspects; from one side it is seen terraced into steps, formed of small parcels of land held up by rough stone walls. On these landings there are thickets of vines and a few almond-trees, which grow even out of the spaces between the stones.

On another part of the hill, called the Trenches, the whole ground is broken by great cuttings, which in other days were no doubt used for the defence of the city. Near the trenches are to be seen the remains of battlemented walls, tiles, and ruins of an ancient settlement, perhaps destroyed by the waters of the river which in time undermined its foundations.

From the Miradero one sees the bridge below, as from a balloon, with men, riding horses, and carts going over it, all diminished by the distance. Women are washing clothes and spreading them in the sun, and in the evening horses and herds of goats are drinking at the river brink.

The great plain, the immense flat land, contains cultivated fields, square, oblong, varying in colour with the seasons, from the light green of barley to the gold of wheat and the dirty yellow of stubble. Near the river are truck-gardens and orchards of almonds and other fruit trees.

In the afternoon, looking from the Miradero, from the height where Castro stands, one feels overcome by this sea of earth, by the vast horizon, and the profound silence. The cocks toss their metallic crowing into the air; the clock-bells mark the hours with a sad, slow clang; and at evening the river, brilliant in its two or three fiery curves, grows pale and turns to blue. On clear days the sunset has extraordinary magic. The entire town floats in a sea of gold. The Collegiate church changes from yellow to lemon colour, and at times to orange; and there are old walls which take on, in the evening light, the colour of bread well browned in the oven. And the sun disappears into the plain, and the Angelus bell sounds through the immense space.

THE TOWN

Castro Duro has a great many streets, as many as an important capital. By only circling the Square one can count the Main Street, Laurel Street, Christ Street, Merchants' Street, Forge Street, Shoemakers' Street, Loafing Street, Penitence Wall, and Chain Street.

These streets are built with large brick houses and small adobe houses. Pointed cobbles form the pavement, and leave a dirty open sewer in the middle.

The large houses have two granite columns on their facades, on either side of the door, and these columns as well as the stones of the threshold take on a violet tinge from the lees of wine the inhabitants have the custom of putting on the sidewalks to dry.

Many of the big houses in Castro boast a large 'scutcheon over the door, little crazy towers with iron weather-cocks on the roof; and some of them a huge stork's nest.

The streets remote from the centre of town have no paving, and their houses are low, built of adobe, and continued by yards, over whose mud-walls appear the branches of fig-trees.

These houses lean forward or backward, and they have worn-out balconies, staircases which hold up through some prodigy of stability, and old grills, crowned with a cross and embellished with big flowers of wrought iron.

The two principal monuments of Castro Duro are the Great Church and the palace.

The Great Church is Romanesque, of a colour between yellow and brown, gilded by the sun. It stands high, at one extremity of the hill, like a sentinel watching the valley. The solid old fabric has rows of crenels under the roof, which shows its warlike character.

The principal dome and the smaller ones are ribbed, like almost all the Romanesque churches of Spain.

The round apse exhibits ornamental half columns, divers rosettes, and a number of raised figures, and masonic symbols. In the interior of the church the most notable thing to be seen is the Renaissance altar-piece and a Romanesque arch that gives entrance to the baptistery.

The second archeological monument of the town is the ancient palace of the Dukes of Castro Duro.

The palace, a great structure of stone and now blackened brick, rises at the side of the town-hall, and has, like it, an arcade on the Square. In the central balcony there are monumental columns, and on top of them two giants of corroded stone, with large clubs, who appear to guard the 'scutcheon; one end of the building is made longer by a square tower.

The palace wears the noble air given to old edifices by the large spread of wall containing windows very far apart, very small, and very much ornamented.

From the inscriptions on its various escutcheons one can gather that it was erected by the Duke of Castro Duro and his wife, Dona Guiomar.

In the rear of the palace, like a high belvedere built on the rampart, there appears a gallery formed of ten round arches, supported on slender pilasters. Below the gallery are the remains of a garden, with ramps and terraces and a few old statues. The river comes almost to the foot of the gardens.

Today the palace belongs to Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero, Count de la Sauceda.

Don Calixto and his family have no necessity for the whole of this big palace to live in, and have been content to renovate the part fronting on the Calle Mayor. They have had new belvederes built in, and have given over the apartments looking on the Square and the Calle del Cristo to the Courts and the school.

Another great building, which astonishes every one that stops over at Castro Duro, by its size, is the Convent of la Merced. It has been half destroyed by a fire. In the groins there remain some large Renaissance brackets, and in one wing of the edifice, inhabited by the nuns, there are windows with jalousies and a rather lofty tower terminating in a weather-cock and a cross.

LIFE AT CASTRO

Castro Duro is principally a town of farmers and carriers. Its municipal limits are very extensive; the plain surrounding it is fertile enough. In winter there are many foggy days, and then the flat land looks like a sea, in which hillocks and groves float like islands. Wine and cultivated fruits constitute the principal riches of Castro. The wine is sharp, badly made; there is one thick dark variety which always tastes of tar, and one light variety which they reinforce with alcohol and which they call aloque.

Autumn is the period of greatest animation in the town; the harvest gets stowed away, the vintage made, the sweet almonds are gathered and shelled in the porticoes.

Formerly in all the houses of rich and poor, the murk of the grapes was boiled in a still and a somewhat bitter brandy thus manufactured. Whether in consequence of the brandy, or of the unusual amount of money about, or of both, the fact is that at that period a great passion for gambling developed in Castro and more crimes were committed then than during all the rest of the year.

The industrial processes in Castro are primitive; everything is made by hand, and the Castrian people imagine that this establishes a superiority. In the environs of the town there are an electrical plant, a brickyard, various mills, and lime and plaster kilns.

The town's commerce is more extended than its industries, although no more prosperous. In the Square and in the Calle Mayor, under the arcades white goods are sold and woollens, and there are hat-shops and silversmiths, one alongside the other. The shopkeepers hang their merchandise in the arches, the saddlers and harness-makers decorate their entrances with head-stalls and straps, and those that have no archway put up awnings. In the Square there are continually stalls set up for earthenware jars and pitchers and for articles in tin.

In the outlying streets there are inns, at whose doors five or six mules with their heads together are almost constantly to be seen; there are crockery stores containing brooms and every kind of jug and glazed pan; there are little shops in doorways holding big baskets full of grain; there are dark taverns, which are also eating-houses, to which the peasants go to eat on market days, and whose signs are strings of dried pimentoes and cayenne peppers or an elm branch. In the written signs there is a truly Castilian charm, chaste and serene. At the Riojano oven one reads: "'Bred' baked for all 'commers.'" And at the Campico inn it says: "Wine served by Furibis herself." The shops and the inns have picturesque names too. There is the Sign of the Moor, and the Sign of the Jew, and the Sign of the Lion, and one of the Robbers.

The streets of Castro, especially those near the centre, where the crowd is greater, are dirty and ill-smelling in summer. Clouds of flies hover about and settle on the pairs of blissfully sleeping oxen; the sun pours down his blinding brilliance; not a soul passes, and only a few greyhounds, white and black, elegant and sad, rove about the streets...

In all seasons, at twilight, a few young gentlemen promenade in the Square. At nine at night in the winter, and at ten in summer, begins the reign of the watchmen with their dramatic and lamentable cry.

* * * * *

Alzugaray gave Caesar these details by degrees, while they were both seated in the hotel getting ready to dine.

"And the type? The ethnic type? What is it, according to you?" asked Caesar.

"A type rather thin than fat, supple, with an aquiline nose, black eyes..."

"Yes, the Iberian type," said Caesar, "that is how it struck me too. Tall, supple, dolichocephalic... It seems to me one can try to put something through in this town..."



III. CAESAR'S LABOURS

FIRST STEPS

"And what have you been doing all day? Tell me."

"I think, my dear Alzugaray," said Caesar, "that I can say, like my namesake Julius: 'Veni, vidi, vice.'"

"The devil! The first day?"

"Yes."

"Show me. What happened?"

"I left the house and entered the cafe downstairs. There was no one there but a small boy, from whom I ordered a bottle of beer and asked if there was a newspaper published here. He told me yes, the Castro Mail, an independent weekly. I bade him fetch me a copy, even an old one, and he brought me these two. I gave them a glance, and then, as if it didn't interest me much, I questioned the lad about Don Calixto.

"The first impression I obtained was that Don Calixto is the most influential person in the town; the second, that besides him, either with him or against him, there is a Senor Don Platon Peribanez, almost as influential as Don Calixto. Afterwards I read the two numbers of the Castro periodical attentively, and from this reading I gathered that there is a somewhat hazy question here about an Asylum, where it seems some irregularities have been committed. There is a Republican book-dealer, who is a member of the Council, and on whom the Workmen's Club depends, and he has asked for information as to the facts from the Municipality, and the followers of Don Calixto and of Don Platon oppose this suggestion as an attack on the good-birth, the honour, and the reputation of such respectable personages.

"Having verified these pieces of news, which are of interest for me, I packed off to church and heard the whole eleven o'clock mass."

"Mighty good! You are quite a man."

"Mass ended, I went over to the Baptistery arch and stood there examining it, as if I felt the most terrible symptoms of enthusiasm for carved stone. Afterwards I went into the big chapel, which serves also as a pantheon for the Dukes of Castro Duro, whose tombs you find in the side niches of the presbytery. These niches are decorated with an efflorescence of Gothic, which is most gay and pretty, and among all this stone filigree you see the recumbent statues of a number of knights and one bishop, who to judge by his sword must have been a warrior too.

"Nobody remained in the church; the priest, a nice old man, fixed his eyes on me and asked me what I thought of the arch. And having prepared my lesson, I talked about the Romanesque of the XII and XIII Centuries like a professor, and then he took me into the sacristy and showed me two paintings on wood which I told him were XV Century.

"'So they say,' the priest agreed. 'Do you think they are Italian or German?'

"'Italian certainly, North Italian.' I might as well have said South German, but I had to decide for something.

"'And they must be worth...? he then asked me with eagerness.

"'My dear man; according,' I told him. 'A dealer would offer you a hundred or two hundred pesetas apiece. In London or New York, well placed, they might be worth twenty or thirty thousand francs.'

"The 'pater' shot fire out of his eyes.

"'And what would one have to do about it?' he asked me.

"'My dear man, I think one would have to take some good photographs and send them to various trades-people and to the museums in the United States.'

"'Would it be necessary to write in English?'

"'Yes, it would be the most practical thing.' "'I don't think there is anybody here that knows how....'

"'I would do it, with great pleasure.'

"'But are you going to be here for some time?'

"'Yes, it is probable.'

"He asked me what I came to Castro Duro for, and I told him that I had no other object than to visit Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero.

"Astonishment on the priest's face.

"'You know him?'

"'Yes, I met him in Rome.'

"'Do you know where he lives?'

"'No.'

"'Then I will take you.'

"The priest and I went out into the street. He wanted to give me the sidewalk, and I opposed that as if it were a crime. He told me he was more accustomed than I to walking on the cobble-stones; and finally, he on the sidewalk and I in the gutter, we arrived at Don Calixto's house."

* * * * *

"Was he at home?" asked Alzugaray.

"Yes," said Caesar. "By the way, on the road there we bowed to the present Deputy to the Cortes, he who will be my opponent in the approaching election, Senor Garcia Padilla."

"Dear man! What a coincidence! What sort is he?"

"He is tall, with a reddish aquiline nose, a greyish moustache, full of cosmetic, a poor type."

"He is a Liberal?"

"Yes, he is a Liberal, because Don Calixto is a Conservative. In his heart, nothing."

"Good. Go on."

DON CALIXTO AT HOME

"As I was saying, Don Calixto was at home, in a large room on the ground floor, which serves as his office. Don Calixto is a tall, supple man, with the blackest of hair which is beginning to turn white on the temples, and a white moustache. He is at the romantic age of illusions, of hopes...." "How old is he?" asked Alzugaray.

"He isn't more than fifty-four," Caesar replied, sarcastically. "Don Calixto dresses in black, very fastidiously, and the effect is smart, but smacks of the notary. No matter what pains he takes to appear graceful and easy in manner, he doesn't achieve the result; he has the inbred humility of one who has taken orders in a shop, either as a lad or as a man.

"Don Calixto received me with great amiability, but with a certain air of reserve, as if to say: 'In Rome I was a merry comrade to you, here I am a personage.' We chatted about a lot of things, and before he could ask me what I wanted, I pulled out the letter and handed it to him. The old man put on his glasses, read attentively, and said:

"'Very good, very good; we will discuss it later.'

"The priest of course thought that he was in the way, and he left.

"When we were alone, Don Calixto said:

"'All right, Caesar, I am happy to see you. I see that you remember our conversation in Rome. You must have lunch with me and my family.'

"'With great pleasure.'

"'I'll go and tell them to put on another place.'

"Don Calixto went out and left me alone. For a while I studied the boss's office. On the wall, diplomas, appointments, in looking-glass frames; a genealogical tree, probably drawn day before yesterday; in a book-case, legal books...

"Don Calixto came back; he asked me if I was tired, and I told him no, and when we had crossed the whole width of the house, which is huge, he showed me the garden. My boy, what a wonderful spot! It hangs over the river and it is a marvel. The highest part, which is the part they keep up, isn't worth much; it is in lamentable style; just imagine, there is a fountain which is a tin negro that spurts out water from all parts.

"However, the old part of the garden, the lower part, is lovely. There is a big tower standing guard over the river, now converted into a belvedere, with pomegranates, rose-bushes, and climbing plants all around it, and above all, there is an oleander that is a marvel...; it looks like a fire-work castle or a shower of flowers."

* * * * *

"Leave that point," said Alzugaray. "You are talking like a poor disciple of Ruskin's."

"You are right. But when you see those gardens, you will be enthusiastic, too."

"Get ahead."

* * * * *

THE POLITICAL POWERS OF CASTRO

"During our promenade Don Calixto talked to me of the immense good he has done for the town and of the ingratitude he constantly receives for it.

"While I listened, I recalled a little periodical in Madrid which had no other object than to furnish bombs at reasonable prices, and which said, speaking of a manufacturer in Catalonia: 'Senor So-and-so is the most powerful boss in the province of Tarragona, and even at that there are those who dispute his bossdom.'

"Don Calixto is astonished that when he has done the Castrians the honour to make them loans at eighty or ninety percent, they are not fond of him. After the garden we saw the house; I won't tell you anything about it, I don't want you to accuse me again of being a Ruskinian.

"When we reached the dining-room Don Calixto said: 'I am going to present you to my family.'

"Thereupon, entrance, ceremonies, bows on my part, smiles... toute la lyre. Don Calixto's wife is an insignificant fat woman; the two daughters insipid, ungainly, not at all pretty; and with them was a little girl of about fifteen or sixteen, a niece of Don Calixto's, a veritable little devil, named Amparo. This Amparo is a tiny, flat-faced creature, with black eyes, and extraordinarily vivacious and mischievous. During dinner I succeeded in irritating the child.

"I talked gravely with Don Calixto and his wife and daughters about Madrid, about the theatrical companies that come to this town, about their acquaintances at the Capital.

"The child interrupted us, bringing us the cat and putting a little bow on him, and then making him walk on the key-board of the piano.

"At half-past one we went to the dining-room. Dinner was kilometres long; and the conversation turned on Rome and Paris. Don Calixto drank more and more, I, too; and at the end of the meal there was a bit of toasting, from which my political intentions were made manifest.

"The elder daughter, whose name is Adela, asked me if I liked music. I told her yes, almost closing my eyes, as if deliriously, and we went into the drawing-room. Without paying attention, I listened, during the horrors of digestion, to a number of sonatas, now and then saying: 'Magnificent! How wonderful that is!'

"The father was enchanted, the mother enchanted, the sister likewise; the little girl was the one who stared at me with questioning black eyes. She must have been thinking: 'What species of bird is this?' I believe the damned child realized that I was acting a comedy.

"About four the ladies and I went out into the garden. Don Calixto has the habit of taking an afternoon nap, and he left us. I succeeded in bringing myself to, in the open air. Don Calixto's wife showed me over an abandoned part of the house, in which there is an old kitchen as big as a cathedral, with a stone chimney like a high altar, with the arms of the Dukes of Castro. We chatted, I was very pleasant to the mother, courteous to the daughters, and coldly indifferent with the little niece. I was bored, after having exhausted all subjects of conversation, when Don Calixto reappeared and carried me off to his office.

"The conference was important; he explained the situation of the Conservative forces of the district to me. These forces are represented, principally, by three men: Don Calixto, a Senor Don Platon, and a friar. Don Calixto represents the modern Conservative tendency and is, let us say, the Canovas of the district; with him are the rich members of the Casino, the superior judge, the doctors, the great proprietors, etc. Don Platon Peribanez, a silversmith in the Calle Mayor, represents the middle-class Conservatives; his people are less showy, but more in earnest and better disciplined; this Platonian or Platonic party is made up of chandlers, silversmiths, small merchants, and the poor priests. The friar, who represents the third Conservative nucleus, is Father Martin Lafuerza. Father Martin is prior of the Franciscan monastery, which was established here after the Order was expelled from Filinas.

"Father Martin is an Ultramontanist up to the eyes. He directs priests, friars, nuns, sisters, and is the absolute master of a town nearby called Cidones, where the women are very pious.

"Despite their piety, the reputation of those ladies cannot be very good, because there is a proverb, certainly not very gallant: 'Don't get either a wife or a mule at Cidones; neither a wife nor a mule nor a pig at Grinon.'

"Opposed to these three Conservative nuclei are the friends of the present Deputy, who amount to no more than the official element, which is always on the ruling side, and a small guerilla band that meets in the Workingmen's Casino, and is composed principally of a Republican bookseller, an apothecary who invents explosives, also Republican, an anarchist doctor, a free-thinking weaver, and an innkeeper whom they call Furibis, who is also a smuggler and a man with hair on his chest."



DON PLATON PERIBANEZ

"After having given me these data, Don Calixto told me that by counting on Senor Peribanez, the election was almost sure; and since the quicker things go the better, he proposed that we should go to see him, and I immediately agreed.

"Don Platon Peribanez has a silver-shop fitted up in the old style; a small show-window, full of rattles, Moorish anklets, necklaces, little crosses, et cetera; a narrow, dark shop, then a long passage, and at the rear, a workroom with a window on a court.

"As his assistant in the silver-shop, Don Platon has a boy who is a nonsuch. I believe that if you took him to London and exhibited him, saying beforehand: 'Bear in mind, gentlemen, that this is not a monkey or an anthropoid, but a man,' you would rake in a mad amount of pounds sterling.

"We went into Don Platon's little shop, we asked the young macaco for him, and we passed on into the workshop.

"Senor Peribanez is a man of medium stature, dressed in black, with a trimmed white beard, grey eyes, and modest manners. He speaks coldly, thinks closely of what he is saying; he has a monotonous, slow voice, and nothing escapes him.

"Don Calixto presented me to him; the silversmith gave me his hand as if with a certain repugnance, and the boss explained who I was and what I was after.

"Don Platon said that he could not reply categorically without consulting with his friends and with Father Martin. The Father has other candidates; one the Duke of Castro himself; and the other a rich farmer of the town.

"The Duke of Castro presents no other drawback than that he has been arrested in Paris for an insignificant swindle he has committed; but it seems that a rich Cuban wants to get him out of his difficulties on condition that he will marry his daughter.

"If he comes out of jail and gets married, then they will nominate him as Deputy from here.

"I said to Don Platon, in case the worthy Duke does not come out of jail, would he have difficulties over my being his candidate. He replied that I am very young, and after many circumlocutions he said flatly that he doesn't know if I would be accepted or not as a candidate by his followers; but in case I were, the conditions precedent would be: first, that I would not interfere in any way in the affairs of the district, which would be ventilated in the town, as previously; secondly, that I should bear the costs of the election, which would amount approximately to some ten thousand pesetas.

"Don Calixto looked at me questioningly, and I smiled in a way to make it understood that I agreed, and after extracting a promise from Don Platon that he will give us a definite answer this week, we took leave of him and went to the Casino.

"There I was introduced to the judge, an Andalusian who has a spotless reputation for veniality, and to the mayor, who is a rich farmer; and the most important persons of the town being thus gathered at one table, we chatted about politics, women, and gambling.

"I told them a number of tales; I told them that I once lost ten thousand dollars at Monte Carlo, playing with two Russian princes and a Yankee millionairess; I talked to them about the mysteries and crimes of gambling houses and of those great centres of pleasure, and I left them speechless. At half-past nine, with a terrible headache, I came back here. I think I have not lost a day, eh?"

"No! The devil! What speed!" exclaimed Alzugaray.

"But you are not eating any supper. Don't you intend to take anything?"

"No. I am going to see if I can sleep. Listen, day after tomorrow we are both invited to dine at Don Calixto's."

"Me, too?"

"Yes; I told them that you are a rich tourist, and they want to know you."

"And what am I to do there?"

"You can study these people, as an entomologist studies insects. Listen, it wouldn't do any harm if you took a walk to that town near here, named Cidones, to see if you can find out what sort of bird this Father Martin is."

"All right."

"And if you don't mind, go into that Republican bookseller's shop, under any pretext, and talk to him."

"I will do so."

"Then, till tomorrow!"

"You are going now?"

"Yes."

"Goodnight, then."

Caesar left his room and marched off to sleep.



IV. THE BOOKSELLER AND THE ANARCHISTS

The following day, very early in the morning, Alzugaray went to a livery-stable which they had directed him to at the hotel, and asked to hire a horse. They brought him a large, old one; he mounted, and crossed the town more slowly than if he had been on foot, and set out for Cidones.

On reaching that town, he left the horse at a blacksmith's and went up through the narrow lanes of Cidones, which are horribly long, dark, and steep.

Then he ascended to la Pena, the rock on which the Franciscan monastery stands; but was unable to obtain any fresh information about Father Martin and his friars. The people with whom he talked were not disposed to unbosom themselves, and he preferred not to insist, so as not to be suspected.

Afterwards he went down to Cidones again and returned to Castro Duro. Caesar was still in bed. Alzugaray went into his room.

"Don't you intend to get up?" he asked him.

"No."

"Don't you intend to eat, either?"

"Neither."

"Are you sick?"

"No."

"What is the matter with you? Laziness?"

"Something like that."

Alzugaray ate alone, and after he had had coffee, he directed his steps to the bookstore of the Republican councilman, of whom Caesar had spoken to him. He found it in a corner of the Square; and it was at the same time a stationer's shop and a newsdealer's. Behind the counter were an old man and a lad.

Alzugaray went in. He bought various Madrid periodicals from the lad, and then addressing the old man, asked him:

"Haven't you some sort of a map of the province, or of the neighbourhood of Castro Duro?"

"No, sir, there isn't one."

"Nor a guidebook, perhaps?"

"Nor that either. At the townhall we have a map of the town...."

"Only of the part built up?"

"Yes."

"Then it would do me no good."

"You want a map for making excursions, eh?"

"That's it. Yes."

"Well, there is none. We are very much behind the times."

"Yes, that's true. It wouldn't cost very much, and it would be useful for ever, both to the people here and to strangers."

"Just tell that to our town government!" exclaimed the old bookseller. "Whatever is not for the advantage of the rich and the clerical element, there is no hope of."

"Those gentlemen have a great deal of influence here?" asked Alzugaray.

"Uf! Enormous. More every day."

"But there don't appear to be many convents."

"No, there are not many convents; but there is one that counts for a hundred, and that is the one at Cidones."

"Why is that?"

"Because it has a wild beast for a prior. Father Martin Lafuerza. He is famous all through this region. And he is a man of talent, there's no denying it, but despotic and exigent. He is into everything, catechizes the women, dominates the men. There is no way to fight against him. Here am I with this bookshop, and I have my pension as a lieutenant, which gives me enough to live very meanly, and with what little I get out of the periodicals I scrape along. Besides, I am a Republican and very liberal, and I like propaganda. If I didn't, I should have left all this long ago, because they have waged war to the death on me, an infamous sort of war which a person that lives in Madrid cannot understand; calumnies that come from no one knows where, atrocious accusations, everything...."

Alzugaray stared at the bookseller's grey eyes, which were extraordinarily bright. The old man was tall, stooped, grizzled, with a prominent nose and a beard trimmed to a point.

"But you have stuck firmly to your post," said Alzugaray.

"Having been a soldier must do something for a man," replied the bookseller. "He learns not to draw back in the face of danger. And this is my life. Now I am a councillor and I work at the town hall as much as I can, even though I know I shall accomplish nothing. Grafting goes on before my face, I know it exists, and yet it is impossible to find it. Six months ago I informed the judge of irregularities committed in a Sisters' Asylum, things I had proof of.... The judge laid my information on the table, and things went on as if nothing had happened."

"Spain is in a bad way. It is a pity!" exclaimed Alzugaray.

"You people in Madrid, and I don't say this to irritate you, do not understand what goes on in the small towns."

"My dear man, I have never taken any part in political affairs."

"Well, I think that everybody ought to take part in politics, because it is for the general interest."

At this moment two persons entered the bookshop. Alzugaray was going to leave, but the bookseller said to him:

"If you have nothing to do, sit down for a while."

Alzugaray sat down and examined the new arrivals. One of them was a skinny man, with bushy hair and whiskers; the other was a smooth-shaven party, short, cross-eyed, dressed in copper-coloured cloth edged with broad black braid.

"The Rebel hasn't come?" asked the whiskered one.

"No," replied the bookseller. "It didn't come out this week."

"They must have reported it," said the whiskered one. "Yes, probably."

"Has the doctor been in?" the shaven, little man with the black braid asked in his turn.

"No."

"All right. Let's go see if we can find him in the club. Salutations!"

"Good-bye."

"Who are those rascals?" asked Alzugaray, when they had gone out.

"They are two anarchists that we have here, who accuse me of being a bourgeois... ha... ha.... The shaven one is the son of the landlady of an inn who is called Furibis, and they call him that too. He used to be a Federalist. They call the other one 'Whiskers,' and he came here from Linares, not long ago."

"What do they do?"

"Nothing. They sit in the club chatting, and nowadays the doctor we have here runs with them, Dr. Ortigosa, who is half mad. He will be in soon. Then you will see a type. He is a very bad-tempered man, and is always looking for an excuse to quarrel. But above all, he is an enemy of religion. He never says Good-bye, but Salutations or Farewell. In the same way, he doesn't say Holy Week, but Clerical Week. His great pleasure is to find a temperament of a fibre like his own; then his eyes flash and he begins to swear. And if he is hit, he stands for it."

"He is an anarchist, too?"

"How do I know? He doesn't know himself. Formerly, for four or five months, he got out a weekly paper named The Protest, and sometimes he wrote about the canalization of the river, and again about the inhabitants of Mars."

The bookseller and Alzugaray chatted about many other things, and after some while the bookseller said:

"Here is Dr. Ortigosa. He is coming in."

The door opened and a slim individual appeared, worn and sickly, with a black beard and spectacles. His necktie was crooked, his suit dirty, and he had his hat in his hand. He stared impertinently at Alzugaray, cast a glance at a newspaper, and set to shouting and talking ill of everything.

"This is a town full of dumb beasts," he said from time to time, with the energy of exasperation.

Then, supposing Alzugaray to come from Madrid, he started to speak ill of the Madrilenos.

"They are a collection of fools," he said roundly, various times. "They know nothing, they understand nothing, and still they talk authoritatively about everything."

Alzugaray put up with the downpour as if it had no reference to him, looking over a newspaper; and when the doctor was in the thick of his discourse, Alzugaray got up, shook hands with the bookseller, thanked him, and left the shop.

The doctor looked at him over his glasses with fury, and began to walk up and down in the bookstore.

Alzugaray went to the hotel, arranging in his memory the data collected.

Caesar was feeling well, and the two of them talked of the bookseller and his friends and of Father Martin Lafuerza.

"I am going to jot down all these points," said Caesar. "It wouldn't be a bad idea for you to go on cultivating the bookseller."

"I am going to."

"Tomorrow, you know," said Caesar. "Grand dinner at Don Calixto's. The practical manoeuvres begin."

"Very good."



V. THE BANQUET

THE GUESTS

The table had been set in that wonderful gallery of the ancient palace of the Dukes of Castro Duro, which looked out over the garden. The early autumn weather was of enchanting softness and sweetness.

Caesar and Alzugaray were very smart and elegant, with creases in their trousers: Caesar dressed in black, with the ceremonious aspect that suits a grave man; Alzugaray in a light suit with a coloured handkerchief in his breast pocket.

"I think we are 'gentlemen' today," said Caesar.

"It seems so to me."

They entered the house and were ushered into the drawing-room. The majority of the guests were already there; the proper introductions and bows took place. Caesar stayed in the group of men, who remained standing, and Alzugaray went over to enter the sphere of Don Calixto's wife and the judge's wife.

The judge, from the first moment, treated Caesar like a man of importance, and began to call him Don Caesar every moment, and to find everything he said, good.

In the ladies' group there was an old priest, a tall, big, deaf man, a great friend of the family, named Don Ramon.

The judge's wife told Alzugaray that this Don Ramon was a simpleton.

He was the pastor of a very rich hermitage nearby, the hermitage of la Vega, and he had spent all the money he had got by an inheritance, in fixing up the church.

The poor man was childlike and sweet. He said various times that he had many cloaks for the Virgin in the sacristy of his church, and that he wished they could be given to poor parishes, because two or three were enough in his.

AMPARITO

While they were talking an automobile horn was heard, and a little later Don Calixto's niece entered the drawing-room.

This was Amparito, the flat-faced girl with black eyes, of whom Caesar had spoken to Alzugaray. Her father accompanied her.

The priest patted the girl's cheeks.

Her father was a clumsy man, red, sunburned, with the face of a contractor or a miner.

The girl took off her cap and the veil she wore in the automobile, and seated herself between Don Calixto's daughters. Alzugaray looked her over. Amparito really was attractive; she had a short nose, bright black eyes, red lips too thick, white teeth, and smooth cheeks. She wore her hair down, in ringlets; but in spite of her infantile get-up, one saw that she was already a woman.

"Caesar is right; this is quite a lively girl," murmured Alzugaray.

The mayor's son now arrived, and his sister. He was an insignificant little gentleman, mild and courteous; he had studied law at Salamanca, and it seemed that he had certain intentions about Don Calixto's second daughter.

All the guests being assembled, the master of the house said that, since nobody was missing and it was time, they might pass into the gallery, where the table was set.

At one end the lady of the house seated herself, having the priest on one side and the judge on the other; at the other end, Don Calixto, between the judge's wife and the mayor's daughter. Caesar had a seat assigned between Don Calixto's elder daughter and Amparito, and Alzugaray one between the second daughter and the judge's girl.

A few moments before they sat down, Amparito went running out of the gallery into the garden. "Where has that child gone?" asked Don Calixto's wife.

"Something or other has occurred to her," said Amparito's father, laughing.

The girl reappeared a little later with a number of yellow and red chrysanthemums in her hand.

She gave red ones to the mayor's daughter and to her cousins, who were all three brunettes, and a yellow one to the judge's daughter, who was blond. Then she proceeded to the men.

"This one is for you," to the mayor's son; "this one for you," and she gave Alzugaray a yellow one; "this one for you," and she gave Caesar a red one; "and this one for me," and she put a similar flower in her bosom.