Chapter IX: Part TWO: Castro Duro (2)

Toward the middle of the meal the conversation grew brisker; the judge recounted, with much art, a mysterious crime that had occurred in a town in Andalusia among farming people, and he succeeded in keeping them all hanging to his lips.

At the end of the recital, the conversation became general; the younger element talked together, and Cæsar made comments about what the judge had told them, and defended the most immoral and absurd conclusions, as though they were Conservative ideas.

Cæsar’s observations were discussed by the men, and the judge and Don Calixto agreed that Cæsar was a man of real talent, who would play a great role in Congress.

“Please give me a little wine,” said Amparito, holding her glass to Alzugaray; “your friend pays no attention to me; I have asked him for some wine twice, and nothing doing.”

Cæsar acted as if he hadn’t heard and kept on talking.

Amparito took the glass, wet her lips in it, and looked at Alzugaray maliciously.

After eating and having coffee, as the two married ladies and the girls were inert from so long a meal, they arose, and Alzugaray, the mayor’s son, and Amparito’s father followed them. Don Calixto, the judge, and Cæsar remained at table. The priest had gone to sleep.

A bottle of chartreuse was brought, and they started in drinking and smoking.

Cæsar’s throat grew dry and he became nauseated from drinking, smoking, and talking.

At five the judge took his leave, because he had to glance in at court; Don Calixto wanted to take his nap, and after he had escorted Cæsar to the garden, he went away. The two married ladies were alone, because the young people had gone with Amparito’s father on an excursion to the Devil’s Threshold, a defile where the river flows between some red precipitous rocks full of clefts.

Cæsar joined the two ladies, and kept up a monotonous, dreary conversation about the ways of the great city.

At twilight all the excursionists came back from their jaunt. One of the young ladies played something very noisy on the piano, and the judge’s daughter was besought to recite one of Campoamor’s poems.

“It is a very pretty thing,” said the judge’s wife, “a girl who laments because her lover abandons her.”

“Given the customs of Spain, as they are, the girl would be in a house of prostitution,” said Cæsar in a low tone, ironically.

“Shut up,” replied Alzugaray.

The girl recited the poem, and Cæsar asked Alzugaray sarcastically if those verses were by the girl’s father, because they sounded to him like the verses of a notary or a judge of the Court of First Instance.

Then somebody suggested that they should have supper there.

Cæsar noticed that this plan did not appeal to the mistress of the house, and he said:

“One should be moderate in all things. I am going home to bed.”

After this somewhat pedantic phrase, which to Don Calixto seemed a pearl, Cæsar took leave of his new acquaintances with a great deal of ceremony and coolness. Alzugaray said he would remain a while longer.

When Cæsar was bowing to Amparito, she asked him jokingly:

“Is it your wife that keeps you in such good habits?”

“My wife!” exclaimed Cæsar, surprised.

“Didn’t your friend say...”

“Ah! Yes, it is she who makes me have such good habits.”

This said, he left the drawing-room and went quickly down the stairs. The cool night air made him shiver, and he went with a heavy, aching head to his hotel, and got to bed. He slept very profoundly, but not for more than an hour, and woke up sweaty and thirsty. His headache was gone. It was not yet past eleven. He lighted the light, and sitting up in bed, set to thinking over the probabilities of success in his undertaking.

Meanwhile he stared at the red chrysanthemum which was in the button-hole of his coat, and remembered Amparito.

“That child is a prodigy of coquetry and bad bringing-up,” he thought with vexation; “these emancipated small town young ladies are more unattractive than any others. I prefer Don Calixto’s daughter, who at least is naively and unobjectionably stupid. But this other one is unsupportable.”

Without knowing why, he felt more antipathy for the girl than was natural under the circumstances. He did not like to admit it to himself; but he felt the hostility which is produced in strong, self-willed characters by the presence of another person with a strong character proposing to exert itself.

THE TWO FRIENDS’ COMMENTS

Cæsar was thinking over the details of the visit, when Alzugaray came home, and seeing a light in Cæsar’s room, went in there. Alzugaray was quite lively. The two friends passed the persons met that day in ironic review, and in general they were agreed about everything, except about valuing Amparito’s character.

Cæsar found her distasteful, pert and impertinent; to his friend, on the contrary, she had seemed very attractive, very amiable and very clever.

“To me,” said Cæsar, “she appears one of these small town lasses who have a flirtation with a student, then with a captain, and finally marry some rich brute, and get fat, and turn into old sows, and grow moustaches.”

“In that I think you are fundamentally unjust,” said Alzugaray. “Amparito is not a small town lass, for she lives in Madrid almost all year. Besides, that makes no difference; what I have not observed is her committing any folly or impertinence.” “Dear man, it all depends on how you look at it. To me her conduct seemed bad, to you it seems all right.”

“You are an extremist, for I can assure you that you were actually rude to her.”

“Actually rude, I don’t think; but I admit that I was cool and not very amiable.”

“And why were you?”

“First, because it is politic of me, since Don Calixto’s family do not care for Amparito; and secondly, because the little creature didn’t please me, either.”

“And why didn’t she please you? For no reason at all?”

“I am not partial to the platyrrhine races.”

“What nonsense! And you wish to look at things clearly! A man that judges people by their noses!”

“It seems to you little to go on? A brunette girl, brachicephalic and rather platyrrhine.... There is no more to say.”

“And if she had been blond, dolichocephalic, and long-nosed, she would have seemed all right to you.”

“Her ethnic type would have seemed all right.”

“Let’s not discuss it. What’s the use? But I feel that you are arbitrary to an extreme.”

“If she knew of our discussion, the young thing couldn’t complain, because if she has had a systematic detractor in me, she has found an enthusiastic defender in you.”

“Yes, dear man; it is only at such long intervals that I see a person with ingenuousness and enthusiasm, that when I do meet one, I get a real joy from it.”

“You are a sentimentalist.”

“That’s true; and you have become an inquisitor.”

“Most certainly. I believe we agree on that and on all the rest.”

“I think so. All right. Good-bye!” said Alzugaray, ill-humouredly.

“Salutations!” replied Cæsar.

VI. UNCLE CHINAMAN

CIDONES

Cæsar impatiently awaited Señor Peribáñez’s reply, so that he might return to Madrid. He was fed up with Don Calixto’s conversation and his wife’s, and with the familiarity they had established with him.

Alzugaray, on the other hand, was entertained and content. Amparito’s father showed a great liking for him and took him everywhere in his automobile.

Cæsar, in order to satisfy his requirements for isolation, had begun to get up very early and take walks on the highway. He almost always walked too far, and was done up for the whole day, and at first he slept badly at night.

He wanted to see, one by one, the parts of his future realm, the scene where his initiative was to bear seed and his plans to be realized.

A lot of ideas occurred to him: to build a bridge here, to take advantage there of the fall of the river and establish a big electric plant for industrial purposes. He would have liked to change everything he saw, in an instant.

To think of these sleeping forces irritated him: the waterfall, lost without leaving its energy anywhere; the ravine, which might be transformed into an irrigation reservoir; the river, which was flowing gently without fertilizing the fields; the land around the hermitage, which might have been converted into a park, with a bright, gay schoolhouse; all these things that could be done and were not done, seemed to him more real than the people with whom he talked and lived.

One morning Cæsar walked to Cidones; the sun shone strongly on the highway, and he reached the town choked and thirsty.

The streets of Cidones were so narrow, so cold and damp, that Cæsar shivered on entering the first one, and he turned back, and instead of going inside that polypus of dark clefts, he walked around it by the road. On a small house with an arbour, which was on a corner, he saw a sign saying: ‘Café Español’; and went in.

THE CAFÉ ESPAÑOL. The café was dark and completely empty, but at one end there was a balcony where the sun entered. Cæsar crossed the café and sat down near the balcony.

He called several times, and clapped his hands, and a girl appeared.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Something to drink. A bottle of beer.”

“I will call Uncle Chinaman.”

The girl went out, and soon after a thick, chubby man came in, with a bottle of beer in his hand, the label of which he showed to Cæsar, asking him if that was what he wanted.

“Yes, sir; that will do very well.”

The man opened the bottle with his corkscrew, put it on the table, and as he seemed to have a desire to enter into conversation, Cæsar asked him:

“Why did the girl tell me that Uncle Chinaman would come? Who is the Chinaman?”

“The Chinaman, or Uncle Chinaman, as you like; I am.”

“My dear man!”

“Yes, we all have nicknames here. They called my father that, and they call me that. Psh! It makes no difference. Because if a person is cross about it, it’s all the worse. A few days ago a muleteer from a town in the district arrived here, and went to the inn, and as he had no nickname and they are very fond here in Cidones of giving one to every living creature, they said to him: ‘No matter how short a while you stay here, you will be given a nickname’; and he answered contemptuously: ‘Bah! Little fear.’ Soon after, as he was crossing the square, a girl said to him: ‘Good-bye, Little Fear!’ and Little Fear it remained.”

As Uncle Chinaman seemed very communicative, Cæsar asked him some questions about life in the town.

Uncle Chinaman talked a great deal and with great clearness. According to him, the cause of all trouble in the town was cowardice. The two or three bosses of Castro and Father Martin ruled their party arbitrarily, and the rest of the people didn’t dare breathe.

The poor didn’t understand that by being united they could offset the influence of the rich, and even succeed in dominating them. Besides, fear didn’t permit them to move.

“But fear of what?” said Cæsar.

“Fear of everything; fear that they will levy a tax, that they won’t provide work, that they will take your son for a soldier, that they will put you in jail for something or other, that the two or three bullies who are in the bosses’ service might beat you.”

“Does their tyranny go as far as that?”

“They do whatever they choose.”

The Chinaman, who looked more like a Tartar, could make himself quite clear. If it had not been that he used the wrong words and had an itch for unusual ones, he would have given the impression of being a most intelligent man.

He said he was anti-clerical, declared himself a pantheist, and spoke of the “controversories” he maintained with different persons.

“A relative of mine who is a monk,” he said, “is always reprehending me, and saying: ‘Lucas, you are a Free-Thinker.’... ‘And it’s greatly to my credit,’ I tell him.”

Then, apropos of his monkish relative, he told a scandalous story. A niece of the Chinaman’s, who had served for some while in the café, had gone to live with this monk.

Uncle Chinaman’s account of it was rather grotesque.

“I had a niece,” he said, “in the house, you know, very spruce, very good-looking, with breasts as hard as a rock. My wife loved her as ‘muchly’ as if she had been our daughter, and so did I. Suddenly we heard the poor child had made a false step... or two false steps... and a little while later the girl was in a bad condition. Well, then; she went to town, and came back here to the café, and again we heard that the poor child had made a false step... or two false steps; and as I have daughters, you know, this ‘pro... missiousness’ didn’t please me, and I went and told her: ‘Look here, Maria, this isn’t right at all, and what you ought to do is get out.’ She understood me, and went away, and went to her uncle the monk, and the two of them formed a ‘cohabit.’... Curse her! I went after them; and if I ever find them, I’ll kill them. All very well for the poor child to make a false step... or two false steps; but this thing of getting into a ‘cohabit’ with a monk, and he her uncle, that is a ‘hulimination’ for the family. You may believe that we had to empty the cup down to the ‘drugs.’”

FATHER MARTIN

Cæsar was listening to Uncle Chinaman with joy, when he saw two friars passing along the road below the balcony.

“They are from the monastery of la Peña, I suppose,” he said.

The Chinaman looked out and replied:

“One of them is the prior, Father Lafuerza. The other is an intriguing young chap who has been here only a short while.”

“Man, I have to see them,” said Cæsar.

“They are coming up the street now.”

Uncle Chinaman and Cæsar went to the other end of the café, and waited for them to pass.

The younger of the two friars had an air of mock humility, and was weakly-looking, with a straggling yellowish beard and a crafty expression; Father Martin, on the contrary, looked like a pasha parading through his dominions. He was tall, stout, of an imposing aspect, with a grizzly blond beard, blue eyes, and a straight, well-shaped nose.

The two friars came up the narrow, steep street, stopping to talk to the women that were sewing and embroidering in the arcades.

Cæsar and the Chinaman followed them with their eyes until the two friars turned a corner. Then Cæsar left the café and walked back to Castro Duro.

VII. A TRYING SCENE

Don Platón Peribáñez’s reply was delayed longer than he had promised. No one knew whether the Duke of Castro Duro would get married or not get married, whether he would come out of prison or stay in.

Cæsar had nothing for it but to wait, although he was already fed up with his stay. Alzugaray had a good time; he visited the surrounding towns in the company of Amparito and her father. Cæsar, on the other hand, began to be bored. Accustomed to live with the independence of a savage, the social train of a town like Castro irritated him.

His good opinion of people was in direct ratio to the indifference they felt for him. Amparito’s father was one of those who showed most antipathy. Sometimes he invited him to go motoring, but only for politeness. Cæsar used to reply to these invitations with a courteous refusal.

Amparito, who was doubtless accustomed to seeing everybody in town fluttering about her, was wounded at this indifference and took every chance to see Cæsar, and then shot her wit at him and was sharply impertinent.

The young creature was more intelligent than she had at first appeared and she spoke very plainly.

Cæsar could not permit a young girl to make fun of him and combat his ideas for her own amusement.

“Let’s see, Moneada,” Amparito said to him one day in the gallery at Don Calixto’s. “What are your political plans?”

“You wouldn’t understand them,” replied Cæsar.

“Why not? Do you think I am so stupid?”

“No. It is merely that politics are not a matter for children.” “Ah! But how old do you think I am?” she asked.

“You must be twelve or thirteen.”

“You are a malicious joker, Señor Moncada, You know that I am almost seventeen.”

“I don’t. How should I know it?”

“Because I told your friend Alzugaray....”

“All right, but I don’t ask my friend what you have told him.”

“It doesn’t interest you? Very good. You are very polite. But your politics do interest me. Come on, tell me. What reforms do you intend to make in the town? What improvements are you going to give the inhabitants? For I warn you, Señor Moncada, that they are all going to vote against you otherwise, I will tell my father.”

“I don’t believe his political interest is so keen.”

“It is keen enough, and my father will do what I tell him. My father says that you are ambitious.”

“If I were, I should make love to you, because you are rich.”

“And do you suppose I would respond?”

“I don’t know, but I should try it, as others do; and you can see that I don’t try.”

Amparito bit her lips and said ironically:

“Are you reserving yourself for my cousin Adelaida?”

“I am not reserving myself for anybody.”

“We couldn’t say that you are very amiable.”

“That is true. I never have been.”

“If you keep on like that when you are a Deputy....”

“What difference is it to you whether I am a Deputy or not? Is it because you have some beau who wants the place? If it is, tell me. I will withdraw in his favour. You must see that I can do no more,” said Cæsar jokingly.

“And how you would hate me then; if you had to give up being a Deputy on my account!”

“No.”

“You hate me already.”

“No. You are mistaken.” “Yes. I believe if you could, you would strike me.”

“No, the most I should do would be to shut you up in a dark room.”

“You are an odious, antipathetic man. I thought I rather liked you, but I only hate you.”

“You know already, Amparito, that I am a candidate for Deputy, but not one for you.”

“All right. All right. I don’t wish to hear any more stupid remarks.”

“The stupid remarks are those you are making.”

And Cæsar, who was beginning to feel angry, rebuked Amparito too severely, for her coquetry, her bad intentions, and her desire to humiliate and mortify people without any reason.

Amparito listened to him, pale and panting.

“And after all,” said Cæsar, “all this is nothing to me. If I am in your family’s way, or even in your way, I can go away from here, and all is ended.”

“No, do not go away,” murmured Amparito, raising her handkerchief to her eyes and beginning to weep bitterly.

Cæsar felt deeply grieved; all his anger disappeared, and he stood there, amazed, and not knowing what to do.

“Do not cry,” exclaimed Cæsar; “what will they think of me? Come, don’t cry. It is childish.”

At that moment Amparito’s father entered the gallery, and he came running to the girl’s side.

“What have you done to my daughter?” he cried, approaching Cæsar threateningly.

“I, nothing,” he said.

“You have. What has he done to you?” screamed the father.

“Nothing, Papa. Do not shriek that way, for God’s sake,” moaned Amparito; “I was entirely to blame.”

“If he...”

“No, I tell you he hasn’t done anything to me.”

Cæsar, who had remained motionless in face of Amparito’s father’s threatening attitude, turned on his heel, and went slowly out. THE ETERNAL GAME OF DISDAIN

Cæsar went back to the hotel, thinking very hard. Alzugaray asked him what the matter was, and Cæsar told his friend what had happened in the gallery. On hearing the story Alzugaray assumed a look of deep desolation.

“I don’t understand what is the matter with the girl, for her to show such antipathy for me,” Cæsar concluded.

“It is very simple,” said Alzugaray, sadly; “the girl is interested in you. The eternal game of disdain has produced its effect. She has seen you show yourself indifferent toward her, speak curtly to her, and she has gone on thinking more and more about you, and now she thinks of nothing else. That is what has happened.”

“Bah! I don’t believe it. You act as if this were in a novel.”

“It’s no novel. It’s the truth.”

The next day, when Cæsar got up, the maid handed him two letters. One was from Don Calixto and said that Señor Peribáñez accepted him as candidate. It had been learned that the Duke of Castro Duro had married his landlady in England; the arrangement with the Cuban gentleman was impossible, and the poor Duke would definitely have to winter in Paris, in the prison, along with the distinguished apaches, Bibi de Montmartre and the Panther of the Batignolles.

The other letter was from Amparito.

Don Calixto’s niece told him he mustn’t believe that she hated him; if she had said anything to him, it was without bad intention; she would be very happy if all his projects were realized.

Despite his ambitious plans and the desire he had that the question of his candidacy should be definitely settled, Amparito’s letter interested him much more than Don Calixto’s.

A new, disturbing element was coming into his life, without any warning and without any reason. He said nothing about Amparito’s letter to his friend Alzugaray. He felt him to be a rival, and in spite of having no intentions of going further, the idea of rivalry between them troubled him. He did not wish to offend him by taking the attitude of a lucky man.

He went out into the street and set off for a walk on the highway.

“It is strange,” he thought, “this coarse psychology, which proves that a man and a woman, especially a woman, are not complex beings, but stupidly simple. The complex thing in a woman is not the intelligence or the soul, but instinct. Why does a woman rebuff a man who pleases her? For the same reason that the female animal repulses the male, and at the same time calls him to her.

“And this instinctive love, this mixture of hatred and attraction, is the curious thing, the enigmatic thing about human nature. The intellect of each individual is, by contrast, so poor, so clear!

“This girl, rich and attractive, flattered by everybody, is bored in this town. She sees a man that doesn’t pay attention to her, who is after another goal, and simply for that reason she feels offended and hunts out a way to mortify him, for her entertainment and for spite; and when she finds that she doesn’t succeed, she gets to thinking about him all the time.

“And this spite, this wounded vanity, is changed to an absorbing interest. Why shouldn’t that absorbing interest be called love? Yes, she is in love, and finds great satisfaction in thinking so.

“She is not an insignificant girl, daughter of a commonplace gentleman; to herself, she is a romantic figure. She seems to be absorbed in another, and what is really the case is that she is absorbed in herself. How ridiculous this all is!... And this is life. Is the whole of life nothing, in reality, but ridiculous?”

Cæsar returned home, and unknown to Alzugaray, wrote a letter to Amparito. He put the letter into the box, and then went to call on Don Calixto, and take leave of him. Don Calixto invited Cæsar and Alzugaray to dinner the next day, and there were the same guests as the first time.

The dinner was cold and ceremonious. Amparito was grave, like a grown person. Scarcely speaking, she replied with discreet smiles to Alzugaray’s occasional phrases, but she was not in a humour to tease anybody.

The train started about the middle of the afternoon, and Don Calixto had arranged to have the carriage got ready, and to accompany the travellers to the station.

Cæsar was uneasy, thinking of the leave-taking. The moment for saying good-bye to Amparito and her father, it seemed to him, would be a difficult moment. Nevertheless, everything went off smoothly. The father offered his hand, without grudge. Amparito blushed a little and said:

“We shall see each other again, Moncada?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it,” replied Cæsar; and the two friends and Don Calixto took the carriage for the station.

The two friends’ return trip to Madrid was scarcely agreeable. Alzugaray was offended at Cæsar’s personal success with Amparito; Cæsar understood his comrade’s mental attitude and didn’t know what to say or do.

To them both the journey seemed long and unpleasant, and when they reached their destination, they were glad to separate.

VIII. THE ELECTION

WHAT THEY SAID IN THE TOWNS

A short while later the eventuality predicted by Cæsar occurred. The Liberal ministry met a crisis, and after various intermediate attempts at mixed cabinets, the Conservatives came into power.

Cæsar had no need to insist with the Minister of the Interior. He was one of the inevitable. He was pigeon-holed as an adherent, from the first moment.

The Government had given out the decree for the dissolution of the Cortes in February and was preparing for the General Election in the middle of April.

Cæsar would have gone immediately to Castro Duro, but he feared that if he showed interest it would complicate the situation. There were a lot of elements there, whose attitude it was not easy to foresee; Don Platón’s friends, Father Martin and his people, Amparito’s father, the friends of the opposing candidate, Garcia Padilla. Cæsar thought it better that they should consider him a young dandy with no further ambition than to give himself airs, rather than a future master of the town.

He wrote to Don Calixto, and Don Calixto told him there was no hurry, everything was in order; it would be sufficient for him to appear five or six days before the election.

Cæsar was impatient to begin his task, and it occurred to him that he might visit the towns that made up the district, without saying anything to anybody or making himself known. The excursion commenced at the beginning of the month of April. He left the train at a station before Castro. He bought a horse and went about through the towns. Nobody in the villages knew that there was going to be an election; such things made no difference to anybody.

After the inauguration of a new Government there was a little revolution in each village, produced by the change of the town-council and by the distribution of all the jobs that were municipal spoils, which passed from the hands of those calling themselves Liberals to the hands of those calling themselves Conservatives.

Cæsar discovered that besides the Liberal García Padilla, there was another candidate, protected by Father Martin La-fuerza; but it looked as if the Clericals were going to abandon him. In a town named Val de San Gil, the schoolmaster explained to him, with some fantastic details, the politics of Don Calixto. The schoolmaster was a Liberal and a frank, brusque, intelligent man, but he formed his judgment of Don Calixto’s politics on the prejudices of a Republican paper in Madrid, which was the only one he read.

According to him, Señor Moncada, whom nobody knew, was nothing more than a figure-head for the Jesuits. Father Martin Lafuerza was getting possession of too much land in Castro, and wanted everything to belong to his monastery. The Jesuits had learned of this and were sending young Moncada to undo the Franciscan friar’s combinations and establish the reign of the Loyolists.

In another place, named Villavieja, Cæsar found that the four or five persons interested in Castrian politics were against him. It seemed that the Conservative candidate they wanted was the one protected by Father Martin, who had promised them results greatly to their advantage.

In general, the people in the towns were not up on politics; when Cæsar asked them what they thought about the different questions that interest a country, they shrugged their shoulders.

In the outlying hamlets they didn’t know either who the king was or what his name was.

The only way in which the trip was of service to the future candidate was by giving him an idea of how elections were carried on, by teaching him who carried the returns to Don. Calixto, and showing him which of these people could be warranted to be honourable and which were rascals.

INDIFFERENCE IN CASTRO

Three days before the election Cæsar appeared in Castro and went to stay at Don Calixto’s house. Nobody knew about his expedition in the environs. There were no preparations whatever. People said they were going to change Deputies; but really this was of no great moment in the life of the town.

Saturday night the party committee met in the Casino at seven. Cæsar arrived a few minutes early; no one was there. He was shown into a shabby salon, lighted by an oil lamp.

It was cold in the room, and Cæsar walked about while he waited. On the ceiling a complete canopy of spider-webs, like dusty silver, trembled in every draught.

At half-past eight the first members of the committee arrived; the others kept on coming lazily in. Each one had some pretext to excuse his being late.

The fact was that the matter interested nobody; the politics of the district were going to go on as formerly, and really it wasn’t worth while thinking about. Cæsar was a decorative figure with no background.

At nine all the members of the committee were in the Casino. Don Calixto made a speech which he prolonged in an alarming manner. Cæsar answered him in another speech, which was heard with absolute coldness.

Then a frantic gabbling let loose; everybody wanted to talk. They abandoned themselves fruitfully to distinctions. “If it is certain that.... Although it is true.... Not so much because...” and they eulogized one another as orators, with great gravity.

The next day, Sunday, the proclamation of the candidates took place. They were three: Moncada, Governmental; Garcia Padilla, Liberal; and San Román, Republican.

San Román was the old Republican bookseller; it was sure beforehand that he couldn’t win, but it suited Cæsar that he should run, so that the Workmen’s Club elements should not vote for the Liberal candidate.

Two days before the election Cæsar went to Cidones and entered the Café Español.

He asked for Uncle Chinaman, and told him that he was the future Deputy. Uncle Chinaman recognized the young man with whom he had talked some months previous in his café, he remembered him with pleasure, and received him with great demonstrations.

“Man,” Cæsar said to him, “I want you to do me a favour.”

“Only tell me.”

“It is a question about the election.”

“Good. Let’s hear what it is.”

“There are several towns where Padilla’s adherents are ready, after the count, to change the real returns for forged ones. Everything is prepared for it. As I have sent people to their voting-places, they intend to make the change on the road, taking the returns from the messengers and giving them forged ones instead. I want twenty or thirty reliable men to send, four by four, to accompany the messengers that come with the returns, or else to carry them themselves.”

“All right, I will get them for you,” said Uncle Chinaman.

“How much money do you need?”

“Twenty dollars will do me.”

“Take forty.”

“All right. Which towns are they?”

Cæsar told him the names of the towns where he feared substitution. Then he warned him:

“You will say nothing about this.”

“Nothing.”

Cæsar gave precise instructions to the landlord of the café, and on bidding Uncle Chinaman good-bye, he told him:

“I know already that you are really on my side.”

“You believe so?”

“Yes.” On Sunday the elections began with absolute inanimation. In the city the Republicans were getting the majority, especially in the suburbs. Padilla was far behind. Nevertheless, it was said at the Casino that it was possible Padilla would finally win the election, because he might have an overwhelming majority in five or six rural wards.

At four in the afternoon the results in the city gave the victory to Moncada. Next to him came San Román, and in the last place Padilla.

The returns began to come in from the villages. In all of them the results were similar. It was found that the official element voted for the Government candidate, and those who had been attached to the preceding town-council for the Liberal.

At eight in the evening the returns arrived from the first village where Padilla expected a victory. The messenger, surrounded by four men from Cidones, was in a terrified condition. He handed over the returns and left. The result was the same as in all the other rural districts.

In one village alone, the presiding officer had been able to evade the vigilance of the guards sent by Cæsar and Uncle Chinaman, and change the number of votes in the returns; but despite this, the election was won for Cæsar.

The next day the exact result of the election was known. It stood:

Moncada, 3705. García Padilla, 1823. San Román, 750.

When it was known that Cæsar had played a trick on his enemies under their noses, he came into great estimation.

The judge said:

“I believe you were all deceived. You supposed Don Cæsar to be a sucking dove, and he is going to turn out to be a vulture for us.”

Cæsar listened to felicitations and accepted congratulations smiling, and some days later returned to Madrid.

IX. CÆSAR AS DEPUTY

TRIPPING THEM UP

People who didn’t know Cæsar intimately used to ask one another: “What purpose could Moncada have had in getting elected Deputy? He never speaks, he takes no part in the big debates.”

His name appeared from time to time on some committee about Treasury affairs; but that was all.

His life was completely veiled; he was not seen at first nights, or in salons, or on the promenade; he was a man apparently forgotten, lost to Madrid life. Sometimes on coming out of the Chamber he would see Amparito in an automobile; she would look for him with her eyes, and smile; he would take his hat off ostentatiously, with a low bow.

Among a very small number of persons Cæsar had the reputation of an intelligent and dangerous man. They suspected him of great personal ambition. It would not have been logical to think that this cold unexpansive man was, in his heart, a patriot who felt Spain’s decadence deeply and was seeking the means to revive her.

“No pleasures, no middle-class satisfactions,” he thought; “but to live for a patriotic ideal, to shove Spain forward, and to form with the flesh of one’s native land a great statue which should be her historic monument.”

That was his plan. In Congress Cæsar kept silence; but he talked in the corridors, and his ironic, cold, dispassionate comments began to be quoted.

He had formed relations with the Minister of the Treasury, a man who passed for famous and was a mediocrity, passed for honourable and was a rogue. Cæsar was much in his company.

The famous financier realized that Moncada knew far more than he did about monetary questions, and among his friends he admitted it; but he gave them to understand that Cæsar was only a theorist, incapable of quick decision and action.

Cæsar’s friendship was a convenience to the Minister, and the Minister’s to Cæsar. In his heart the Minister hated Cæsar, and Cæsar felt a deep contempt for the famous financier.

Nobody seeing them in a carriage talking affectionately together could have imagined that there existed such an amount of hatred and hostility between them.

The majority of people, with an absolute want of perspicacity, believed Cæsar to be fascinated by the Minister’s brilliant intellect; but there were persons that understood the situation of the pair and who used to say:

“Moncada has an influence over the Minister like that of a priest over a family.”

And there was some truth in it.

Cæsar carried his experimental method over from the stock exchange into politics. He kept a note-book, in which he put down all data about the private lives of Ministers and Deputies, and he filed these papers after classifying them.

Castro Duro began to be aware of Cæsar’s exertions. The secretary of the municipality, the employees, all who were friends and adherents to the boss’s group that Don Platón belonged with, began by degrees to leave Castro.

Those who had lost their jobs, and their protectors too, began to write letters and more letters to the Deputy. At first they believed that Cæsar wasn’t interested; but they were soon able to understand at Castro that he was interested enough, but not in them. The Minister of the Treasury served him as a battering-ram to use against the Clericals at Castro Duro.

Don Calixto was inwardly rejoiced to see his rivals reduced to impotency.

Cæsar began to establish political relations with the Republican bookseller and his friends. When he began to perceive that he was making headway with the Liberal and Labour element, he started without delay to set mines under Don Calixto’s terrain. The judge, who was a friend of Don Calixto’s, was transferred; so were some clerks of the court; and the Count of la Sauceda, the famous boss, was soon able to realize that his protégé was firing against him.

“I have nourished a serpent in my bosom,” said Don Calixto; “but I know how I can grind its head.”

He could not have been very sure of his strength; for Don Calixto found himself in a position where he had to beg for quarter. Cæsar conceded it, on the understanding that Don Calixto would not take any more part in Castro politics.

“You people had the power and you didn’t use it very well for the town. Now just leave it to me.”

In exchange for Don Calixto’s surrender, Cæsar agreed to have his Papal title legalized.

At the end of a year and a half Cæsar had all the bosses of Castro in his fist.

“Suppressing the bosses in the district was easy,” Cæsar used to say; “I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous and gave him a title.”

Cæsar did not forget or neglect the least detail. He listened to everybody that talked to him, even though they had nothing but nonsense to say; he always answered letters, and in his own handwriting.

With the townpeople he used the tactics of knowing all their names, especially the old folks’, and for this purpose he carried a little note-book. He wrote down, for example: “Señor Ramón, was in the Carlist war; Uncle Juan, suffers with rheumatism.”

When, by means of his notes, he remembered these details, it produced an extraordinary effect on people. Everybody considered himself the favourite.

CÆSAR’S MANNER OF LIVING

Cæsar lived simply; he had a room in an hotel in the Carrera de San Jerónimo, where he received calls; but nobody ever found him there except in business hours.

He used to go now and then to Alzugaray’s house, where he would talk over various matters with his friend’s mother and sister; he would find out about everything, and go away after giving them advice on questions of managing their money, which they almost always observed and followed.

Of all people, Ignacio Alzugaray was the most incredulous in regard to his friend; his mother and his sister believed in Cæsar as in an oracle. Cæsar often thought that he ought to fall definitely in love with Ignacio’s sister and marry her; but neither he nor she seemed to have set upon passing the limits of a cordial friendship.

Cæsar told the Alzugaray family how he lived and caused them to laugh and wonder.

He had rented a fairly large upper story in a street in Valle Hermoso, for five dollars. The days he had nothing to do he went there. He put on an old, worn-out fur coat, which was still a protection, a soft hat, took a stick, and went walking in the environs.

His favourite walk was the neighbourhood of the Canalillo and of the Dehesa de Amaniel.

Generally he went out of his house on the side opposite the Model Prison, then he walked toward Moncloa, and taking the right, passed near the Rubio Institute, and entered the Cerro del Pimiento by an open lot which he got into through a broken wall.

From there one could see, far away, the Guadarrama range, like a curtain of blue mountains and snowy crests; on clear days, the Escorial; Aravaca, the Casa de Campo, and the Sierra de Gredos, which ran out on the left hand like a promontory. Nearby one saw a pine grove, close to the Rubio Institute, and a valley containing market-gardens, and the ranges of the Moncloa shooting school.

Cæsar would walk on by the winding road, and stop to look at the Cemetery of San Martín on the right, with its black cypresses and its yellowish walls.

Then he would follow the twists of the Canalillo, and pass in front of the third Reservoir, to the Amaniel road.

That was where Cæsar would have built himself a house, had he had the idea of living retired.

The dry, hard landscape was the kind he liked. The mornings were wonderful, the blue sky radiant, the air limpid and thin.

The twilight had an extraordinary enchantment. All that vast extent of land, the mountains, the hills of the Casa de Campo, the cypresses of the cemetery, were bathed in a violet light.

In winter there were hunters of yellow-hammers and goldfinches in these regions, who set their nets and their decoys on the ground, and spent hours and hours watching for their game.

On Sunday, in particular, the number of hunters was very large. They went in squads of three; one carried a big bundle on his shoulder, which was the net all rolled up; another the decoy cages, fastened with a strap; and the third a frying-pan, a skin of wine, and some kindling for a fire.

Cæsar used to talk with the guards at Amaniel, with the octroi-officers, and he got to be great friends with a little hunchback, a bird hunter.

It was curious to hear this hunchback talk of the habits of the birds and of the influence of the winds. He knew how the gold-finches, yellow-hammers, and linnets make their nests, and the preference some of them have for coltsfoot cotton, and others for wool or for cow’s hair. He told Cæsar a lot of things, many of which could have existed only in his imagination, but which were entertaining.

ONE DAY AT CHRISTMASTIME

One day at Christmastime Alzugaray went in the morning to look for Cæsar. He knew where to find him and walked direct to the Calle de Galileo. At the house, they told him that Cæsar was eating in a tavern close at hand.

Alzugaray went into the place and found his friend the Deputy seated in a coner eating. He had the appearance of a superior workman, an electrician, carver, or something of the sort.

“If people find out you behave so extravagantly, they will think you are crazy,” said Alzugaray.

“Pshaw! Nobody comes here,” replied Cæsar. “The political world and this are separate worlds. This one belongs to the people who have to shoulder the load of everything, and the other is a world of villains, robbers, idiots, and fools. Really, it is difficult to find anything so vile, so inept, and so useless as a Spanish politician. The Spanish middle class is a warren of rogues and villains. I feel an enormous repugnance to brushing against it. That is why I came here now and then to talk to these people; not because these are good, no; the first and the last of them are riff-raff, but at least they say what they mean and they blaspheme naïvely.”

“What are you going to do after lunch?” Alzugaray asked him. “Have you got a sweetheart in one of the old-clothes shops of the quarter?”

“No. I was thinking of taking a walk; that’s all.”

“Then come along.”

They left the tavern and went along a street between sides of sand cut straight down, and started up the Cerro del Pimiento. The soft, vague mist allowed the Guadarrama to stand out visible.

“This landscape enchants me,” said Cæsar.

“It seems hard and gloomy,” responded Alzugaray.

“Yes, that is true; hard and gloomy, but noble. When one is drenched with a miserable political life, when one actually forms a part of that Olympus of madmen called Congress, one needs to be purified. How miserable, how vile that political life is! How many faces pale with envy there are! What low and repugnant hatreds! When I come out nauseated by seeing those people; when I am soaked with repugnance, then I come out here to walk, I look at those serious mountains, so frowning and strong, and the mere sight of them seems like a purifying flame which cleanses me from meanness.”

“I see that you are as absurd as ever, Cæsar. It would never occur to anybody to come and comfort himself with some melancholy mountains, out here between an abandoned hospital, which looks like a leper-asylum, and a deserted cemetery.”

“Well, these mountains give me an impression of energy and nobility, which raises my spirits. This leper-asylum, as you call it, sunken in a pit, this deserted cemetery, those distant mountains, are my friends; I imagine they are saying to me: ‘One must be hard, one must be strong like us, one must live in solitude....’”

They did not continue their walk much further, because the night and the fog combined made it difficult to see the path along the Canalillo, which made it possible to fall in, and that would have been disagreeable.

They returned the way they had come. From the top of a hill they saw Madrid in the twilight, covered with fog; and in the streets newly opened between the sides of sand, the lights of the gas-lamps sparkled in a nimbus of rainbow....

X. POLITICAL LABOURS

MONEY ON THE EXCHANGE

Although Cæsar did not distinguish himself especially in Congress, he worked hard. His activities were devoted mainly to two points: the stock exchange and Castro Duro.

Cæsar had found a partner to play the market for him, a Bilboan capitalist, whom he had convinced of the correctness of his system. Señor Salazar had deposited, in Cæsar’s name, thirty thousand dollars. With this sum Cæsar played for millions and he was drawing an extraordinary dividend from his stocks.

Their operations were made in the name of Alzugaray, whose job it was to go every month to see the broker, and to sign and collect the certificates. Cæsar gave his orders by telephone, and Alzugaray communicated them to the broker.

Alzugaray often went to see Cæsar and said to him:

“The broker came to my house terrified, to tell me that what we are going to do is an absurdity.”

“Let it alone,” Cæsar would say. “You know our agreement. You get ten percent of the profits for giving the orders. Do not mix in any further.”

Often, on seeing the positive result of Cæsar’s speculations, Alzugaray would ask him:

“Do you find out at the Ministry what is going to happen?”

“Pshaw!” Cæsar would say; “the market is not a capricious thing, as you think. There are signs. I pay attention to a lot of facts, which give me indications: coupons, the amount shares advance, the calculation of probabilities; and I compare all these scientific data with empirical observations that are difficult to explain. In such a situation, events are what make the least difference to me. Is there going to be a revolution or a Carlist war?... I am careless about it.”

“But this is impossible,” Alzugaray used to say. “Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t believe you. You have some secret, and that is what helps you.”

“How fantastic you all are!”’ Cæsar would exclaim; “you refuse to believe in the rational, and still you believe in the miraculous.”

“No, I do not believe in the miraculous; but I cannot explain your methods.”

“That’s clear! Am I to explain them to you! When you don’t know the mechanism of the market! I am certain that you have never considered the mechanism of the rise produced by the reintegration of the coupon, or the way that rise is limited to double its value. Tell me. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“Well, then, how are you to understand anything?”

“All right, then; explain it to me.”

“There’s no difficulty. You know that the natural tendency of the market is to rise.”

“To rise and to fall,” interrupted Alzugaray.

“No, only to rise.”

“I don’t see it.”

“The general tendency of the market is to rise, because having to fall eighty _céntimos_, the value of the coupon, every quarter, if the market didn’t rise to offset that loss, shares would reach zero....”

“I don’t understand,” said Alzugaray.

“Imagine a man on a stairway; if you oblige him to go down one step every so often, in order to keep in the same place as before he will necessarily have to go up again, because if he didn’t do so, he would be constantly approaching the front door.”

“Yes, surely.” “Well, this man on the stairway is the quotation, and the mechanical task of constantly making up for the quarterly loss is what is called the reintegration of the coupon.”

“You do not convince me.”

Alzugaray didn’t like listening to these explanations. He had formed an opinion that had not much foundation, but he would not admit that Cæsar, by reasoning, could arrive at the glimmering of an inductive and deductive method, where others saw no more than chance.

CÆSAR BEGINS HIS TASK

With the money he made on the market, Cæsar was making himself the master of Castro Duro. He constantly assumed a more Liberal attitude in the Chamber, and was in a position to abandon the Conservative majority, on any pretext.

His plan of campaign at Castro Duro corresponded to this political position of his: he had rehabilitated the Workmen’s Club and paid its debts. The Club had been founded by the workmen of a thread factory, now shut. The number of members was very small and the labourers and employees of the railway and some weavers were its principal support.

On learning that it was about to be closed for lack of funds, Cæsar promised to support it. He thought of endowing the Club with a library, and installing a school in the country. On seeing that the Deputy was patronizing the Club, a lot of labourers of all kinds joined it. A new governing board was named, of which Cæsar was honourary president, and the Workmen’s Club re-arose from its ashes. The Republicans and the little group of Socialists, almost all weavers, were on Cæsar’s side and promised to vote for him in the coming election.

Various Republicans who went to Madrid to call on Cæsar, told him he ought to come out as a Republican. They would vote for him with enthusiasm.

“No; why should I?” Cæsar used to answer. “Are we going to do any more at Castro by my being a Republican than when I am not one? Besides the fact that I should not be elected on that ticket and should thus have no further influence, to me the forms of a government are indifferent; I don’t even care whether it has a true ideal or a false one. What I do want is for the town to progress; whether by means of a dream or by means of a reality. A politician should seek for efficiency before asking anything else, and at present the Republican dream would not be efficient at Castro.”

Most of the Republicans did not go away very well satisfied with what Cæsar had said; and after leaving him, they would say:

“He is a very curious person, but he favours us and we’ll have to follow him.”

The reopening of the Workmen’s Club in Castro was the chance for an event. Cæsar was in favour of inaugurating the Club without any celebration, without attracting the attention of the Clericals; but the members of the Club, on the contrary, wished to give the reactionaries a dose to swallow, and Cæsar could not but promise his participation in the inauguration.

“Would you like to come to Castro?” Cæsar said to Alzugaray.