The world is wide, after all! My paternal grandmother, the one
who sang the couplet, died a long time ago. On the other hand, my
brothers have married and have children. My father's harp, unstrung
and broken, has been thrown among the cast-off furniture. It has
been many a Christmas Eve since I had supper at home. My village
has disappeared from the ocean of my life like the islet which the
mariner leaves behind him.
I am no longer the same Pedro, the child, that focus of ignorance,
curiosity, and anguish trembling on the threshold of life. I am
nothing short of a man, an inhabitant of Madrid, comfortably settled
in life, proud of my independence as a bachelor, a novelist, and
a volunteer in the great orphanage of the capital, with whiskers,
debts, and loves.
When I compare myself now, my perfect freedom, my broad life, the
immense scene of my operations, my early experience, standing as I do
revealed, tuned like a grand piano on the night of a concert; when I
compare myself with all my boldness, my ambitions, my contempts, with
the little chap that played the drum fifteen years ago on Christmas
Eve in a remote corner of Andalusia,--I smile, I even laugh aloud,
with the feeling that it befits me, while my lonely heart sheds pure
tears of infinite melancholy, which it carefully hides from view.
Holy tears! May Providence frank you to the home where my father is
growing old!