I am a Basque, if not on all four sides, at least on three and a half.
The remaining half, which is not Basque, is Lombard.
Four of my eight family names are Guipúzcoan, two of them are Navarrese,
one Alavese, and the other Italian. I take it that family names are
indicative of the countries where one's ancestors lived, and I take it
also that there is great potency behind them, that the influence of each
works upon the individual with a duly proportioned intensity. Assuming
this to be the case, the resultant of the ancestral influences operative
upon me would indicate that my geographical parallel lies somewhere
between the Alps and the Pyrenees. Sometimes I am inclined to think that
the Alps and the Pyrenees are all that is European in Europe. Beyond
them I seem to see Asia; below them, Africa.
In the riparian Navarrese, as in the Catalans and the Genovese, one
already notes the African; in the Gaul of central France, as well as in
the Austrian, there is a suggestion of the Chinese.
Clutching the Pyrenees and grafted upon the Alps, I am conscious of
being an Arch-European.