The celebrated Vicomte de Chateaubriand, after flaunting an ancestry of
princes and kings in his _Memoires d'outre-tombe_, then turns about
and tells us that he attaches no importance to such matters.
I shall do the same. I intend to furbish up our family history and
mythology, and then I shall assert that I attach no importance to them.
And, what is more, I shall be telling the truth.
My researches into the life of Aviraneta [Footnote: A kinsman of Baroja
and protagonist of his series of historical novels under the general
title of _Memoirs of a Man of Action_.] have drawn me of late to
the genealogical field, and I have looked into my family, which is
equivalent to compounding with tradition and even with reaction.
I have unearthed three family myths: the Goñi myth, the Zornoza myth,
and the Alzate myth.
The Goñi myth, vouched for by an aunt of mine who died in San Sebastian
at an age of ninety or more, established, according to her, that she was
a descendant of Don Teodosio de Goñi, a Navarrese _caballero_ who
lived in the time of Witiza, and who, after killing his father and
mother at the instigation of the devil, betook himself to Mount Aralar
wearing an iron ring about his neck, and dragging a chain behind him,
thus pilloried to do penance. One day, a terrible dragon appeared before
him during a storm.
Don Teodosio lifted up his soul unto God, and thereupon the Archangel
Saint Michael revealed himself to him, in his dire extremity, and broke
his chains, in commemoration of which event Don Teodosio caused to be
erected the chapel of San Miguel in Excelsis on Mount Aralar.
There were those who endeavoured to convince my aunt that in the time of
this supposititious Don Teodosio, which was the early part of the eighth
century, surnames had not come into use in the Basque country, and even,
indeed, that there were at that time no Christians there--in short they
maintained that Don Teodosio was a solar myth; but they were not able to
convince my aunt. She had seen the chapel of San Miguel on Aralar, and
the cave in which the dragon lived, and a document wherein Charles V.
granted to Juan de Goñi the privilege of renaming his house the Palace
of San Miguel, as well as of adding a dragon to his coat of arms,
besides a cross in a red field, and a _broken_ chain.
The Zornoza myth was handed down through my paternal grandmother of that
name.
I remember having heard this lady say when I was a child, that her
family might be traced in a direct line to the chancellor Pero López de
Ayala, and, I know not through what lateral branches, also to St.
Francis Xavier.
My grandmother vouched for the fact that her father had sold the
documents and parchments in which these details were set forth, to a
titled personage from Madrid.
The Zornozas boast an escutcheon which is embellished with a band, a
number of wolves, and a legend whose import I do not recall.
Indeed, wolves occur in all the escutcheons of the Baroja, Alzate and
Zornoza families, in so far as I have been able to discover, and I take
them to be more or less authentic. We have wolves passant, wolves
rampant, and wolves mordant. The Goñi escutcheon also displays hearts.
If I become rich, which I do not anticipate, I shall have wolves and
hearts blazoned on the doors of my dazzling automobile, which will not
prevent me from enjoying myself hugely inside of it.
Turning to the Alzate myth, it too runs back to antiquity and the
primitive struggles of rival families of Navarre and Labourt. The
Alzates have been lords of Vera ever since the fourteenth century.
The legend of the Alzates of Vera de Navarra relates that one Don
Rodrigo, master of the village in the fifteenth century, fell in love
with a daughter of the house of Urtubi, in France, near Urruña, and
married her. Don Rodrigo went to live in Urtubi and became so thoroughly
gallicized that he never cared to return to Spain, so the people of Vera
banded together, dispossessed him of his honours and dignity, and
sequestrated his lands.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, my great-grandfather,
Sebastián Ignacio de Alzate, was among those who assembled at Zubieta in
1813 to take part in the rebuilding of San Sebastian, and this
great-grandfather was uncle to Don Eugenio de Aviraneta, a good relative
of mine, protagonist of my latest books.
St. Francis Xavier, Don Teodosio de Goñi, Pero López de Ayala,
Aviraneta--a saint, a revered worthy, an historian, a conspirator--these
are our family gods.
Now let me take my stand with Chateaubriand as attaching no importance
to such things.