I was something of a rowdy as a boy and rather quarrelsome. The first
day I went to school in Pamplona, I came out disputing with another boy
of my own age, and we fought in the street until we were separated by a
cobbler and the blows of a leather strap, to which he added kicks.
Later, I foolishly quarrelled and fought whenever the other boys set me
on. In our stone-throwing escapades on the outskirts of the town, I was
always the aggressor, and quite indefatigable.
When I began to study medicine, I found that my aggressiveness had
departed completely. One day after quarrelling with another student in
the cloisters of San Carlos, I challenged him to fight. When we got out
on the street, it struck me as foolish to goad him to hit me in the eye
or else to land on my nose with his fist, and I slipped off and went
home. I lost my morale as a bully then and there. Although I was a
fighter from infancy, I was also something of a dreamer, and the two
strains scarcely make a harmonious blend.
Before I was grown, I saw Gisbert's Death of the Comuneros reproduced as
a chromo. For a long, long while, I always seemed to see that picture
hanging in all its variety of colour on the wall before me at night. For
months and months after my vigil with the body of the man who had been
garroted outside of Pamplona, I never entered a dark room but that his
image rose up before me in all its gruesome details. I also passed
through a period of disagreeable dreams. Some time would elapse after I
awoke before I was able to tell where I was, and I was frightened by it.