Another friendship which I found stimulating was that of Paul Schmitz, a
Swiss from Basle, who had come to Madrid because of some weakness of the
lungs, spending three years among us in order to rehabilitate himself.
Schmitz had studied in Switzerland and in Germany, and also had lived
for a long time in the north of Russia.
He was familiar with what in my judgment are the two most interesting
countries of Europe.
Paul Schmitz was a timid person of an inquiring turn of mind, whose
youth had been tempestuous. I made a number of excursions with Schmitz
to Toledo, to El Paular and to the Springs of Urbión; a year or two
later we visited Switzerland several times together.
Schmitz was like an open window through which I looked out upon an
unknown world. I held long conversations with him upon life, literature,
art and philosophy.
I recall that I took him one Sunday afternoon to the home of Don Juan
Valera.
When Schmitz and I arrived, Valera had just settled down for the
afternoon to listen to his daughter, who was reading aloud one of the
latest novels of Zola.
Valera, Schmitz and I sat chatting for perhaps four or five hours. There
was no subject that we could all agree upon. Valera and I were no sooner
against the Swiss than the Swiss and Valera were against me, or the
Swiss and I against Valera, and then each flew off after his own
opinion.
Valera, who saw that the Swiss and I were anarchists, said it was beyond
his comprehension how any man could conceive of a state of general well
being.
"Do you mean to say that you believe," he said to me, "that there will
ever come a time when every man will be able to set a bowl of oysters
from Arcachón upon his table and top it off with a bottle of champagne
of first-rate vintage, besides having a woman sitting beside him in a
Worth gown?"
"No, no, Don Juan," I replied. "In the eyes of the anarchist, oysters,
champagne, and Worth are mere superstitions, myths to which we attach no
importance. We do not spend our time dreaming about oysters, while
champagne is not nectar to our tastes. All that we ask is to live well,
and to have those about us live well also."
We could not convince each other. When Schmitz and I left Valera's house
it was already night, and we found ourselves absorbed in his talents and
his limitations.