I met Alejandro Sawa one evening at the Café Fornos, where I had gone
with a friend.
As a matter of fact, I had never read anything which he had written, but
his appearance impressed me. Once I followed him in the street with the
intention of speaking to him, but my courage failed at the last moment.
A number of months later, I met him one summer afternoon on the
Recoletos, when he was in the company of a Frenchman named Cornuty.
Cornuty and Sawa were conversing and reciting verses; they took me to a
wine-shop in the Plaza de Herradores, where they drank a number of
glasses, which I paid for, whereupon Sawa asked me to lend him three
pesetas. I did not have them, and told him so.
"Do you live far from here?" asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.
"No, near by."
"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."
He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home
and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it
from me, and then said:
"You may go now."
This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated
in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Later again, when I brought out _Sombre Lives_, I sometimes saw
Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and
followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it
did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:
"Be proud! You have written _Sombre Lives_."