One day I was walking with my friend Gil Campos and my cousin Goñi, when
we happened on Silverio Lanza, who took us to the Café de San Sebastián,
where we sat down in the section facing the Plazuela del Angel. It was a
company that was singularly assorted.
Silverio reverted to the theme that women should be handled with the
rod. Gil Campos proceeded to laugh, being gifted with an ironic vein,
and made fun of him. For my part, I was tired of it, so I said to Lanza:
"See here, Don Juan" (his real name was Juan Bautista Amorós), "what you
are giving us now is literature, and poor literature at that. You are
not, and I am not, able to violate law and women as we see fit. That may
be all very well for Caesars and Napoleons and Borgias, but you are a
respectable gentleman who lives in a little house at Getafe with your
wife, and I am a poor man myself, who manages as best he may to make a
living. You would tremble in your boots if you ever broke a law, or even
a municipal ordinance, and so would I. As far as women are concerned, we
are both of us glad to take what we can get, if we can get anything, and
I am afraid that neither of us is ever going to get very much, despite
the fact"--I added by way of a humorous touch--"that we are two of the
most distinguished minds in Europe."
My cousin Goñi replied to this with the rare tact that was
characteristic of him, arguing that within the miserable sphere of
tangible reality I was right, while Lanza moved upon a higher plane,
which was more ideal and more romantic. He went on to add that Lanza and
he were both Berbers, and so violent and passionate, while I was an
Aryan, although a vulgar Aryan, whose ideas were simply those which were
shared by everybody.
Lanza was not satisfied with my cousin's explanation and departed with a
marked lack of cordiality.
Since that time, Silverio has regarded me with mixed emotions, half
friendly, half the reverse, although in one of his latest books, _The
Surrender of Santiago_, he has referred to me as a great friend and a
great writer. I suspect, however, that he does not love me.