Cæsar studied in Madrid in an Escolapian college in the Calle de
Hortaleza, where he was an intern all the time he was taking his
bachelor’s degree.
His mother had gone to live in Valencia, after marrying Laura off,
and Cæsar passed his vacations with her at a country-place in a
neighbouring village.
Several times a year Cæsar received letters and photographs from his
sister, and one winter Laura came to Valencia. She retained a great
fondness for Cæsar; he was fond of her too, although he did not show
it, because his character was little inclined to affectionate expansion.
At college Cæsar showed himself to be a somewhat strange and absurd
youth. As he was slight and of a sickly appearance, the teachers treated
him with a certain consideration.
One day a teacher noticed that Cæsar creaked when he moved, as if his
clothes were starched.
“What are you wearing?” he asked him.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, indeed! Unbutton your jacket.”
Cæsar turned very pale and did not unbutton it; but the master, seizing
him by a lapel, unbuttoned his jacket and his waistcoat, and found that
the student was covered with papers.
“What are these papers? For what purpose are you keeping them here?”
“He does it,” one of his fellow students replied, laughing, “because
he is afraid of catching cold and becoming consumptive.” They all made
comments on the boy’s eccentricity, and a few days later, to show that
he was not a coward, he tried to go out on the balcony on a cold winter
night, with his chest bare.
Among his fellow-students Cæsar had an intimate friend, Ignacio
Alzugaray, to whom he confided and explained his prejudices and doubts.
Alzugaray was not a boarder, but a day-scholar.
Ignacio brought anti-clerical periodicals to school, which Cæsar read
with enthusiasm. His sojourn in a religious college was producing a
frantic hatred for priests in young Moncada.
Cæsar was remarkable for the rapidity of his decisions and the lack of
vacillation in his opinions. He felt no timidity about either affirming
or denying.
His convictions were absolute; when he believed in the exact truth of a
thing, he did not vacillate, he did not go back and discuss it; but if
his belief faltered, then he changed his opinion radically and went
ahead stating the contrary of his previous statements, without
recollecting his abandoned ideas.
His other fellow-students did not care about discussions with a lad who
appeared to have a monopoly of the truth.
“Professor So-and-So is a beast; What-you-call-him is a talented chap;
that fellow is a thick-witted chap. This kid is all right; that one is
not.”
In this rail-splitting manner did young Moncada announce his decisions,
as if he held the secret explanation of all things tight between his
fingers.
Alzugaray seldom shared his friend’s opinions; but in spite of this
divergence they understood each other very well.
Alzugaray came of a modest family; his mother, the widow of a government
clerk, lived on her pension and on the income from some property they
owned in the North.
Ignacio Alzugaray was very fond of his mother and his sister, and was
always talking about them. Cæsar alone would listen without being
impatient to the meticulous narratives Ignacio told about the things
that happened at home.
Alzugaray was of a very Catholic and very Carlist family; but like
Cæsar, he was beginning to protest against such ideas and to show
himself Liberal, Republican, and even Anarchistic. Ignacio Alzugaray was
a nephew of Carlos Yarza, the Spanish author, who lived in Paris, and
who had taken part in the Commune and in the Insurrection of Cartagena.
Cæsar, on hearing Alzugaray recount the doings of his uncle Carlos
Yarza various times, said to his fellow-student:
“When I get out of this college, the first thing I am going to do is to
go to Paris to talk with your uncle.”
“What for?”
“I have to talk to him.”
As a matter of fact, once his course was finished, Cæsar left the
college, took a third-class ticket, went to Paris, and from there wrote
to his mother informing her what he had done. Carlos Yarza, Alzugaray’s
uncle, received him very affectionately. He took him to dine and
explained a good many things. Cæsar asked the old man no end of
questions and listened to him with real avidity.
Carlos Yarza was at that time an employee in a bank. At this epoch his
forte was for questions of speculation. He had put his mind and his will
to the study of these matters and had the glimmering of a system in
things where everybody else saw only contingencies without any possible
law.
Cæsar accompanied Yarza to the Bourse and was amazed and stirred at
seeing the enormous activity there.
Yarza cleared away the innumerable doubts that occurred to the boy.
In the short time Cæsar spent in Paris he came to a most important
conclusion, which was that in this life one had to fight terribly to get
anywhere.
One day, on awakening in the shabby little room where he lodged, he
found that the arms of a very smart woman were around his neck. It was
Laura, very contented and joyful to surprise her madcap brother.
“Mamma is alarmed,” Laura told him. “What are you doing here all this
time? Are you in love?” “I? Bah!”
“Then what have you been doing?”
“I’ve been going to the Bourse.”