People who didn’t know Cæsar intimately used to ask one another: “What
purpose could Moncada have had in getting elected Deputy? He never
speaks, he takes no part in the big debates.”
His name appeared from time to time on some committee about Treasury
affairs; but that was all.
His life was completely veiled; he was not seen at first nights, or in
salons, or on the promenade; he was a man apparently forgotten, lost
to Madrid life. Sometimes on coming out of the Chamber he would see
Amparito in an automobile; she would look for him with her eyes, and
smile; he would take his hat off ostentatiously, with a low bow.
Among a very small number of persons Cæsar had the reputation of an
intelligent and dangerous man. They suspected him of great personal
ambition. It would not have been logical to think that this cold
unexpansive man was, in his heart, a patriot who felt Spain’s decadence
deeply and was seeking the means to revive her.
“No pleasures, no middle-class satisfactions,” he thought; “but to live
for a patriotic ideal, to shove Spain forward, and to form with the
flesh of one’s native land a great statue which should be her historic
monument.”
That was his plan. In Congress Cæsar kept silence; but he talked in
the corridors, and his ironic, cold, dispassionate comments began to be
quoted.
He had formed relations with the Minister of the Treasury, a man who
passed for famous and was a mediocrity, passed for honourable and was a
rogue. Cæsar was much in his company.
The famous financier realized that Moncada knew far more than he did
about monetary questions, and among his friends he admitted it; but he
gave them to understand that Cæsar was only a theorist, incapable of
quick decision and action.
Cæsar’s friendship was a convenience to the Minister, and the
Minister’s to Cæsar. In his heart the Minister hated Cæsar, and Cæsar
felt a deep contempt for the famous financier.
Nobody seeing them in a carriage talking affectionately together could
have imagined that there existed such an amount of hatred and hostility
between them.
The majority of people, with an absolute want of perspicacity, believed
Cæsar to be fascinated by the Minister’s brilliant intellect; but there
were persons that understood the situation of the pair and who used to
say:
“Moncada has an influence over the Minister like that of a priest over a
family.”
And there was some truth in it.
Cæsar carried his experimental method over from the stock exchange into
politics. He kept a note-book, in which he put down all data about the
private lives of Ministers and Deputies, and he filed these papers after
classifying them.
Castro Duro began to be aware of Cæsar’s exertions. The secretary of
the municipality, the employees, all who were friends and adherents to
the boss’s group that Don Platón belonged with, began by degrees to
leave Castro.
Those who had lost their jobs, and their protectors too, began to write
letters and more letters to the Deputy. At first they believed that
Cæsar wasn’t interested; but they were soon able to understand at
Castro that he was interested enough, but not in them. The Minister of
the Treasury served him as a battering-ram to use against the Clericals
at Castro Duro.
Don Calixto was inwardly rejoiced to see his rivals reduced to
impotency.
Cæsar began to establish political relations with the Republican
bookseller and his friends. When he began to perceive that he was making
headway with the Liberal and Labour element, he started without delay to
set mines under Don Calixto’s terrain. The judge, who was a friend of
Don Calixto’s, was transferred; so were some clerks of the court; and
the Count of la Sauceda, the famous boss, was soon able to realize that
his protégé was firing against him.
“I have nourished a serpent in my bosom,” said Don Calixto; “but I know
how I can grind its head.”
He could not have been very sure of his strength; for Don Calixto found
himself in a position where he had to beg for quarter. Cæsar conceded
it, on the understanding that Don Calixto would not take any more part
in Castro politics.
“You people had the power and you didn’t use it very well for the town.
Now just leave it to me.”
In exchange for Don Calixto’s surrender, Cæsar agreed to have his Papal
title legalized.
At the end of a year and a half Cæsar had all the bosses of Castro in
his fist.
“Suppressing the bosses in the district was easy,” Cæsar used to say;
“I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made
that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous and gave him a title.”
Cæsar did not forget or neglect the least detail. He listened to
everybody that talked to him, even though they had nothing but nonsense
to say; he always answered letters, and in his own handwriting.
With the townpeople he used the tactics of knowing all their names,
especially the old folks’, and for this purpose he carried a little
note-book. He wrote down, for example: “Señor Ramón, was in the Carlist
war; Uncle Juan, suffers with rheumatism.”
When, by means of his notes, he remembered these details, it produced
an extraordinary effect on people. Everybody considered himself the
favourite.