One day at Christmastime Alzugaray went in the morning to look for
Cæsar. He knew where to find him and walked direct to the Calle de
Galileo. At the house, they told him that Cæsar was eating in a tavern
close at hand.
Alzugaray went into the place and found his friend the Deputy seated
in a coner eating. He had the appearance of a superior workman, an
electrician, carver, or something of the sort.
“If people find out you behave so extravagantly, they will think you are
crazy,” said Alzugaray.
“Pshaw! Nobody comes here,” replied Cæsar. “The political world and
this are separate worlds. This one belongs to the people who have to
shoulder the load of everything, and the other is a world of villains,
robbers, idiots, and fools. Really, it is difficult to find anything
so vile, so inept, and so useless as a Spanish politician. The Spanish
middle class is a warren of rogues and villains. I feel an enormous
repugnance to brushing against it. That is why I came here now and then
to talk to these people; not because these are good, no; the first and
the last of them are riff-raff, but at least they say what they mean and
they blaspheme naïvely.”
“What are you going to do after lunch?” Alzugaray asked him. “Have you
got a sweetheart in one of the old-clothes shops of the quarter?”
“No. I was thinking of taking a walk; that’s all.”
“Then come along.”
They left the tavern and went along a street between sides of sand cut
straight down, and started up the Cerro del Pimiento. The soft, vague
mist allowed the Guadarrama to stand out visible.
“This landscape enchants me,” said Cæsar.
“It seems hard and gloomy,” responded Alzugaray.
“Yes, that is true; hard and gloomy, but noble. When one is drenched
with a miserable political life, when one actually forms a part of
that Olympus of madmen called Congress, one needs to be purified. How
miserable, how vile that political life is! How many faces pale with
envy there are! What low and repugnant hatreds! When I come out
nauseated by seeing those people; when I am soaked with repugnance, then
I come out here to walk, I look at those serious mountains, so frowning
and strong, and the mere sight of them seems like a purifying flame
which cleanses me from meanness.”
“I see that you are as absurd as ever, Cæsar. It would never occur to
anybody to come and comfort himself with some melancholy mountains, out
here between an abandoned hospital, which looks like a leper-asylum, and
a deserted cemetery.”
“Well, these mountains give me an impression of energy and nobility,
which raises my spirits. This leper-asylum, as you call it, sunken in a
pit, this deserted cemetery, those distant mountains, are my friends;
I imagine they are saying to me: ‘One must be hard, one must be strong
like us, one must live in solitude....’”
They did not continue their walk much further, because the night and
the fog combined made it difficult to see the path along the
Canalillo, which made it possible to fall in, and that would have been
disagreeable.
They returned the way they had come. From the top of a hill they saw
Madrid in the twilight, covered with fog; and in the streets newly
opened between the sides of sand, the lights of the gas-lamps sparkled
in a nimbus of rainbow....