To be in Castro Duro and not visit Don Cæsar Moncada’s house is a
veritable crime of _lèse-art_. Señor Moncada, who is a most intelligent
person, has gathered in his aristocratic residence a collection of
precious things, old pictures, antiques, sculptures of the XV and
XVI Centuries, badges of the Inquisition. Señor Moneada has made
a conscientious study of the primitive Castilian painters, and is
certainly the person most at home in that line.
His most beautiful wife, who is also a distinguished artist, has aided
him in forming this collection, and they have both gone about by
automobile through all the towns in this province and the neighbouring
ones, collecting everything artistic they found.
At Don Cæsar’s house we had the pleasure of greeting the learned
Franciscan Father Martin, to whom the population of Castro Duro owes so
much.
At a halt in the conversation we asked Señor Moncada:
“And you, Don Cæsar, have no idea of going back into politics?”
And he answered us, smiling:
“No, no. What for? I am nothing, nothing.”