Sometimes when we were short of money we lay on our beds smoking, and he would tell me of the Siege of Paris, his terrible experiences there, and how he ate his share of the elephant and lion steaks from the Zoo. Becoming philosophical, he would tell me of his boyish aspirations, the happiness he got out of them and the worry from the events that never happened. I would say: “Supposing we run right out of money, what about food and a bed?” Then he would cheer me up by saying: “My dear boy, all’s sure to be well; we are certain to be somewhere and sleep somewhere whatever happens.” Then, as was his wont, he would lick his thumb and push the old cigar stump into his pipe and hum my last melody—a melody that no publisher would buy—till I, secure in his philosophical comradeship, fell asleep. He never professed or spoke on religious matters, but each night he knelt by his bed before he got in and lit his pipe.
We were very happy in the house of Señora Dolores; she treated us as though we were dear relatives. In her little attic room I spent the happiest hours of my Continental travels. I lay half the night reading my beloved Montaigne’s essays. The old French Shakespeare was my best dead learned friend. If ever I was worried and could not sleep for thinking I went to my sea-chest and brought him out. I read some of his essays over twenty times, but they were always fresh, wise and sincere, and I still read them. In that little room I also read poetry’s legitimate child, Keats. As my dear comrade slept on I fell in love with Madeline and roamed with Endymion, Lamia and Hyperion. The nightingale singing outside
“Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”
as the moonlight glimmered through my little room. I have read somewhere that Keats was earthly. I think if he had lived his intense genius would have fought for the sorrows of humanity, and his marvellous mind made literature and our country even better than it is. It may be centuries before earth, capable of bringing forth such spiritual flowers as his earthliness did, will be born again.
Poor little Mercedes! She crossed herself and murmured the Holy Virgin’s name many times as we bade her and her sister good-bye, and I thought of Madeline, and felt sad that the days of gallant knights and amorous warriors were gone for ever. I can still see their eyes shining through sorrow as we said farewell; even the old mother’s wrinkled face blushed as we kissed the three.
We went from Madrid to Valencia, where we stayed for three weeks, and then left by boat for Marseilles, and then on to Nice, and finally to Genoa. My comrade was the happiest of men as he tramped beside me; he loved to carry my violin. We started to write an opera together, entitled The Siege of Paris. He was delighted as he gave me thrilling, realistic details of all he had witnessed. I tried to place them in lyrical form and wrote suitable melodies round the tragic events. He knew as much about authorship as I did, but I believe, with the help of his clever head and earnestness, we should have amply made up for our artistic deficiencies and lack of literary method.
The manuscript still remains unfinished, as we left it, for not long after he ceased singing my songs. The brief sunlight between the workhouse and the grave faded and disappeared. When I turned away from his last resting-place I was the only mourner, and as I went away into our mysterious world once more I felt very lonely.
So end the intimate reminiscences of my wanderings, most of them experiences up to my twenty-second birthday. Whether I have succeeded in giving the reader an insight into the personality of the writer, such a glimpse as an autobiography is supposed to give, I do not know. Personally, I think it is a hard thing to do in a thorough sense, especially for a vagabond at heart. Each individual is a multitude of struggling ancestral strains, and real active life is manifested in the fight, the fierce hunt to find ourselves; which we can never do, for we die every moment that we live. So all we can attempt in a book is to tell truthfully those things that impressed us deeply at different periods of our life, so deeply that they still remain imprinted on the mind. Also to tell of our experiences for better or worse in this life of ours, where one footstep taken out of the track that we have known and write about would have altered the whole book of our life to another colour.