“There’s no doubt about it,” he would say, obstinately, “we are more like Catalans than Galicians, my dear fellow.”
If we were much alike in our ideas of the way to order our lives, we differed greatly in our estimate of the principal aim of life.
Portal used to say:
“Look here, sonny, I am not going to waste my time catching flies nor in trifling pursuits. I’ll try to get money so as to set the world at defiance. It is but a sorry joke to pass one’s life grubbing and in want. My father is an awful miser; he will not shell out a cent, and as yet I know nothing at all about many fine things there are going. I don’t know whether by following my profession I shall ever succeed in obtaining them; I believe that politicians and tradespeople know how to make money better than professional men. It is true the two things are not incompatible, and that Sagasta himself is a civil engineer. Anyway, just let them give me free swing and I shall know how to fix things. If I don’t get rich, put me down for a fool.”
While I applauded his valiant resolution, yet I knew that my dreams of the future differed from his. By “fine things” Portal meant to live well, to drink good wines, to smoke good cigars, and perhaps marry some beautiful, rich girl; while I, without despising all these good things of the earth, did not long for any one of them in particular. I only desired my freedom. I foresaw that with that I might obtain something very noble, and worthy of being tasted and enjoyed; but not in a material or prosaic sense; something like renown, celebrity, passion, adventures, wealth, authority, home, children, travels, combats, even misfortune. At any rate, it would be life—life rich, and worthy of a rational being—who is not content simply to vegetate nor to gloat over pleasures, but who must run over the whole scale of thought, of feeling, and of action. I could not clearly define in what my hopes consisted, but I thought that it would be degrading to lower them to Portal’s material and sensuous level.
Nor did I consider myself a visionary, or an enthusiast, or a dreamer. On the contrary, I knew that if sometimes my head did lift itself toward the clouds, my feet still remained firmly planted on the earth; and that all my actions were those of a man fully determined to make his way in the world, without being distracted by the siren of enthusiasm.
If our creed for the individual had certain points in common, in our creed for the nation, Portal and I utterly disagreed. We were both Republicans; but he belonged to Castelar’s party, was a cautious opportunist, and almost a monarchist by force of concessions; while I was a radical, one of Pi’s followers, and firmly believed that we ought not to carry out a conciliatory policy in Spain, nor accommodate ourselves to old traditions in any respect whatever; but that, on the contrary, we ought to press on resolutely and uncompromisingly in the path of thorough and progressive change.
“These concessions are ruinous and fatal to our country,” I would say, “and by concessions in this case I mean something equivalent to cheating. They say ‘concessions’ so as not to say capitulation or defeat. If our forefathers, those upright men of 1812 to 1840, had accepted a compromise and walked softly about absorbed in thought, a pretty fix we should be in now! It hurts to cut out a cancer, and causes disturbance in the system; but the cancer is destroyed. I can’t understand this mania for compromising with the past, with absolute and fanatic Spain. Your illustrious Chief—for thus we styled Castelar—is a man of the world, fond of making himself agreeable to duchesses and to crowned heads; and that’s what he calls holding to old traditions. Empty words! Fortunately, the French in 1793 did not adopt that method, nor did we in later times. Don’t talk to me. At the rate we are going, within a few years Spain will be crowded with convents again. It is absurd to tolerate such craftiness, and even protect it, as our most liberal government does now. The Jesuits have again spread their net, and every once in a while draw it in a little more. Some day they will catch the whole of us. Of course, when such big bugs as they gain their ends, they don’t care what comes after. ‘After me the deluge,’ as that old scamp, Louis XV., used to say. No well-balanced mind can think that in order to weaken and uproot an institution like Monarchy, you must begin by strengthening and coddling it, and quietly implanting it in the hearts of the people. I don’t swallow that ‘concession’ hook; don’t let them try that business on me.”
Portal would then get excited and answer me with equal energy: “Well, you are simple, to say the least. Those who think as you do are in a fool’s paradise. With your system, we would have an outbreak of the Carlists in the twinkling of an eye, and Spain would be plunged in petty civil war. I don’t like to think, either, what would happen on the establishment of your famous federation. Within two months after the establishment of the Galician canton, there wouldn’t be a rag left. All would want to command, and none to obey. If you begin by wounding and outraging the susceptibilities of a nation, it will surely result in demoralization like that which followed the Revolution of September. Rest assured, Castelar has a long head. It is the republic that is not yet of age, not the king. Let the republic fall of its own weight, like a ripe pear.”
“Try some other dog with that bone. What they all want here is to be chief. Sonny, there are no ideals; all that has collapsed and we must bring them to life, believe me.”