“Don’t spin me great yarns about your ideals,” Portal would reply, getting angry. “Ideals are the cause of all our troubles. There is no other ideal but peace, and to bring order into all this chaos, little by little.”
Another subject of dispute was local government. I was not at all modest in my demands. I wanted the independence of Galicia. In regard to our annexation to Portugal, we might discuss that later. We would see what was most expedient. But it would be well for Portugal, also, to shake off her ancient and fantastic monarchical yoke, and assent to the Iberian Federation.
“I don’t know what I’d give just to see your swinish ideal realized for about twenty-four hours,” Luis would exclaim. “If Galicia should declare itself a canton, not even the evil one would stay there. Make up your mind to one thing: in Spain, the smaller the governing entities—is that the right word?—the worse they are. The central government, as you call it, makes a thousand blunders; but the provincial legislature would make two thousand, the county justices three thousand, and the village authorities a million. Fortunately, to talk about Galician independence is as idle as to ask the fish and the sands what they know about the sea.”
“So you think that the provinces have no right to say, like individuals, ‘each one for himself.’”
“Look here, don’t say anything about their rights. To talk about their rights, is running off on a tangent. By rights and technicalities, I can prove to you that Isabella the Second is to-day the rightful Queen of Spain, and that her grandson is only a usurper. In rational politics no rights nor mummeries exist. There is only what is advantageous or otherwise, what is successful or unsuccessful. There is a sense of smell and of touch, and although I can’t explain to you in what it consists, yet it shows itself in the result. Radical ideas lead on to logical absurdities. You can’t apply algebra to politics. And say no more about independence. Our Spanish nation is an indisputable reality, even if you do not believe it.”
Irritated by his opposition, I would exclaim: “What a musty idea that love of country is! The great thinkers laugh at the idea of patriotism; you can’t deny that.”
“Tell your great thinkers to go think in a stable. If they suppress the springs of action, little by little, because humanity has always progressed, we’ll no longer have any pretext for so much as living. You know that I am not at all sentimental, but our country is like our family, and there’s no need of poetry or sentimentalism to make us love it and defend it with our lives. You think you settle everything by dragging out that about old-fashioned notions. Well, old-fashioned notions are inevitable and necessary and proper. We live on them. And that old idea about our love of country is not the only one bred in our bones. There are a great many others, my dear fellow, which we’ll not give up for twenty centuries. I believe that in this country, in order to foster the ideas which are to replace the old-fashioned ones, what we must do is to be crossed with other races. All of us who are a bit enlightened—why, let us marry foreign wives!”
Sometimes we got to quarreling over these profundities, and would roar at each other while loitering at the table or even while eating. These disputes usually gave us the greatest eagerness in the play of mind on mind; and even in the midst of our hottest arguments we felt drawn toward each other by the conviction that though our opinions were so antagonistic, we were able to understand each other and to spur each other on.
We had come to be inseparable. We helped each other in our studies; we used to go to walk together, even when Luis was going to promenade before the house of a certain outlandish sweetheart he had discovered; we used to sit at the same table in the Levante Café; when we had a little spare cash we would go together to our favorite resort—the gallery in the Teatro Real. All of us students at Doña Jesusa’s were musical; we were all ready to die for “L’Africaine,” and “Les Huguenots,” especially the Cuban, who had a musical craze. His retentive memory would store up not only the music but the words as well, and we used to amuse ourselves on getting home by making him sing over the whole opera.
“Trinidad,” we would say, for that was his name, “Come now, sing the love duet between Vasco and Selika.” “Trinidad, there now, the poniard scene.” “Come, Triny, sing that about O paradiso. Now about Copre fuoco.” “Triny, sing the Protestant psalm. Now, the violins start in—now come the oboe’s notes, when Marcelo appears.” The mocking-bird would sing all we called for, reproducing with astonishing exactness the slightest details of the instrumentation, until at length fairly worn out, he would exclaim, beseechingly: