“Moreover, as for us, we do not recognize prestige, nor do we cheerfully accept either kings or presidents or high priests or grand magi.
“The only thing that would suit us would be to have a chief... for the pleasure of eating him alive.
“A Loyola of the extra-religious individualism is what Spain needs. Deeds, always deeds, and a cold philosophy, realistic, based on deeds, and a morality based on action. Don’t you agree?
“I think, and I am becoming more confirmed in my opinion, that the only people who can give a direction, found a new civilization with its own proper characteristics, for that old Iberian race, which probably sprang from the shores of the Mediterranean... is we Spaniards.
“‘Why only you Spaniards?’ my friend Kennedy asked me; and I told him:
“‘To me it seems indubitable. France is leaning constantly more towards the North. In Italy the same is true; Milan and Turin, where the Saxon and the Gaul predominate, are the real capitals of Italy. In Spain, however, this does not happen. We are separated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees, and joined to Africa by the sea and climate. Our plan ought to be to construct a great European Empire, to impose our ideas on the peninsula, and then to spread them everywhere.’”
XX. DON CALIXTO AT SAINT PETER’S
DON CALIXTO UNDERSTANDS
Kennedy was anxious that Cæsar should turn into the good road. The good road, for him, was art.