“Professor So-and-So is a beast; What-you-call-him is a talented chap; that fellow is a thick-witted chap. This kid is all right; that one is not.”
In this rail-splitting manner did young Moncada announce his decisions, as if he held the secret explanation of all things tight between his fingers.
Alzugaray seldom shared his friend’s opinions; but in spite of this divergence they understood each other very well.
Alzugaray came of a modest family; his mother, the widow of a government clerk, lived on her pension and on the income from some property they owned in the North.
Ignacio Alzugaray was very fond of his mother and his sister, and was always talking about them. Cæsar alone would listen without being impatient to the meticulous narratives Ignacio told about the things that happened at home.
Alzugaray was of a very Catholic and very Carlist family; but like Cæsar, he was beginning to protest against such ideas and to show himself Liberal, Republican, and even Anarchistic. Ignacio Alzugaray was a nephew of Carlos Yarza, the Spanish author, who lived in Paris, and who had taken part in the Commune and in the Insurrection of Cartagena.
Cæsar, on hearing Alzugaray recount the doings of his uncle Carlos Yarza various times, said to his fellow-student:
“When I get out of this college, the first thing I am going to do is to go to Paris to talk with your uncle.”
“What for?”
“I have to talk to him.”