Barriovero, a conventionalist, according to Grandmontagne—yes, and how keen the scent of this American for such matters!—attended the opening of a radical club in the Calle del Príncipe with a party of friends. We were all drinking champagne. Like other revolutionists and parvenus generally, Lerroux is a victim of the superstition of champagne.
"Aha, suppose those workingmen should see us drinking champagne!" suggested some one.
"What of it?" asked another.
"I only wish for my part," Barriovero interrupted with a show of sentiment, "that the workingman could learn to drink champagne."
"Learn to drink it?" I burst out, "I see no difficulty about that. He could drink champagne as well as anything else."
"Not at all," said Barriovero the conventionalist, very gravely. "He has the superstition of the peasant; he thinks he must leave enough wine to cover the bottom of the glass."
I doubt whether this observation will attract the attention of any future Plutarch, although it might very well do so, as it expresses most I clearly the distinction which exists in the minds of our revolutionists between the workingman and the young gentleman.
ANARCHISTS
I have had a number of acquaintances among anarchists. Some of them are dead; the majority of the others have changed their ideas. It is apparent nowadays that the anarchism of Reclus and Kropotkin is out of date, and entirely a thing of the past. The same tendencies will reappear under other forms, and present new aspects. Among anarchists, I have known Elysée Reclus, whom I met in the editorial offices of a publication called L'Humanité Nouvelle, which was issued in Paris in the Rue des Saints-Pères. I have also met Sebastien Faure during a mass meeting organized in the interests of one Guerin, who had taken refuge in a house in the Rue de Chabrol some eighteen or twenty years ago. I have had relations with Malatesta and Tarrida del Marmol. As a matter of fact, both these anarchists escorted me one afternoon from Islington, where Malatesta lived, to the door of the St. James Club, one of the most aristocratic retreats in London, where I had an appointment to meet a diplomat.
As for active anarchists, I have known a number, two or three of whom have been dynamiters.