I have become independent financially. I not only support myself, but I am able to travel occasionally upon the proceeds of my pen.
A Russian publishing house, another in Germany, and another in the United States are bringing out my books, paying me, moreover, for the right of translation; and I am satisfied. I have friends of both sexes in Madrid and in the Basque provinces, who seem already like old friends, because I have grown fond of them. As I face old age, I feel that I am walking upon firmer ground than I did in my youth.
In a short time, what a few years ago the sociologists used to call involution—that is, a turning in—will begin to take place in my brain; the cranial sutures will become petrified, and an automatic limitation of the mental horizon will soon come.
I shall accept involution, petrification of the sutures and limitation with good grace. I have never rebelled against logic, nor against nature, against the lightning or the thunder storm. No sooner does one gain the crest of the hill of life than at once he begins to descend rapidly. We know a great deal the moment that we realize that nobody knows anything. I am a little melancholy now and a little rheumatic; it is time to take salicylates and to go out and work in the garden—a time for meditation and for long stories, for watching the flames as they flare upward under the chimney piece upon the hearth.
I commend myself to the event. It is dark outside, but the door of my house stands open. Whoever will, be he life or be he death, let him come in.
PALINODE AND FRESH OUTBURST OF IRE
A few days ago I left the house with the manuscript of this book, to which I have given the name of Youth and Egolatry, on my way to the post office.
It was a romantic September morning, swathed in thick, white mist. A blue haze of thin smoke rose upward from the shadowy houses of the neighbouring settlement, vanishing in the mist. Meanwhile, the birds were singing, and a rivulet close by murmured in the stillness.
Under the influence of the homely, placid country air, I felt my spirit soften and grow more humble, and I began to think that the manuscript which I carried in my hand was nothing more than a farrago of foolishness and vulgarity.
The voice of prudence, which was also that of cowardice, cautioned me: