But soon we all shall be of those
Who come back—never!"
"Here," thought I, "is a home, a hearth, with almond soup and a gilt-head, which I could buy for four dollars!" Just then a woman came up to me, begging. She had two children, one in her arms wrapped in her ravelled shawl, the other clinging to her hand. Both were crying; I thought the mother was crying too.
IX.
I do not know how I happen to be in this café. The clock strikes midnight, the hour when the Christ was born. I am here, alone, in a boisterous crowd. I have fallen to analyzing my life since I left my father's roof, and for the first time I am horror-stricken at the painful struggle of the poet in Madrid,—a struggle in which so much affection, so much peace, is sacrificed to a vain ambition.
I have watched the bards of the nineteenth century writing the local; I have watched the Muse, scissors in hand, making clippings; I have seen men who in other ages would have written a national epic busily patching up editorials to rehabilitate a party and earn fifty dollars a month.
Poor children of God! Poor poets! Antonio Trueba, to whom I dedicate this article, says,—
"I have found so many thorns on my journey that my heart aches, my soul aches!"
And so much for my present Christmas Eve!