Henry Blake Fuller - "Bertram Cope's Year"

W. S. B. Mathews - "A Popular History of the Art of Music"

Bernard Mandeville - "An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Caesar or Nothing

P >> Pio Baroja >> Caesar or Nothing




"I went to get her at her hotel; she came down, looking very smart, with
an unmarried friend, also an American and also very chic.

"The three of us walked toward the Forum. We passed under the arch of
Constantine. A small beggar-boy preceded us, getting ahead and turning
hand-springs. I gave him some pennies. Susanna laughed. This woman, who
pays bills of thousands of pesetas to her milliner, doesn't like to give
a copper to a ragamuffin.

"We turned off a bit from the avenue and went up on the right, toward
the Palatine. Among the ruins some women were pulling up plants and
putting them into sacks. At the end of the road, on the slope, there
were Stations of the Cross, and some boys from a school were playing,
guarded by priests with white rabbits.

"It was impossible to go further, and we went down the hill toward the
Piazza di San Gregorio. On the open place in front of the church that is
in this square, some vagabonds were stretched out on the ground; an old
man with a long hoary beard and a pipe with a chain, two dark youths
with shocks of black hair, and a red-headed woman with silver hoops in
her ears and a baby in her arms.

"The two young boys threw me a glance of hatred, and stared at Susanna
and her friend with extraordinary avidity.

"What very false ideas must have been going through their minds! I might
have approached them and said politely:

"'Do not imagine that these ladies are of different stuff from this red
woman who has the baby in her arms. They are all the same. There is no
more difference than what is caused by a little soap and some money.'

"'Let us go in and see the church,' said Susanna.

"'Good. Come along.'

"The church has a flight of stone steps and two cypresses to one side.

"We went into a court with graves in it, and stayed there a while,
reading the names of the people buried in them. Susanna's friend is a
sort of little devil with the instincts of a small boy, and she went
springing about in all the corners.

"When we came out of the church we found the square, deserted before,
now full of people. During the time we had stayed inside, a numerous
group of tourists had formed a circle, and a gentleman was explaining in
English what the Via Appia used to be.

"'These are the things that please you,' Susanna said to me, laughing.

"I answered with a joke. The truth is that no matter how many
explanations I am given, an ancient Roman always seems a cardboard
figure to me, or at most a marble figure. It is not possible to imagine
how bored I used to be reading _Les Martyres_ of Chateaubriand and that
famous _Quo Vadis_.

"From the Piazza di San Gregorio we took a steep street, the 'Via di
Santi Giovanni e Paolo,' which passes under an arch with several brick
buttresses.

"We came out in a little square, in an angle of which there is an
ancient arcaded tower, which has tiles set into the walls, some round
and others the shape of a Greek cross.

"The modern portico of the church has columns and a grated door, which
we found open. Over the door is a picture of Saint John and Saint Paul;
on the sides of it two shields with the mitre and the keys. On one, set
round about, are the Latin words: _Omnium rerum est vicisitudo;_ on the
other is written in Spanish: _Mi corazon arde en mucha llama._

"'Is it Spanish?' Susanna asked me.

"'Yes.'

"'What does it mean?'

"I translated the phrase into English: 'My heart burns with a great
flame'; and Susanna repeated it several times, and begged me to write it
in her card-case.

"Her friend skimmed some pages in Baedeker and said:

"'It seems that the house of two saints martyred by Julian the Apostate
is preserved here.'

"I assured them that that was an error. I happen to have been reading
just a few days ago a book about Julian the Apostate, and it turns out
that that Emperor was an admirable man, good, generous, brave, full of
virtues; but the Christians had reason for calumniating him and they
calumniated him. All Julian's persecutions of Christians are logical
repressions of people that were disturbing public order, and the phrase,
Vencisti, Galileo, is a pious fraud. Julian was a philosopher, he
loved science, hygiene, cleanliness, peace, in a world of hysterical
worshipers of corpses, who wanted to live in ignorance, filth, and
prayer.

"But Christianity, always a religion of hallucinated persons, of
mystifiers, has never vacillated in singing the praises of parricides
like Constantine, and in calumniating the memory of great men like
Julian.

"Susanna and her friend considered that the question of whether Julian
has been calumniated by history, or not, was of no importance.

"The truth is that I feel the same way.

"From the Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo we came out into a small square
by a church, which has a little marble ship in front of its porch. We
saw that his street is named after the _Navicella._"


A ROYAL IDYLL

"By the side of the church of the Navicella, we passed the Villa Mattei,
and Susanna wished to go in. What a beautiful property! What splendid
terraces those in that garden are! What laurels! What lemon-trees! What
old statues! What heavy shade of pines and live-oaks!

"Kennedy, who has an admirable knowledge of every corner of Rome, has
told me that at the beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was
the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living
in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of
the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now
become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box
and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his
forehead ornamented like a faun's, enchanted to watch them; I don't know
whether he was playing the flute.

"Susanna's friend laughed at the thought of the good Charles IV, with
his waistcoat and his long coat, and his satyr's excrescences, and his
rural flute; but the allusion did not find favour with Susanna, whether
because she thought of her husband's infidelities, or because she
considered, that if her father gets to be the shoe-king, she will then
have a certain spiritual relationship to the Bourbons. In the Villa
Mattei we saw an _ediculo_, which rises at the edge of a terrace, amidst
climbing plants. There, as an inscription says, Saint Philip Neri talked
to his disciples of things divine. From the terrace one can see the
Baths of Caracalla, and part of the Roman Campagna behind them.

"We came out of the Villa Mattei and left the Piazza, della Navicella
and came down through a place where there is a wall with arches, under
which some beggars have built huts out of gasoline cans. There is an
eating-place thereabouts called the Osteria di Porta Metronia.

"Susanna's friend consulted her book, and the result was that we found
we were in the Vale of Egeria.

"From there we came out by a narrow road running along a wall, not a
very high one, over which green laurel branches projected. We saw an
obelisk at the end of the road, and the entablature of Saint John the
Lateran. The group of statues, reddish brown, silhouetted against the
sky, made a very strange effect.

"We started to go down by the Via di San Sisto Vecchio, which also runs
along by a wall. At the bottom of the slope there is a mill, with a deep
race. Susanna's friend said she would enjoy bathing there.

"We came out, at nightfall, almost opposite the Baths of Caracalla.

"'They ought to knock these ruins down altogether,' I said.

"'Why so?' asked Susanna.

"'Because they appear to be standing here to demonstrate the uselessness
of human energy.' Susanna was very little interested as to whether
human energy is useful or useless.

"I am, because my own energy forms a part of human energy, and for no
other reason.

"We came back past the Forum, but today we did not come upon any
funerals. To demand that somebody should die every day and his corpse be
carried out at twilight to feed tourists' emotions, would, I think, be
demanding too much.

"When we reached her hotel, Susanna let her friend go up first; and as
soon as we were alone, she looked at me expressively, placing one hand
on her breast, and said to me, in nasal Spanish:

"_'Mi corazon arde en mucha llama.'_

"I don't believe it."




XXIV

TOURIST INTERLUDE

TRAVELLING


"Susanna said to me: 'I have some inclination for you, but I don't know
you well enough. If you feel the same way, come with me. Let us travel
together? I am with her, and nevertheless I am convinced that what I am
doing is a piece of stupidity.

"We spent this Sunday morning in the train. In the country we saw men at
work with great oxen that had long twisted horns. In a swampy field some
labourers were draining the ground with great effort. From the train we
saw the island of Elba, and Capraia, and the sea as blue as indigo.

"'Mare nostro,'_ said an elegant gentleman in a fluty voice, and
pointed out something on the horizon which he said was Corsica, and he
said that it can be seen from far away.

"While all we useless, unoccupied persons gathered in the dining-car,
the people in the fields kept on working, bent over in the mud, draining
the marshes.

"'What a lot of effort those poor devils have to make to keep us alive.'
I said.

"'We are not kept alive by them,' retorted Susanna.

"'No, we live off of other slaves, who work for us,' I answered her.
'Those out there serve to feed the officers, the effeminate priestlings,
all the people that take part in the theatrical performance of the
Vatican. Those unfortunates help to uphold the eight basilicas and the
three hundred odd churches of Rome.'

"Susanna shrugged her shoulders and smiled."


CLOSE TO

"Travelling with a woman one does not love, no matter how very pretty
she is, produces a series of disenchantments. It seems as if one kept
seeking defects and analysing them under the microscope. During these
days that I have been accompanying Susanna, I have discovered a lot of
physical and moral imperfections in her. There are moments in which she
cannot conceal an egoism and brutality which are truly disagreeable; and
besides, she is tyrannical, vain, and tries always to have her own way.

"We have been at Siena, which is a kind of Toledo, made up of narrow
lanes. It was very hot. We were bored, especially she who has no
artistic feeling.

"We have spent two days in Florence, a night in Bologna, another night
at Milan, and after vacillating as to whether it would be better to go
to Lake Como or to Switzerland, we have come to Geneva to spend a few
days.

"Travelling like this in limited trains, one finds travelling more
insipid than in any other fashion. All the sleeping-cars are alike, all
the people alike, all the hotels alike. Really it is Stupid.

"It is still more stupid travelling with a woman who attracts attention
wherever she goes. She attracts attention, that is all; she doesn't
awaken any liking. She cannot comprehend why, being a beautiful and
distinguished woman, she has nobody who cares for her disinterestedly.
She notices that all the smart young men who aim for her are simply
coming to the beautiful rich woman.

"And she thinks they ought to be in ecstasies over her wit and over the
repertory of ready-made phrases she keeps for conversation."


A TIRESOME HOTEL

"In this immense, luxurious hotel, situated two thousand odd metres
above sea-level, as the announcement-cards stuck everywhere say, more
than a hundred of us gather in the dining-room at lunch-time. The
greatest coolness, the most frozen composure reigns among us.

"It is obvious that, thus harboured and united by chance in this hotel,
we disturb one another; a wall of prejudices and conventionalities
separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the
German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks
champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and
some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be crushed by the
lugubrious silence.

"Through the windows one can see Lake Leman, closed in near here by
mountains, blue like a great turquoise, ploughed by white, triangular
sails. From time to time one hears the strident noise of a steamboat's
siren and the murmur of the funicular train."


A MODEST FAMILY

"To this ostentatious hotel a family of modest air came two days ago.
It was a family made up of five persons; two ladies, one of them plain,
thin, spectacled, the other plumper and short; a merry girl, smiling
and rosy, and a melancholy little girl, with a waxen face. They were
accompanied by a man with a distinguished, weary manner.

"They are all in mourning. They are English; they treat one another with
an attractive affability. The short lady, mother of the two girls, was
pressing the man's hand and caressing it, during lunch the first day. He
kept smiling in a gentle, tired way. No doubt he was unable to stay here
long, for he did not appear that evening, and the four females were
alone in the dining-room.

"The two ladies and the fresh, blooming girl are much preoccupied about
the pale little girl, so much so that they do not notice the interest
they arouse among the guests. All the old 'misses,' loaded with jewels,
watch the family in mourning, as if they were wondering: 'How come they
here, if their position is not so good as ours? How dare they mix among
us, not being in our class?'

"And it is a fact; they cannot be; there is something that shows that
this family is not rich. Besides, and this is extraordinary enough, it
seems that they haven't come here to look down on others, or to give
themselves airs, but to take walks and to look at the immaculate peaks
of Mont Blanc. So one sees the two girls going out into the country
without making an elaborate toilet, carrying a book or an orange in
their hands, and coming back with bunches of flowers...."

_TRAGEDY IN A HOTEL ROOM_

"This morning at lunch only one of the ladies appeared in the
dining-room.

"'Perhaps the others have gone off on some picnic,' thought I.

"In the evening at dinner, the tall woman with the glasses and the
larger of the two girls were at table. They didn't eat, and disquietude
was painted on their faces; the girl had flushed cheeks and swollen
eyes.

"'What can be happening to them?' I asked myself.

"At that juncture, in came the short lady, with two vials of medicine
in her hand, and put them on the table. By what I could hear of the
conversation, she had just come from Lausanne, where she had gone for
the doctor. The melancholy little girl, the one with the waxen face,
must be ill.

"No doubt the family have come to Switzerland for the sake of the child,
who is probably delicate, and have made a sacrifice to do so. That
explains their modest air, and the rapid departure of the man who
brought them.

"The three women gazed sadly at one another. What can the poor child
have? I remember nothing about her, except her hair parted in the
middle, and the pallid colour of her bloodless skin, and nevertheless it
makes me sad to think that she is sick.

"I should like to offer myself to these women at this crisis; I should
like to say to them: 'I am a humble person, without money; but if I
could be useful to you in any way, I would do it with all my heart; and
that is more than I would do for this gang covered with brilliants.'

"The German who eats at the next table to the family understands what is
happening, and he leaves off eating to look at them, and then looks at
me with his blue eyes. At last he shrugs his shoulders, lowers his head,
and empties a glass of wine at one gulp.

"The three women rise and go to their rooms. One hears them coming and
going in the corridor; then a waiter takes their dinner upstairs.

"And while the family are desolate up there, down here in the 'hall' the
'misses' keep on looking at one another contemptuously, exhibiting rings
that sparkle on their fingers, and which would keep hundreds of people
alive; and while they are weeping upstairs, down here a blond Yankee
woman, with a large blue hat, a friend of Susanna's, who flirts with a
youth from Chicago, is laughing heartily, showing a set of white teeth
in which there shines a chip of gold."

_SUSANNA DOES NOT UNDERSTAND_

"I have spoken to Susanna about the poor English girl, who, they say, is
dying; and she has bidden me not to tell her sad things. She cannot bear
other people's suffering. She says she is more sensitive than others.
How very comical!

"This fine lady, who thinks herself so witty and so sensitive, has
an inner skin like a hippopotamus; she is covered with a magnificent
egoism, which must be at least of galvanized steel. Her armour protects
her against the action of other people's miseries and pains.

"This woman, so beautiful, is of a grotesque egotism; one understands
her husband's despising her.

"I am leaving her with her millions and going away to Spain."





PART TWO


CASTRO DURO

I

ARRIVAL

_CAESAR IN ACTION_


During the night Caesar Moncada and Alzugaray chatted in the train.
Alzugaray was praising this first Quixotic sally of his friend's.

"We are going to cross the Rubicon, Caesar," he said, as he got into the
train.

"We shall see."

Many times Alzugaray had heard Caesar explain his plans, but he had no
great confidence in their realization. Nor did this particular moment
seem to him opportune for beginning the campaign. Everybody believed
that the Liberal Ministry was stronger than ever; people were still away
for the summer; nothing was doing.

Nevertheless, Caesar insisted that the crisis was imminent, and that it
was the precise moment for him to enter politics. With this object he
was taking a letter from Alarcos, the leader of the Conservatives, to
Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero.

"Your Don Calixto will be at San Sebastian or at some water-cure," said
Alzugaray, taking his seat in the train.

"It's all the same to me. I intend to follow him until I find him,"
answered Caesar.

"And you are decided to run as a Conservative?"

"Of course."

"I hope you won't be sorry later."

"Pshaw! Later one jumps into the position that suits one. On these first
rungs of political life, either you have to have great luck, or you have
to go like a grasshopper, first here, then there. That is the take-off,
and when you are there all the ambitious mediocrities unite against you
if you have any talent. Naturally, I do not intend to do anything to
exhibit mine. Spanish politics are like a pond; a strong, healthy stick
of wood goes to the bottom; a piece of bark or cork or a sheaf of straw
stays on the surface. One has to disguise oneself as a cork."

"And later you will go on and make yourself known."

"Naturally. Since I find myself in the vein for making comparisons, I
will say that in Spanish politics we have a case like those in the old
comedies of intrigue, where the lackeys pretend to be gentlemen. When I
am once among the gentlemen, I shall know how to prove that I am more a
master than the people surrounding me."

"How conceited you are."

"The confidence one feels in oneself," said Caesar ironically.

"But have you really got it, or do you only pretend to have?"

"What matter whether I have it or haven't it, if I behave as if I had
it?"

"It matters a lot. It matters whether you are calm or not in the moment
of danger."

"Calmness is the muse that inspires me. I haven't it in my thoughts, but
in active life you shall see me!"

The two friends stretched themselves out in their first-class
compartment, and lay half asleep until dawn, when they got up again.

The train was running rapidly across the flat country; the yellow
sunlight shone into the car; through the newly sowed fields rode men on
horseback.

"These are not my dominions yet," said Caesar.

"We have two more stations till Castro Duro," responded Alzugaray,
consulting the time-table. They took off their caps, put them into the
bag, Caesar put on a fresh collar, and they sat down by the window.

"It is ugly enough, eh?" said Alzugaray.

"Naturally," replied Caesar. "What do you want; that there should be
some of those green landscapes like in your country, which for my part
irritate me?"


THE CLASSIC STAGECOACH


They arrived at Castro Duro. In the station they saw groups of peasants.
The travellers with their baggage went out of the station. There were
two shabby coaches at the door.

"Are you going to the Comercio?" asked one driver.

"No, they are going to the Espana," said the other.

"Then you two know more than we do," answered Alzugaray, "because we
don't know where to go."

"To the Comercio!"

"To the Espana!"

"Whose coach is this one?" asked Caesar, pointing to the less dirty of
the two.

"The Comercio's."

"All right, then we are going to the Comercio."

The coach, in spite of being the better of the two, was a rickety,
worn-out old omnibus, with its windows broken and spotted. It was drawn
by three skinny mules, full of galls. Caesar and Alzugaray got in and
waited. The coachman, with the whip around his neck, and a young man who
looked a bit like a seminarian, began to chat and smoke.

At the end of five minutes' waiting, Caesar asked:

"Well, aren't we going?"

"In a moment, sir."

The moment stretched itself out a good deal. A priest arrived, so fat
that he would have filled the vehicle all alone; then a woman from the
town with a basket, which she held on her knees; then the postman got in
with his bag; the driver closed the little window in the coach door, and
continued joking with the young man who looked a bit like a seminarian
and with one of the station men.

"We are in a hurry," said Alzugaray.

"We are going now, sir. All right. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" answered the station man and the seminarian.

The driver got up on his seat, cracked his whip, and the vehicle began
to move, with a noisy swaying and a trembling of all its wood and glass.
A very thick cloud of dust arose in the road.

"Ya, ya, Coronela!" yelled the driver. "Why do you keep getting where
you oughtn't to get? Damn the mule! Montesina, I am going to give you a
couple of whacks. Get on there, Coronela! Get up, get up.... All right!
All right!... That's enough.... That's enough.... Let it alone, now! Let
it alone, now!"

"What an amount of oratory that man is wasting," exclaimed Caesar; "he
must think that the mules are going to go better for the efforts of his
throat. It would be an advantage if he had stronger beasts, instead of
these dying ones."

The other travellers paid no attention to his observation, and Alzugaray
said:

"These drivers drip oratory."

While the shabby coach was going along the highway which encircles
Castro hill, to the sound of the bells and the cracking of the whip, it
was possible to remain seated in the vehicle with comparative ease; but
on reaching the town's first steep, crooked, rough-cobbled street, the
swinging and tossing were such that the travellers kept falling one upon
another.

The first street kept getting rapidly narrower, and as it grew narrower,
the crags in its paving were sharper and more prominent. At the highest
part of the street, in the middle, stood a two-wheeled cart blocking the
way. The coachman got down, from his seat and started a long discussion
with the carter, as to who was under obligations to make way.

"What idiots!" exclaimed Caesar, irritated; then, calmer, he murmured,
addressing Alzugaray, "The truth is, these people don't care about doing
anything but talk."

As the discussion between the coachman and the carter gave signs of
never ending, Caesar said:

"Come along," and then, addressing the man with the bag, he asked him,
"Is it far from here to the inn?"

"No; it is right here, in the house where the cafe is." THE INN


Sure enough, the inn was only a step away. They went into the damp, dark
entrance, up the crooked stairs, and down the corridor to the kitchen.

"Good morning, good morning!" they shouted.

Nobody appeared.

"Might it be on the second floor?" asked Alzugaray.

"Let's go see."

They went up to the next floor, entered by a gallery of red brick, which
was falling to pieces, and called several times. An old woman, from
inside a dark bedroom where she was sweeping, bade them go down to the
dining-room, where she would bring them breakfast.

The dining-room had balconies toward the country, and was full of sun;
the bedrooms they were taken to, on the other hand, were dark, gloomy,
and cavernous. Alzugaray requested the old woman to show them the other
vacant chambers, and chose two on the second floor, which were lighter
and airier.

The old woman told them she hadn't wanted to take them there, because
there was no paper on the walls.

"No doubt, in Castro, the prospect of bed-bugs is an agreeable
prospect," said Caesar.

After he had washed and dressed, Caesar started out to find and capture
Don Calixto, and Alzugaray went to take a stroll around the town. It was
agreed that they should each explore the region in his own way.




II

CASTRO DURO

THE MORNING


In these severe old Castilian towns there is one hour of ideal peace and
serenity. That is the early morning. The cocks are still crowing, the
sound of the church bells is scattered on the air, and the sun begins to
penetrate into the streets in gusts of light. The morning is a flood of
charity that falls upon the yellowish town.

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