Caesar or Nothing

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His name appeared from time to time on some committee about Treasury
affairs; but that was all.

His life was completely veiled; he was not seen at first nights, or in
salons, or on the promenade; he was a man apparently forgotten, lost
to Madrid life. Sometimes on coming out of the Chamber he would see
Amparito in an automobile; she would look for him with her eyes, and
smile; he would take his hat off ostentatiously, with a low bow.

Among a very small number of persons Caesar had the reputation of an
intelligent and dangerous man. They suspected him of great personal
ambition. It would not have been logical to think that this cold
unexpansive man was, in his heart, a patriot who felt Spain's decadence
deeply and was seeking the means to revive her.

"No pleasures, no middle-class satisfactions," he thought; "but to live
for a patriotic ideal, to shove Spain forward, and to form with the
flesh of one's native land a great statue which should be her historic
monument."

That was his plan. In Congress Caesar kept silence; but he talked in
the corridors, and his ironic, cold, dispassionate comments began to be
quoted.

He had formed relations with the Minister of the Treasury, a man who
passed for famous and was a mediocrity, passed for honourable and was a
rogue. Caesar was much in his company.

The famous financier realized that Moncada knew far more than he did
about monetary questions, and among his friends he admitted it; but he
gave them to understand that Caesar was only a theorist, incapable of
quick decision and action.

Caesar's friendship was a convenience to the Minister, and the
Minister's to Caesar. In his heart the Minister hated Caesar, and Caesar
felt a deep contempt for the famous financier.

Nobody seeing them in a carriage talking affectionately together could
have imagined that there existed such an amount of hatred and hostility
between them.

The majority of people, with an absolute want of perspicacity, believed
Caesar to be fascinated by the Minister's brilliant intellect; but there
were persons that understood the situation of the pair and who used to
say:

"Moncada has an influence over the Minister like that of a priest over a
family."

And there was some truth in it.

Caesar carried his experimental method over from the stock exchange into
politics. He kept a note-book, in which he put down all data about the
private lives of Ministers and Deputies, and he filed these papers after
classifying them.

Castro Duro began to be aware of Caesar's exertions. The secretary of
the municipality, the employees, all who were friends and adherents to
the boss's group that Don Platon belonged with, began by degrees to
leave Castro.

Those who had lost their jobs, and their protectors too, began to write
letters and more letters to the Deputy. At first they believed that
Caesar wasn't interested; but they were soon able to understand at
Castro that he was interested enough, but not in them. The Minister of
the Treasury served him as a battering-ram to use against the Clericals
at Castro Duro.

Don Calixto was inwardly rejoiced to see his rivals reduced to
impotency.

Caesar began to establish political relations with the Republican
bookseller and his friends. When he began to perceive that he was making
headway with the Liberal and Labour element, he started without delay to
set mines under Don Calixto's terrain. The judge, who was a friend of
Don Calixto's, was transferred; so were some clerks of the court; and
the Count of la Sauceda, the famous boss, was soon able to realize that
his protege was firing against him.

"I have nourished a serpent in my bosom," said Don Calixto; "but I know
how I can grind its head."

He could not have been very sure of his strength; for Don Calixto found
himself in a position where he had to beg for quarter. Caesar conceded
it, on the understanding that Don Calixto would not take any more part
in Castro politics.

"You people had the power and you didn't use it very well for the town.
Now just leave it to me."

In exchange for Don Calixto's surrender, Caesar agreed to have his Papal
title legalized.

At the end of a year and a half Caesar had all the bosses of Castro in
his fist.

"Suppressing the bosses in the district was easy," Caesar used to say;
"I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made
that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous and gave him a title."

Caesar did not forget or neglect the least detail. He listened to
everybody that talked to him, even though they had nothing but nonsense
to say; he always answered letters, and in his own handwriting.

With the townpeople he used the tactics of knowing all their names,
especially the old folks', and for this purpose he carried a little
note-book. He wrote down, for example: "Senor Ramon, was in the Carlist
war; Uncle Juan, suffers with rheumatism."

When, by means of his notes, he remembered these details, it produced
an extraordinary effect on people. Everybody considered himself the
favourite.

CAESAR'S MANNER OF LIVING

Caesar lived simply; he had a room in an hotel in the Carrera de San
Jeronimo, where he received calls; but nobody ever found him there
except in business hours.

He used to go now and then to Alzugaray's house, where he would talk
over various matters with his friend's mother and sister; he would find
out about everything, and go away after giving them advice on questions
of managing their money, which they almost always observed and followed.

Of all people, Ignacio Alzugaray was the most incredulous in regard
to his friend; his mother and his sister believed in Caesar as in an
oracle. Caesar often thought that he ought to fall definitely in love
with Ignacio's sister and marry her; but neither he nor she seemed to
have set upon passing the limits of a cordial friendship.

Caesar told the Alzugaray family how he lived and caused them to laugh
and wonder.

He had rented a fairly large upper story in a street in Valle Hermoso,
for five dollars. The days he had nothing to do he went there. He put
on an old, worn-out fur coat, which was still a protection, a soft hat,
took a stick, and went walking in the environs.

His favourite walk was the neighbourhood of the Canalillo and of the
Dehesa de Amaniel.

Generally he went out of his house on the side opposite the Model
Prison, then he walked toward Moncloa, and taking the right, passed near
the Rubio Institute, and entered the Cerro del Pimiento by an open lot
which he got into through a broken wall.

From there one could see, far away, the Guadarrama range, like a curtain
of blue mountains and snowy crests; on clear days, the Escorial;
Aravaca, the Casa de Campo, and the Sierra de Gredos, which ran out on
the left hand like a promontory. Nearby one saw a pine grove, close to
the Rubio Institute, and a valley containing market-gardens, and the
ranges of the Moncloa shooting school.

Caesar would walk on by the winding road, and stop to look at the
Cemetery of San Martin on the right, with its black cypresses and its
yellowish walls.

Then he would follow the twists of the Canalillo, and pass in front of
the third Reservoir, to the Amaniel road.

That was where Caesar would have built himself a house, had he had the
idea of living retired.

The dry, hard landscape was the kind he liked. The mornings were
wonderful, the blue sky radiant, the air limpid and thin.

The twilight had an extraordinary enchantment. All that vast extent of
land, the mountains, the hills of the Casa de Campo, the cypresses of
the cemetery, were bathed in a violet light.

In winter there were hunters of yellow-hammers and goldfinches in these
regions, who set their nets and their decoys on the ground, and spent
hours and hours watching for their game.

On Sunday, in particular, the number of hunters was very large. They
went in squads of three; one carried a big bundle on his shoulder, which
was the net all rolled up; another the decoy cages, fastened with a
strap; and the third a frying-pan, a skin of wine, and some kindling for
a fire.

Caesar used to talk with the guards at Amaniel, with the
octroi-officers, and he got to be great friends with a little hunchback,
a bird hunter.

It was curious to hear this hunchback talk of the habits of the birds
and of the influence of the winds. He knew how the gold-finches,
yellow-hammers, and linnets make their nests, and the preference some of
them have for coltsfoot cotton, and others for wool or for cow's hair.
He told Caesar a lot of things, many of which could have existed only in
his imagination, but which were entertaining.

ONE DAY AT CHRISTMASTIME

One day at Christmastime Alzugaray went in the morning to look for
Caesar. He knew where to find him and walked direct to the Calle de
Galileo. At the house, they told him that Caesar was eating in a tavern
close at hand.

Alzugaray went into the place and found his friend the Deputy seated
in a coner eating. He had the appearance of a superior workman, an
electrician, carver, or something of the sort.

"If people find out you behave so extravagantly, they will think you are
crazy," said Alzugaray.

"Pshaw! Nobody comes here," replied Caesar. "The political world and
this are separate worlds. This one belongs to the people who have to
shoulder the load of everything, and the other is a world of villains,
robbers, idiots, and fools. Really, it is difficult to find anything
so vile, so inept, and so useless as a Spanish politician. The Spanish
middle class is a warren of rogues and villains. I feel an enormous
repugnance to brushing against it. That is why I came here now and then
to talk to these people; not because these are good, no; the first and
the last of them are riff-raff, but at least they say what they mean and
they blaspheme naively."

"What are you going to do after lunch?" Alzugaray asked him. "Have you
got a sweetheart in one of the old-clothes shops of the quarter?"

"No. I was thinking of taking a walk; that's all."

"Then come along."

They left the tavern and went along a street between sides of sand cut
straight down, and started up the Cerro del Pimiento. The soft, vague
mist allowed the Guadarrama to stand out visible.

"This landscape enchants me," said Caesar.

"It seems hard and gloomy," responded Alzugaray.

"Yes, that is true; hard and gloomy, but noble. When one is drenched
with a miserable political life, when one actually forms a part of
that Olympus of madmen called Congress, one needs to be purified. How
miserable, how vile that political life is! How many faces pale with
envy there are! What low and repugnant hatreds! When I come out
nauseated by seeing those people; when I am soaked with repugnance, then
I come out here to walk, I look at those serious mountains, so frowning
and strong, and the mere sight of them seems like a purifying flame
which cleanses me from meanness."

"I see that you are as absurd as ever, Caesar. It would never occur to
anybody to come and comfort himself with some melancholy mountains, out
here between an abandoned hospital, which looks like a leper-asylum, and
a deserted cemetery."

"Well, these mountains give me an impression of energy and nobility,
which raises my spirits. This leper-asylum, as you call it, sunken in a
pit, this deserted cemetery, those distant mountains, are my friends;
I imagine they are saying to me: 'One must be hard, one must be strong
like us, one must live in solitude....'"

They did not continue their walk much further, because the night and
the fog combined made it difficult to see the path along the
Canalillo, which made it possible to fall in, and that would have been
disagreeable.

They returned the way they had come. From the top of a hill they saw
Madrid in the twilight, covered with fog; and in the streets newly
opened between the sides of sand, the lights of the gas-lamps sparkled
in a nimbus of rainbow....

X

POLITICAL LABOURS

MONEY ON THE EXCHANGE

Although Caesar did not distinguish himself especially in Congress, he
worked hard. His activities were devoted mainly to two points: the stock
exchange and Castro Duro.

Caesar had found a partner to play the market for him, a Bilboan
capitalist, whom he had convinced of the correctness of his system.
Senor Salazar had deposited, in Caesar's name, thirty thousand dollars.
With this sum Caesar played for millions and he was drawing an
extraordinary dividend from his stocks.

Their operations were made in the name of Alzugaray, whose job it was
to go every month to see the broker, and to sign and collect the
certificates. Caesar gave his orders by telephone, and Alzugaray
communicated them to the broker.

Alzugaray often went to see Caesar and said to him:

"The broker came to my house terrified, to tell me that what we are
going to do is an absurdity."

"Let it alone," Caesar would say. "You know our agreement. You get
ten percent of the profits for giving the orders. Do not mix in any
further."

Often, on seeing the positive result of Caesar's speculations, Alzugaray
would ask him:

"Do you find out at the Ministry what is going to happen?"

"Pshaw!" Caesar would say; "the market is not a capricious thing, as you
think. There are signs. I pay attention to a lot of facts, which give
me indications: coupons, the amount shares advance, the calculation of
probabilities; and I compare all these scientific data with empirical
observations that are difficult to explain. In such a situation, events
are what make the least difference to me. Is there going to be a
revolution or a Carlist war?...I am careless about it."

"But this is impossible," Alzugaray used to say. "Excuse me for saying
so, but I don't believe you. You have some secret, and that is what
helps you."

"How fantastic you all are!"' Caesar would exclaim; "you refuse to
believe in the rational, and still you believe in the miraculous."

"No, I do not believe in the, miraculous; but I cannot explain your
methods."

"That's clear! Am I to explain them to you! When you don't know the
mechanism of the market! I am certain that you have never considered the
mechanism of the rise produced by the reintegration of the coupon, or
the way that rise is limited to double its value. Tell me. Do you know
what that means?"

"No."

"Well, then, how are you to understand anything?"

"All right, then; explain it to me."

"There's no difficulty. You know that the natural tendency of the market
is to rise."

"To rise and to fall," interrupted Alzugaray.

"No, only to rise."

"I don't see it."

"The general tendency of the market is to rise, because having to fall
eighty _centimos_, the value of the coupon, every quarter, if the market
didn't rise to offset that loss, shares would reach zero...."

"I don't understand," said Alzugaray.

"Imagine a man on a stairway; if you oblige him to go down one step
every so often, in order to keep in the same place as before he will
necessarily have to go up again, because if he didn't do so, he would be
constantly approaching the front door."

"Yes, surely." "Well, this man on the stairway is the quotation, and the
mechanical task of constantly making up for the quarterly loss is what
is called the reintegration of the coupon."

"You do not convince me."

Alzugaray didn't like listening to these explanations. He had formed
an opinion that had not much foundation, but he would not admit that
Caesar, by reasoning, could arrive at the glimmering of an inductive and
deductive method, where others saw no more than chance.

CAESAR BEGINS HIS TASK

With the money he made on the market, Caesar was making himself the
master of Castro Duro. He constantly assumed a more Liberal attitude in
the Chamber, and was in a position to abandon the Conservative majority,
on any pretext.

His plan of campaign at Castro Duro corresponded to this political
position of his: he had rehabilitated the Workmen's Club and paid its
debts. The Club had been founded by the workmen of a thread factory,
now shut. The number of members was very small and the labourers and
employees of the railway and some weavers were its principal support.

On learning that it was about to be closed for lack of funds, Caesar
promised to support it. He thought of endowing the Club with a library,
and installing a school in the country. On seeing that the Deputy was
patronizing the Club, a lot of labourers of all kinds joined it. A new
governing board was named, of which Caesar was honourary president, and
the Workmen's Club re-arose from its ashes. The Republicans and the
little group of Socialists, almost all weavers, were on Caesar's side
and promised to vote for him in the coming election.

Various Republicans who went to Madrid to call on Caesar, told him
he ought to come out as a Republican. They would vote for him with
enthusiasm.

"No; why should I?" Caesar used to answer. "Are we going to do any more
at Castro by my being a Republican than when I am not one? Besides the
fact that I should not be elected on that ticket and should thus have no
further influence, to me the forms of a government are indifferent;
I don't even care whether it has a true ideal or a false one. What I
do want is for the town to progress; whether by means of a dream or
by means of a reality. A politician should seek for efficiency before
asking anything else, and at present the Republican dream would not be
efficient at Castro."

Most of the Republicans did not go away very well satisfied with what
Caesar had said; and after leaving him, they would say:

"He is a very curious person, but he favours us and we'll have to follow
him."

The reopening of the Workmen's Club in Castro was the chance for an
event. Caesar was in favour of inaugurating the Club without any
celebration, without attracting the attention of the Clericals; but the
members of the Club, on the contrary, wished to give the reactionaries a
dose to swallow, and Caesar could not but promise his participation in
the inauguration.

"Would you like to come to Castro?" Caesar said to Alzugaray.

"What are you going to do there?"

"We are going to open a Club."

"Are you going to speak?"

"Yes."

"All right. Let's go, so that I can hear you. Probably you will do it
badly enough."

"It's possible."

"And what you say won't please anybody."

"That's possible, too. But that makes no difference. You will come?"

"Yes. Will there be picturesque speakers?"

"There are some, but they are not going to speak. There is one, Uncle
Chinaman, who is a marvel. In describing the actual condition of Spain,
he once uttered this authoritative phrase: 'Clericalism in the zenith,
immorality in high places, the debt floating more every day,...'"

"That's very good." "It certainly is. He made another happy phrase,
criticizing the Spanish administration. 'For what reason do they write
so many useless papers?' he said. 'So that rats, the obscene reptiles,
can go on eating them....'"

"That's very good too."

"He is a man without any education, but very intelligent. So you are
going to come?"

"Yes."

"Then we will meet at the station."

CAN ONE CHANGE OR NOT?

They took the train at night and they chatted as they went along in it.
Caesar explained to Alzugaray the difficulties he had had to overcome
in order that the Workmen's Club could be reinstituted, and went on
detailing his projects for the future.

"Do you believe the town is going to be transformed?" asked Alzugaray.

"Yes, certainly!" said Caesar, staring at his friend.

"So then, you, a Darwinist who hold it as a scientific doctrine
that only the slow action of environment can transform species and
individuals, believe that a poor worn-out, jog-trotting race is going
to revive suddenly, in a few years! Can a Darwinist believe in a
revolutionizing miracle?"

"Previously, no; but now he can."

"My dear fellow! How so?"

"Haven't you read anything about the experiments of the Dutch botanist
Hugo de Vries?"

"No."

"Well, his experiments have proved that there are certain vegetable
species which, all at once, without any preparation, without anything
to make you expect it, change type absolutely and take on other
characters."

"The devil! That really is extraordinary."

"Vries verified this rapid transformation first in a plant named
OEnotheria Lamarckiana, which, all of a sudden, with no influence from
the environment, with nothing to justify it, at times changes and
metamorphosizes itself into a different plant."

"But this transformation may be due to a disease," said Alzugaray.

"No, because the mutation, after taking place, persists from generation
to generation, not with pathological characteristics, but with
completely normal ones."

"It is most curious."

"These experiments have produced Neo-Darwinism. The Neo-Darwinists, with
Hugo de Vries at their head, believe that species are not generally
gradually transformed, but that they produce new forms in a sudden,
brusque way, having children different from the fathers. And if such
brusque variations can take place in a characteristic so fixed as
physiological form, what may not happen in a thing so unstable as the
manner of thinking? Thus, it is very possible that the men of the
Italian Renaissance or the French Revolution were mentally distinct from
their predecessors and their successors, and they may even have been
organically distinct."

"But this overthrows the whole doctrine of evolution," said Alzugaray.

"No. The only thing it has done is to distinguish two forms of change:
one, the slow variation already verified by everybody, the other the
brusque variation pointed out by Hugo de Vries. We see now that the
impulses, which in politics are called evolution and revolution, are
only reflexions of Nature's movements."

"So then, we may hope that Castro Duro will change into an Athens?"
asked Alzugaray.

"We may hope so," said Caesar.

"All right, let's hope sleeping."

They ordered the porter to prepare two berths in the car, and they both
lay down.

THE RECEPTION

In the morning Caesar went to the dressing-room, and a short while later
came back clean and dressed up as if he were at a ball.

"How spruce you are!" Alzugaray said to him.

"Yes, that's because they will come to receive me at the station."

"Honestly?"

"Yes."

"Ha...ha...ha...!" laughed Alzugaray.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Caesar, smiling.

"At your having arranged a reception and brought me along for a
witness."

"No, man, no," said Caesar; "I have arranged nothing. The workmen of the
Club will come down out of gratitude."

"Ah, that's it! Then there will be only a few."

At this juncture the car door opened and a man in the dirty clothes of a
mechanic appeared.

"Don Caesar Moncada?" he inquired.

"What is it?" said Caesar.

"I belong to the Castro Workmen's Club and I have come to welcome you
ahead of anybody else," and he held out his hand. "Greetings!"

"Greetings! Regards to the comrades," said Caesar, shaking his hand.

"Damn it, what enthusiasm!" murmured Alzugaray.

The employee disappeared. On arriving at the station, Alzugaray looked
out the window and saw with astonishment that the platform was full of
people.

As the car entered the covered area of the station, noisy applause broke
out. Caesar opened the door and took off his hat courteously.

"Hurrah for Moncada! Hurrah for the Deputy from Castro! Hurrah for
liberty!" they heard the shouts.

Caesar got out of the car, followed by Alzugaray, and found himself
surrounded by a lot of people. There were some workmen and peasants, but
the majority were comfortable citizens.

They all crowded around to grasp his hand.

Surrounded by this multitude, they left the station. There Caesar took
leave of all his acquaintances and got into a carriage with Alzugaray,
while hurrahs and applauses resounded.

"Eh? What did you think of the reception?" asked Caesar.

"Magnificent, my boy!"

"You can't say I behaved like a demagogue."

"On the contrary, you were too distant."

"They know I am like that and it doesn't astonish them."

Caesar had a rented house in Castro and the two friends went to it.
All morning and part of the afternoon committees kept coming from the
villages, who wanted to talk with Caesar and consult him about the
affairs of their respective municipalities.

INAUGURATION OF THE CLUB

In the evening the Workmen's Club was inaugurated. Nobody in Castro
talked of anything else. The Clerical element had advised all religious
persons to stay away from the meeting.

The large hall of the Club was profusely lighted; and by half-past six
was already completely full.

At seven the ceremony began. The president of the Club, a printer,
spoke, and told of Caesar's benefactions; then the Republican
bookseller, San Roman, give a discourse; and after him Caesar took up
the tale.

He explained his position in the Chamber in detail. The people listened
with some astonishment, doubtless wishing to find an opportune occasion
for applause, and not finding it.

Some of the old men put their hands to their ears, like a shell, so as
to hear better.

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