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

CÆsar had found a partner to play the market for him, a Bilboan capitalist, whom he had convinced of the correctness of his system. SeÑor Salazar had deposited, in CÆsar’s name, thirty thousand dollars. With this sum CÆsar 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. CÆsar gave his orders by telephone, and Alzugaray communicated them to the broker.

Alzugaray often went to see CÆsar 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,” CÆsar 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 CÆsar’s speculations, Alzugaray would ask him:

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

“Pshaw!” CÆsar 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!”’ CÆsar 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 cÉntimos, 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 CÆsar, by reasoning, could arrive at the glimmering of an inductive and deductive method, where others saw no more than chance.

CÆSAR BEGINS HIS TASK

With the money he made on the market, CÆsar 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, CÆsar 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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar’s side and promised to vote for him in the coming election.

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

“No; why should I?” CÆsar 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 CÆsar 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. CÆsar 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 CÆsar could not but promise his participation in the inauguration.

“Would you like to come to Castro?” CÆsar 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. CÆsar 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 CÆsar, 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 CÆsar.

“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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar, smiling.

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

“No, man, no,” said CÆsar; “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 CÆsar Moncada?” he inquired.

“What is it?” said CÆsar.

“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 CÆsar, 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. CÆsar 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.

CÆsar 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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar.

“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.”

CÆsar 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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar’s benefactions; then the Republican bookseller, San RomÁn, give a discourse; and after him CÆsar 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.

Next, CÆsar spoke about life in Castro, and pointed out the town’s needs.

“You have here,” he said, “three fundamental problems, as is the case with almost all towns in the interior of Spain. First: water. You have neither good drinking water, nor enough water for irrigation. For want of drinkable water, the mortality of Castro is high; for want of irrigation, you cannot cultivate more than a very small zone, under good conditions. For that reason water must be brought here, and an irrigation canal begun. Second problem: subsistence. Here, as in the whole of Castile, there are people who corner the grain market and raise the price of wheat, and people who corner the necessities of life and put up their prices as high as they feel like. To prevent this, it is necessary for the Municipality to establish a public granary which shall regulate prices. For, want of that, the people are condemned to hunger, and people that do not eat can neither work nor be free. Third problem: means of transport. You have the railway here, but you have neither good highways nor good byways, and transportation is most difficult. I, for my part, will do all I can to keep the federal government from neglecting this region, but we must also stir up the little municipalities to take care of their roads.

“These three are questions that must be settled as soon as possible.

“Water, subsistence, transportation; those are not matters of luxury, but of necessity, matters of life. They belong to what may be called the politics of bread.

“I cannot make the reforms alone; first, because I have not the means; next, because even supposing I had, if I must leave these improvements in a township that would not look after them, not take care of them, they would soon disappear; they would be like the canals dug by the Moors and afterwards allowed to fill up through the neglect of the Christians. That is what politics are needed for, to convince reactionaries.

“At the same time, looking toward the future, let us start the school, which I should like to see not merely a primary school, but also a school for working-men.

“Let us endeavour, too, to turn the field of San Roque into a park.”

After explaining his program, CÆsar called on all progressive men who had liberal ideas and loved their city, to collaborate in his work.

When he ended his speech, all the audience applauded violently. Alzugaray was able to verify the fact that the majority of them had not understood what CÆsar was saying. “They didn’t understand anything. A few sparkling phrases would have pleased them much better.”

“Ah, of course. But that makes no difference,” replied CÆsar. “They will get used to it.”

The inauguration over, the bookseller, San RomÁn, Dr. Ortigosa, SeÑor Camacho, who was the pharmacist that called himself an inventor of explosives, and some others, met in the office of the Club, and talked with great enthusiasm of the transformation that was obviously taking place at Castro.