Whether politicians or authors, the Spanish revolutionists always smack to my mind of the property room, and especially is this true of the authors. Zozaya, Morote and Dicenta have passed for many years now as terrible men, both destructive and great innovators. But how ridiculous! Zozaya, like Dicenta, has never done anything but manipulate the commonplace, failing to impart either lightness or novelty to it, as have Valera and Anatole France, succeeding only on the other hand in making it more plumbeous and indigestible.

Speaking of Luis Morote, against whom I urge nothing as a man, he has always been a bugbear to me, the personification of dullness, of vulgarity, of everything that lacks interest and charm. I can conceive nothing lower than an article by Morote.

"What talent that man has! What a revolutionary personality!" they used to say in Valencia, and once the janitor at the Club added: "To think I knew that man when he was only this high!" And he held out his hand about a metre above the ground.

Spain has never produced any revolutionists. Don NicolÁs EstÉvanez, who imagined himself an anarchist, would fly into a rage if he read an article which concealed a gallicism in it.

"Do not bother your head about gallicisms," I used to say to him. "What do they matter, anyway?"

No, we have never had any revolutionists in Spain. That is, we have had only one: Ferrer.

He was certainly not a man of great mind. When he talked, he was on the level of Morote and Zozaya, which is nothing more nor less than the level of everybody else; but when it came to action, he did amount to something, and that something was dangerous.