THE POLITICAL POWERS OF CASTRO
“During our promenade Don Calixto talked to me of the immense good he has done for the town and of the ingratitude he constantly receives for it.
“While I listened, I recalled a little periodical in Madrid which had no other object than to furnish bombs at reasonable prices, and which said, speaking of a manufacturer in Catalonia: ‘Señor So-and-so is the most powerful boss in the province of Tarragona, and even at that there are those who dispute his bossdom.’
“Don Calixto is astonished that when he has done the Castrians the honour to make them loans at eighty or ninety percent, they are not fond of him. After the garden we saw the house; I won’t tell you anything about it, I don’t want you to accuse me again of being a Ruskinian.
“When we reached the dining-room Don Calixto said: ‘I am going to present you to my family.’
“Thereupon, entrance, ceremonies, bows on my part, smiles... toute la lyre. Don Calixto’s wife is an insignificant fat woman; the two daughters insipid, ungainly, not at all pretty; and with them was a little girl of about fifteen or sixteen, a niece of Don Calixto’s, a veritable little devil, named Amparo. This Amparo is a tiny, flat-faced creature, with black eyes, and extraordinarily vivacious and mischievous. During dinner I succeeded in irritating the child.
“I talked gravely with Don Calixto and his wife and daughters about Madrid, about the theatrical companies that come to this town, about their acquaintances at the Capital.
“The child interrupted us, bringing us the cat and putting a little bow on him, and then making him walk on the key-board of the piano.
“At half-past one we went to the dining-room. Dinner was kilometres long; and the conversation turned on Rome and Paris. Don Calixto drank more and more, I, too; and at the end of the meal there was a bit of toasting, from which my political intentions were made manifest.