Cæsar, on learning this, smiled bitterly and said:
“They are not obliged to be less of brutes than the bourgeoisie.”
From Madrid Cæsar continued sending maps for the school, engravings, bas-reliefs, a moving-picture machine.
Dr. Ortigosa and his friends went every day to look over the work.
A year from the beginning of work, the boys and girls’ school was opened. Dr. Ortigosa succeeded in arranging that two of the three male teachers they procured were Free-Thinkers. One of them, a poor man who had lived a dog’s life in some town in Andalusia, was reputed to be an anarchist. They appointed three female teachers too, two old, and one young, a very attractive and clever girl, who came from a town near Bilboa.
Cæsar took part in the opening, and spoke, and received enthusiastic applause. Despite which, Cæsar felt ill at ease among his old friends; in his heart he knew that he was deserting them. He now thought it unlikely, almost impossible, that that town should succeed in emerging from obscurity and meaning something in modern life. Moreover, he doubted about himself, began to think that he was not a hero, began to believe that he had assigned himself a role beyond his powers; and this precisely at the moment when the town had the most faith in him.
XV. “DRIVELLER” JUAN AND “THE CUB-SLUT”
A MURDER
“Driveller” Juan, the town dandy protected by Father Martín, had from childhood distinguished himself by his cowardice and by his tendency to bullying. His appearance was that of an idiot; people said he drivelled; whence they gave him the nickname of “Driveller” Juan. He lived by pretending to be terrible in the gambling houses, and bragged of having been in prison several times.