IX. CÆSAR AS DEPUTY
TRIPPING THEM UP
People who didn’t know Cæsar intimately used to ask one another: “What purpose could Moncada have had in getting elected Deputy? He never speaks, he takes no part in the big debates.”
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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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. Cæsar 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 Cæsar was only a theorist, incapable of quick decision and action.
Cæsar’s friendship was a convenience to the Minister, and the Minister’s to Cæsar. In his heart the Minister hated Cæsar, and Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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.
Cæsar 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 Cæsar’s exertions. The secretary of the municipality, the employees, all who were friends and adherents to the boss’s group that Don Platón 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 Cæsar 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.
Cæsar 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 protégé 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. Cæsar 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, Cæsar agreed to have his Papal title legalized.
At the end of a year and a half Cæsar had all the bosses of Castro in his fist.
“Suppressing the bosses in the district was easy,” Cæsar 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.”
Cæsar 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: “Señor Ramón, 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.
CÆSAR’S MANNER OF LIVING
Cæsar lived simply; he had a room in an hotel in the Carrera de San Jerónimo, 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 Cæsar as in an oracle. Cæsar 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.
Cæsar 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.
Cæsar would walk on by the winding road, and stop to look at the Cemetery of San Martín 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 Cæsar 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.
Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar. He knew where to find him and walked direct to the Calle de Galileo. At the house, they told him that Cæsar 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 Cæsar. “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 naïvely.”
“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 Cæsar.
“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, Cæsar. 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 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.
XI. THE PITFALL OF SINIGAGLIA
A COMMISSION FOR THE MINISTER
A few days later, during Carnival, the Minister of the Treasury presented himself at Cæsar’s hotel. The famous financier was a trifle nervous.
“Come along with me,” he said.
“Come on.”
They got into a motor, and the Minister suddenly asked:
“Could you go to Paris immediately?”
“There’s nothing to prevent. What is it to do?”
“You know that the great financier Dupont de Sarthe is studying out a plan for restoring the value of the currency of Spain.”
“Yes.”
“Well, today the Speaker asked me several times if it was ready. It is necessary for me to introduce it soon, as soon as possible, and along with the plan for restoring the currency, one for the suppression of the government tax.”
“The Speaker wishes to have these plans introduced?”
“Yes, he wishes them introduced at once.”
“That indicates that the Conservative situation is very strong,” said Cæsar.
“Obviously.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Go to Dupont de Sarthe and have him explain his scheme clearly, and tell you the difficulties; if he has an outline of it, have him give it to you; if not, have him give you his notes.”
“All right. Shall I go tonight?”
“If you can, it would be the best thing.” “There’s nothing to prevent. Take me back to the hotel and I will pack.”
The Minister told the chauffeur to go back to Cæsar’s house.
“As soon as you arrive, let me know by wire, and write to me explaining the scheme in the greatest possible detail.”
“Very good.”
“You will need money; I don’t know if I have any here,” said the Minister, feeling for his pocket-book.
“I have enough for the trip,” replied Cæsar. “But, as I might need some in Paris, it would not be a bad idea for you to open an account for me at a bank there, or else to give me a cheque.”
The Minister vacillated, then went into the hotel writing-room and signed a cheque on a Parisian banker in the Rue de Provence, which he handed to Cæsar.
“See you on your return,” he said.
“Good-bye.”
Cæsar called a servant and bade him:
“Telephone to my friend Alzugaray. You know his number. Tell him to be here inside an hour.”
“Very good, sir.”
This arranged, Cæsar went to the main door and saw that the Minister’s motor was headed for down town. Immediately he took a carriage and went to the Chamber. The undersecretary of the Speaker was a friend of his; sometimes he gave him advice about playing the market.
Cæsar looked him up, and when he found him, said:
“How are we getting on?”
“All right, man,” replied the undersecretary.
“Come over here, so I can see you in the light,” said Cæsar, and taking him by the hand, he looked into his eyes.
“It’s true,” said the undersecretary, laughing, “that the situation is not very strong.”
“What is the danger?”
“The only danger is your friend, the famous financier. He is the one who could play us a dirty trick.”
“Do you suspect what it could be?” “No. Not clearly. You must know better than any one else.”
“I have just seen the Minister, and he gave me the impression of being satisfied.”
“Then everything is all right. But I haven’t much confidence.”
Cæsar left the undersecretary, went out of the Chamber, and returned home in the carriage. Alzugaray was waiting in the entry for him.
Cæsar called to him from the carriage:
“I am going to Paris,” he told him, “to spend a few days.”
“Good.”
“I must draw out what money I have in the Bank.”
“Let’s go there now.”
They went to the Bank, to the paying teller, and Cæsar drew out twenty thousand pesetas of his few months’ winnings on the market.
“You are not going to play at all, this month?” asked Alzugaray.
“No, not this month.”
They left the Bank.
“I will wire you my address in Paris,” said Cæsar.
“Very good. And nothing is to be done?”
“No. That is to say, my partner and I are not going to play. Nevertheless, I am going to leave you two thousand pesetas, and if you think well, you can use it as you choose.”
“All right,” said Alzugaray, pleased at Cæsar’s confidence in his talents for speculation.
“In case I need any information which had best not be public,” Cæsar went on, “I will wire you in code. Do you know the Aran code?”
“No.”
“I will give it to you, directly, at my house. If you receive a telegram from me from Paris, beginning with your name: ‘Ignacio, do thus or so,’ you will know it is in the code.”
“I follow you. What’s up?”
“An affair the Minister is putting through, which we will not let him pull off without getting our share out of him. I will explain it to you, when I come back.”
“How long do you expect to be there?”
“Two weeks at most; but perhaps I’ll come right back.”
INDUCTION
On arriving at the train, Cæsar bought all the evening papers. In one of them he found an article entitled: The Projects of the Minister of Finance, and he read it carefully.
The writer said that the Minister of Finance had never been so closely identified with the Conservative Cabinet as at that moment; that he had plans for a number of projects for the salvation of the Spanish Treasury, which he would briefly explain.
“It’s a witty joke,” thought Cæsar.
He was too well acquainted with the market and monetary affairs in general, too well acquainted with the sterling worth of the famous financier not to understand the idea of his scheme.
Cæsar knew that the Minister not only was not on good terms with his colleagues in the Government, but was at sword’s points with them, and was moreover disposed to give up his portfolio from one day to the next.
Whence came this haste to launch the plan for the suppression of the government tax and restoring the value of the currency? Why did he send him, Cæsar, on this errand, and not somebody in the Department?
His haste to launch the plan was easy to comprehend.
The Minister was about to give a decisive impulse to all stocks; the suppression of the affidavit and the restoring the value of the currency would shove up domestic paper in Spain and foreign stocks in France to extraordinary heights. Then a difficulty with the Speaker, a moment of anger, such as was to be expected in a character like the Minister’s, would oblige him to offer his resignation... prices would take a terrible drop, and the Minister, having already planned for a big bear scoop in Paris, would clear some hundreds of thousands of francs and keep his reputation as a patriot and an excellent financier.
Why was he sending Cæsar? No doubt because he suspected his secretary, whom he had probably given similar missions to previously.
Cæsar knew the Minister well. He had described him in his notes in these words: “He is dark and brachicephalic; a man of tradition and good common sense; average intellect, astute, a good father and a good Catholic. He believes himself cleverer than he really is. His two leading passions are vanity and money.”
Cæsar knew the Minister, but the Minister did not know Cæsar. He imagined him to be a man of brilliant intellect, but incapable of grasping realities.
After thinking a long while over the business, while he was undressing to go to bed in the sleeping-car, Cæsar said:
“There is only one thing to find out. Who is the Minister’s broker in Paris, and who is his banker? With Yarza’s assistance that is not going to be difficult for me to ascertain. When we know what broker he works through and what banker, the affair is finished.”
Having concluded thus, he got into his berth, put out the light, and lay there dozing.
IN PARIS
On arriving at Paris next evening, he left his luggage in the hotel at the Quai d’Orsay station. He wired his address to the Minister and to Alzugaray, and went out at once to look for Carlos Yarza. He was unable to find him until very late at night. He explained to his friend what had brought him, and Yarza told him he was at his disposition.
“When you need me, let me know.”
“Good.”
Cæsar went off to bed, and the next morning he proceeded to the banking-house in the Rue de Provence where he was to cash the cheque handed him by the Minister of the Treasury.
He entered the bank and asked for the president. A clerk came out and Cæsar explained to him that on arriving at his hotel he had missed a cheque for three thousand francs from the Spanish Minister of Finance. He introduced himself as a Deputy, as an intimate friend of the Minister’s, and behaved as if much vexed. The department manager told him that they could do no more than take the number and not pay the cheque if anybody presented it for payment.
“You don’t handle the Minister’s business here?” asked Cæsar.
“No, only very rarely,” said the manager.
“You don’t know who his regular banker is?”
“No; I will ask, because it is very possible that the chief may know.”
The clerk went out and came back a little later, informing Cæsar that they said the house the Spanish Minister of Finance did his banking with was Recquillart and Company, Rue Bergère.
The street was near at hand, and it took Cæsar only a very little while to get there. The building was dark, lighted by electricity even in the daytime, one of those classic corners where Jewish usurers amass great fortunes.
There was no question of employing the same ruse as in the Rue de Provence, and Cæsar thought of another.
He asked for M. Recquillart, and out came a heavy gentleman, a blond going grey, with a rosy cranium and gold eyeglasses.
Cæsar told him he was secretary to a rich Spanish miner, who was then in Paris. That gentleman wanted to try some business on the Bourse, but was unable to come to the bank because he was ill of the dropsy.
“Who recommended our house to this gentleman?” asked the banker.
“I think it was the Minister of Finance, in Spain.”
“Ah, yes, very good, very good! And how are we to communicate with him? Through you?”
“No. He told me he would prefer to have a clerk who knows Spanish come to him and take his orders.” “That is all right; one shall go. We happen to have a Spanish clerk. At what hour shall he come?” said M. Recquillart, taking out a pencil.
“At nine in the evening.”
“For whom shall he ask?”
“For Señor Pérez Cuesta.”
“At what hotel?”
“The one in the Quai d’Orsay station.”
“Very good indeed.”
Cæsar bowed; and after he had sent Yarza a telephone message, making an appointment for after the Bourse at the Café Riche, he took an automobile and went to hunt for the great financier Dupont de Sarthe, who lived on the other bank of the Seine, near the Montparnasse station.
He had a large, sumptuous office, with an enormous library. Two secretaries were at work at small tables placed in front of the balconies, and the master wrote at a big Ministerial table full of books. When Cæsar introduced himself, the great economist rose, offered his hand, and in a sharp voice with a Parisian accent, asked what he desired.
Cæsar told him the Minister’s request, and the great economist became indignant.
“Does that gentleman imagine that I am at his bidding, to begin a piece of work and stop it according as it suits him, and take it up again when he orders? No, tell him no. Tell him the scheme he asked me for is not done, not finished; that I cannot give him any data or any information at all.”
In view of the great man’s indignation, Cæsar made no reply, but left the house. He lunched at his hotel, gave orders that if any one brought a letter or message for Señor Pérez Cuesta they should receive it, and went again to the Rue de Provence, where he said he had had the good luck to find his cheque.
With all these goings and comings it got to be three o’clock, and Cæsar turned his steps toward the Café Riche. Yarza was there and the two talked a long while. Yarza knew of the manoeuvres of the Minister of Finance, and he gave his opinion about them with great knowledge of the business questions. He also knew Recquillart’s clerk, the Catalan Pujol, of whom he had not a very good opinion.
The two friends made an engagement for the next day and Cæsar hurried to his hotel. He wrote to the Minister, telling him what the fundamentals of Dupont de Sarthe’s project were; and between his own ideas and those Yarza had expounded to him, he was able to draw up a complete enough plan.
“The Minister being a man who knows nothing about all this,” thought Cæsar, “when he understands that the ideas I expound are those of the celebrated Dupont de Sarthe, will find them wonderful.”
RECQUILLART’S CLERK
After having written his letter and taken a little tea, he lay stretched out on a divan, until they brought him word that a young man was asking for Señor Pérez Cuesta.
“Send him up.”
Señor Puchol entered, a dark little man who wore a morning-coat and had a hat with a flat brim edged with braid.
Cæsar greeted him affably and made him sit down.
“But are you not Spanish?” Cæsar asked him.
“Yes, I was born in Barcelona.”
“I should have taken you for a Frenchman.”
“In dress and everything else, I am a complete Parisian.”
“This poor man is full of vanity,” thought Cæsar. “All the better.” He immediately began to explain the affair.
“Look,” he said, “the whole matter is this: the Spanish Minister of Finance, my chief, has dealings on a large scale with the Recquillart bank; you know that, and so do I; but the Recquillarts, besides charging an inflated commission, interfere in his buying and selling with so little cleverness, that whenever he buys, it turns out that he bought for more than the market price of the security, and whenever he sells, he sells lower than the quotation. The Minister does not wish to break off with the Recquillarts....”
“He can’t, you meant to say,” replied Puchol, in an insinuating manner. “Since you know the situation...” responded Cæsar.
“Oughtn’t I to?”
“Since you know the whole situation,” continued Cæsar, “I will say that he cannot indeed break off with the Recquillarts, but the Minister would like to do business with somebody else, without passing under the yoke of the chief.”
“He ought to make arrangements with another broker here,” said Puchol.
“Ah, certainly. I have brought some twenty thousand francs with that object.”
“Then there is no difficulty.”
“But we need a go-between. The Minister doesn’t care to turn to the first banker at hand and explain all his combinations to him.”
“That’s where I come in.”
“Good, but we must know beforehand how much you are to get. Your demands may be such that it would be better for him to stick to the Recquillarts.”
“Recquillart gets ten percent of the profits, besides a small commission as broker. I will take five.”
“It’s a good deal.”
“I will not accept less; the arrangement might cost me my career. Consult him....”
“If I could consult him! The truth is that there may not be time. We will accept five.”
“What does the Minister wish to speculate in? The same things as with Recquillart? Foreign Loans and Northerns?”
“Exactly. Just as before.”
“All right. The investment, as you can see, is safe,” Puchol continued. “I would put my fortune in it, if I had one. There are a lot of newspapers bought; all the financial reviews are predicting a rise.”
The clerk took out a folded review and handed it to Cæsar, who read:
“We are assured that the plan of the Spanish Minister of Finance must make foreign securities rise considerably. Northerns will follow the same path, and there are indications that their rise will be very rapid and will cover several points.”
“The field is going to be covered with corpses,” said Cæsar.
Señor Puchol burst out laughing; Cæsar invited him to dine with him, and gave him a sumptuous dinner with good wines.
Puchol was absolutely vain, and he boasted of his triumphs on the Bourse; it was he who guided Recquillart in the dealings he had with Spaniards, in which they had plucked various incautious persons.
“How much will the Minister’s operation amount to?” Cæsar asked him.
“Nobody can prevent his making three hundred thousand, at the least. With the increase he has ordered you to make, it will come to six hundred thousand. We will gobble up the two points it falls.”
“I don’t know if there may have been some new order while I was in the train coming to Paris,” said Cæsar.
“No, his operation is all arranged,” replied Puchol, and he got out a note-book and consulted it. “It will be like giving away bread. We are going to sell ten millions of Foreigns and five hundred Northerns on the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the twentieth.”
“And the scoop will take place?” asked Cæsar.
“On the 27th.”
“So that on those days we shall sell just as much again?”
“And we shall sell much dearer.”
They dropped that point and talked of other things.
Señor Puchol was a literary man and was writing a symbolistic drama which he wanted to read to Cæsar.
At twelve they said good-night. Puchol was to tell his chief that he had not been able to do any business with Señor Pérez Cuesta. In respect to the other matter, they had an engagement for ten the next morning at a café in the neighbourhood of the Bourse.
There were no great difficulties to overcome. They saw a broker named Müller. Cæsar entrusted him with his twenty thousand francs, and hinted that the speculation was being made for some rich people, who would have no objection to making up any loss, if he should exceed the twenty thousand francs.
The broker told him he could play whatsoever sum he wished.
As Cæsar had not entire confidence in Puchol, and did not care either to tell the broker that he was to begin only when the stocks fell, he brought Yarza into the deal.
Puchol was to say to Yarza: “The Minister has given the order to sell”; and Yarza would first verify this, if he could verify it; then he would tell the broker: “Sell.” It might go as far as handling twenty millions of Foreigns and up to a thousand of Northerns.
In order to get all the ends well tied up, Cæsar had to get from one place to another without a moment’s rest.
IN MADRID
The trap being set, Cæsar took the train, worn out and feverish. He arrived at Madrid, took a bath, and went to see the Minister; and after the interview went to his house in the Calle de Galileo and spent two days in bed, alone in the completest silence.
The third day Alzugaray arrived, anxious.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?” he asked.
“No. How did you know I was here?”
“Your janitress came to my house to tell me you were in bed.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with me, boy.”
“You should know that there’s a splendid chance to make some money, today.”
“My dear fellow!”
“Yes, and we haven’t done anything in the market, except one miserable little operation.”
“And why do you think there is such a good chance?”
“Because there is, because everybody can see it,” said Alzugaray. “Prices are going to rise with this project of the Minister of Finance’s; they are going in for a big deal; everybody has been indiscreet, without meaning to be, and people on the market are buying and buying. Everybody is sure of a rise... and we are doing nothing.”
“We are doing nothing,” repeated Cæsar.
“But it is absurd.”
“What’s the date?”
“The twenty-second.”
“The evening of the twenty-seventh we will talk.”
“How mysterious you are, boy.”
“I can’t tell you any more now. If you have bought anything, sell it.”
“But why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“All right, when you get on these sibylline airs, I say no more. Another thing. Various gentlemen have come to tell me that they wanted to play the market; they have heard that it is about to go up....”
“Who were they?”
“Among others, Amparito’s father and Don Calixto García Guerrero.”
“If they wish to give security, tell our broker, and I will sell them anything they want to buy.”
“Really?”
“Really. I have my reasons for doing it.”
“This time we are all going to make, except you.”
“Dear Ignacio, I am at Sinigaglia.”
“What does that mean?”
“If you have a moment free, read the history of the Borgias,” murmured Cæsar, turning over in bed.
The next few days Cæsar lived in constant intranquillity. Yarza telegraphed him, saying that they had done the whole operation. On the 27th, in the afternoon, Cæsar wandered toward the Calle de Alcalá; Madrid wore its normal aspect; the newspaper boys were calling no extras. More worried than he liked, Cæsar went for his walk by the Canalillo and then shut himself in his house. In the evening he went out breathless and bought the newspapers. His first impression was one of panic; there was nothing; on reaching the third page he uttered an exclamation and smiled. The Minister of Finance had just offered his resignation.
The next morning Cæsar went to the hotel in the Carrera de San Jerónimo where he had a room, and in the afternoon to the Chamber. He telephoned to Alzugaray to come and see him after the exchange closed.
Alzugaray arrived, looking pale, in company with Amparito’s father, Don Calixto, and the broker. They were all wretched. The news was horrible. Domestics had fallen two points and were still falling; in Paris the Foreign Loan had fallen more than four; Northern was not falling but tumbling to the bottom of a precipice.
“Did you know that the Minister was going to present his resignation?” asked the broker, in despair.
“I, no. How should I know it? Even the Minister himself couldn’t have known it yesterday. But I had scientific data for not believing in that rise.”
“I am ruined,” exclaimed the broker. “I have lost my savings.”
Don Calixto and Amparito’s father had also lost very large sums, which Cæsar won, and they were disconsolate.
When they were gone and only Alzugaray remained, he said to Cæsar:
“And you have played in Paris, too, probably.”
“Yes.”
“On a fall?”
“Certainly.”
“You are a bandit.”
“This game, my dear Ignacio, based solely on events, is not a speculator’s game, but is, simply, a hold-up. The other day I told you: ‘I am at Sinigaglia.’ Did you read the history of Cæsar Borgia?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what he did at Sinigaglia to the condottieri, to Vittellozzo, Oliverotto da Fermo, and his other two captain-adventurers, I have done to the Minister of Finance, to Don Calixto, Amparito’s father, and many others.” And Cæsar explained his game. Alzugaray was amazed.
“How much have you made?”
“From what these telegrams say, I think I shall go over half a million francs. From those beginners, Don Calixto and Amparito’s father, I think I have made forty thousand pesetas.”
“What an atrocious person! If the Minister should find out about your game.”
“Let him find out. I am not worried. The famous financier, in addition to being an idiot, is an honourable rogue. He plays the market with the object of enriching himself and leaving a fortune to his repugnant children. I, on the other hand, play it with a patriotic object.”
The matter didn’t rest there: Puchol, carried away by an easily comprehensible desire for lucre, and thinking it brought the same amount to the famous financier whether he played through Recquillart or through Muller, had made the last bid for the Minister through the new broker.
The Minister’s winnings diminished considerably and Cæsar’s gained in proportion. The illustrious financier, on learning what had happened, shrieked to heaven; but he said nothing, because of the secret transaction they had had together. Puchol was dismissed by Recquillart, and with the thirty thousand francs he collected from Cæsar he set up for himself.
The Minister, a little later, went to Biarritz, to collect his share. On his return he sent Cæsar a note, unsigned and written on the type-writer. It read:
“I did not think you had enough ability for cheating. Another time I will be more careful.”
Cæsar replied in the same manner, as follows:
“When it’s a question of a man who, besides being an idiot, is a poor creature and a cheat like you, I have no scruple in robbing him first and despising him afterwards.”
Some days later Cæsar published an article attacking the retiring Minister of Finance and disclosing a lot of data and figures.
The Minister answered with a letter in a Conservative paper, in which he denied everything Cæsar alleged, and said, with contempt, that questions of Finance were not to be treated by “amateurs.”
Cæsar said that he considered himself insulted by the Minister’s words, whom, however, he admired as a financier; and a few months later he joined the Liberal party and was received with open arms by its famous chief.
XII. LOCAL STRUGGLES THE WATER SUPPLY
Cæsar had money in abundance, and he decided to exert a decisive influence on Castro Duro.
For a long while he had had various projects planned.
He thought it was an appropriate moment to put them into practice.
The first that he tried to carry out was the water supply.
The Municipality had a plan for this in the archives, and Cæsar asked for it to study. The scheme was big and expensive; the stream it was necessary to harness so as to bring it to Castro, was far away. Besides it was requisite to construct a piping system or an aqueduct.
Cæsar consulted an engineer, who told him:
“From a business point of view, this is very poor. Even if you use the superfluous water, in a factory for instance, it will give you no results.”
“What shall we do then?”
“The simplest thing would be to put in a pumping plant and pump up the river water.”
“But it is infected water, full of impurities.”
“It can be purified by filtering. That’s not difficult.”
Cæsar laid this plan before the Municipality, and it was decided to carry it out, as the most practical and practicable. A company was formed to pump up the water, and work was begun.