My esthetic critics say to me: "You have not perfected your style, you have not developed the technique of your novels. You can scarcely be said to be literate." I shrug my shoulders and reply: "Are you sure?" My social critics reproach me for my negative and destructive views. I do not know how to create anything, I am incapable of enthusiasm, I cannot describe life, and so on. This feeling seems logical enough, if it is sincere, if it is honest, and I accept it as such, and it does not offend me. But, as some of my esthetic critics tell me: "You are not an artist, you do not know how to write," without feeling any deep conviction on the subject, but rather fearing that perhaps I may be an artist after all and that at last somebody may come to think so, so among my critics who pose as defenders of society, there are those who are influenced by motives which are purely utilitarian. I am reminded of servants shouting at a man picking flowers over the garden wall, or an apple from the orchard as he passes, who raise their voices as high as possible so as to make their officiousness known. They shout so that their masters will hear. "How dare that rascal pick flowers from the garden? How dare he defy us and our masters? Shall a beggar, who is not respectable, tell us that our laws are not laws, that our honours are not honours, and that we are a gang of accomplished idiots?" Yes, that is just what I tell them, and I shall continue to do so as long as it is the truth. Shout, you lusty louts in gaudy liveries, bark you little lap-dogs, guard the gates, you government inspectors and carabineers! I shall look into your garden, which is also my garden, I shall make off with anything from it that I am able, and I shall say what I please. TO A MEMBER OF SEVERAL ACADEMIES A certain Basque writer, one Señor de Loyarte, who is a member of several academies, and Royal Commissioner of Education, assails me violently upon social grounds in a book which he has published, although the attack is veiled as purely literary. Señor de Loyarte is soporific as a general rule, but in his polite sortie against me, he is more amusing than is usual. His malice is so keen that it very nearly causes him to appear intelligent. In literature, Señor de Loyarte--and why should Señor de Loyarte not be associated with literature--presents the figure of a fat, pale, flabby boy in a priests' school, skulking under the skirts of a Jesuit Father. Señor de Loyarte, like those little, chubby-winged cherubs on sacristy ceilings, shakes his arrowlet at me and lets fling a _billet doux_. Señor de Loyarte says I smack of the cadaver, that I am a plagiarist, an atheist, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, and more to boot.