He called me a country-man, said that my bones were misshapen, and then stated that glory does not go hand in hand with tuberculosis. Poor Alejandro! He was sound at heart, an eloquent child of the Mediterranean, born to orate in the lands of the sun, but he took it into his head that it was his duty to make himself over into the likeness of one of the putrid products of the North. SEMI-HATRED ON THE PART OF SILVERIO LANZA A mutual friend, Antonio Gil Campos, introduced me to Silverio Lanza. Silverio Lanza was a man of great originality, endowed with an enormous fund of thwarted ambition and pride, which was only natural, as he was a notably fine writer who had not yet met with success, nor even with the recognition which other younger writers enjoyed. The first time that I saw Lanza, I remember how his eyes sparkled when I told him that I liked his books. Nobody ever paid any attention to him in those days. Silverio Lanza was a singular character. At times he seemed benevolent, and then again there were times when he would appear malignant in the extreme. His ideas upon the subject of literature were positively absurd. When I sent him _Sombre Lives_, he wrote me an unending letter in which he attempted to convince me that I ought to append a lesson or moral, to every tale. If I did not wish to write them, he offered to do it himself. Silverio thought that literature was not to be composed like history, according to Quintilian's definition, _ad narrandum_, but _ad probandum_. When I gave him _The House of Aizgorri_, he was outraged by the optimistic conclusion of the book, and advised me to change it. According to his theory, if the son of the Aizgorri family came to a bad end, the daughter ought to come to a bad end also. Being of a somewhat fantastical turn of mind, Silverio Lanza was full of political projects that were extraordinary. I remember that one of his ideas was that we ought all to write the King a personal note of congratulation upon his attaining his majority. "It is the most revolutionary thing that can be done at such a time," insisted Lanza, apparently quite convinced. "I am unable to see it," I replied. Azorín and myself were of the opinion that it was a ridiculous proceeding which would never produce the desired result. Another of Lanza's hobbies was an aggressive misogyny. "Baroja, my friend," he would say to me, "you are too gallant and respectful in your novels with the ladies. Women are like laws, they are to be violated." I laughed at him. One day I was walking with my friend Gil Campos and my cousin Goñi, when we happened on Silverio Lanza, who took us to the Café de San Sebastián, where we sat down in the section facing the Plazuela del Angel. It was a company that was singularly assorted.