My father had friends who were not above going down into our cellar on
such occasions so as better to observe the manoeuvres of the cat.
TWO LUNATICS
After the war, I used to stroll as a boy with my mother and brothers to
the Castillo de la Mota on Sundays. It was truly a beautiful walk, which
will soon be ruined utterly by the citizens of San Sebastian. We looked
out to sea from the Castillo and then we talked with the guard. We often
met a lunatic there, who was in the care of a servant. As soon as he
caught sight of us children, the lunatic was happy at once, but if a
woman came near him, he ran away and flattened himself against the
walls, kicking and crying out: "Blind dog! Blind dog!"
I remember also having seen a young woman, who was insane, in a great
house which we used to visit in those days at Loyola. She gesticulated
and gazed continually into a deep well, where a half moon of black water
was visible far below. These lunatics, one at the Castillo and the other
in that great house, haunted my imagination as a child.
THE HAWK
My latest recollection of San Sebastian is of a hawk, which we
brought home to our house from the Castillo.
Some soldiers gave us the hawk when it was still very young, and it grew
up and became accustomed to living indoors.
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