Schmitz had studied in Switzerland and in Germany, and also had lived
for a long time in the north of Russia.
He was familiar with what in my judgment are the two most interesting
countries of Europe.
Paul Schmitz was a timid person of an inquiring turn of mind, whose
youth had been tempestuous. I made a number of excursions with Schmitz
to Toledo, to El Paular and to the Springs of Urbion; a year or two
later we visited Switzerland several times together.
Schmitz was like an open window through which I looked out upon an
unknown world. I held long conversations with him upon life, literature,
art and philosophy.
I recall that I took him one Sunday afternoon to the home of Don Juan
Valera.
When Schmitz and I arrived, Valera had just settled down for the
afternoon to listen to his daughter, who was reading aloud one of the
latest novels of Zola.
Valera, Schmitz and I sat chatting for perhaps four or five hours. There
was no subject that we could all agree upon. Valera and I were no sooner
against the Swiss than the Swiss and Valera were against me, or the
Swiss and I against Valera, and then each flew off after his own
opinion.
Valera, who saw that the Swiss and I were anarchists, said it was beyond
his comprehension how any man could conceive of a state of general well
being.
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