In
a shop on the Plaza de Santa Ana, Rodriguez Serra asked the proprietor,
not altogether without a touch of malice:
"What do you think of this book?"
"It would be all right," answered the proprietor, who did not know me,
"if anybody knew who Martinez Ruiz was; and who is this Pio Baroja?"
Senor Ruiz Contreras says that he made me known, but the fact is that
nobody knew me in those days; Senor Ruiz Contreras flatters himself that
he did me a great favour by publishing my articles, at a cost to me, at
the very least, of two or three _duros_ apiece.
If this is to be a patron of letters, I should like to patronize half
the planet.
As for literary influence, Ruiz Contreras never had any upon me. He was
an admirer of Arsene Houssage, Paul Bourget, and other novelists with a
sophisticated air, who never meant anything to me. The theatre also
obsessed him, a malady which I have never suffered, and he was a devotee
of the poet, Zorrilla, in which respect I was unable to share his
enthusiasm, nor can I do so today. Finally, he was a political
reactionary, while I am a man of radical tendencies.
XIII
PARISIAN DAYS
For the past twenty years I have been in the habit of visiting Paris,
not for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the city--to see it once
is enough; nor do I go in order to meet French authors, as, for the most
part, they consider themselves so immeasurably above Spaniards that
there is no way in which a self-respecting person can approach them.
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