"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. Azorin 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 Goni, when
we happened on Silverio Lanza, who took us to the Cafe de San Sebastian,
where we sat down in the section facing the Plazuela del Angel. It was a
company that was singularly assorted.
Silverio reverted to the theme that women should be handled with the
rod. Gil Campos proceeded to laugh, being gifted with an ironic vein,
and made fun of him. For my part, I was tired of it, so I said to Lanza:
"See here, Don Juan" (his real name was Juan Bautista Amoros), "what you
are giving us now is literature, and poor literature at that. You are
not, and I am not, able to violate law and women as we see fit. That may
be all very well for Caesars and Napoleons and Borgias, but you are a
respectable gentleman who lives in a little house at Getafe with your
wife, and I am a poor man myself, who manages as best he may to make a
living.
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