"
This cynically cheap joke might have fallen appropriately from the
tongues of the majority of Spanish politicians. Among these male
_bailarinas_, nearly all of whom date back to the Revolution of
September, we may find, indeed, some men of austere character: Salmeron,
Pi y Margall and Costa. Salmeron was an inimitable actor, but an actor
who was sincere in his part. He was the most marvellous orator that I
have ever heard.
As a philosopher, he was of no account, and as a politician he was a
calamity.
Pi y Margall, whom I met once in his own home where I went in company
with Azorin, was no more a politician or a philosopher than was
Salmeron. He was a journalist, a popularizer of other men's ideas,
gifted with a style at once clear and concise. Pi y Margall was sincere,
enamoured of ideas, and took but little thought of himself.
As to Costa, I confess that he was always antipathetic to me. Like
Nakens, he was a man who lived upon the estimation in which he was held
by others, pretending all the while that he attached no importance to it
whatever. Aguirre Metaca once told me that while he was connected with a
paper in Saragossa, he had solicited an interview with Costa, and
thereupon Costa wrote the interview himself, referring to himself here
and there in it as the Lion of Graus.
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