things where everybody else saw only contingencies without any possible
law.

Caesar accompanied Yarza to the Bourse and was amazed and stirred at
seeing the enormous activity there.

Yarza cleared away the innumerable doubts that occurred to the boy.

In the short time Caesar spent in Paris he came to a most important
conclusion, which was that in this life one had to fight terribly to get
anywhere.

One day, on awakening in the shabby little room where he lodged, he
found that the arms of a very smart woman were around his neck. It was
Laura, very contented and joyful to surprise her madcap brother.

"Mamma is alarmed," Laura told him. "What are you doing here all this
time? Are you in love?" "I? Bah!"

"Then what have you been doing?"

"I've been going to the Bourse."

SOUNDING-LINES IN LIFE

Laura burst out laughing, and she accompanied her brother back to
Valencia. Caesar's mother wished the lad to take his law course there,
but Caesar decided to do it in Madrid.

"A provincial capital is an insupportable place," he said.

Caesar went to Madrid and rented a study and a bed-room, cheap and
unrestricted.

He boarded in one house and lodged at another. Thus he felt more free.

Caesar believed that it was not worth the trouble to study law
seriously; and he imagined moreover that to study so many routine
conceptions, which may be false, such as the conception of the soul, of
equity, of responsibility, etc., would bring him to a shyster lawyer's
vulgar and affected idea of life. To counteract this tendency he devoted
himself to studying zoology at the University, and the next year he took
a course in physiology at San Carlos.

At the same time he did not neglect the stock exchange; his great pride
was to acquaint himself thoroughly with the details of the speculations
made and to talk in the crowds.

As a student he was mediocre. He learned the secret of passing
examinations well with the minimum of effort, and practised it. He
found that by knowing only a couple of things under each heading of the
program, it was enough for him to answer and to pass well. And so, from
the beginning of each course, he marked in the text the two or three
lines of every page which seemed to him to comprise the essential, and
having learned those, considered his knowledge sufficient.

Caesar had a deep contempt for the University and for his
fellow-students; all their rows and manifestations seemed to him
repulsi