given in the tiny theatre of the friars,
and always with a place in the first line on prize days. The Party organ
dedicated an annual article to the scholastic prodigies of the "gifted
son of our distinguished chief don Ramon Brull, the country's hope, who
already merits title as the shining light of the future!"

When Rafael, escorted by his mother and half a dozen women who had
witnessed the exercises, would come home, gleaming with medals and his
arms full of diplomas, he would stoop and kiss his father's hard,
bristly hand; and that claw would caress the boy's head and
absent-mindedly sink into the old man's vest pocket--for don Ramon
expected to pay for all welcome favors.

"Very good," the hoarse voice would murmur. "That's the way I like to
see you do ...Here's a _duro_."

And not till the following year would the boy again know what a caress
from his father meant. On certain occasions, playing in the _patio_, he
had surprised the austere old man gazing at him fixedly, as if trying to
foresee his future.

Don Andres took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his
university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the
son, would be fulfilled in the third generation!

"This one at least will be a lawyer!" said dona Bernarda, who in the old
days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which
to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.

And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had
done Ramon in his student days, she would send don Andres frequently to
the capital, and write letter after letter to her Valencian friends,
particularly to a canon of her intimate acquaintance, asking them not to
lose sight of the boy.

But Rafael was good behavior itself; a model boy, a "serious" young man,
the good canon assured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that
came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides,
don Ramon and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved
by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law
students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such
themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than
an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."

Some terrible youths, who had to get home before ten o'clock to escape a
whipping, declared themselves rabid socialists and frightened the
beadles with curses