few larks sang in the sky. Two men in brown corduroy with hoes on their
shoulders passed on their way to the fields.

"Who shall say what is the gesture of Castile?... I am from La Mancha
myself." The man on the grey horse started speaking gravely while with
a bony hand, very white, he stroked his beard. "Something cold and
haughty and aloof ... men concentrated, converging breathlessly on the
single flame of their spirit.... Torquemada, Loyola, Jorge Manrique,
Cortes, Santa Teresa.... Rapacity, cruelty, straightforwardness....
Every man's life a lonely ruthless quest."

Lyaeus broke in:

"Remember the infinite gentleness of the saints lowering the Conde de
Orgaz into the grave in the picture in San Tomas...."

"Ah, that is what I was trying to think of.... These generations, my
generation, my son's generation, are working to bury with infinite
tenderness the gorgeously dressed corpse of the old Spain....
Gentlemen, it is a little ridiculous to say so, but we have set out
once more with lance and helmet of knight-errantry to free the
enslaved, to right the wrongs of the oppressed."

They had come into town. In the high square tower church-bells were
ringing for morning mass. Down the broad main street scampered a flock
of goats herded by a lean man with fangs like a dog who strode along in
a snuff-colored cloak with a broad black felt hat on his head.

"How do you do, Don Alonso?" he cried; "Good luck to you, gentlemen."
And he swept the hat off his head in a wide curving gesture as might a
courtier of the Rey Don Juan.

The hot smell of the goats was all about them as they sat before the
cafe in the sun under a bare acacia tree, looking at the tightly
proportioned brick arcades of the mudejar apse of the church opposite.
Don Alonso was in the cafe ordering; the dumpling-man had disappeared.
Telemachus got up on his numbed feet and stretched his legs. "Ouf," he
said, "I'm tired." Then he walked over to the grey horse that stood
with hanging head and drooping knees hitched to one of the acacias.

"I wonder what his name is." He stroked the horse's scrawny face. "Is
it Rosinante?"

The horse twitched his ears, straightened his back and legs and pulled
back black lips to show yellow teeth.

"Of course it's Rosinante!"

The horse's sides heaved. He threw back his head and whinnied shrilly,
exultantly.

_V: A Novelist of Revolution_

I

Much as G. B. S. refuses to be called an Englishman, Pio Baroj