this
miserable society.

"Jesus listened with attention.

"'You are an anarchist,' he told him.

"'I?'

"'Yes. So am I.'

"'Since when?'

"'Since I have seen the infamies committed in the world; since I have
seen how coldly they give to death a bit of human flesh; since I have
seen how men die abandoned in the streets and hospitals,' answered
Jesus with a certain solemnity.

"Manuel was silent. The friends walked without speaking round the Ronda
de Segovia, and sat down on a bench in the little gardens of the Virgen
del Puerto.

"The sky was superb, crowded with stars; the Milky Way crossed its
immense blue concavity. The geometric figure of the Great Bear
glittered very high. Arcturus and Vega shone softly in that ocean of
stars.

"In the distance the dark fields, scratched with lines of lights,
seemed the sea in a harbor and the strings of lights the illumination
of a wharf.

"The damp warm air came laden with odors of woodland plants wilted by
the heat.

"'How many stars,' said Manuel. 'What can they be?'

"'They are worlds, endless worlds.'

"'I don't know why it doesn't make me feel better to see this sky so
beautiful, Jesus. Do you think there are men in those worlds?' asked
Manuel.

"'Perhaps; why not?'

"'And are there prisons too, and judges and gambling dens and
police?... Do you think so?'

"Jesus did not answer. After a while he began talking with a calm voice
of his dream of an idyllic humanity, a sweet pitiful dream, noble and
childish.

"In his dream, man, led by a new idea, reached a higher state.

"No more hatreds, no more rancours. Neither judges, nor police, nor
soldiers, nor authority. In the wide fields of the earth free men
worked in the sunlight. The law of love had taken the place of the law
of duty, and the horizons of humanity grew every moment wider, wider
and more azure.

"And Jesus continued talking of a vague ideal of love and justice, of
energy and pity; and those words of his, chaotic, incoherent, fell like
balm on Manuel's ulcerated spirit. Then they were both silent, lost in
their thoughts, looking at the night.

"An august joy shone in the sky, and the vague sensation of space, of
the infinity of those imponderable worlds, filled their spirits with a
delicious calm."

III

Spain is the classic home of the anarchist. A bleak upland country
mostly, with a climate giving all varieties of temperature, from moist
African heat to dry Siberian cold, where