--if the word were not threadbare one would call it
religious--which is shaking the foundations of the world's social
pyramid, perhaps only another example of the failure of nerve, perhaps
the triumphant expression of a new will among mankind.

In _Aurora Roja_ ("Red Dawn"), the last of the Madrid trilogy, about
the same Manuel who is the central figure of _Mala Hierba_, he writes:

"At first it bored him, but later, little by little, he felt himself
carried away by what he was reading. First he was enthusiastic about
Mirabeau; then about the Girondins; Vergniau Petion, Condorcet; then
about Danton; then he began to think that Robespierre was the true
revolutionary; afterwards Saint Just, but in the end it was the
gigantic figure of Danton that thrilled him most....

"Manuel felt great satisfaction at having read that history. Often he
said to himself:

"'What does it matter now if I am a loafer, and good-for-nothing? I've
read the history of the French Revolution; I believe I shall know how
to be worthy....'

"After Michelet, he read a book about '48; then another on the Commune,
by Louise Michel, and all this produced in him a great admiration for
French Revolutionists. What men! After the colossal figures of the
Convention: Babeuf, Proudhon, Blanqui, Bandin, Deleschize, Rochefort,
Felix Pyat, Vallu.... What people!

"'What does it matter now if I am a loafer?... I believe I shall know
how to be worthy.'"

In those two phrases lies all the power of revolutionary faith. And how
like phrases out of the gospels, those older expressions of the hope
and misery of another society in decay. That is the spirit that, for
good or evil, is stirring throughout Europe to-day, among the poor and
the hungry and the oppressed and the outcast, a new affirmation of the
rights and duties of men. Baroja has felt this profoundly, and has
presented it, but without abandoning the function of the novelist,
which is to tell stories about people. He is never a propagandist.

IV

"I have never hidden my admirations in literature. They have been and
are Dickens, Balzac, Poe, Dostoievski and, now, Stendhal...." writes
Baroja in the preface to the Nelson edition of _La Dama Errante_
("The Wandering Lady"). He follows particularly in the footprints of
Balzac in that he is primarily a historian of morals, who has made a
fairly consistent attempt to cover the world he lived in. With
Dostoievski there is a kinship in the passionate hatred