in joy or bitterness. The first impression that I
feel upon receiving it, then, is one of joy, like that experienced
upon opening a letter on whose envelope we recognize a dear familiar
handwriting, or when in a foreign land we grasp the hand of a
compatriot and hear our native tongue again. The peculiar odor of the
damp paper and the printer's ink, that characteristic odor which for a
moment obscures the perfume of the flowers that one breathes here on
every hand, seems to strike the olfactory memory, a strange and keen
memory that unquestionably exists, and it brings back to me a portion
of my former life,--that restlessness, that activity, that feverish
productiveness of journalism. I recall the constant pounding and
creaking of the presses that multiply by thousands the words that we
have just written, and that have come all palpitating from our pens. I
recall the strain of the last hours of publication, when night is
almost over and copy scarce. I recall, in short, those times when day
has surprised us correcting an article or writing a last notice when
we paid not the slightest attention to the poetic beauties of the
dawn. In Madrid, and for us in particular, the sun neither rises nor
sets: we put out or light the lights, and that is the only reason we
notice it."

At last he opens the sheet. The news of the clubs or the Cortes
absorbs him until the failing light of the setting sun warns him that,
though he has read but the first columns, it is time to go. "The
shadows of the mountains fall rapidly, and spread over the plain. The
moon begins to appear in the east like a silver circle gleaming
through the sky, and the avenue of poplars is wrapped in the uncertain
dusk of twilight.... The monastery bell, the only one that still hangs
in its ruined Byzantine tower, begins to call to prayers, and one near
and one afar, some with sharp metallic notes, and some with solemn,
muffled tones, the other bells of the hillside towns reply.... It
seems like a harmony that falls from heaven and rises at the same time
from the earth, becomes confounded, and floats in space, intermingling
with the fading sounds of the dying day and the first sighs of the
newborn night.

"And now all is silenced,--Madrid, political interests, ardent
struggles, human miseries, passions, disappointments, desires, all is
hushed in that divine music. My soul is now as serene as deep and
silent water. A faith in something greater, in a future though