The Last Lion, and Other Tales

The Last Lion, and Other Tales
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

The Last Lion, and Other Tales

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Title: The Last Lion and Other Tales

Author: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Commentator: Mariano Joaquin Lorente

Release Date: March 5, 2012 [EBook #39062]

Language: English

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INTERNATIONAL POCKET LIBRARY

EDITED BY EDMUND R. BROWN

Copyright, 1919, by

JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY

Reprinted by arrangement with John W.

Luce & Company. All Rights Reserved.

First printing, 2,000 copies

Second printing, 5,000 copies

Third printing, 10,000 copies

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICABY THE COLONIAL PRESS INC., CLINTON, MASS.

THE LAST LION AND OTHER TALES

VICENTE BLASCO IBÁÑEZ

DON Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born on the 29th of January, 1867, in the city of Valencia, that same picturesque sunshiny Valencia which was captured from the Moors by the formidable Cid a little over eight centuries ago. But Blasco Ibáñez is a valenciano only by birth, for his family came from the old kingdom of Aragon.

The Aragonese are a sturdy, hardworking, adventurous people, somewhat stubborn, suicidally valorous, passionately independent, fanatically religious, fond of music and of the honest pleasures of life. Their adventurous spirit led them in ages gone by as far as Asia Minor, where, with the Catalonians, they gave a good account of themselves. They fought against the Moors as doughtily as did the Castilians, and when their kingdom was united to that of Castile, under Isabella and Ferdinand, Granada was conquered and Mahomedan domination in Spain ceased for ever. The great Napoleon had no fiercer antagonists than the Aragonese, and when, after two sieges, his troops took Saragossa, they found in it nothing but corpses and ashes. The Aragonese were so jealous of their liberties that when one of their kings was being crowned, the Chief Justice of Aragon, addressing His Majesty in the familiar form, reminded him that they, the people, were greater than their king, "somos más que tu".

Of his Aragonese ancestry, we find in Blasco Ibáñez the intense love of freedom, the adventurous spirit and the untiring energy for work.

Blasco Ibáñez was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth; his earlier years were a continual struggle for existence in which he made a close acquaintance with poverty and even hunger. He followed many trades and occupied, after a hard hunt, minor clerical positions. Yet, he managed to study law and at the age of eighteen he was a full fledged lawyer.

His studies may have impressed him with the august majesty of the law, but did not imbue him with any respect for the then existing government, and he proceeded to write a sonnet which gave full vent to his contempt for it.

Considering that many sonneteers escape the gallows they so richly deserve for their miserable productions, it was hard on Blasco Ibáñez that he should have to go to jail for a period "not exceeding six months," but perhaps it was just as well for him, as he no doubt has made good use of his experience.

Jails, as we all know, are not meant to correct political ideas: they are merely punitive institutions. Blasco Ibáñez took his punishment like the man he is, and at the first opportunity attacked the government with renewed vigor and was banished from Spain. During his exile, Blasco Ibáñez lived in France and visited Italy.

Returning to Valencia after an amnesty, he founded a newspaper, "El Pueblo" (The People) in 1891. From the columns of his paper, which he still edits, he continued his fight "agin' the government," advocating a republican form of government. He became a leader in the Republican party and was elected Deputy to the Spanish Parliament, for the city of Valencia, six consecutive times.

Though his political career has been a most strenuous one, it by no means exhausted his tremendous energy, and he managed at the same time to do an immense amount of literary work. As a young man, he became secretary to Manuel Fernandez y Gonzalez, a prolific writer – he is said to have written over three hundred novels – whose name has been almost forgotten. Fernandez y Gonzalez was an old man when Blasco Ibáñez made his acquaintance, and it often happened that the old man, exhausted by age, or merely feeling heavy after a hearty meal, fell asleep while dictating to his young secretary. Blasco Ibáñez, however, did not stop writing; he let his own fancy do the dictating, for a change, and he continued the novel until the old man woke up of his own accord. Then, he read what he had written, and Fernandez y Gonzalez, who must have had good literary taste, was generally delighted with the collaboration.

It is extremely doubtful whether Fernandez y Gonzalez had any influence on Blasco Ibáñez as a writer. He was an excellent example of an energetic worker … and that is all. But Blasco Ibáñez did not need any such examples. He is, and has always been, activity personified.

While Blasco Ibáñez was actively engaged in political warfare, editing his own paper, contributing radical articles to other papers and periodicals, issuing innumerable pamphlets, preparing speeches, and addressing meetings, he still found time to write novels. Seventeen novels, two books of short stories, and three of travels stand to his name, as well as many uncollected critical and biographical essays.

His first novels were written at odd moments, after he had edited "El Pueblo" and attended to political business. In later years, he has devoted less time to politics and more to literature. Whereas his earlier novels required little preparation, for they deal with his native city, which he has known all his life, his later works represent a gigantic amount of study and forethought, for Blasco Ibáñez is nothing if not thorough. He studies his characters at first hand. When he was preparing Flor de Mayo, he became one of those tobacco smugglers of whom he speaks; he obtained his material for La Horda by living with the scum of Madrid and joining some of the poachers in their excursions to the royal preserves at El Pardo, thereby running the risk of being shot at sight by the guards; later on, while he was planning Los Muertos Mandan, he joined the fishermen on the coast of Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands, and having been caught in a storm, nearly lost his life; he lived a long time among bullfighters before writing Sangre y Arena and became intimately acquainted with the famous "espada" Antonio Fuentes.

As if all the activities we have enumerated were not enough to keep an ordinary Hercules busy for a life-time, Blasco Ibáñez has been interested for many years in a publishing firm which has been the means of introducing into Spain what is more instructive or interesting in the literatures of other countries. Some of the publications of this firm – Prometeo, of Valencia – bear witness to the indefatigable energy of the man. Such are the "New Universal History," by Lavisse and Rambaud, of which ten volumes have thus far been published; the "History of the French Revolution," by Michelet, in three volumes; the "New Universal Geography," by Reclus; "The Thousand Nights and One Night," all of them translated by Blasco Ibáñez. The same firm is now publishing a monumental "History of the European War of 1914," from the pen of Blasco Ibáñez. Six ponderous tomes of this work have already been published.

Blasco Ibáñez has travelled extensively. He has visited most of Europe, the Near East, and Argentina. In the latter country, he has acquired some land and has founded a colony.

There is a curious contradiction between Blasco Ibáñez' personal appearance and his life's activities. In his younger days, when he was more of a man of action than to-day, he wore a curly beard and a mustache that grew untouched by scissors. They gave him an artistic appearance and harmonized well with the rest of his features. In those days he was a decidedly handsome man. To-day, when he is more of an artist, perhaps, than a man of action, the beard has disappeared and the mustache is close-cropped. The hairy camouflage, sacrificed – as we suspect – to the goddess of Anglo-Saxon fashion, concealed a determined chin and two deep lines, running from the base of the nose to the corners of his mouth, that give him an energetic air. His forehead is now larger than ever, for he is getting somewhat bald; his eyes are piercing, with moderate eyebrows and slightly puffed lower eyelids, and they have lost that touch of dreaminess they had in their younger days; his nose is large and shapely modelled, his face broad and fleshy, his ears round and big. Altogether, his head – supported by a short bullish neck – is that of a deep thinker, a sharp observer, and active energetic man, and withal a bon vivant. In other words, a true Aragonese.

Ecce homo!

    MARIANO JOAQUIN LORENTE

THE LAST LION

SCARCELY had the meeting of the honorable guild of blanquers come to order within its chapel near the towers of Serranos, when Señor Vicente asked for the floor. He was the oldest tanner in Valencia. Many masters recalled their apprentice days and declared that he was the same now as then, with his white, brush-like mustache, his face that looked like a sun of wrinkles, his aggressive eyes and cadaverous thinness, as if all the sap of his life had been consumed in the daily motions of his feet and hands about the vats of the tannery.

He was the only representative of the guild's glories, the sole survivor of those blanquers who were an honor to Valencian history. The grandchildren of his former companions had become corrupted with the march of time; they were proprietors of large establishments, with thousands of workmen, but they would be lost if they ever had to tan a skin with their soft, business-man's hands. Only he could call himself a blanquer of the old school, working every day in his little hut near the guild house; master and toiler at the same time, with no other assistants than his sons and grandchildren; his workshop was of the old kind, amid sweet domestic surroundings, with neither threats of strikes nor quarrels over the day's pay.

The centuries had raised the level of the street, converting Señor Vicente's shop into a gloomy cave. The door through which his ancestors had entered had grown smaller and smaller from the bottom until it had become little more than a window. Five stairs connected the street with the damp floor of the tannery, and above, near a pointed arch, a relic of medieval Valencia, floated like banners the skins that had been hung up to dry, wafting about the unbearable odor of the leather. The old man by no means envied the moderns, in their luxuriously appointed business offices. Surely they blushed with shame on passing through his lane and seeing him, at breakfast hour, taking the sun, – his sleeves and trousers rolled up, showing his thin arms and legs, stained red, – with the pride of a robust old age that permitted him to battle daily with the hides.

Valencia was preparing to celebrate the centenary of one of its famous saints, and the guild of blanquers, like the other historic guilds, wished to make its contribution to the festivities. Señor Vicente, with the prestige of his years, imposed his will upon all the masters. The blanquers should remain what they were. All the glories of the past, long sequestrated in the chapel, must figure in the procession. And it was high time they were displayed in public! His gaze, wandering about the chapel, seemed to caress the guild's relics; the sixteenth century drums, as large as jars, that preserved within their drumheads the hoarse cries of revolutionary Germania; the great lantern of carved wood, torn from the prow of a galley; the red silk banner of the guild, edged with gold that had become greenish through the ages.

All this must be displayed during the celebration, shaking off the dust of oblivion; even the famous lion of the blanquers!

The moderns burst into impious laughter. The lion, too?.. Yes, the lion, too. To Señor Vicente it seemed a dishonor on the part of the guild to forget that glorious beast. The ancient ballads, the accounts of celebrations that might be read in the city archives, the old folks who had lived in the splendid epoch of the guilds with their fraternal camaraderie, – all spoke of the blanquers' lion; but now nobody knew the animal, and this was a shame for the trade, a loss to the city.

Their lion was as great a glory as the silk mart or the well of San Vicente. He knew very well the reason for this opposition on the part of the moderns. They feared to assume the rôle of the lion. Never fear, my young fellows! He, with his burden of years, numbered more than seventy, would claim his honor. It belonged to him in all justice; his father, his grandfather, his countless ancestors, had all been lions, and he felt equal to coming to blows with anybody who would dare dispute his right to the rôle of the lion, traditional in his family.