60 Modem Spanish Literature
upon his arrival there, his life was threatened, and he was
watched by detectives, and yet he dismissed and pushed aside
all guards, and walked unarmed down the middle of the
crowd. Here we find that essentially personal courage,
which has always been demanded by the Spaniard. His
Majesty also has a pronounced sense of irony or humor,
which is a counter-weight to the weighty solemnity we often
find in Spain, and to this we should add his great sense of
dignity.
Then take the nobles who surround the King, men like the
Duke of Alba, who has done so much to rehabilitate Spain,
as much a patron of art and literature as were his ancestors.
You find in him, as in the King, that sense of tradition which
links him with the earlier members of his family, in the age
of Garcilaso de Vega, who were patrons of art and litera-
ture.
Now we will take some other characters. Take, for
instance, Unamuno, that philosophical mystic, who was so
long a director of the University at Salamanca ; he has been
essentially a Don Quixote of Modern Spain. At this time
he sits in exile only a few miles from the Spanish frontier,
awaiting the outcome of the present dictatorship; and al-
ways he is waiting until something happens, some amazing
shock which will pulverize all those people and bring him
back to Spain. There is a certain pathos in the figure of this
man. I remember him as I saw him in 1921 in Salamanca,
his real city, where he was beloved by everybody; he was the
cynosure of all who came there; all called him “master,” and
as he sat surrounded by people who came from all parts of
the town, he was the symbol of the city. One time he had
been put into semi-exile by the King of Spain for something
he had written, and was not allowed to leave his city. Then
the King pardoned him, and when the telegram granting