scarcely ever read and often leave forgotten on the steps of the
cross, I linger for one, two, and sometimes even four hours waiting
for the papers." At last the post arrives, and the _Contemporáneo_ is
in his hands. "As I was present at its birth, and as since its birth I
have lived its feverish and impassioned life, _El Contemporáneo_ is
not for me a common newspaper like the rest, but its columns are
yourselves, my friends, my companions in hope or disappointment, in
failure or triumph, 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,