Women who have known me always tell me: "You will never amount to
anything."

And a friend who was leaving for America volunteered:

"When I return in twenty or thirty years, I shall find all my
acquaintances situated differently: one will have become rich, another
will have ruined himself, this fellow will have entered the cabinet,
that one will have been swallowed up in a small town; but you will be
exactly what you are today, you will live the same life, and you will
have just two pesetas in your pocket. That is as far as you will get."

The idea that I shall never amount to anything is now deeply rooted in
my soul. It is evident that I shall never become a deputy, nor an
academician, nor a Knight of Isabella the Catholic, nor a captain of
industry, nor alderman, nor Member of the Council, nor a common cheat,
nor shall I ever possess a good black suit.

And yet when a man has passed forty, when his belly begins to take on
adipose tissue and he puffs out with ambition, he ought to be something,
to sport a title, to wear a ribbon, to array himself in a black frock
coat and a white waistcoat; but these ambitions are denied to me. The
professors of my childhood and my youth rise up before my eyes like the
ghost of Banquo, and proclaim: "Baroja, you will never amount to
anything."

When I go down to the seashore, the waves lap my feet and murmur:
"Baroja, you will never amount to anything." The wise owl that perches
at night on our roof at Itzea calls to me: "Baroja, you will never