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Page 3
�Oh de sangre y valor glorioso d�a!
Mis padres cuando ni�o me contaron
Sus hechos, �ay! y en la memoria m�a
Santos recuerdos de virtud quedaron.
But, as he says later in the poem,
El trono que erigi� vuestra bravura,
Sobre huesos de h�roes cimentado,
Un rey ingrato, de memoria impura,
Con eterno bald�n dej� manchado.
�Ay! para herir la libertad sagrada,
El Pr�ncipe, borr�n de nuestra historia,
Llam� en su ayuda la francesa espada,
Que segase el laurel de vuestra gloria.
These verses were written in later life; but already in 1827 he dates a
poem "fourth year after the sale of Spanish liberty."
It was an age of political conspiracy and secret societies. Many
liberals were members of Masonic lodges, and in addition there were
circles like the Friends of Liberty, the Friends of the Constitution,
the Cross of Malta, the Spanish Patriot, and others. Nothing more
natural than that boys whose age made them ineligible to join these
organizations should form one of their own. The result was La Sociedad
de los Numantinos. The prime movers were Miguel Ortiz Amor and Patricio
de Escosura, who drew up its Draconic constitution. Other founders were
Espronceda, Ventura de la Vega, and N��ez de Arenas. All told, the
society had about a dozen members. Their first meetings were held in a
sand-pit, until the curiosity of the police forced them to seek safer
quarters. One of the members was an apothecary's apprentice, who,
unknown to his master, installed the club in the shop cellar. There
they built an altar bearing all the romantic paraphernalia of skull and
cross-bones, swords, and pistols. The members stood wrapped in black
garments, their faces muffled with their long Spanish capes, wearing
Venetian masks, each one grasping a naked dagger. There they swore
binding oaths and delivered fiery orations. Red paper lanterns cast a
weird light over the scene. How tame the sessions of the Myrtle
must have seemed by comparison! Yet the two organizations throve
simultaneously.
With the return of Ferdinand in September the persecution of the
liberals began. The boys witnessed the judicial murder of Riego, the
hero of the constitutional movement, November 8, 1823. This made the
impression upon them that might have been expected. That night an
extraordinary session of the Numantinos was held at which Espronceda
delivered an impassioned oration. Then all signed a document in which
the king's death was decreed. Some of the members' parents seem to
have learned what was happening. The father of Ortiz, the club's first
president, prudently sent him away to O�ate. Escosura became the second
president, and held office until September of 1824, when his father sent
him to France. Espronceda then became the club's third president, but
his term was brief. The boys had made the mistake of admitting one
member of mature years whose name we do not know; for, in spite of his
treachery, the Numantinos even in their old age chivalrously
refrained from publishing it. This Judas betrayed the secrets of his
fellow-members, and placed incriminating documents, among them the
king's "death warrant," in the hands of the police. The latter, however,
displayed less rigor and more common sense than usual. While all the
youths implicated were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in
various monasteries scattered throughout Spain, nothing more was
intended than to give the conspirators a salutary scare. They were all
released after a few weeks of nominal servitude. Ortiz and Escosura, the
ringleaders, were sentenced to six years of seclusion, and Espronceda
received a term of five years to be served in the Monastery of San
Francisco de Guadalajara in the city of Guadalajara. His term was
pronounced completed after a very few weeks of confinement. That he had
a father prominent in the government service stood him in good stead,
and this probably accounts for the fact that his place of confinement
was in the city where Don Juan was garrisoned. The latter, as an old
soldier in the wars against Napoleon, sympathized in a general way with
liberal ideas; yet, placed as he was in a very difficult position, he
must have found his son's escapades compromising. His record shows that
he was "purified," that is his loyalty to the crown was certified to, on
August 8, 1824. He seems to have maintained a "correct" attitude toward
his rulers to the end, with all the unquestioning obedience of a
military man.
While undergoing this easy martyrdom Espronceda improved his time by
beginning what was to be a great patriotic epic, his _Pelayo_. Like many
another ambitious project, this was never completed. The few fragments
of it which have been printed date mostly from this time. The style is
still classic, but it is the pseudo-classicism of his model, Tasso. The
poet had taken the first step leading to Romanticism. Hence this work
was not so sterile as his earlier performances. Lista, on seeing the
fragments, did much to encourage the young author. Some of the octaves
included in the published version are said on good authority to have
come from the schoolmaster's pen. Lista's classicism was of the
broadest. He never condemned Romanticism totally, though he deplored
its unrestrained extravagances and the antireligious and antidynastic
tendencies of some of its exponents. He long outlived his brilliant
pupil, and celebrated his fame in critical articles. After his return
from exile Espronceda continued to study in a private school which Lista
had started in the Calle de Valverde. Calleja's Colegio de San Mateo had
been suppressed by a government which was the sworn enemy of every form
of enlightenment. The new seminary, however, continued the work of
the old with little change: While there Jos� carried his mathematical
studies through higher algebra, conic sections, trigonometry, and
surveying, and continued Latin, French, English, and Greek. If we may
judge from later results, a course in rhetoric and poetics must have
been of greatest benefit to him.
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