Don Andrés took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his
university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the
son, would be fulfilled in the third generation!

"This one at least will be a lawyer!" said doña Bernarda, who in the old
days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which
to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.

And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had
done Ramón in his student days, she would send don Andrés frequently to
the capital, and write letter after letter to her Valencian friends,
particularly to a canon of her intimate acquaintance, asking them not to
lose sight of the boy.

But Rafael was good behavior itself; a model boy, a "serious" young man,
the good canon assured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that
came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides,
don Ramón and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved
by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law
students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such
themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than
an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."

Some terrible youths, who had to get home before ten o'clock to escape a
whipping, declared themselves rabid socialists and frightened the
beadles with curses on the institution of property--all rights reserved,
of course, to apply, as soon as they got out of college, for some
position under the government as registrar of deeds or secretary of
prefecture! But Rafael, ever sane and a congenital "moderate," was not
of those fire-brands; he sat on "the Right" of the august assembly of