Historical bazaars _a la_ Cesare Cantu may be put on one side, as
belonging to an inferior genre. They remind me of those great nineteenth
century world's fairs, vast, miscellaneous and exhausting.

As for the German historians, they are not translated, so I do not know
them. I have read only a few essays of Simmel, which I think extremely
keen, and Stewart Chamberlain's book upon the foundations of the
nineteenth century, which, if the word France were to be substituted for
the word Germany, might easily have been the production of an advanced
nationalist of the _Action Francaise_.




VII

MY FAMILY

FAMILY MYTHOLOGY


The celebrated Vicomte de Chateaubriand, after flaunting an ancestry of
princes and kings in his _Memoires d'outre-tombe_, then turns about
and tells us that he attaches no importance to such matters.

I shall do the same. I intend to furbish up our family history and
mythology, and then I shall assert that I attach no importance to them.
And, what is more, I shall be telling the truth.

My researches into the life of Aviraneta [Footnote: A kinsman of Baroja