remembering in view of the statement that a Spanish monarch has no such prerogative. France, as usual, received the fugitives, and both Zorrilla and Ferrer settled in Paris, where Ferrer filled the honorary position of secretary to Zorrilla.
In this decade of life in Paris we have a second and very interesting period in the young man's career. I need not dwell long on the material details. With the inevitable limitations of a foreigner, he found life hard at first, and attempted to obtain subsistence as a commission agent. The occupation failed, and it is difficult to trace his movements for a few years. What is clear is that, after a time, we find him in the position of professor of languages at the Philotechnic School in Paris. A writer in Le Temps remembers him as "a man of iron will, and especially an idealist... a model professor, giving excellent lessons in a very original manner." He is described as "a man of medium height, very nervous and refined, with extraordinary eyes, like live coals, and a look that one could never forget." His lessons were much sought, and he made lasting and devoted friends in the French metropolis. One who knew him there a few years later tells me that he had a comfortable and refined home, using his resources with great ability and moderation. Since he had first become conscious of his lack of culture, he had studied most assiduously, and held a high position as teacher. It is another element that enters into the ideal of his later life.
That ideal slowly took shape in the pacific, intellectual atmosphere of Paris. I wish to speak with the most complete candour on the important aspects of Ferrer's personality and ideals. Skulking under the disguise of anonymity, there are writers who have shamefully traduced a murdered man, and nothing that one can say will escape misrepresentation in the cheap Roman Catholic journals. But I am laying my case before those men and women who would form an honest judgment on this great crime, and it is my duty to place before them the facts as I know them. I have examined half-a-dozen intimate friends of Ferrer on the evolution of his ideas. It is unfortunate that he wrote no work from which one can learn his mature views. An elementary Spanish grammar is his only literary work. But there are passages enough in his
