Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/61

Rh intelligence, an iron will, and a fine business capacity, he took pride and pleasure in work. A French writer, who knew him, observes that "it was difficult to approach him without loving him," but that he was reserved, and only responded when he willed. His many intimate friends to whom I have spoken—and had spoken often before the tragedy occurred—felt and suffered as one does only where great charm is associated with great worth of character. Of children he was passionately fond. His work for them had a ground of human sentiment as well as of social and moral principle. It was the peril of a child that caused him, quite accidentally, to break a sojourn in England that was to last some months, and drew him into the death-trap at Barcelona.

Ferrer was a happy man. Quiet and dignified in bearing, he had all the Spaniard's love of life, and in his last decade it found satisfaction. Welcomed in a score of circles throughout Eastern Europe, wedded to a charming and beautiful woman, comfortable in his small estate (a farm) on the fringe of Barcelona, he needed but one further solace—the success of his work, the enlightenment of Spain. And it was succeeding as rapidly as he had ever hoped it would. With warm feeling he watched the rays of his ideal spread slowly over the map of Spain, and nursed the little schools which sprang up on all sides. Here was a pacific victory, far more promising than the silencing of rifle by rifle which he had once meditated. But the reactionary powers were watching with inflamed anger and dread, and he was hardly five years in Barcelona when the first attempt was made to destroy his work and take his life.