I write from the salt-stone terrace at Almaria Vella, where the gulls this morning were earlier than the news. My grandfather's statement has been read, I am told, from a canteen in the Chamber and from a quay at Port de Cala Rossa, and I find I am neither surprised nor moved to comment upon its reception. I write instead to say what the younger members of our house have been saying at breakfast.

We believe that fidelity is a virtue, and we believe it is also a practice. The fisherman to whom the patriarch's statement is addressed does not live in the statement; he lives at the quay. If the figure of the household is to mean anything, it must mean that the households of the littoral see, this fortnight, a practical diminution of their cost — in duty, in tariff, in the small mercies of which governments are capable when they choose to be.

I do not write against my grandfather. I write, as he has taught me to write, toward the matter. The reserve exists to be used. Let it be used, carefully and in measure, and let the hearth which he invoked be warm not only in metaphor.