dead rule

The author says about the stages of writing his famous novel "e;The Dead Rule"e;:"e;My attention was attracted, more than the famous caves, the ancient olive trees, and the eternal blue coasts of Mallorca, by the honest people who inhabit it and the division into classes that still exists, no doubt due to the isolation of the island, and their resistance to the tendency toward equality with the Spaniards of the mainland. I saw in the life of the converted Jews of Mallorca, the so-called Chuita, a future novel. Then, returning to the peninsula, I stopped at Ibiza, and felt the same interest in the traditional customs of these people of sailors and farmers, as in the continuous struggle during 1,500 years with all the pirates of the Mediterranean. I thought of uniting the lives of the two islands, so different and at the same time deeply original, into one novel. Six years passed without me being able to fulfill my wish. Finally, in 1908, when I was preparing for my first trip to America, I was able to escape from Madrid for a few weeks, living a wandering life on both islands. I visited the greater part of Majorca, and slept many nights in small villages where peasant families allowed me to reside with their most generous hospitality and pious integrity. I wandered through the mountains of Ibiza and sailed along its red and green coasts in old boats, intrepid at sea, where some months of the year they go fishing, and others are designated for smuggling. When I returned to Madrid, with my face blackened by the sun and my hand hardened by the paddle, I began to write "e;The Dead Rule,"e; and my notes were so present and at the same time so abundant, that I produced the novel "e;at once,"e; without the slightest weakness in my memory as a novelist, in Within two or three months."e;