Chapter XI: Part TWO: Castro Duro (4)

They heard the footsteps of the old woman, coming back to say that she had found nothing in the room Laura had occupied during her stay.

Amparito dried her tears, and smiled, and her face was redder than usual. Presently she said to the nurse:

“Probably you didn’t look well. I am going to go myself.”

Amparito went out.

Cæsar was pale and absorbed; he felt that something extraordinary had happened to him. His hands trembled and things swam around him.

In a short while Amparito returned. She had a round glass box in her hand, which she said she had found in Laura’s room.

“This afternoon I am going to Our Lady of the Rock,” said Amparito. “Will you come, Cæsar?”

“Yes.”

“Then, good-bye till then.”

Amparito gave him her hand, and Cæsar kissed it. The old servant was dumfounded. Amparito burst out laughing.

“He is my beau. Hadn’t you noticed it before?”

“No,” said the old woman with a gesture of violent negation.

Amparito laughed again and disappeared.

The first days of his engagement Cæsar was constantly in-tranquil and uneasy. He kept thinking that it was impossible to live like that, giving his whole attention to nothing except the desires of a girl. He imagined that the awakening would come from one moment to the next; but the awakening didn’t arrive.

By degrees Cæsar abandoned all the affairs of the district, which had taken all his attention, and took to occupying himself solely with his sweetheart. The whole town knew their relations and talked of the coming wedding.

That dazzling idyll intrigued all the girls in Castro. The truth was that none of them had considered Cæsar a marrying man; some had imagined him already old; others an experienced and vicious bachelor, incapable of yielding to the matrimonial yoke; and now they saw him a youth, of distinguished type, with distinguished manners and looks.

Cæsar went almost daily to Amparito’s father’s country-place. It was a magnificent estate, another ancient property of the Dukes of Castro Duro, with a house adorned with escutcheons, and an extensive stone pool, deep and mysterious. The garden did not resemble that at Don Calixto’s house, for that one was of a frantic gaiety, and the one on Amparito’s father’s estate was very melancholy. Above all, the square of water in the pool, whose edges were decorated with great granite vases, had a mysterious, sad aspect.

“Doesn’t it make you very sad to look at this deep water in the pool?” Cæsar asked his fiancée.

“No, it doesn’t me.”

“It does me.”

“Because you are a poet,” she said, “and I am not; I am very prosaic.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The more Cæsar talked with Amparito, the less he understood her and the more he needed to be with her.

“We really do not think the same about anything,” Cæsar used to tell himself, “and yet we understand each other.”

Many times he endeavoured to make a psychological résumé of Amparito’s character, but he didn’t succeed. He didn’t know how to classify her; her type always escaped him.

“All her notions are different from mine,” he used to think; “she speaks in another way, feels in another way, she even has a different moral code. How strange!”

Also, what Amparito knew was completely heterogeneous; she spoke French well and wrote it fairly correctly; in Spanish, on the other hand, she had no idea of spelling. Cæsar was always stupefied on seeing the transpositions of h’s, s’s, and z’s that she made in her letters.

There remained by Amparito, from her passage through the French school, a recollection of the history of France made up of a few anecdotes and a few phrases. Thus, it was not unusual to hear her speak of Turenne, of Francis I, or of Colbert. For the rest, she played the piano badly enough and with extremely little enthusiasm.

This was the part belonging to her education as a rich young lady; that which belonged to the country girl, who lived among peasants, was more curious and personal.

She knew many plants by their vulgar names, and understood their industrial and medicinal use. Besides, she spoke in such pure, natural phrases that Cæsar was filled with admiration.

Cæsar had reached such a degree of exaltation that he thought of nothing any more, except his sweetheart. At night, before going to sleep, he thought of her deliriously. He often dreamed that Amparito had changed into the red-flowered oleander of the wild palace garden, and in every flower of the oleander he used to see Amparito’s red lips and white teeth.

XIV. INTRANSIGENCE LOST

DISQUIET DISAPPEARS

The wedding took place and Cæsar had to compromise about a lot of things. It didn’t trouble him to confess and receive communion; he considered those mere customs, and went to the church of the Plain to conform to these practices with the old priest who was a friend of Amparito’s.

On the other hand, it did bother Cæsar to have to suffer Father Martin in his house, who allowed himself to talk and give advice; and he was also irritated by the presence of certain persons who considered themselves aristocrats and who came to call on him and point out to him that it was now time to give up the rabble and the indigent and to rise to their level.

If he had not had so much to think about as he did have, he would have found this a good chance to show his aggressive humour; but all his attention was fixed on Amparito.

The newly married pair spent the first days of their honeymoon at Castro; then they went to Madrid, with the intention of going abroad, and afterwards they went back to the town.

The old palace of the Dukes of Castro was witness to their idyll.

At the end of some time Cæsar felt tranquil, perhaps too tranquil.

“This, no doubt, is what is called being happy,” he used to say to himself. And being happy gave him the impression of a limbo; he felt as though his old personality was dying within him. He could no longer recover his former way of life; all his disquietudes had vanished. He felt that he was balanced, lacking those alternations of courage and cowardice which had previously formed the characteristic thing in him. It was the oasis after the desert; the calm that follows the storm.

Cæsar wondered if he had acquired new nerves. His instinct to be arbitrary was on the downward track.

He could not easily determine what role his wife played in his inner life. He felt the necessity of having her beside him, of talking to her; but he did not understand whether this was mere selfishness, for the sake of the soothing effect her presence produced, or was for the satisfaction of his vanity in seeing how she gave all her thought to him.

Spiritually he did not feel her either identified with him or strange to him; her soul marched along as if parallel to his, but in other paths.

“All that men say about women is completely false,” Cæsar used to think, “and what women say about themselves, equally so, because they merely repeat what men say. Only when they are completely emancipated will they succeed in understanding themselves. It is indubitable that we have not the same leading ideas, or the same points of view. Probably we have not a similar moral sense either. Neither is woman made for man, nor man for woman. There is necessity between them, not harmony.”

Many times, watching Amparito, he told himself:

“There is some sort of machinery in her head that I do not understand.”

Noting his scrutinizing gaze, she would ask him:

“What are you thinking about me?”

He would explain his perplexities, and she would laugh.

SYMPATHY

Indubitably, there existed an instinctive accord of the sentiments between Amparito and him, an organic sympathy. She could feel for them both, but he could not think for them both; each mental machine ran in isolation, like two watches, which do not hear each other. She knew whether Cæsar was sad or joyful, disheartened or spirited, merely by looking at him. She had no need to ask him; she could read Cæsar’s face. He could not, on his side, understand what went on behind that little forehead and those moist and sparkling eyes.

“Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling sad?” he would ask her. He could not reach the point of knowing by himself.

“I never succeed in knowing what you want,” he sometimes said to her, bitterly.

“Why, you always succeed,” she used to reply.

Cæsar often wondered if the rôle of being so much loved, whether wrong or right, was an absurd, offensive thing. In all great affections there is one peculiarity; if one loves a person, one gets to the point of changing that person to an idol inside oneself, and from that moment it seems that the person divides into the unreal idol, which is like a false picture of the adored one, and the living being, who resembles the idolized object very slightly.

Cæsar found something absurd in being loved like that. Besides, he found that she was dragging him away from himself. After six months of marriage, she was making him change his ideas and his way of life, and he was having absolutely no influence on her.

Previously he had often thought that if he lived with a woman, he should prefer one that was spiritually foreign to him, who should look on him like a rare plant, not with one that would want to identify herself with his tastes and his sympathies.

With a somewhat hostile woman he would have felt an inclination to be voluble and contradictory; with a sympathetic woman, on the contrary, he would have seemed to himself like a circus runner whom one of his pupils is trying to overtake, and who has to run hard to keep the record where it belongs.

But his wife was neither one nor the other.

Amparito had an extraordinary insouciance, gaiety, facility, in accepting life. Cæsar never ceased being amazed. She spent her days working, talking, singing. The slightest diversion enchanted her, the most insignificant gift aroused a lively satisfaction.

“Everything is decided, as far as you are concerned,” Cæsar used, to tell her.

“By what?”

“By your character.”

She laughed at that.

It seemed as if she had chosen the best attitude toward life. She saw that her husband was not religious, but she considered that an attribute of men, and thought that God must have an especial complacency toward husbands, if only so as not to leave wives alone in paradise.

Amparito held by a fetichistic Catholicism, conditioned by her situation in life, and mixed with a lot of heterodox and contradictory ideas, but she didn’t give any thought to that.

The marriage was very successful; they never had disputes or discussions. When both were stubborn, they never noticed which one yielded.

They had rented one rather big floor facing on the Retiro, and they began to furnish it.

Amparito had bad taste in decoration; everything loud pleased her, and sometimes when Cæsar laughed, she would say:

“I know I am a crazy country girl. You must tell me how to fix things.”

Cæsar decided the arrangement of a little reception-room. He chose a light paper for the walls, some coloured engravings, and Empire furniture. Female friends found the room very well done. Amparito used to tell them:

“Yes, Cæsar had it done like this,” as if that were a weighty argument with everybody.

Amparito and her father persuaded Cæsar that he ought to open an office. All the people in Castro lamented that Cæsar did not practise law.

He had always felt a great repugnance for that sharpers’ and skinflints’ business; but he yielded to please Amparito, and set up his office and took an assistant who was very skillful in legal tricks. Cæsar was often to be found writing in the office, when Amparito opened the door.

“Do you want to come here a moment?” she would say.

“Yes. What is it?”

“Look and see how this hat suits me. How do you like it?”

Cæsar would laugh and say:

“I think you ought to take off the flowers, or it ought to be smaller.”

Amparito accepted Cæsar’s suggestions as if they had been, articles of faith.

Cæsar, on his part, had a great admiration for his wife. What strength for facing life! What amazing energy!

“I walk among brambles and leave a piece of my clothing on every one of them,” thought Cæsar, “and she passes artlessly between all obstacles, with the ease of an ethereal thing. It’s extraordinary!”

It pleased Amparito to be thus observed.

Her husband used to tell her:

“You have, as it were, ten or twelve Amparitos inside of you; it often seems to me that you are a whole round of Amparitos.”

“Well, you are not more than one Cæsar to me.”

“That’s because I have the ugly vice of talking and of being consequential.”

“Don’t I talk?”

“Yes, in another way.”

_DOUBT_

In the spring they went to Castro, and the members of the Workmen’s Club presented themselves before Cæsar to remind him of a project for a Co-operative and a School, which he had promised them. They were all ready to put up what was necessary for realizing both plans.

Cæsar listened to them, and although with great coldness, said yes, that he was ready to initiate the scheme. A few days later, in Dr. Ortigosa’s _Protest_, there was enthusiastic talk of the Great Co-operative, which, when established, would improve, and at the same time cheapen necessary articles.

The same day that the paper came out with this news, a commission of the shopkeepers of Castro waited on Cæsar. The scheme would ruin them. It was especially the small shopkeepers that considered themselves most injured.

Cæsar replied that he would think it over and decide in an equitable manner, looking for a way to harmonize the interests of all people. Really he didn’t know what to do, and as he had no great desire to begin new undertakings, he wanted to call the Co-operative dead, but Dr. Ortigosa was not disposed to abandon the idea.

“It is certain that if goods are made cheaper,” said the doctor, “and the Co-operative is opened to the public, the shopkeepers will have to fight it, and then either they or we shall be ruined; but something else can be done, and that is to sell articles to the public at the same price as the tradesmen, and arrange it that members get a dividend from the profits of the society. In that way there will be no fight, at any rate not at first.”

They tried to do it that way, but it did not satisfy the poor people, or calm the shopkeepers.

Cæsar, who had lost his lust for a fight, put the scheme aside; and although it would cost him more, decided to have the construction of the school begun.

The Municipality ceded the lot and granted a subsidy of five thousand pesetas to start the work; Cæsar gave ten thousand, and at the Workmen’s Club a subscription was opened, and performances were given in the theatre to collect funds.

The school promised to be a spacious edifice with a beautiful garden. The corner-stone was laid in the presence of the Governor of the Province, and despite the fact that the founders’ intention was to found a lay school, the Clerical element took part in the celebration.

When the work began, the majority of the members of the Club were shocked to find that the masons, instead of working on the same conditions as for other jobs, asked more pay, as if the school where their sons might study were an institution more harmful than beneficial for them.

Cæsar, on learning this, smiled bitterly and said:

“They are not obliged to be less of brutes than the bourgeoisie.”

From Madrid Cæsar continued sending maps for the school, engravings, bas-reliefs, a moving-picture machine.

Dr. Ortigosa and his friends went every day to look over the work.

A year from the beginning of work, the boys and girls’ school was opened. Dr. Ortigosa succeeded in arranging that two of the three male teachers they procured were Free-Thinkers. One of them, a poor man who had lived a dog’s life in some town in Andalusia, was reputed to be an anarchist. They appointed three female teachers too, two old, and one young, a very attractive and clever girl, who came from a town near Bilboa.

Cæsar took part in the opening, and spoke, and received enthusiastic applause. Despite which, Cæsar felt ill at ease among his old friends; in his heart he knew that he was deserting them. He now thought it unlikely, almost impossible, that that town should succeed in emerging from obscurity and meaning something in modern life. Moreover, he doubted about himself, began to think that he was not a hero, began to believe that he had assigned himself a role beyond his powers; and this precisely at the moment when the town had the most faith in him.

XV. “DRIVELLER” JUAN AND “THE CUB-SLUT”

_A MURDER_

“Driveller” Juan, the town dandy protected by Father Martín, had from childhood distinguished himself by his cowardice and by his tendency to bullying. His appearance was that of an idiot; people said he drivelled; whence they gave him the nickname of “Driveller” Juan. He lived by pretending to be terrible in the gambling houses, and bragged of having been in prison several times.

The Clericals had made “Driveller” the janitor of the Benevolent Society, and at the same time its bully, so that he could inspire terror; but as he was a coward in reality, and this was evident, he did not succeed in terrifying the members of the Workmen’s Club.

“Driveller” Juan was tall, red-headed, with high cheek bones, knotty hands, and a pendulous lip; his father, like him, had been bony and strong, and for that reason had been called “Big Bones.”

“Driveller,” like the coward he was, knew that he was not filling his job; one day he had dared to go to a ball at the Workmen’s Club, and San Román, the old Republican, had gone to him and tapped him on the arm, saying:

“Listen here, ‘Driveller,’ get out right now and don’t you come back.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you are not wanted.”

Juan had gone away like a whipped dog. “Driveller” wanted to do a manly action, and he did it.

There was a boy belonging to the Workmen’s Club, who was called “Lengthy,” one of the few type-setters in the town, a clever, facetious lad who now and then wrote an article for _The Protest_.

“Driveller” insisted that “Lengthy” wanted to make fun of him. No doubt he chose him for his victim, because he was so slim, lanky, and weak; perhaps he had some other reason for attacking him. One afternoon, at twilight, “Driveller” halted “Lengthy,” demanded an explanation, insulted him, and on finding his victim made no reply, gave him a blow. The street was wet, and “Driveller” stepped on a fruit-skin and fell headlong. Seeing the bully infuriated, “Lengthy” started to run, came to an open door, and ran rapidly up the stairs. “Driveller,” furious, ran after him. Pursued and pursuer went down a hallway and “Lengthy” managed to reach a door and close it. “Driveller’s” revengeful fury was not satisfied; he lay in wait until “Lengthy,” believing himself alone, tried to escape from his hiding-place and was walking down the hall, and then “Driveller” drew his pistol and fired with the mouth against “Lengthy’s” shoulder, and left him dead. As it was a rainy day, both the dead man’s footsteps and the murderer’s could be followed and everything that had happened ascertained.

The impression produced in the town by this assassination was enormous. Some people said that Father Martin and his followers had ordered “Lengthy” killed. In the Workmen’s Club there was talk of setting fire to the Benevolent Society of Saint Joseph and of burning the monastery of la Peña.

Cæsar was in Madrid at the time of the crime. Some days later a committee from the Club came to see him; it was necessary to have a charge pushed and for Cæsar to be the private attorney.

According to the Club people, the Clericals wanted to save “Driveller” Juan, and if he was not disposed of completely, he would begin his performances again.

Cæsar could see nothing for it but to accept the duty which the town put upon him.

Because of the crime, the history of “Driveller’s” family came to be public property. He had a mother and two sisters who were seamstresses, whom he exploited, and he lived with a tavern-keeper nicknamed “The Cub-Slut,” a buxom, malicious woman, who said horrible things about everybody.

* * * * *

_LIFE OF “THE CUB-SLUT”_

There were reasons for “The Cub-Slut’s” being what she was. Her parents being dead when she was a baby, having no relatives she had been left deserted. A farrier they called “Gaffer,” who seemed to have been a kind person, took in the infant and brought her up in his house. It was “Gaffer” who had given the nickname to the child, because instead of calling her by her name, he used to say:

“Hey, ‘Cub-Slut!’ Hey, little ‘Cub-Slut!’” and the appellation had stuck.

When the girl was fourteen, “Gaffer” ravished her, and afterwards, being tired of her, took her to a house of prostitution in the Capital and sold her. “The Cub-Slut” left the brothel to go and live with an old innkeeper, who died and made her his heiress. Six years later she went back to Castro. Those that had seen her come back maintained that when she reached the town and was told that “Gaffer” had died a few months before, she burst into tears; some said it was from sentiment, but others thought, very plausibly, that it was from rage at not being able to get revenge. “The Cub-Slut” set up a tavern at Castro.

“Driveller” and “The Cub-Slut” got along well, although, by what any one could discover, “The Cub-Slut” treated the bully more like a servant than anything else.

“The Cub-Slut” was said to be very outspoken. One Sunday, on the promenade, she had answered one of the young ladies of Castro rudely. The young lady was the daughter of a millionaire, who had married after having several children by a mistress of pretty bad reputation. The millionaire’s children had been educated in aristocratic schools, and his girls were very elegant young ladies; even the mother got to be refined and polished. One Sunday, on the promenade, one of them, on passing near “The Cub-Slut,” said in a low tone to her mother:

“Dear Lord, what riff-raff!”

And “The Cub-Slut,” hearing her, stopped and said violently:

“There’s no riff-raff here except your mother and me. Now you know it.”

The young lady was so upset by the harsh retort that she didn’t leave the house again for a long while.

Such rude candour on “The Cub-Slut’s” part had made her feared; so that nobody durst provoke her in the slightest degree. Besides, her history and her misfortune were known and people knew that she was not a vicious woman, but rather a victim of fate.

The assassination of “Lengthy” was one of those events that are not forgotten in a town. “Lengthy” was the son of “Gaffer,” “The Cub-Slut’s” protector, and some people imagined that she had persuaded “Driveller” to commit the crime; but the members of the Workmen’s Club continued to believe that it was a case of clerical revenge.

_“THE CUB-SLUT’S” ARGUMENT_

In the month of June, Cæsar and Amparito went to Castro Duro.

One afternoon when Cæsar was alone in the garden, a very buxom woman appeared before him, wearing a mantilla and dressed in black.

“I came in without anybody seeing me,” she said. “Your porter, ‘Wild Piglet,’ let me pass. I know that Amparito is not here.”

She didn’t say “Your wife,” or “Your lady,” but “Amparito.”

“Tell me what you want,” said Cæsar, looking at the woman with a certain dread.

“I am the woman that lives with ‘Driveller’ Juan.”

“Ah! You are...?” “Yes. ‘The Cub-Slut.’”

Cæsar looked at her attentively. She was of the aquiline type seen on Iberian coins, her nose arched, eyes big and black, thin-lipped mouth, and a protruding chin. She noticed his scrutiny, and stood as if on her guard.

“Sit down, if you will, please, and tell me what you wish.”

“I am all right,” she replied, continuing to stand; then, precipitately, she said, “What I want is for them not to punish Juan more than is just.”

“I don’t believe he will be punished unjustly,” responded Cæsar.

“The whole town says that if you speak against him in court, the punishment will be heavier.”

“And you want me not to speak?”

“That’s it.”

“It seems to me to be asking too much. I shall do no more than insist that they punish him justly.”

“There is no way to get out of it?”

“None.”

“If you wanted to... I would wait on you on my knees afterwards, I would make any sacrifice for you.”

“Are you so fond of the man?”

“The Cub-Slut” answered in the negative, by an energetic movement of her head.

“Well, then, what do you expect to get out of him?”

“I expect revenge.”

“The Cub-Slut’s” eyes flashed.

“Is what they say about you true?” asked Cæsar.

“Yes.”

“The dead boy was the son of the man that sold you?”

“Yes.”

“But to revenge oneself on the son for the sin of the father is horrible.”

“The son was just as wicked as the father.”

“So that you ordered him killed?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you come and tell that to me, when I am to be the private attorney.” “Have them arrest me. I don’t care.”

“The Cub-Slut” stood firm before Cæsar, provocative, with flashing eyes, in an attitude of challenge.

“You hated that dead boy so much as this?”

“Yes, him and all his family.”

“I can understand that if the father were alive, you might...”

“If he were alive! I would give my life to drag him out of his tomb, so as to make him suffer as much as he made me suffer.”

Cæsar vaguely remembered the story he had heard about this woman, whose adopted father had ruined her and then left her in a disreputable house in the Capital. In general, the most absolute lack of apprehension characterizes such village tragedies, and neither does the victim know she is a victim, nor the villain that he is a villain.

But in this case, judging by what “The Cub-Slut” was telling him, it had not been so; “Gaffer” had gone about it with a certain depravity, glutting his desires on her, and then selling her, putting her into an infamous house. The villain had been cruel and intelligent; the victim had realized that she was one, to the degree that her soul was filled with desires for vengeance.

“That man,” “The Cub-Slut” ended, sobbing, “took away my name and gave me a nickname; took away my honour, my life, everything; and if I cannot be revenged on him because he is dead, I will be revenged on his family.”

Cæsar listened attentively to the woman’s explanation, without interrupting her. Then, when she had finished speaking, he said:

“And why not go away?”

“Away? Where?” she asked, astonished.

“Anywhere. The world is so big! Why do you persist in living in the one spot where people know you and have a bad opinion of you? Go away from here. There are countries with more generous sentiments than these old corners of the world. You do not consider yourself infamous or vile.”

“No, no.”

“Then go away from here. To America, to Australia, anywhere. Perhaps you can reconstruct your life. At any rate, nobody will call you by your nickname; nobody will talk familiarly to you. You will conquer or you will be conquered in the struggle for life. That’s evident. You will share the common lot, but you will not be vilified. Do go.”

“The Cub-Slut” listened to Cæsar with eyes cast down. When he ceased, she stood looking at him intently, and then, without a word, she disappeared.

XVI. PITY, A MASK OF COWARDICE

_THE MOTHER_

Some days later Cæsar was in his office, when a thin old woman, dressed in black, shot in, crossed the room, and fell on her knees before him. Cæsar jumped up in disgust.

“What’s this? What’s going on here?” he asked.

Amparito entered the room and explained what was going on. The old woman was “Driveller” Juan’s mother. People had told Juan’s mother that the only obstacle to her son’s salvation from death was Cæsar, and she had come to implore him not to let them condemn Juan to death.

“My poor son is a good boy,” moaned the old creature; “a woman made him commit the crime.”

Cæsar listened, silent and gloomy, without speaking, and then left the room. Amparito remained with the old woman, consoling her and trying to quiet her.

That night Amparito returned to the task, and dragged the promise from her husband that he would not act as private attorney at the trial.

Cæsar was ashamed and saddened; he didn’t care to go to see anybody; he was committing treason against his cause.

“Pity will finish my work or finish me,” thought Cæsar, walking about his room. “That poor old woman is worthy of compassion; that is undeniable. She believes her son is a good boy, and he really is a low, cowardly ruffian. I ought not to pay any attention to this plea, but insist on their condemning that miserable wretch to death. But I haven’t any more energy; I haven’t any more strength. I can feel that I am going to yield; the mother’s grief moves me, and I do not consider that if this bully goes free, he is going to turn the town upside down and ruin all our work. I am lost.”

_FLIGHT_

Cæsar confided to his wife that he was daunted; his lack of courage was a nightmare to him.

Amparito said that they ought to take a long trip. Laura had invited them to come to Italy. It was the best thing they could do.

Cæsar accepted her solution, and, as a matter of fact, they went to Madrid and from there to Italy.

The Workmen’s Club telegraphed to Cæsar when the time for the trial came, and Amparito answered the telegram from Florence, saying that her husband was ill.

Never had Cæsar felt so agitated as then. He bought the Spanish newspapers, and expected to find in some one of them the words: “Señor Moncada is a coward,” or “Señor Moncada is a sorry creature and a traitor.”

When they knew that judgment had been pronounced and Juan condemned to eight years in the penitentiary, they returned to Madrid.

Cæsar felt humiliated and ashamed; he did not dare show himself in Castro. The congratulations that some people sent him on the restoration of his health made his cheeks hot with shame in the solitude of his office.

The editor of a newspaper in the Capital of the Province came to call on Cæsar, who was so dispirited that he confided to his visitor that he was ready to retire from politics. Two days later Cæsar saw a big headline on the first page of the Conservative newspaper of the Capital, which said: “Moncada is about to retire.”

Amparito applauded her husband’s decision, and Cæsar made melancholy plans for the future, founded on the renunciation of all struggle.

A few days later Cæsar received a letter from Castro Duro which made him quiver. It was signed by Dr. Ortigosa, by San Román, Camacho, the apothecary, and the leading members of the Workmen’s Club. The letter was in the doctor’s handwriting. It read thus:

“Dear Sir: We have read in the newspaper from the Capital the announcement that you are thinking of retiring from politics. We believe this announcement is not true. We cannot think that you, the champion of liberty in Castro Duro, would abandon so noble a cause, and leave the town exposed to the intrigues and the evil tricks of the Clericals. There is no question in this of whether it would suit you better to retire from politics, or not. That is of no importance. There is a question of what would suit our country and Liberty better.

“If because of the seductions of an easy life, you should withdraw from us and desert us, you would have committed the crime of lèse-civilization; you would have slain in its flower the re-birth of the spiritual and civic life of Castro.

“We do not believe you capable of such cowardice and such infamy, and since we do not believe you capable of it, we beg you to come to Castro Duro as soon as possible to direct the approaching municipal elections.--Dr. Ortigosa, Antonio San Román, José Camacho.”

On reading this letter Cæsar felt as if he had been struck with a whip. Those men were correct; he had no right to retire from the fight.

This conviction supported him.

“I have to go to Castro,” he said to Amparito.

“But didn’t you say that...?”

“Yes, but it is impossible.”

Amparito realized that her husband’s decision was final, and she said:

“All right; let us go to Castro.”

XVII. FIRST VICTORY

The Conservatives had come into power; the time to change the town government was approaching. It was customary at Castro, as in all rural districts in Spain, that in a period of Liberal administration the majority of the councillors elected should be Liberal, and at a time of Conservative government, they should be Conservative.

The former Liberal, García Padilla, had gone over to the Conservative camp, and one was now to see whether he would get his friends into the Municipality so as to prepare for his own election as Deputy later.

It was the first time there was going to be a real election at Castro Duro. Moncada’s candidates were almost all persons of good position. Dr. Ortigosa and a Socialist weaver figured among the candidates, as representing the revolutionary tendency. The Liberals felt and showed an unusual activity and anxiety. Cæsar started a newspaper which he named Liberty, Dr. Ortigosa was the soul of this paper, whose doctrines ran from Liberal Monarchy to Anarchy, inclusive. As the election drew nearer, the agitation increased.

In the two electoral headquarters established by Moncada’s party, the coming and going never stopped; some enthusiastic Moncadists came to headquarters every fifteen minutes, to bring rumours going about and to get news.

Don So-and-So had said this; Uncle What’s-His-Name was thinking of doing that; it was nothing but conferences and machinations. The painter had painted for them gratis a big poster expressing cheers for Liberty, for Moncada, Dr. Ortigosa, and the Liberal candidates. The café keeper brought chairs, without any one’s asking him; somebody else brought a brasier for the clerks; everybody was anxious to do something. The stock phrase, an electoral battle, was not for them a political commonplace but a reality. The most trivial things served as a motive for very long discussions. Such was their identification with the Idea, that it succeeded in wiping out selfish ends. They all felt honoured and enthusiastic, at least while it lasted.

People dreamed of the election.

When Cæsar arrived at the electoral headquarters, it was always a series of exclamations, of embracing, of advice, that never ended.

“Don Cæsar, such a thing is... Don Cæsar, don’t trust So-and-So.”

“We must get rid of them.”

“Not one of them ought to be left.”

He used to smile, because finding himself really loved by the people had cleansed him of his habitual bitterness and his loss of spirits. When he had finished receiving recommendations and congratulations, he would go to an inside room, and there, in the company of a candidate or a secretary, would read letters and arrange what they had to do.

The most active of the candidates was Dr. Ortigosa.

Ortigosa was a narrow-minded, tenacious man. His chief hatred was for Catholicism and he directed all his attacks at the religion of his forefathers, as he ironically termed it.

He had founded a Masonic lodge, named the “Microbe,” and whose principal characteristic was anti-Catholicism.

Ortigosa carried his propaganda everywhere. He stopped at every corner to speechify, to talk of his plans.

Cæsar used his motor-car to go about among the villages in the district. They would go to four or five and talk from balconies, or very often from the car, like itinerant patent-medicine venders.

In the little villages these reunions produced a great effect. What was said served as a topic of conversation for a month.

Cæsar had developed a clear, insinuating eloquence. He knew how to explain things admirably. Padilla’s followers were not asleep; but, as was natural, they took up the work in another way. They went from shop to shop, making the shopkeepers see the harmfulness of the Moncadist politics, promising them advantages. They threatened workmen with dismissal. There was no great enthusiasm; their campaign was less noisy, but, in part more certain.

All the Liberal element of Castro was wrought up, from the temperate Liberals, who remembered Espartero, to the Anarchists. “Whiskers” and “Furibis” were the only ones who got together in a tavern to talk about bombs and dynamite, and one could be sure that neither of them was capable of anything. Those two had nothing more to do with Ortigosa, considering him a deserter.

“You are imbeciles,” the doctor told them, with his habitual fury. “This fight is waking the people up. They are beginning to show their instincts, and that makes a man strong. The longer and more violent this fight is, the better; progress will be so much quicker.”

“Agitation, agitation is what we need,” cried the doctor; and he himself was as agitated as a man condemned.

The Liberals won a great victory; they obtained eight places out of ten vacancies.

XVIII. DECLARATION OF WAR

The new city government of Castro was the most extraordinary that could be imagined. Dr. Ortigosa presented motions which caused the greatest astonishment and stupefaction, not only in the town, but in the whole province. He conceived magnificent plans and extravagant ideas. He asked to have the teaching system changed, religious festivals suppressed and other ones instituted, property abolished, public baths installed, and that Castro Duro should break with Rome.

The doctor was a creature born to succeed those revolutionary eagle-men, like Robespierre and Saint Just, and condemned to live in a miserable chicken-yard.

One day when Cæsar was working in his office, he was astounded to see Father Martin enter.

Father Martin greeted Cæsar like an old acquaintance; he had come to ask him a favour. Suspicious, Cæsar prepared to listen. After speaking of the business that had brought him, the friar began to criticize the town-government of Castro and to say that it was a veritable mad-house.

“Your friends,” said the priest, smiling, “are unrestrained. They want to change everything in three days. Dr. Ortigosa is a crazy man....”

“To my mind, he is the only man in Castro that deserves my estimation.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“This demoniac says that for him traditions have no value whatsoever.”

“Oh! I think the same thing,” said Cæsar. “Are you anti-historic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Absolutely. Tradition has no value for me either.”

“The basis of tradition,” answered the friar, arguing like a man who carries the whole of human knowledge in the pocket of his habit, “is the confidence we all have in the experience of our predecessors. Whether I be a labourer or a pastor, even though I have lived fifty years, I may have great experience about my work and about life, but it will never be so great as the united experience of all those who have preceded me. Can I scorn the accumulation of wisdom that past generations hand down to us?”

“If you wish me to tell you the truth, for me your argument has no weight,” answered Cæsar coldly.

“No?”

“No. It is undeniable that there is a sum of knowledge that comes from father to son, from one labourer to another, and from one pastor to another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences, compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge of a quack was greater and better than that of a wise physician.”

“I am not talking,” answered the Father, “of pure science. I am talking of applied science. Is one of your universal savants going to occupy himself with the way of sowing or of threshing in Castro?”

“Yes. He has already occupied himself with it, because he has occupied himself with the way of sowing or threshing in general, and, what is more, with the variations in the processes that may be occasioned by the kind of soil, the climate, etc.”

“And do you believe that such scientific pragmatism can be substituted for the natural pragmatism born of the people’s loins, created by them through centuries and centuries of life?”

“Yes. That is to say, I believe it can purify it; that it can cast out of this pragmatism, as you call it, all that is wrong, absurd, and false and keep what good there may be.” “And for you the absurd and false is Catholic morality.”

“It is.”

“You are not willing to discuss whether Catholicism is true or is a lie; you consider it a ruinous doctrine which produces decadence. I have been told that you have stated that on various occasions.”

“It is true. I have said so.”

“Then we do not agree. Catholicism is useful; Catholicism is efficient.”

“For what? For this life?”

“Yes.”

“No. Pshaw! It may be useful when it comes to dying? Where there is Catholicism there is ruin and misery.”

“Nevertheless, there is no misery in Belgium.”

“Certainly there is none, but in that country Catholicism is not what it is in Spain.”

“Of course it isn’t,” exclaimed the friar, shouting, “because what characterizes Spanish Catholicism is Spain, poverty-stricken, fanatic Spain, and not the Catholicism.”

“I do not believe we are going to understand each other,” replied Cæsar; “what seems a cause to me is an effect for you.... Besides, we are getting away from the question. To you Castro’s moral and intellectual state seems good, does it not?”

“Yes.”

“Well, to me it seems horrifying. Sordid vice, obscure adultery; gambling, bullying, usury, hunger... You think it ought to keep on being just as it was before I was Deputy for the District. Do you not?”

“I do.”

“That I have been a disturbance, an enemy to public tranquillity.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, this state of things that you find admirable, seems to me bestially fanatical, repugnantly immoral, repulsively vile.”

“Of course, for you are a pessimist about things as they are, like any good revolutionist. You believe that you are going to improve life at Castro. You alone?” “I, united with others.”

“And meanwhile you introduce anarchy into the city.”

“I introduce anarchy! No. I introduce order. I want to finish with the anarchy already reigning in Castro and make it submit to a thought, to a worthy, noble thought.”

“And by what right do you arrogate to yourself the power to do this?”

“By the right of being the stronger.”

“Ah! Good. If you should get to be the weaker, you ought not to complain if we should misuse our strength.”

“Complain! When you have been misusing it for thousands of years! At this very moment, we do the talking, we make the protests, but you people give the orders.”

“We offset your idiotic behaviour. We stand in the way of your utopias. Do you think you are going to solve the problem of this earth, and that of Capital? Are you going to solve the sexual question? Are you going to institute a society without inequality or injustice, as Dr. Ortigosa said in _La Libertad_ the other day? To me it seems very difficult.”

“To me too. But that is what there is to try for.”

“And when will you attain so perfect an arrangement, so great a harmony, as the Catholic, created in twenty centuries? When?”

“We shall attain a different, better harmony.”

“Oh, I doubt it.”

“Naturally. That is just what the pagans might have said to the Christians; and perhaps with reason, because Christianity, compared to paganism, was a retrogression.”

“That point we cannot discuss,” said Father Lafuerza, getting up.

Cæsar got up too.

“In spite of all this, I admire you, because I believe you are sincere,” said Father Martin. “But I believe you to be dangerous and I should be happy to get you out of Castro.”

“I feel the same way about you, and I should also be happy to get you out of here, as an unwholesome element.”

“So that we are open, loyal enemies.” “Loyal! Pshaw! We are ready to do each other all the harm possible.”

“For my part, yes, and in any way,” announced the priest with energy.

“I, too,” Cæsar answered; and he raised the curtain of the office door.

“Don’t disturb yourself,” said Father Martin.

“Oh, it’s no trouble.”

“Regards to Amparito.”

“Thank you.”

The friar hesitated about going out, as if he wanted to return to the attack.

“Afterwards, if you repent...” he said.

“I shall not repent,” Cæsar coldly replied.

“I will drink peace to you.”

“Yes, if I submit. I will drink peace to you too, if I submit.”

“You are going to play a dangerous game.”

“It will be no less dangerous for you than for me.”

“You are playing for your head.”

“Pshaw! We will play for it and win it.”

The friar bowed, and smiling in a forced manner, left the house.

XIX. THE FIGHT FOR THE ELECTION

The Conservatives at Castro Duro were ready to commit the greatest outrages and the most arbitrary acts so as to win by any methods.

It was known that a committee consisting of García Padilla, Father Martín Lafuerza, and two Conservative councillors had gone to the Minister of the Interior to beg that Cæsar’s victory might be prevented by whatsoever means.

“It is necessary that Don Cæsar Moncada should not be elected for the District,” said Father Martín. “If he is, the town will remain subjected to a revolutionary dictatorship. All the Conservative classes, the merchants, the religious communities, fervently hope that Moncada will not be made Deputy.”

The committee of Castrians visited other high personages, and they must have attained their object, because the municipal government was suspended a few days later, the Workmen’s Club closed, the judge transferred, the Civil Guard was reinforced, and a police inspector of the worst antecedents was detailed to Castro as commissioner of elections.

The Governor of the Province, a political enemy of Cæsar’s, was a personal friend of his.

“For your sake I am ready to lose my future,” he had said to him, “but as for your followers, there is nothing left for me to do but knock them over the head.”

_La Libertad_, Cæsar’s newspaper, made a very violent campaign against García Padilla. Ortigosa succeeded in finding out that Padilla had been tried for embezzlement, and he published that fact. The _Castro News_, on its side, insulted Cæsar and called him a crooked speculator on the exchange, an upstart, and an atheist.

The rapidity and violence of the Government’s methods produced an effect of fear on lukewarm Liberals; on the other hand, it moved the decided ones to show themselves all the more courageous and rash.

Moncada’s party almost immediately took on a revolutionary character. The lodge, “The Microbe,” was at work, and the most radical arrangements started there. It suited the Government and the Conservatives to have the Moncada party take this demagogic character. The commissioner had contaminating persons come on from the Capital for the purpose of sowing discord in the Workmen’s Club.

These suspicious persons, directed by one they called “Sparkler,” used to gather in the taverns to corrupt the workmen and the peasants, carrying on a propaganda that was anarchistic in appearance, but in reality anti-liberal.

“They are all the same,” they used to say; “Liberals and Conservatives are not a bit different.”

The drunkards and vagabonds were in their glory during those days, eating and drinking. Nobody knew for certain where the money came from, but everybody could make certain that it flowed profusely.

At the same time the commissioner had the most prominent workmen of the Club arrested and brought suit against them on ridiculous accusations.

_THE MEETING_

The Liberals tried to hold a manifestation in protest, but the commissioner and the mayor prohibited it.

The newspaper _La Libertad_ explained what was going on, and was reprimanded.

A meeting was organized at the school; the governor had granted permission.

The school was not lighted, and Cæsar sent a man to the Capital for acetylene lamps, which were put up on the walls, and which made a detestable smell. The reunion took place at nine at night. Cæsar presided, and had San Román, the bookseller, on his right, and Dr. Ortigosa on his left.

Behind them on a bench were some of the members of the Workmen’s Club.

The audience was composed of the poorest people; the rich Liberal element was drawing back; there were day-labourers with blankets around their shoulders and mouths, women in shawls holding children in their arms. Among the audience were the _agents provocateurs_ who doubtless had the intention of making a disturbance; but the Republican bookseller ordered them thrown out of the place, and, despite their resistance, he managed to have it done.

The chief of police, insolent and contemptuous, took his seat at the table with an officer of the Civil Guard in civilian’s, who was there, he said, to take notes.

San Román, the bookseller, gave Cæsar a paper with the names of those who were going to speak. They were many, and Cæsar didn’t know them.

The first to whom he gave the floor, in the order of the list, was a lame boy, who came forward on a crutch, and began to speak.

The boy expressed himself with great enthusiasm and admirable candour.

“Who is this youngster?” Cæsar asked San Román.

“He is the best pupil in our school. We call him ‘Limpy.’ He comes of a very poor family. He came to the school a year ago, knowing nothing, and see him now. He says, and I think he is right, that if he keeps on studying, he will be an eminent man.”

The audience applauded everything “Limpy” said, and when he finished they hailed him with shouts and cheers. As he went back to his seat, Cæsar and San Román shook his hand effusively.

_STAND FAST, FELLOW CITIZENS!_

After “Limpy,” various orators spoke, in divers keys: “Furibis,” “Uncle Chinaman,” “Panza,” San Román, a weaver, a railway employee, and Dr. Ortigosa. The last-named let loose, and launched into such violent terms that the audience shouted in horrified excitement. Cæsar’s speech recommended firmness, and caused scarcely any reaction. The note had been given by “Limpy,” with his ingenuousness and his appealing quality, and by the doctor with the violence of his words.

The next day the Governor’s commissioner gave orders to close the school, and Dr. Ortigosa and San Román were taken to jail.

_POLITICAL TRICKS_

It was impossible to carry on a campaign of popular agitation, and Cæsar decided to open a headquarters for propaganda next door to each voting place.

Meetings in the villages had been suppressed, because at the least alarm, or even without any motive, the chief of police, with members of the Civil Guard, went in among the people and dispersed them by shoving and by pounding rifles on their feet.

The newspapers couldn’t say anything without being immediately reported and suspended.

Cæsar sent no telegrams of protest, but he kept at work silently. He was thinking of using all weapons, including even trickery and bribes.

García Padilla and the Government agents found this proceeding even more dangerous than the former. Cæsar offered twenty dollars to anybody that would give information of any electoral sharp practices which could be proved. The week of the election he and his friends did not rest.

At one of the polls in Carrascal, where Cæsar had a majority, the tile bearing the house-number had been changed by night. The real voters had to wait to cast their votes in one place, and meanwhile the urn was being filled with ballots for the Government candidate at another place.