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.