Who was the ruler of the pueblo? Not Don Rafael during his lifetime, though he possessed the most land, and nearly every one owed him. As he was modest, and gave little value to his deeds, no party formed around him, and we have seen how he was deserted and attacked when his fortunes fell.

Was it Captain Tiago? It is true his arrival was always heralded with music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents; but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago.

Was it by chance the town mayor, the gobernadorcillo? Alas! he was an unfortunate, who governed not, but obeyed; did not dispose, but was disposed of. And yet he had to answer to the alcalde for all these dispositions, as if they emanated from his own brain. Be it said in his favor that he had neither stolen nor usurped his honors, but that they cost him five thousand pesos and much humiliation.

Perhaps then it was God? But to most of these good people, God seemed one of those poor kings surrounded by favorites to whom their subjects always take their supplications, never to them.

No, San Diego was a sort of modern Rome. The curate was the pope at the Vatican; the alfÉrez of the civil guard, the King in the Quirinal. Here as there, difficulties arose from the situation.

The present curate, Brother Bernardo Salvi, was the young and silent Franciscan we have already seen. In mode of life and in appearance he was very unlike his predecessor, Brother DÁmaso. He seemed ill, was always thoughtful, accomplished strictly his religious duties, and was careful of his reputation. Through his zeal, almost all his parishioners had speedily become members of the Third Order of St. Francis, to the great dismay of the rival order, that of the Holy Rosary. Four or five scapularies were suspended around every neck, knotted cords encircled all the waists, and the innumerable processions of the order were a joy to see. The head sacristan took in a small fortune, selling—or giving as alms, to put it more correctly—all the paraphernalia necessary to save the soul and combat the devil. It is well known that this evil spirit, who once dared attack God face to face, and accuse His divine word, as the book of Job tells us, is now so cowardly and feeble that he flees at sight of a bit of painted cloth, and fears a knotted cord.

Brother Salvi again greatly differed from Brother DÁmaso—who set everything right with fists or ferrule, believing it the only way to reach the Indian—in that he punished with fines the faults of his subordinates, rarely striking them.

From his struggles with the curate, the alfÉrez had a bad reputation among the devout, which he deserved, and shared with his wife, a hideous and vile old Filipino woman named DoÑa Consolacion. The husband avenged his conjugal woes on himself by drinking like a fish; on his subordinates, by making them exercise in the sun; and most frequently on his wife, by kicks and drubbings. The two fought famously between themselves, but were of one mind when it was a question of the curate. Inspired by his wife, the officer ordered that no one be abroad in the streets after nine at night. The priest, who did not like this restriction, retorted in lengthy sermons, whenever the alfÉrez went to church. Like all impenitents, the alfÉrez did not mend his ways for that, but went out swearing under his breath, arrested the first sacristan he met, and made him clean the yard of the barracks. So the war went on. All this, however, did not prevent the alfÉrez and the curate chatting courteously enough when they met.

And they were the rulers of the pueblo of San Diego.