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.