"You laugh," said the teacher, "and I, too, now; but I assure you I had no desire to then. I started to reply, I don't know what, but Brother Dámaso interrupted:
"'Don't wear clothes that are not your own,' he said in Tagal; 'be content to speak your own language. Do you know about Ciruela? Well, Ciruela was a master who could neither read nor write, yet he kept school.' And he left the room, slamming the door behind him. What was I to do? What could I, against him, the highest authority of the pueblo, moral, political, and civil; backed by his order, feared by the Government, rich, powerful, always obeyed and believed. To withstand him was to lose my place, and break off my career without hope of another. Every one would have sided with the priest. I should have been called proud, insolent, no Christian, perhaps even anti-Spanish and filibustero. Heaven forgive me if I denied my conscience and my reason, but I was born here, must live here, I have a mother, and I abandoned myself to my fate, as a cadaver to the wave that rolls it."
"And you lost all hope? You have tried nothing since?"
"I was rash enough to try two more experiments, one after our change of curates; but both proved offensive to the same authority. Since then I have done my best to convert the poor babies into parrots."
"Well, I have cheerful news for you," said Ibarra. "I am soon to present to the Government a project that will help you out of your difficulties, if it is approved."
"You will see, Señor Ibarra, that your projects--I've heard something of them--will no more be realized than were mine!"
Sisa was running toward her poor little home. She had experienced one of those convulsions of being which we know at the hour of a great misfortune, when we see no possible refuge and all our hopes take flight. If then a ray of light illumine some little corner, we fly toward it without stopping to question.
Sisa ran swiftly, pursued by many fears and dark presentiments. Had they already taken her Basilio? Where had her Crispin hidden?
As she neared her home, she saw two soldiers coming out of the little garden. She lifted her eyes to heaven; heaven was smiling in its ineffable light; little white clouds swam in the transparent blue.