Caesar or Nothing Part 76

"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, Garcia Padilla, had gone over to the Conservative camp, and one was now to see whether he would get his friends into the Munic.i.p.ality 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. Caesar 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 cafe 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 Caesar arrived at the electoral headquarters, it was always a series of exclamations, of embracing, of advice, that never ended.

"Don Caesar, such a thing is... Don Caesar, 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 princ.i.p.al characteristic was anti-Catholicism.

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

Caesar 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.

Caesar 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 inst.i.tuted, 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 Caesar was working in his office, he was astounded to see Father Martin enter.

Father Martin greeted Caesar like an old acquaintance; he had come to ask him a favour. Suspicious, Caesar 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 Caesar. "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 acc.u.mulation 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 Caesar 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 subst.i.tuted for the natural pragmatism born of the people's loins, created by them through centuries and centuries of life?"