The Fourth Estate Volume I Part 26

"Gentlemen, I will say it again, come what may, Sarrio is called to a great destiny. It has a right to be one of the first towns on the Biscayan coast, an emporium of activity and riches, by reason of the excellent position which nature has given it, a harbor second to none, as well as the integrity, industry, and the great gift of intelligence of its inhabitants."

[_Bravo! Bravo! Unanimous and loud applause._]

The silence, caused more by surprise than any bad feeling, was now broken, and the "bravos" and applause continued without intermission.

Never had the industrious, honest, intelligent people of Sarrio heard any one speak so fluently and eloquently before.

"That discourse was a revelation of the modern parliamentary style!" So Alvaro Pena said when the meeting was over.

The speech continued half an hour longer, amid the increasing enthusiasm of the audience, when one of the notabilities on the platform thought that his throat must be dry, and that it was time to give him a gla.s.s of sugared water.

The idea was communicated in an undertone to the president, who interrupted the orator with the remark:

"If Senor Suarez is fatigued, he can rest. I am going to have a gla.s.s of water sent him."

These words were received with a murmur of approval.

"I am not tired, Senor President," the orator replied gently.

[_Yes, yes; rest. Make him rest. Let him have a gla.s.s of water. He will hurt himself. Let him have a few drops of anise._]

The audience, suddenly inspired with tender sympathy, manifested quite a maternal solicitude for Perinolo's son, who, inflated with delight, smiled on the audience and continued:

"Fatigue is fitting for valiant soldiers. Those who, like myself, are accustomed to the tribune [he had spoken a few times in the Academy of Jurisprudence in Lancia], do not easily become fatigued."

We must now say that Mechacar, a shoemaker, a neighbor, and a rival of many years' standing of Senor Jose Maria Perinolo, who had known Sinforoso from his birth, and had often given him two or three beatings with the strap, when on his return from school he annoyed him by calling him by some contemptuous nickname, was in the gallery with his hands resting on the rail, and his face, alert and attentive, on his hands. No enthusiasm shone in those eyes under the lowering brows, as in those of the others; but envy, hatred, and malice were visible on the countenance. When the honeyed words of his rival fell upon his ears he felt powerless to stand the farce, and he called out in a rage:

"Stop that rubbish, you fool!"

[_Indescribable indignation of the audience. All eyes were turned to the gallery. Voices were heard saying:_]

"Who is this brawler? To the prison with him! Out with the fool!"

The president asked with terrible severity:

"Are we in a civilized town, or among Hottentots?"

The question thus formulated produced a profound impression upon the audience. Suarez, slightly pale, and in an agitated voice, finally said:

"If the meeting desire it, I am ready to sit down."

[_No, no. Go on! Loud and prolonged applause for the orator._]

The indignation against the rude disturber increased to such a degree that sounds of threats were audible, and several shook their fists in the direction whence the voice had proceeded. Alvaro Pena, the Greek orator, more indignant than anybody, finally went up to the gallery and put Mechacar out of the theatre by force, amid the applause of the public.

The storm abated, the orator continued. He made a wide digression through the fields of history to prove that from the Roman conquest, when Spain was divided into citerior and ulterior Hispania, and afterward into Tarraco, Betica, and Lusitania, and so on down to the present day, the Sarrienses had on all occasions given proof of a powerful intellect, very superior to that of the people of Nieva.

Such a.s.sertions were received with great signs of approval. Then suddenly pa.s.sing into the region of law, he gently touched upon branches of knowledge that are not common, particularly in Sarrio--the science of Tribonia.n.u.s and Papinia.n.u.s.

On arriving at a certain point he said, with a modesty that did him credit:

"What I have just observed, senor, has no scientific value whatsoever.

Every boy and girl knows it who has made the acquaintance of the pandectas."

Don Jeronimo de la Fuente, a schoolmaster of the town who had studied the modern methods of pedagogics, and knew something of Froebel and Pestalozzi, a celebrated man who had written a primer on irregular verbs and kept a telescope at his window always turned toward the heavens, now rose from his seat and said:

"Corporal punishment has been stopped in the schools for some years."

"I did not say 'palmetas' [blows]; I said 'pan-dec-tas'" [digest of law], returned Suarez, smiling with some vexation.

Don Jeronimo was angry at having made such a mistake.

The orator continued, and finally resumed his seat, saying, like the eloquent officer who had preceded him, that Sarrio must awake to the life of progress; that she must arise from the lethargy in which she lay, and that she must take part in the struggle of ideas, which are always fruitful; and that she must let the radiant sun of civilization rise on her horizon.

"If it be true, as I have heard, that, thanks to the patriotic and generous initiative of a most worthy citizen of this town, the Fourth Estate of modern powers is about to celebrate its advent here; if, in fact, Sarrio will be presented with a periodical which will reflect her legitimate aspirations, let it be the palladium for the exercise of her intelligence, the promoter of her dearest interests, the advanced protector of her tranquillity and peace, the organ, in short, by which she may have communion with the intellectual world. Let us congratulate ourselves with all our hearts, and let us also congratulate the ill.u.s.trious patrician whose efforts will bring to us a ray of this luminous star of the nineteenth century which is called the press."

[_Bravo, bravo! All eyes are turned to the chairman. The face of Don Rosendo beams with dignity and delight._]

After the son of Perinolo came Don Jeronimo de la Fuente.

The ill.u.s.trious professor of the instruction of youth was very anxious to rise in the eyes of the public after his slip about the pandectas. He began by saying that he shared the opinions of the worthy orator [notice that he did not say eloquent, or ill.u.s.trious, but worthy, nothing more]

who had preceded him on the subject; that he, destined by his profession to light the torch of science in infantile brains, could not do less than be a devoted partizan of all modern enlightenment, more especially of that of the press. In corroboration of this statement he begged to say that as soon as a periodical in Sarrio was an established fact he would have the pleasure of laying before his fellow-citizens the solution of a problem which until now was considered insoluble, that of the trisection of the angle, to which he had devoted much time and trouble, and which, fortunately, now was crowned with success.

He spoke, moreover, with great emphasis on other matters--of physical geography and astronomy, clearly and briefly explaining the earth's rotation and progression, the composition of air, the formation of the clouds and dew, the origin of the salt of the sea, of springs and rivers, the scientific cause of tides, and also something about the cause of volcanoes.

Afterward, just by the way, he pa.s.sed on to an explanation of the celestial mechanism, and particularly the law of universal attraction, discovered by Newton, by which planets move round the sun in elliptic orbits. Then he explained with great brilliancy the nature of an ellipsis.

Finally, speaking of our satellite the moon, he remarked that the time of its revolution round the earth was sensibly diminishing, which indicated the decrease of its...o...b..t. This, according to the orator, would sooner or later result in the moon falling into the earth, when both would be shattered.

Don Jeronimo then resumed his seat, leaving the audience quite crushed under the weight of this alarming prophecy.

The proceedings went on until the lamps were lighted.

Don Rufo, the town doctor, a tall, lean man, with a pointed beard and gold eyegla.s.ses, then got up and declared explicitly in a few words that thought was only a physiological function of the brain, and the soul an attribute of matter, and that the greater or less degree of intelligence in animals depends on the cerebral lobules and the weight of the brain.

The orator computed that its weight in a man was three pounds and a half. Then he gave the calculation of the phosphoric matter that it contains. Man's brain contains more phosphorus than animals', while theirs have more than birds'. In children the quant.i.ty of phosphorus increases considerably at the natal hour, and it continues to increase rapidly with the course of time.

But in what part of the brain is the spark of intellectual activity situated? asked the orator. In his opinion this activity has its mainspring in the grayish or bluish substance, and in some way in the whitish substance, which is the conductor of such activity.

He then spoke of the dura mater, the hemispheres of the brain, the frontal, parietal, and occipital parts of the skull, the function of the cerebrum, the seat of the cerebellum.

Here the speaker conceived the happy idea of making a beautiful comparison between the circ.u.mlocutions of this gray substance and a heap of intestines thrown promiscuously together. All the faculties which we call the soul are nothing but functions of this gray substance, of this ma.s.s of intestines. The brain secretes thoughts, as the liver does bile.

The orator concluded by saying that while humanity is ignorant of these truths it can not rise from its present state of barbarism.

Navarro, the veterinary professor, who never wished to be behind the doctor, then asked leave to speak, and after a few words of congratulation on the inauguration of the "meeting" (all the speakers used the English term), he gave expression of a few very rational ideas on the gangrenous quinsy of the pig, and the treatment for its prevention. The orator hesitated, stuttered, and grew hot in the expression of his ideas, but this deficiency of language was compensated for by the novelty and interest of the subject, for numbers of these nice animals fell victims to quinsy at certain seasons in Sarrio.

In spite of the interest and respect with which the public listened to the discourse on the danger which threatened pig-farming, there were certainly signs of impatience to hear the president's speech. After the allusion of Perinolo's son to the fact of a journal, every one was anxious to have the news confirmed. While Navarro was talking a voice from the gallery cried:

"Let Don Rosendo speak!"