Meantime, a few carefully chosen words to the Bishop aroused a dull interest in that quarter. Josè had been seen mingling freely with men of very liberal political views. It would be well to warn him. Again, weeks later, Wenceslas was certain, from inquiries made among the students, that Josè’s work in the classroom bordered a trifle too closely on radicalism. It were well to admonish him. And, still later, happening to call at Josè’s quarters just above his own in the ecclesiastical dormitory, and not finding him in, he had been struck by the absence of crucifix or other religious symbol in the room. Was the young priest becoming careless of his example?
And now, on this important feast-day, where was Padre Josè? On the preceding evening, as Wenceslas leaned over the parapet of the wall after his surprise by Josè, he had noted in the dim light the salient features of a foreigner who, he had just learned, was registered at the Hotel Mariano from the United States. Moreover, Wenceslas had just come from Josè’s room, whither he had gone in search of him, and––may the Saints pardon his excess of holy zeal which impelled him to examine the absent priest’s effects!––he had returned now to the Bishop bearing a copy of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, with the American’s name on the flyleaf. It certainly were well to admonish Padre Josè again, and severely!
The Bishop, hardly to the surprise of his crafty coadjutor, 113 flew into a towering rage. He was a man of irascible temper, bitterly intolerant, and unreasoningly violent against all unbelievers, especially Americans whose affairs brought them to Colombia. In this respect he was the epitome of the ecclesiastical anti-foreign sentiment which obtained in that country. His intolerance of heretics was such that he would gladly have bound his own kin to the stake had he believed their opinions unorthodox. Yet he was thoroughly conscientious, a devout churchman, and saturated with the beliefs of papal infallibility and the divine origin of the Church. In the observance of church rites and ceremonies he was unremitting. In the soul-burning desire to witness the conversion of the world, and especially to see the lost children of Europe either coaxed or beaten back into the embrace of Holy Church, his zeal amounted to fanaticism. In the present case––
“Your Eminence,” suggested the suave Wenceslas to his exasperated superior, “may I propose that you defer action until I can discover the exact status of this American?”
And the Bishop forthwith placed the whole matter in his trusted assistant’s helpful hands.
Meantime, Josè and the American explorer sat in the shade of a magnificent palm on a high hill in beautiful Turbaco, looking out over the shimmering sea beyond. For Hitt had wandered into the Plaza de Coches just as Josè was taking a carriage, and the latter could not well refuse his proffered companionship for the day. Yet Josè feared to be seen in broad daylight with this stranger, and he involuntarily murmured a Loado sea Dios! when they reached Turbaco, as he believed, unobserved. He did not know that a sharp-eyed young novitiate, whom Wenceslas had detailed to keep the priest under surveillance, had hurried back to his superior with the report of Josè’s departure with the Americano on this innocent pleasure jaunt.
“Say no more, my friend, in apology for your abrupt departure last evening,” the explorer urged. “But tell me, rather, about your illustrious grandfather who had his country seat in this delightful spot. Why, man! this is paradise. I’ve a notion to come here to live some day.”
Josè cast his apprehensions upon the soft ocean breeze, and gave himself up to the inspiriting influence of his charming environment. He dwelt at length upon the Rincón greatness of mediaeval days, and expressed the resolve sometime to delve into the family records which he knew must be hidden away in the moldering old city of Cartagena. “But now,” he concluded, after another reference to the Church, “is Colombia to witness again the horror of those days of carnage? And over the human mind’s interpretation of the Christ? God forbid!”
The American shook his head dubiously. “There is but one remedy––education. Not sectarian, partisan, worldly education––not instruction in relative truths and the chaff of materialistic speculation––but that sort of education whereby the selfish human mind is lifted in a measure out of itself, out of its petty jealousies and envyings, out of sneaking graft and touting for worldly emolument, and into a sense of the eternal truth that real prosperity and soundness of states and institutions are to be realized only when the Christ-principle, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ is made the measure of conduct. There is a tremendous truth which has long since been demonstrated, and yet which the world is most woefully slow to grasp, namely, that the surest, quickest means of realizing one’s own prosperity and happiness is in that of others––not in a world to come, but right here and now.”