“With your eyes on the ground?”
“The sacristan saw it. Furthermore, let me tell you that the figure of the saint owned by the worthy Indian, Alonzo Cuyapit, at his house in Dilao, was stirred to tears last night.”
“Tears! For victory?”
“I fear, for some reason worthy of tears.”
“And your imaginations have nothing to do with all this? Men who are wasted with vigils and fasting”—here the secretary chuckled and made as if he would nudge the churchman in his ample paunch—“are prone to see what common men cannot. Though I protest that when I eat much cheese before retiring I have visions, too. But not always holy ones.”
The priest answered with gravity, “A life of devotion does clear the vision. It opens the gates of heaven. I fear, señor, that too many in this doubting age are affected like you,—that a study of philosophy and ungodly sciences has harmed your respect for the saints and the church.”
“By no means, father. All I maintain is that the figure of St. Francis was not seen in the thick of the battle, as some of the friars allege. Good sooth! What do they know of battle? Our victories were won by stout Spanish arms and good Toledo steel. All praise to Heaven that we had the power.”
The priest shook his head and sighed. Then he looked curiously into the sky. The stars were shining, save in the south, where lightning flickered in a bank of cloud, and there was no threat of storm. Yet in the air was a curious stagnation that had fallen within the hour and brooded over the city like a palpable thing. It was hot and close and lifeless; stale smells from the streets reeked into the nostrils, and from the Pasig came a heavy, sickish odor of river vegetation.
“Sometimes it fills me with a fear that Heaven has a punishment in store for us,” said the priest, stopping in his walk and looking meditatively into the distance, where the lightning now played more brightly. “We have grown worldly. We have thought less of serving God by our wars than of increasing our power and importance in the eyes of the nations. We have grown proud. We are in danger of losing our piety. Pray that the wrath do not fall.”
“With all my heart,—especially to-night. Your blessing, father. And sound sleep.”