“Well, that might do.”
Meanwhile, the little priest, or acolyte as he might better be called, leaned back in his chair as though he were going to stay all night. I saw that it was necessary to use no ceremony with him, so I undressed rapidly and got into bed.
“Are you sleepy?” asked Serafín, approaching the bed, and with the greatest familiarity pinching my shoulder and patting my cheeks. I screamed, and instinctively struck him a hard blow, which made him burst out laughing convulsively. Then he tried to find out, by experiment, whether I was ticklish; or if I was in love—for that purpose cruelly squeezing my little finger.
That strange familiarity, more suitable to a child of six years than to a man, and especially a man who aspired to the priesthood, inspired me with a ludicrous contempt for him; though, at the same time, with a certain tolerance for his faults; and I threatened to throw my boot at him, if he did not keep quiet. That threat took effect; Serafín sobered down, and, throwing himself like a lap-dog across the foot of my bed, he said that he was not sleepy and that he wanted to talk to me.
I told him that he might go on, and never was a programme more faithfully carried out to the very letter. A flood of ridiculous nonsense rushed from that mouth; laughable simplicities mixed with bits of theological learning, and fragments of coarse wit, so pointed at times, that I was amazed, and quite unable to solve the problem whether that individual were a born idiot or a tremendous rogue.
“So you come from Madrid. Ah, how delightful Madrid must be! I have never been there. Have no cash for the railroad. Cash! I wish I might see some! Well, Serafín, my boy, when it rains dollars you’ll get some. And are the streets in Madrid like—those—of Pontevedra? I suppose the pavements are of marble. Well, the people there go off to the other world, either raging or singing, don’t they? Well, then I do not envy the people in Madrid a bit. All are equal in the presence of death, sir. And you, what are you studying for? To be one of those who make viaducts, railroads, and tunnels? Ah, then we’ll have to call you Your Excellency! You’ll be a Minister, and you’ll make me an electoral canon,—I mean lectoral. Still, I would make a better penitentiary canon, because I am awfully penitent. And you, even if you come to be more of an engineer than the very one who invented engineering, you’ll not get ahead like your uncle. Get on! Ah, your uncle knows how; he is a crafty one. Nobody can get the cream out of Don Vicente Sotopeña as he does. That business of the lots was a good slice, and now they are going to hire his house for the post-office, and pay him a million dollars rent. Afterward, when they have elections, they’ll come to soft-soap us priests. But as a friend of mine, a priest, said to me: Gee-up, there, vade retro, exorciso te, for liberalism is sin, and if anybody doubts it I will thrust under his nose the fundamental doctrine of de fide, expounded by the Holy Vatican Council. Our palates here are not spoiled by mongrel sauces. Ha, ha, ha!”
“And what do you think about politics?” I inquired.
“About politics? Noble breasts can hold but one opinion.”
“Let’s hear what opinions noble breasts hold.”
“Well, I will tell you through the lips of one who knew what he was talking about: Nequit idem simul esse et non esse. Do you want it any clearer? I am not an advocate of Iglesia liebre en el Estado galgo (a church like a hare in a state like a grey-hound). Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.”