“Certainly,” he said, “I will read it aloud: only I must warn you, that its contents are not such as are usual, I will not say in a proclamation, but in print of any kind. To begin with, it is, I must warn you, from first to last a print of the last blasphemy of madness.”
The listeners did not answer this, but looked and felt uncomfortable.
“Will you not read, then?” Donna Emilia said at last. Don Inocencio began to read aloud. He bent a little over the paper, so that he might read; he beat time with his left hand, in a pumping stroke, to mark his cadence. He began as follows:—
“This,” he said, “is his preludium or exordium.
PROCLAMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT.
Forasmuch as I, Don Lopez de Meruel, King, Emperor and Dictator of Santa Barbara, am convinced of my divinity and of my oneness with God. Know all men, that henceforth, throughout this my heaven of Santa Barbara, I assume the style and name of God, with the titles of Thrice Holy, Thrice Blessed, Thrice Glorious.
“What do you make of that?” he said, “for a beginning?”
“The man is mad,” Rosa said.
“It is blasphemy unspeakable,” Donna Emilia said. “I tremble lest fire descend on us.”
“This is nothing to what follows,” Don Inocencio said. “I will read on. The rest is incredibly much worse. But the rest, I, for one, rejoice at. It continues thus: