“Ah! then beware!”
Both were silent.
“And too,” the sick man continued, “we have need of attack to show us our faults and make us better them. Too much flattery deceives us; we sleep; and more, it makes us ridiculous, and the day we become ridiculous we fall as we have fallen in Europe. Money will no longer come to our churches. No one will buy scapulary, penitential cords, anything; and when we cease to be rich, we can no longer convince the conscience. And the worst is, that we’re working our own destruction. For one thing, this immoderate thirst for gain, which I’ve combated in vain in all our chapters, this thirst will be our ruin. I fear we are already declining. God blinds whom He will destroy.”
“We shall always have our lands.”
“But every year we raise their price, and force the Indian to buy of others. The people are beginning to murmur. We ought not to increase the burdens we’ve already laid on their shoulders.”
“So your reverence believes that the revenues——”
“Talk no more of money,” interrupted the old man with aversion. “You say the lieutenant threatened Father Dámaso?”
“Yes, Father,” replied Sibyla, half smiling; “but this morning he told me the sherry had mounted to his head, and he thought it must have been the same with Brother Dámaso. ‘And your threat?’ I asked jestingly. ‘Father,’ said he, ‘I know how to keep my word when it doesn’t smirch my honor; I was never an informer—and that’s why I am only a lieutenant.’”
Though the lieutenant had not carried out his threat to go to Malacañang, the captain-general none the less knew what had happened. A young officer told the story.