Ibarra looked at him in surprise.
“Because, if you do,” he continued with bitter irony, “all sensible people will take you for a fool, too. For all sensible people think those who differ with them fools; they think me one, and I am grateful for it, because the day they see in me a reasonable being woe is me! That day I shall lose the little liberty I now enjoy at the expense of my reputation. The gobernadorcillo passes with them for a wise man because having learned nothing but to serve chocolate and to suffer the caprices of Brother Dámaso, he is now rich and has the right to trouble the life of his fellow-citizens. ‘There is a man of talent!’ says the crowd. ‘He has sprung from nothing to greatness.’ But perhaps I am really the fool and they are the wise men. Who can say?”
And the old man shook his head as though to dismiss an unwelcome thought.
“The second thing I advise is to consult the curate, the gobernadorcillo, all the people of position in the pueblo. They will give you bad advice, unintelligible, useless. But to ask advice is not to follow it. All you need is to make it understood that you are working in accordance with their ideas.”
Ibarra reflected, then replied:
“No doubt your counsel is good, but it is very hard to take. May I not offer my own ideas to the light of day? Cannot the good make its way anywhere? Has truth need of the dross of error?”
“No one likes the naked truth,” replied the old man. “It is good in theory, easy in the ideal world of which youth dreams. You say you are a stranger to your country; I believe it. The day that you arrived here, you began by wounding the self-esteem of a priest. God grant this seemingly small thing has not decided your future. If it has, all your efforts will break against the convent walls, without disturbing the monk, swaying his girdle, or making his robe tremble. The alcalde, under one pretext or another, will deny you to-morrow what he grants you to-day; not a mother will let her child go to your school, and the result of all your efforts will be simply negative.”
“I cannot help feeling your fears exaggerated,” said Ibarra. “In spite of all you say, I cannot believe in this power; but even admitting it to be so great, the most intelligent of the people would be on my side, and also the Government, which is animated by the best intentions, and wishes the veritable good of the Philippines.”
“The Government! the Government!” murmured the philosopher, raising his eyes. “However great its desire to better the country, however generous may have been the spirit of the Catholic kings, the Government sees, hears, judges nothing more than the curate or the provincial gives it to see, hear, or judge. The Government is convinced that its tranquillity comes through the monks; that if it is upheld, it is because they uphold it; that if it live, is it because they consent to let it, and that the day when they fail it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its base. The monks hold the Government in hand by threatening a revolt of the people they control; the people, by displaying the power of the Government. So long as the Government has not an understanding with the country, it will not free itself from this tutelage. The Government looks to no vigorous future; it’s an arm, the head is the convent. Through its inertia, it allows itself to be dragged from abyss to abyss; its existence is no more than a shadow. Compare our system of government with the systems of countries you have visited——”
“Oh!” interrupted Ibarra, “that is going far. Let us be satisfied that, thanks to religion and the humanity of our rulers, our people do not complain, do not suffer like those of other countries.”