“Ay, don’t mention that or you’ll be taken for an accomplice. I’ve already burnt the book[3] you lent me. There might be a search and it would be found. Be careful!”
“Did you say that Isagani is a prisoner?”
“Crazy fool, too, that Isagani,” replied the indignant student. “They didn’t try to catch him, but he went and surrendered. Let him bust himself—he’ll surely be shot.”
The señora shrugged her shoulders. “He doesn’t owe me anything. And what about Paulita?”
“She won’t lack a husband. Sure, she’ll cry a little, and then marry a Spaniard.”
The night was one of the gloomiest. In the houses the rosary was recited and pious women dedicated paternosters and requiems to each of the souls of their relatives and friends. By eight o’clock hardly a pedestrian could be seen—only from time to time was heard the galloping of a horse against whose sides a saber clanked noisily, then the whistles of the watchmen, and carriages that whirled along at full speed, as though pursued by mobs of filibusters.
Yet terror did not reign everywhere. In the house of the silversmith, where Placido Penitente boarded, the events were commented upon and discussed with some freedom. [[279]]
“I don’t believe in the pasquinades,” declared a workman, lank and withered from operating the blowpipe. “To me it looks like Padre Salvi’s doings.”
“Ahem, ahem!” coughed the silversmith, a very prudent man, who did not dare to stop the conversation from fear that he would be considered a coward. The good man had to content himself with coughing, winking to his helper, and gazing toward the street, as if to say, “They may be watching us!”
“On account of the operetta,” added another workman.