“Yes!” exclaimed Don Filipo bitterly. “That will happen as long as you think that way, as long as fear and prudence are synonyms. More attention is paid to a possible evil than to a necessary good. At once fear, and not confidence, presents itself; each one thinks only of himself, no one thinks of the rest, and therefore we are all weak!”
“Well then, think of others before yourself and you’ll see how they’ll leave you in the lurch. Don’t you know the proverb, ‘Charity begins at home’?”
“You had better say,” replied the exasperated teniente-mayor, “that cowardice begins in selfishness and ends in shame! This very day I’m going to hand in my resignation to the alcalde. I’m tired of passing for a joke without being useful to anybody. Good-by!”
The women had opinions of still another kind.
“Ay!” sighed one woman of kindly expression. “The young men are always so! If his good mother were alive, what would she say? When I think that the like may happen to my son, who has a violent temper, I almost envy his dead mother. I should die of grief!”
“Well, I shouldn’t,” replied another. “It wouldn’t cause me any shame if such a thing should happen to my two sons.”
“What are you saying, Capitana Maria!” exclaimed the first, clasping her hands.
“It pleases me to see a son defend the memory of his parents, Capitana Tinay. What would you say if some day when you were a widow you heard your husband spoken ill of and your son Antonio should hang his head and remain silent?”
“I would deny him my blessing!” exclaimed a third, Sister Rufa, “but—”
“Deny him my blessing, never!” interrupted the kind Capitana Tinay. “A mother ought not to say that! But I don’t know what I should do—I don’t know—I believe I’d die—but I shouldn’t want to see him again. But what do you think about it, Capitana Maria?”