"Don't plead the cause of those people, Monsalvat, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed the plump lady.
"Of what people?"
"Oh, the rabble, the bad people, 'the people,' in short!"
"The sovereign people!" offered Ercasty contemptuously.
"Don't defend them!" continued the lady. "See what they tried to do last May, just when we had a lot of very distinguished foreigners here, ambassadors and their wives, representatives of European nobility even! They wanted to make someone pay for their own laziness! So they tried to cast discredit on their own country, and spoil the Centennial celebration—a disgusting performance if ever there was one! What can our distinguished visitors have thought? And to take advantage of such an occasion to gain their ends! There's no name for such conduct, Monsalvat!"
"And if I had been the government," said the doctor venomously, "I would have taken all these gringo organizers, soap boxers, agitators and strikers, and the bad Argentines who followed their example, stood them in a row on the Plaza de Mayo and shot them down. That would have been a number on the Centennial program, and example to the rabble!"
Monsalvat could listen no longer. He was quivering with indignation. Usually serene, quiet, and incapable of hating anybody, he would at this moment have enjoyed strangling the individual who was taunting him so flippantly. Now he realized that all the men and women around him were his enemies, representatives of his old out-worn ideas, of prejudices which he had come to abhor. On their faces he could see only insolent satisfaction with good living, a proclamation of inhuman selfishness, a spirit of evil, hypocrisy, pride, an absence of all human sympathy. What were their lives but one continuous lie? These men and women had no real existence. They were insipid creatures of something they called public opinion, thinking the thoughts of their crowd, following the morals, the standards, the tastes, the fads of their crowd! Their opinions were but a false semblance of opinion, their feelings but imitations of other people's feelings, their tastes, even their loves and their hates, mere aping pretense! Life for them was a gigantic farce. Had any of them ever thought of living sincerely, of seeking any meaning in all they were doing? And these people with their accommodating philosophy, their pretentious political economy, their hypocritical charity, were responsible for the poverty in the world, for the misery of girls like Nacha, for the sufferings which social injustice was heaping up on every hand! Why had he had to live forty years before understanding this? How could he have sat at this table a whole hour, forgetting all he had been through that afternoon? But no! he was not sorry he had come! Henceforth he could have no doubts as to his place in the general scheme of things: he belonged in the front line of the attack on pride and falsehood and evil! All these individuals around him were so many tools in the hands of Injustice; and someone must put an end to their privileges, their ideas, their unfeeling self-approval! At any cost, even at the cost of blood and fire, brotherly love must be made to prevail over brute force! These men who called themselves Christians must be taught what Christian love really meant!
And the young ladies, the one on his left and the one on his right? To him they seemed instruments of Wrong, monsters of selfishness, beings without hearts. One represented the selfishness of pleasure, the other, the selfishness of class. They could think only of themselves, of their amusements, their clothes, their reading, their suitors, their pet vices, or of their religious and social practices. To them the world seemed quite satisfactory as it was; and everything could go on in the same way to the end of time. In them there was no strong, spontaneous desire for the happiness of others. They were innocent of any attempt to relieve the pain of those who writhed in anguish in the world's black depths. They were little china figures, fashioned to adorn the society in which they lived, interested in knowing only the pleasant aspects of life. Now and then, from a play or a book, they received tidings of some one of life's tragedies; but always they turned away with disgust: such things were not for their fragile and aristocratic souls! Monsalvat was amazed at the ignorance, the unconscious cruelty their attitude toward life brought with it; and he could not help thinking of the outcry rising from the great city's multitudes who might some day clamor for vengeance as well as for justice!
But at the same time Monsalvat wondered if his present views might not perhaps be due to an attitude toward society engendered by his illegitimacy. His enemies would say so at any rate. They would attribute his bitterness to consciousness of his shameful birth, suspect him of trying to avenge his mother's disgrace on society at large. With how much truth? With none, whatever! Of that he was sure. For beyond all such considerations, the question of justice itself remained; and this justice, unaffected by personal wrongs, superior to any mean satisfactions, condemned Evil as Evil, and indeed,—it could not be otherwise—had decreed already the death of all that Monsalvat so intensely hated.
At last, when he could no longer contain the indignation burning within him, he began to speak; and the consternation was general. Ruiz de Castro, who knew that his friend was an exceptionally timid person, loath to attract any attention whatever, stared at Monsalvat in astonishment. The doctor kept executing fidgety gestures of annoyance and tried a number of times to interrupt. Isabel seemed to be agreeing with Monsalvat's tirade, but refrained from committing herself since she was unable to decide whether what she was hearing was for or against religion. Elsa was enjoying the whole situation as if this outburst were a new kind of lark. She sat looking at Monsalvat with smiling delight.