“I’m off for Barcelona till all this pother’s over,” he said. “Come with me. What interest have we republicans in royal marriages?”
“The interest of seeing what we cannot see at home.”
“Ah! that’s the difference between your republic and mine; we do not forget, be sure that you do not.”
“Don’t be cryptic,” said Patsy, “I never knew what a good republican I was till I came to Spain.”
“Though Spain is one kingdom, the more free people in the world is the Spaniard,” Don Jaime protested. “If he have a little money he do what he like. United States is one republic; there no man can do what he like.”
“He can think as he likes,” retorted the Argentino, then persuasively to Patsy, “you’ve seen enough of old Spain and its pageants. Come with me to Barcelona, have a look at new Spain. There’s a great fight on there, that really is the most important thing that is happening in Spain.”
“What sort of a fight?”
“The eternal fight between Yesterday and To-morrow, between new ideas and old. The liberals are making a brave stand. They are trying to get control of the vast sums of money now expended by the Church, which they wish to use for the public schools. There are not half enough schools to go round even in Catalonia, the brains, the nerve center, the place that does the thinking for Spain. Only thirty per cent of the people can read and write; that’s not enough.”
“Too much monks, nuns and priests expulsed from France,” sighed Don Jaime; “enough came before from Cuba and Porto Rico. The priest he know what happen in every man’s house before the husband.”
“Which is worse?” asked Patsy, “the rule of the priest, the soldier, or the shopkeeper?”