“No. Pshaw! It may be useful when it comes to dying? Where there is Catholicism there is ruin and misery.”
“Nevertheless, there is no misery in Belgium.”
“Certainly there is none, but in that country Catholicism is not what it is in Spain.”
“Of course it isn’t,” exclaimed the friar, shouting, “because what characterizes Spanish Catholicism is Spain, poverty-stricken, fanatic Spain, and not the Catholicism.”
“I do not believe we are going to understand each other,” replied Cæsar; “what seems a cause to me is an effect for you.... Besides, we are getting away from the question. To you Castro’s moral and intellectual state seems good, does it not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to me it seems horrifying. Sordid vice, obscure adultery; gambling, bullying, usury, hunger... You think it ought to keep on being just as it was before I was Deputy for the District. Do you not?”
“I do.”
“That I have been a disturbance, an enemy to public tranquillity.”
“Exactly.”