I have no doubt that the charcoal merchant uttered his theatrical threat on purpose to frighten the priest, and if that was his object he certainly succeeded, for the poor man turned white and trembled with alarm; but it is certain that no one of his class would have dared to express such sentiments before a priest or a monk previous to the Barcelona affair.
I have heard a gentle-looking old woman say deliberately: “I wish all the frailes were going out to be shot this morning! How I should enjoy seeing them killed!”
And I have heard an artisan remark as a couple of “long skirts” went by:
“How I hate those vermin! It makes me sick to see them near me.”
The people who say these things are not Socialists nor Anarchists, nor even Republicans. They are decent, quiet, industrious working people, who know and care little about current politics, and simply judge of the priests and the Religious Orders by what they see. Once the confidence of such people is won, you will hear similar remarks by the score wherever two or three of the working class are gathered together, whether in town or country. Nor are their wives and daughters one whit behind the men in their expressions of hostility.
Here is an outburst which I took down word for word from a clever but quite illiterate working woman. The reference to the “ovens,” as will be seen, tallies with what I have quoted about the bakers, although the speakers were in different provinces, far apart.
“While we have that lot here we cannot live. The alms which ought to be given to the poor are given to them. I don’t believe they give to the poor the bread which they beg from the ovens. I believe they use it all to make alforjillas and piñonates for sale.[8] They cannot make them without bread. The Jesuits do not make them themselves. All the monasteries keep amas de gobierno[9] to cook and wash and mend and do everything required. They are quite independent, answerable to nobody. They eat us up as if they were ants. They let no one live, meddling with everything that doesn’t concern them. They tack themselves to a lady, an acquaintance, and she has linen to launder, and they order her to send it at once to be washed in one of the [religious] houses where poor unfortunates are taken in. Many of them are the children of the friars themselves and of the priests. There is a family in —— Street whom they call ‘Curitas,’ five brothers and sisters, all children of one parish priest [cura]. Their ‘Uncle Cura,’ as they called him, brought them up and educated them and left them all he possessed. They were all the children of one mother; it was the same as if the priest had been married to her. He lived with her and maintained her all his life. But that is a great sin for the priest! They say that in your country the priests are allowed to marry. If it were the same here the Church would be purged of many sins, for all the priests live with women. If they are faithful to one woman I do not see what sin there is in it. It is natural. But it is more usual for them to have many women. I know that one old priest had at least ten or twelve children in —— And here is another statement made by the father of growing lads whom he was educating as best he could to try for appointments in the Civil Service. “You should be careful not to say anything about the Jesuits in those letters you are always writing,” he said. “In Madrid or Barcelona it may be all very well, but in a little country town like this you can never be sure how much the ‘good Fathers’ will find out. It is well known that Paco, who attends to the registered letters here, is the son of a Jesuit. Many of the clerks in the post-offices are the sons of priests or frailes, and that is why honest lads like my sons have no chance of getting a place there. The Jesuits have a plan by which their sons slip in without the examination imposed on others. Do you think that fool Paco would be where he is if he had had to pass a competitive examination? But be warned! He has been clever enough to learn how to open letters and seal them up again. The ‘good Fathers’ have taken care of that. And if they suspect that you write stories about them, they will take care to read your letters before they leave the post-office.”