“Enough, my sons!” said the bishop, with composure; “the souls under my jurisdiction must be in a perilous condition when they have forgotten that there must be obedience in little matters as well as in great. Whether I am assaulting an established custom, or a new abuse, matters little. It is a bad habit; it is sapping the foundations of reverence and morality. God’s house was built for worship, and for that alone. My children must come to His temple either to learn or to pray. Learn they will not, for they have forgotten how to pray: prayer they are unused to, for the highest act of adoration the Church can offer is only regarded by them as an opportunity for the gratification of their appetites. You recommend me to yield to their vagaries. A strange shepherd would he be, who let his sheep lead him; a wondrous captain, who was dictated to by his soldiers! As for the cause of true religion being endangered, I judge differently. Religion is endangered; but it is by children’s disobedience to their spiritual legislators, and by their own perversity. I am sorry for you, my sons, that you should have undertaken a fruitless office; but you may believe me, that nothing shall induce me to swerve from the course which I deem advisable. My personal safety, you hint, is endangered; my life, I answer, is in my Master’s hands, and I value it but as it may advance His glory.”
When the ladies heard that their request had been refused, they treated the excommunication with the greatest contempt, scoffing at it publicly, and imbibing chocolate in church, “on principle,” more than ever; “Just,” says Gage, “drinking in church as a fish drinks in water.”
Some of the canons and priests were then stationed at the cathedral doors to stop the ingress of the servants with cups and chocolate-pots. They had received injunctions to remove the drinking and eating vessels, and suffer the servants to come empty-handed to church. A violent struggle ensued in the porch, and all the ladies within rushed in a body to the doors, to assist their domestics. The poor clerks were utterly routed and thrown in confusion down the steps, whilst, with that odious well-known clink, clink, the trays came in as before.
Another move was requisite, and, on the following Sunday, when the ladies came to church, they found a band of soldiers drawn up outside, ready to barricade the way against any inroad of chocolate; a stern determination was depicted on the faces of the military—that if cups and saucers did enter the sacred edifice, it should be over their corpses.
The foremost damsels halted, the matrons stood still, the crowd thickened, but not one of the pretty angels would set foot within the cathedral precincts: a busy whisper circulated, then a hush ensued, and with one accord the ladies trooped off to the monastery churches, and there was no congregation that day at the minster.
The brethren of St. Dominic and of St. Francis were nothing loath to see their chapels crowded with all the rank and fashion of Chiapa; for, with the ladies came money-offerings, and they blinked at the chocolate cups for—a consideration. This was allowed to continue a few Sundays only. Our friend the bishop was not going to be shelved thus, and a new manifesto appeared, inhibiting the friars from admitting parishioners to their chapels, and ordering the latter to frequent their cathedral.
The regulars were forced to obey; not so the ladies—they would go when they pleased, quotha! and for a month and more, not one of them went to church at all. The prelate was in sore trouble: he hoped that his froward charge would eventually return to the path of duty, but he hoped on from Sunday to Sunday in vain.
Would that the story ended as stories of strife and bitterness always should end; so that we might tell how the ladies yielded at length, how that rejoicings were held and a general reconciliation effected:—but the historian may not pervert facts, to suit his or his readers’ gratification.
On Saturday evening the old bishop was more than usually anxious; he paced up and down his library, meditating on the sermon he purposed preaching on the following morning—a fruitless task, for he knew that no one would be there but a few poor Mexicans. Sick at heart, he all but wished that he had yielded for peace sake, but conscience told him that such a course would have been wrong; and the great feature in Salazar’s character was his rigid sense of duty. He leaned on his elbows and looked out of a window which opened on a lane between the palace and the cathedral.
“Silly boy!” muttered the prelate. “Luis is always prattling with that girl. I thought better of the fair sex till of late.” He spoke these words as his eyes caught his page, chattering at the door with a dark-eyed Creole servant-maid of the De Solis family. Presently the bishop clapped his hands, and a domestic entered. “Send Luis to me.”