Don Francisco R. Cantu y Falomir stepped to his desk and handed her the first month’s salary in shining gold; directed a dreamy-eyed criada to show the señorita to her room, and sent un mozo de cordel to the hotel for all of her belongings.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLUNGER FROM KANSAS.
Events of great importance were crowding themselves thick and fast upon the attention of more people in the capital of Chihuahua than the leader of his people, the Governor, and his able coworker, Guillermo Gonzales, and Julio Murillo, his assistant.
Governor Lehumada had long been practicing to make his personal desires subordinate to a very high standard of right. He had fixed his sole purpose of thought upon a desire to bring about a means for the recovery of memory.
He had received many impressions through the gift he had of placing the spiritual world first in his thoughts and his actions.
Evil he believed to be the result of a microbic condition of matter. The happy results obtained by the rise of the “Memory Fluid,” were turning the tide of thought into a more spiritual channel, the fact of which was in itself sufficient compensation for the years of labor the great men had had in bringing about their scientific discovery of “Memory Fluid.”
The name of Don Francisco R. Cantu y Falomir had within the last ten days become a household word. At first most every one looked upon his ideas, as portrayed by the press, as a big joke; but now the clergy had made bold (for they believed their staunch supporter had a big following,) to attack “Memory Fluid” as an enemy of life, as a messenger of evil. Yet they hailed it as their mascot, for they claimed to believe that, though a great evil within itself, through it would come a revolution which would result in the re-establishment of the Church and the Mexican Republic, which would be controlled by the former.
The very audacity of such statements made the public stop to pant; and a few stopped a little longer to think.
Governor Lehumada was reviewing the ideas advanced by Don Francisco R. Cantu y Falomir, and hoped to be given the light which would enable him to see the outcome. So intent was he with “his feast with his soul,” as he termed his moments of abstraction, that he did not notice that Mr. Niksab had returned to the reception-room. “Your Honor,” spoken in a rather loud voice, caused the Governor to start and look around.
“Pardon me,” he said, “I did not hear you, so intent was I reflecting upon all that we have just witnessed.”