Don Antolin, who knew well enough the crew confided to his care, was not long in perceiving this moral upturn. He felt hostility and rebellion on every side. The debtors answered him haughtily, alleging their poverty as a reason for no longer enduring his avarice; his imperious orders were tardily executed, and he had a clear perception that they were laughing behind his back as he walked through the cloister, and making threatening gestures. One day his legs trembled beneath him and his eyes were dimmed, hearing how the Perrero replied to one of his reprimands, having returned late to the Cathedral, and obliging him to descend and open the door after he had gone to bed. The Tato made him understand, with an insolent expression, that he had bought a knife, and that he intended its first fleshing to be in the bowels of some priest or other who ground down the poor.
His niece complained to Don Antolin, they paid no attention to her and flouted her, no woman now ever came to help her gratuitously in her household duties. They replied insolently that those who wanted servants must pay for them. What was her uncle thinking about? It was certainly time to assert his authority and to lay a heavy hand on these people.
She herself, so lively and energetic in her own house, was now obliged to retire snorting with rage or weeping, whenever she stationed herself at her door. All the women of the Claverias wished to revenge themselves for their former thraldom, standing already on the declivity of disrespect.
"Look at her!" screamed the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours, "always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood that vampire of an uncle sucks from the poor."
And from the iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no doubt inspired by the Cathedral garden—
"Las amas de los curas y los laureles
Como nunca dan fruto siempre estan verdes." [1]
[Footnote 1: Priest's housekeepers—like laurels—never have any fruit, because they are evergreens.]
It was this that ended the patience of Don Antolin; this insulting conjecture about himself and his niece that disturbed his miserly chastity. He visited the cardinal to complain of the inhabitants of the cloister, but His Eminence, who lived in a perpetual rage, grew furious listening to him and very nearly thrashed him. Why did he come to him with such tales? For what reason had he been given any authority? Was there nothing left of a man beneath his cassock? He who was wanting in the good discipline of the house—turn him out into the street at once! More energy, and be careful never to trouble him again with such insignificant tales, otherwise the person who would be turned into the street would be Silver Stick himself.
Don Antolin felt a little braver after this interview, although he swore mentally never again to visit that terrible prelate. He was determined to reassert his authority, by punishing the weakest, whom he considered as the origin of all these scandals. The shoemaker should be expelled from the Claverias, as he was there through no other right but that his wife had been born there. Mariquita, bewildered by her uncle's energy, must needs speak to some one about these intentions, and so the news circulated through the cloister.
Don Antolin did not dare to move a step further, terrified by the silent unanimity with which the whole population rose against him.