and steel to the
cancer, chastisement to vice, and afterwards destroy the instrument,
if it be bad! No, I have planned well, but now I feel feverish, my
reason wavers, it is natural--If I have done ill, it has been that I
may do good, and the end justifies the means. What I will do is not
to expose myself--"

With his thoughts thus confused he lay down, and tried to fall asleep.

On the following morning Placido listened submissively, with a smile
on his lips, to his mother's preachment. When she spoke of her plan of
interesting the Augustinian procurator he did not protest or object,
but on the contrary offered himself to carry it out, in order to
save trouble for his mother, whom he begged to return at once to the
province, that very day, if possible. Cabesang Andang asked him the
reason for such haste.

"Because--because if the procurator learns that you are here he won't
do anything until you send him a present and order some masses."

CHAPTER XX

THE ARBITER

True it was that Padre Irene had said: the question of the academy of
Castilian, so long before broached, was on the road to a solution. Don
Custodio, the active Don Custodio, the most active of all the arbiters
in the world, according to Ben-Zayb, was occupied with it, spending
his days reading the petition and falling asleep without reaching any
decision, waking on the following day to repeat the same performance,
dropping off to sleep again, and so on continuously.

How the good man labored, the most active of all the arbiters
in the world! He wished to get out of the predicament by pleasing
everybody--the friars, the high official, the Countess, Padre Irene,
and his own liberal principles. He had consulted with Senor Pasta, and
Senor Pasta had left him stupefied and confused, after advising him to
do a million contradictory and impossible things. He had consulted with
Pepay the dancing girl, and Pepay, who had no idea what he was talking
about, executed a pirouette and asked him for twenty-five pesos to
bury an aunt of hers who had suddenly died for the fifth time, or the
fifth aunt who had suddenly died, according to fuller explanations, at
the same time requesting that he get a cousin of hers who could read,
write, and play the violin, a job as assistant on the public works--all
things that were far from inspiring Don Custodio with any saving idea.

Two days after the events in the Quiapo fair, Don Custodio was as
usual busily studyin