ilk
curtain leads to a small chapel or oratory such as must be lacking
in no Filipino home. There were placed his household gods--and we
say "gods" because he was inclined to polytheism rather than to
monotheism, which he had never come to understand. There could be
seen images of the Holy Family with busts and extremities of ivory,
glass eyes, long eyelashes, and curly blond hair--masterpieces of
Santa Cruz sculpture. Paintings in oil by artists of Paco and Ermita
[33] represented martyrdoms of saints and miracles of the Virgin;
St. Lucy gazing at the sky and carrying in a plate an extra pair
of eyes with lashes and eyebrows, such as are seen painted in the
triangle of the Trinity or on Egyptian tombs; St. Pascual Bailon;
St. Anthony of Padua in a _guingon_ habit looking with tears upon a
Christ Child dressed as a Captain-General with the three-cornered hat,
sword, and boots, as in the children's ball at Madrid that character
is represented--which signified for Capitan Tiago that while God
might include in His omnipotence the power of a Captain-General of
the Philippines, the Franciscans would nevertheless play with Him
as with a doll. There, might also be seen a St. Anthony the Abbot
with a hog by his side, a hog that for the worthy Capitan was as
miraculous as the saint himself, for which reason he never dared to
refer to it as the _hog_, but as the _creature of holy St. Anthony_;
a St. Francis of Assisi in a coffee-colored robe and with seven
wings, placed over a St. Vincent who had only two but in compensation
carried a trumpet; a St. Peter the Martyr with his head split open
by the talibon of an evil-doer and held fast by a kneeling infidel,
side by side with another St. Peter cutting off the ear of a Moro,
Malchus [34] no doubt, who was gnawing his lips and writhing with
pain, while a fighting-cock on a doric column crowed and flapped his
wings--from all of which Capitan Tiago deduced that in order to be
a saint it was just as well to smite as to be smitten.

Who could enumerate that army of images and recount the virtues and
perfections that were treasured there! A whole chapter would hardly
suffice. Yet we must not pass over in silence a beautiful St. Michael
of painted and gilded wood almost four feet high. The Archangel
is biting his lower lip and with flashing eyes, frowning forehead,
and rosy cheeks is grasping a Greek shield and brandishing in his
right hand a Sulu kris, ready, as would appear from his at