hat you are
not seriously ill. Last night and today I've been bored by
requests to play on the piano and by invitations to dance. I
didn't know before that there are so many tiresome people
in the world! If it were not for Padre Damaso, who tries to
entertain me by talking to me and telling me many things, I
would have shut myself up in my room and gone to sleep. Write
me what the matter is with you and I'll tell papa to visit
you. For the present I send Andeng to make you some tea,
as she knows how to prepare it well, probably better than
your servants do.

MARIA CLARA."

"P.S. If you don't come tomorrow, I won't go to the
ceremony. _Vale!_"

CHAPTER XXIX

The Morning

At the first flush of dawn bands of music awoke the tired people of the
town with lively airs. Life and movement reawakened, the bells began
to chime, and the explosions commenced. It was the last day of the
fiesta, in fact the fiesta proper. Much was hoped for, even more than
on the previous day. The Brethren of the Venerable Tertiary Order were
more numerous than those of the Holy Rosary, so they smiled piously,
secure that they would humiliate their rivals. They had purchased a
greater number of tapers, wherefor the Chinese dealers had reaped a
harvest and in gratitude were thinking of being baptized, although
some remarked that this was not so much on account of their faith in
Catholicism as from a desire to get a wife. To this the pious women
answered, "Even so, the marriage of so many Chinamen at once would
be little short of a miracle and their wives would convert them."

The people arrayed themselves in their best clothes and dragged out
from their strong-boxes all their jewelry. The sharpers and gamblers
all shone in embroidered camisas with large diamond studs, heavy
gold chains, and white straw hats. Only the old Sage went his way
as usual in his dark-striped sinamay camisa buttoned up to the neck,
loose shoes, and wide gray felt hat.

"You look sadder than ever!" the teniente-mayor accosted him. "Don't
you want us to be happy now and then, since we have so much to
weep over?"

"To be happy doesn't mean to act the fool," answered the old man. "It's
the senseless orgy of every year! And all for no end but to squander
money, when there is so much misery and want. Yes, I understand it all,
it's the same orgy, the revel to drown the woes of all."

"You know that I share