you, O sinners! You
should know such important and necessary things as the Lord's
Prayer, although many of you have forgotten it, living now as do
the Protestants or heretics, who, like the Chinese, respect not the
ministers of God. But the worse for you, O ye accursed, moving as
you are toward damnation!"

"_Aba_, Pale Lamaso, what!" [90] muttered Carlos, the Chinese,
looking angrily at the preacher, who continued to extemporize,
emitting a series of apostrophes and imprecations.

"You will die in final unrepentance, O race of heretics! God punishes
you even on this earth with jails and prisons! Women should flee from
you, the rulers should hang all of you so that the seed of Satan
be not multiplied in the vineyard of the Lord! Jesus Christ said:
'If you have an evil member that leads you to sin, cut it off, and
cast it into the fire--'"

Having forgotten both his sermon and his rhetoric, Fray Damaso began to
be nervous. Ibarra became uneasy and looked about for a quiet corner,
but the church was crowded. Maria Clara neither heard nor saw anything
as she was analyzing a picture, of the blessed souls in purgatory,
souls in the shape of men and women dressed in hides, with miters,
hoods, and cowls, all roasting in the fire and clutching St. Francis'
girdle, which did not break even with such great weight. With that
improvisation on the preacher's part, the holy-ghost friar lost the
thread of the sermon and skipped over three long paragraphs, giving
the wrong cue to the now laboriously-panting Fray Damaso.

"Who of you, O sinners, would lick the sores of a poor and ragged
beggar? Who? Let him answer by raising his hand! None! That I knew, for
only a saint like Diego de Alcala would do it. He licked all the sores,
saying to an astonished brother, 'Thus is this sick one cured!' O
Christian charity! O matchless example! O virtue of virtues! O
inimitable pattern! O spotless talisman!" Here he continued a long
series of exclamations, the while crossing his arms and raising and
lowering them as though he wished to fly or to frighten the birds away.

"Before dying he spoke in Latin, without knowing Latin! Marvel, O
sinners! You, in spite of what you study, for which blows are given
to you, you do not speak Latin, and you will die without speaking
it! To speak Latin is a gift of God and therefore the Church uses
Latin! I, too, speak Latin! Was God going to deny this consolation
to His beloved Diego? Could he die, could he