e the friars and the
civil-guards, they're so rude," said a corpulent dame, "but now that
I see their usefulness and their services, I would almost marry any
one of them gladly. I'm a patriot."

"That's what I say!" added a thin lady. "What a pity that we haven't
our former governor. He would leave the country as clean as a platter."

"And the whole race of filibusters would be exterminated!"

"Don't they say that there are still a lot of islands to be
populated? Why don't they deport all these crazy Indians to them? If
I were the Captain-General--"

"Senoras," interrupted the one-armed individual, "the Captain-General
knows his duty. As I've heard, he's very much irritated, for he had
heaped favors on that Ibarra."

"Heaped favors on him!" echoed the thin lady, fanning herself
furiously. "Look how ungrateful these Indians are! Is it possible to
treat them as if they were human beings? _Jesus!_"

"Do you know what I've heard?" asked a military official.

"What's that?"

"Let's hear it!"

"What do they say?"

"Reputable persons," replied the officer in the midst of a profound
silence, "state that this agitation for building a schoolhouse was
a pure fairy tale."

"_Jesus!_ Just see that!" the senoras exclaimed, already believing
in the trick.

"The school was a pretext. What he wanted to build was a fort from
which he could safely defend himself when we should come to attack
him."

"What infamy! Only an Indian is capable of such cowardly thoughts,"
exclaimed the fat lady. "If I were the Captain-General they would
soon seem they would soon see--"

"That's what I say!" exclaimed the thin lady, turning to the one-armed
man. "Arrest all the little lawyers, priestlings, merchants, and
without trial banish or deport them! Tear out the evil by the roots!"

"But it's said that this filibuster is the descendant of Spaniards,"
observed the one-armed man, without looking at any one in particular.

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed the fat lady, unterrified. "It's always the
creoles! No Indian knows anything about revolution! Rear crows,
rear crows!" [166]

"Do you know what I've heard?" asked a creole lady, to change the topic
of conversation. "The wife of Capitan Tinong, you remember her, the
woman in whose house we danced and dined during the fiesta of Tondo--"

"The one who has two daughters? What about her?"

"Well, that woman just this afternoon presented the Captain-General
with a ring worth a thousand pesos!"