others have been lost
sight of, a real epilogue is impossible. For the satisfaction of the
groundlings we should gladly kill off all of them, beginning with Padre
Salvi and ending with Dona Victorina, but this is not possible. Let
them live! Anyhow, the country, not ourselves, has to support them.

After Maria Clara entered the nunnery, Padre Damaso left his town
to live in Manila, as did also Padre Salvi, who, while he awaits a
vacant miter, preaches sometimes in the church of St. Clara, in whose
nunnery he discharges the duties of an important office. Not many
months had passed when Padre Damaso received an order from the Very
Reverend Father Provincial to occupy a curacy in a remote province. It
is related that he was so grievously affected by this that on the
following day he was found dead in his bedchamber. Some said that
he had died of an apoplectic stroke, others of a nightmare, but his
physician dissipated all doubts by declaring that he had died suddenly.

None of our readers would now recognize Capitan Tiago. Weeks before
Maria Clara took the vows he fell into a state of depression so great
that he grew sad and thin, and became pensive and distrustful, like
his former friend, Capitan Tinong. As soon as the doors of the nunnery
closed he ordered his disconsolate cousin, Aunt Isabel, to collect
whatever had belonged to his daughter and his dead wife and to go to
make her home in Malabon or San Diego, since he wished to live alone
thenceforward, tie then devoted himself passionately to _liam-po_ and
the cockpit, and began to smoke opium. He no longer goes to Antipolo
nor does he order any more masses, so Dona Patrocinia, his old rival,
celebrates her triumph piously by snoring during the sermons. If at
any time during the late afternoon you should walk along Calle Santo
Cristo, you would see seated in a Chinese shop a small man, yellow,
thin, and bent, with stained and dirty finger nails, gazing through
dreamy, sunken eyes at the passers-by as if he did not see them. At
nightfall you would see him rise with difficulty and, supporting
himself on his cane, make his way to a narrow little by-street to
enter a grimy building over the door of which may be seen in large
red letters: FUMADERO PUBLICO DE ANFION. [173] This is that Capitan
Tiago who was so celebrated, but who is now completely forgotten,
even by the very senior sacristan himself.

Dona Victorina has added to her false frizzes and to her
_Andalusizatio