tholicism."

"I do not believe we are going to understand each other," replied
Caesar; "what seems a cause to me is an effect for you.... Besides,
we are getting away from the question. To you Castro's moral and
intellectual state seems good, does it not?"

"Yes."

"Well, to me it seems horrifying. Sordid vice, obscure adultery;
gambling, bullying, usury, hunger... You think it ought to keep on being
just as it was before I was Deputy for the District. Do you not?"

"I do."

"That I have been a disturbance, an enemy to public tranquillity."

"Exactly."

"Well, this state of things that you find admirable, seems to me
bestially fanatical, repugnantly immoral, repulsively vile."

"Of course, for you are a pessimist about things as they are, like any
good revolutionist. You believe that you are going to improve life at
Castro. You alone?" "I, united with others."

"And meanwhile you introduce anarchy into the city."

"I introduce anarchy! No. I introduce order. I want to finish with the
anarchy already reigning in Castro and make it submit to a thought, to a
worthy, noble thought."

"And by what right do you arrogate to yourself the power to do this?"

"By the right of being the stronger."

"Ah! Good. If you should get to be the weaker, you ought not to complain
if we should misuse our strength."

"Complain! When you have been misusing it for thousands of years! At
this very moment, we do the talking, we make the protests, but you
people give the orders."

"We offset your idiotic behaviour. We stand in the way of your utopias.
Do you think you are going to solve the problem of this earth, and that
of Capital? Are you going to solve the sexual question? Are you going
to institute a society without inequality or injustice, as Dr. Ortigosa
said in _La Libertad_ the other day? To me it seems very difficult."

"To me too. But that is what there is to try for."

"And when will you attain so perfect an arrangement, so great a harmony,
as the Catholic, created in twenty centuries? When?"

"We shall attain a different, better harmony."

"Oh, I doubt it."

"Naturally. That is just what the pagans might have said to the
Christians; and perhaps with reason, because Christianity, compared to
paganism, was a retrogression."

"That point we cannot discuss," said Father Lafuerza, getting up.

Caesar got up too.

"In spite of all this, I admire you, because I believe you are sincere,"
said Father Martin. "But