ld
one day reap the harvest from all such family sacrifices.

Dona Bernarda had taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing
oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life. Her heart
would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the
church:

"Take good care of don Ramon. Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts
at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District. He is the
bulwark of the Lord against the impious!"

And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity
and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the
streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean,
greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would
pardon don Ramon all the infidelities she knew about and consider the
sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.

"If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District....
The lower scum would conquer--those wild-eyed mechanics and common
laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all
the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the
product of the harvests--thousands and thousands of _duros_ paid for
oranges by the Englishmen and the French--should belong to all." But to
stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramon, the scourge of the
wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in
hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious
trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep
at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in
their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in
this support of "law and order!"

The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige
rose higher and higher. The sacks of money filled by the old man at the
cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor
were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring
them back to normal roundness. Don Ramon contemplated this squandering
impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as
much as of his power.

The whole District worshipped as a sacred flagstaff that bronzed,
muscular, massive figure, which floated a huge, flowing, gray-flecked
mustache from its upper end.

"Don Ramon, you ought to remove that bush," his clerical friends would
say to him with a smile of affectionate ban