ppression.

Don Antolin, who knew well enough the crew confided to his care,
was not long in perceiving this moral upturn. He felt hostility and
rebellion on every side. The debtors answered him haughtily, alleging
their poverty as a reason for no longer enduring his avarice; his
imperious orders were tardily executed, and he had a clear perception
that they were laughing behind his back as he walked through the
cloister, and making threatening gestures. One day his legs trembled
beneath him and his eyes were dimmed, hearing how the Perrero replied
to one of his reprimands, having returned late to the Cathedral, and
obliging him to descend and open the door after he had gone to bed.
The Tato made him understand, with an insolent expression, that he had
bought a knife, and that he intended its first fleshing to be in the
bowels of some priest or other who ground down the poor.

His niece complained to Don Antolin, they paid no attention to her and
flouted her, no woman now ever came to help her gratuitously in her
household duties. They replied insolently that those who wanted
servants must pay for them. What was her uncle thinking about? It was
certainly time to assert his authority and to lay a heavy hand on
these people.

She herself, so lively and energetic in her own house, was now obliged
to retire snorting with rage or weeping, whenever she stationed
herself at her door. All the women of the Claverias wished to revenge
themselves for their former thraldom, standing already on the
declivity of disrespect.

"Look at her!" screamed the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours,
"always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood
that vampire of an uncle sucks from the poor."

And from the iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the
roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no
doubt inspired by the Cathedral garden--

"Las amas de los curas y los laureles
Como nunca dan fruto siempre estan verdes." [1]

[Footnote 1: Priest's housekeepers--like laurels--never have any
fruit, because they are evergreens.]

It was this that ended the patience of Don Antolin; this insulting
conjecture about himself and his niece that disturbed his miserly
chastity. He visited the cardinal to complain of the inhabitants of
the cloister, but His Eminence, who lived in a perpetual rage, grew
furious listening to him and very nearly thrashed him. Why did he
come to him with such tales?