We owe you a great deal; you
have opened our eyes and we are no longer brute beasts. But I am tired
of knowing so much and being so poor, and my companions are thinking
the same. We do not care to have our heads full and our bellies
empty."

"Well, then, what remedy have we? We have all been born too-soon.
Others will come after us, finding things better arranged. What can
you do to right the present, when there are millions of workers in
the world more wretched than yourselves, who have not succeeded in
finding a better way out even at the cost of their blood, fighting
against authority?"

"What shall we do?" grumbled his companion. "That is what we shall
see, and you will see also. We are not such fools as you think. You
are very clever, Gabriel, and we respect you as our master, for
everything you say is true. But it seems to us that when you have to
do with things--practical things: you understand me? when one must
call bread, bread, and wine, wine: am I explaining myself?--you are,
begging your pardon, rather soft, like all those who live much in
books. We are ignorant, but we see more clearly."

He walked away from Gabriel, who-was quite unable to understand the
true bearing of this aberration among his disciples. Several times
when he went up to the tower to spend a few moments with his friends,
they would suddenly cease their conversation, looking anxiously at him
as though they feared he might have overheard their words.

It was several days since Don Martin had been in the cloister. Gabriel
knew through Silver Stick that the chaplain's mother had died, and a
week afterwards he saw him one evening in the Claverias. His eyes were
bloodshot, his cheeks thin, and his skin drawn as though he had wept
much.

"I come to take farewell, Gabriel. I have spent a month of sorrow and
sleeplessness nursing my mother. The poor thing is dead; she was
far from young, and I expected this ending, but however strong and
resigned one may be, these blows must be felt. Now the poor old woman
is gone I am free; she was the only tie that bound me to this Church,
in which I no longer believe. Its dogma is absurd and puerile, its
history a tissue of crimes and violence. Why should I lie like others,
feigning a faith I do not feel? To-day I have been to the palace to
tell them they may dispose of my seven duros monthly and my chaplaincy
of nuns. I am going away. I wish not only to fly the Church, I wish
to get out of her atmosphe