adorcillo? Alas! he was
an unfortunate, who governed not, but obeyed; did not dispose, but
was disposed of. And yet he had to answer to the alcalde for all
these dispositions, as if they emanated from his own brain. Be it
said in his favor that he had neither stolen nor usurped his honors,
but that they cost him five thousand pesos and much humiliation.

Perhaps then it was God? But to most of these good people, God seemed
one of those poor kings surrounded by favorites to whom their subjects
always take their supplications, never to them.

No, San Diego was a sort of modern Rome. The curate was the pope
at the Vatican; the alferez of the civil guard, the King in the
Quirinal. Here as there, difficulties arose from the situation.

The present curate, Brother Bernardo Salvi, was the young and silent
Franciscan we have already seen. In mode of life and in appearance
he was very unlike his predecessor, Brother Damaso. He seemed ill,
was always thoughtful, accomplished strictly his religious duties,
and was careful of his reputation. Through his zeal, almost all
his parishioners had speedily become members of the Third Order of
St. Francis, to the great dismay of the rival order, that of the Holy
Rosary. Four or five scapularies were suspended around every neck,
knotted cords encircled all the waists, and the innumerable processions
of the order were a joy to see. The head sacristan took in a small
fortune, selling--or giving as alms, to put it more correctly--all
the paraphernalia necessary to save the soul and combat the devil. It
is well known that this evil spirit, who once dared attack God face
to face, and accuse His divine word, as the book of Job tells us,
is now so cowardly and feeble that he flees at sight of a bit of
painted cloth, and fears a knotted cord.

Brother Salvi again greatly differed from Brother Damaso--who set
everything right with fists or ferrule, believing it the only way to
reach the Indian--in that he punished with fines the faults of his
subordinates, rarely striking them.

From his struggles with the curate, the alferez had a bad reputation
among the devout, which he deserved, and shared with his wife,
a hideous and vile old Filipino woman named Dona Consolacion. The
husband avenged his conjugal woes on himself by drinking like a fish;
on his subordinates, by making them exercise in the sun; and most
frequently on his wife, by kicks and drubbings. The two fought famously
between themselv