Caesar or Nothing

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"Dear Sir: We have read in the newspaper from the Capital the
announcement that you are thinking of retiring from politics. We believe
this announcement is not true. We cannot think that you, the champion of
liberty in Castro Duro, would abandon so noble a cause, and leave the
town exposed to the intrigues and the evil tricks of the Clericals.
There is no question in this of whether it would suit you better to
retire from politics, or not. That is of no importance. There is a
question of what would suit our country and Liberty better.

"If because of the seductions of an easy life, you should withdraw
from us and desert us, you would have committed the crime of
lese-civilization; you would have slain in its flower the re-birth of
the spiritual and civic life of Castro.

"We do not believe you capable of such cowardice and such infamy, and
since we do not believe you capable of it, we beg you to come to
Castro Duro as soon as possible to direct the approaching municipal
elections.--Dr. Ortigosa, Antonio San Roman, Jose Camacho."

On reading this letter Caesar felt as if he had been struck with a whip.
Those men were correct; he had no right to retire from the fight.

This conviction supported him.

"I have to go to Castro," he said to Amparito.

"But didn't you say that...?"

"Yes, but it is impossible."

Amparito realized that her husband's decision was final, and she said:

"All right; let us go to Castro."

XVII

FIRST VICTORY

The Conservatives had come into power; the time to change the town
government was approaching. It was customary at Castro, as in all rural
districts in Spain, that in a period of Liberal administration the
majority of the councillors elected should be Liberal, and at a time of
Conservative government, they should be Conservative.

The former Liberal, Garcia Padilla, had gone over to the Conservative
camp, and one was now to see whether he would get his friends into the
Municipality so as to prepare for his own election as Deputy later.

It was the first time there was going to be a real election at Castro
Duro. Moncada's candidates were almost all persons of good position.
Dr. Ortigosa and a Socialist weaver figured among the candidates, as
representing the revolutionary tendency. The Liberals felt and showed an
unusual activity and anxiety. Caesar started a newspaper which he named
Liberty, Dr. Ortigosa was the soul of this paper, whose doctrines ran
from Liberal Monarchy to Anarchy, inclusive. As the election drew
nearer, the agitation increased.

In the two electoral headquarters established by Moncada's party, the
coming and going never stopped; some enthusiastic Moncadists came to
headquarters every fifteen minutes, to bring rumours going about and to
get news.

Don So-and-So had said this; Uncle What's-His-Name was thinking of doing
that; it was nothing but conferences and machinations. The painter had
painted for them gratis a big poster expressing cheers for Liberty,
for Moncada, Dr. Ortigosa, and the Liberal candidates. The cafe keeper
brought chairs, without any one's asking him; somebody else brought a
brasier for the clerks; everybody was anxious to do something. The stock
phrase, an electoral battle, was not for them a political commonplace
but a reality. The most trivial things served as a motive for very
long discussions. Such was their identification with the Idea, that
it succeeded in wiping out selfish ends. They all felt honoured and
enthusiastic, at least while it lasted.

People dreamed of the election.

When Caesar arrived at the electoral headquarters, it was always a
series of exclamations, of embracing, of advice, that never ended.

"Don Caesar, such a thing is ... Don Caesar, don't trust So-and-So."

"We must get rid of them."

"Not one of them ought to be left."

He used to smile, because finding himself really loved by the people had
cleansed him of his habitual bitterness and his loss of spirits. When he
had finished receiving recommendations and congratulations, he would
go to an inside room, and there, in the company of a candidate or a
secretary, would read letters and arrange what they had to do.

The most active of the candidates was Dr. Ortigosa.

Ortigosa was a narrow-minded, tenacious man. His chief hatred was for
Catholicism and he directed all his attacks at the religion of his
forefathers, as he ironically termed it.

He had founded a Masonic lodge, named the "Microbe," and whose principal
characteristic was anti-Catholicism.

Ortigosa carried his propaganda everywhere. He stopped at every corner
to speechify, to talk of his plans.

Caesar used his motor-car to go about among the villages in the
district. They would go to four or five and talk from balconies, or very
often from the car, like itinerant patent-medicine venders.

In the little villages these reunions produced a great effect. What was
said served as a topic of conversation for a month.

Caesar had developed a clear, insinuating eloquence. He knew how to
explain things admirably. Padilla's followers were not asleep; but, as
was natural, they took up the work in another way. They went from shop
to shop, making the shopkeepers see the harmfulness of the Moncadist
politics, promising them advantages. They threatened workmen with
dismissal. There was no great enthusiasm; their campaign was less noisy,
but, in part more certain.

All the Liberal element of Castro was wrought up, from the temperate
Liberals, who remembered Espartero, to the Anarchists. "Whiskers" and
"Furibis" were the only ones who got together in a tavern to talk about
bombs and dynamite, and one could be sure that neither of them was
capable of anything. Those two had nothing more to do with Ortigosa,
considering him a deserter.

"You are imbeciles," the doctor told them, with his habitual fury.
"This fight is waking the people up. They are beginning to show their
instincts, and that makes a man strong. The longer and more violent this
fight is, the better; progress will be so much quicker."

"Agitation, agitation is what we need," cried the doctor; and he himself
was as agitated as a man condemned.

The Liberals won a great victory; they obtained eight places out of ten
vacancies.

XVIII

DECLARATION OF WAR

The new city government of Castro was the most extraordinary that could
be imagined. Dr. Ortigosa presented motions which caused the greatest
astonishment and stupefaction, not only in the town, but in the whole
province. He conceived magnificent plans and extravagant ideas. He asked
to have the teaching system changed, religious festivals suppressed and
other ones instituted, property abolished, public baths installed, and
that Castro Duro should break with Rome.

The doctor was a creature born to succeed those revolutionary eagle-men,
like Robespierre and Saint Just, and condemned to live in a miserable
chicken-yard.

One day when Caesar was working in his office, he was astounded to see
Father Martin enter.

Father Martin greeted Caesar like an old acquaintance; he had come to
ask him a favour. Suspicious, Caesar prepared to listen. After speaking
of the business that had brought him, the friar began to criticize the
town-government of Castro and to say that it was a veritable mad-house.

"Your friends," said the priest, smiling, "are unrestrained. They want
to change everything in three days. Dr. Ortigosa is a crazy man...."

"To my mind, he is the only man in Castro that deserves my estimation."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"This demoniac says that for him traditions have no value whatsoever."

"Oh! I think the same thing," said Caesar. "Are you anti-historic?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't believe it."

"Absolutely. Tradition has no value for me either."

"The basis of tradition," answered the friar, arguing like a man who
carries the whole of human knowledge in the pocket of his habit, "is the
confidence we all have in the experience of our predecessors. Whether I
be a labourer or a pastor, even though I have lived fifty years, I may
have great experience about my work and about life, but it will never be
so great as the united experience of all those who have preceded me. Can
I scorn the accumulation of wisdom that past generations hand down to
us?"

"If you wish me to tell you the truth, for me your argument has no
weight," answered Caesar coldly.

"No?"

"No. It is undeniable that there is a sum of knowledge that comes from
father to son, from one labourer to another, and from one pastor to
another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences,
compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have
been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge
of a quack was greater and better than that of a wise physician."

"I am not talking," answered the Father, "of pure science. I am talking
of applied science. Is one of your universal savants going to occupy
himself with the way of sowing or of threshing in Castro?"

"Yes. He has already occupied himself with it, because he has occupied
himself with the way of sowing or threshing in general, and, what is
more, with the variations in the processes that may be occasioned by the
kind of soil, the climate, etc."

"And do you believe that such scientific pragmatism can be substituted
for the natural pragmatism born of the people's loins, created by them
through centuries and centuries of life?"

"Yes. That is to say, I believe it can purify it; that it can cast out
of this pragmatism, as you call it, all that is wrong, absurd, and false
and keep what good there may be." "And for you the absurd and false is
Catholic morality."

"It is."

"You are not willing to discuss whether Catholicism is true or is a lie;
you consider it a ruinous doctrine which produces decadence. I have been
told that you have stated that on various occasions."

"It is true. I have said so."

"Then we do not agree. Catholicism is useful; Catholicism is efficient."

"For what? For this life?"

"Yes."

"No. Pshaw! It may be useful when it comes to dying? Where there is
Catholicism there is ruin and misery."

"Nevertheless, there is no misery in Belgium."

"Certainly there is none, but in that country Catholicism is not what it
is in Spain."

"Of course it isn't," exclaimed the friar, shouting, "because what
characterizes Spanish Catholicism is Spain, poverty-stricken, fanatic
Spain, and not the Catholicism."

"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 I believe you to be dangerous and I should be
happy to get you out of Castro."

"I feel the same way about you, and I should also be happy to get you
out of here, as an unwholesome element."

"So that we are open, loyal enemies." "Loyal! Pshaw! We are ready to do
each other all the harm possible."

"For my part, yes, and in any way," announced the priest with energy.

"I, too," Caesar answered; and he raised the curtain of the office door.

"Don't disturb yourself," said Father Martin.

"Oh, it's no trouble."

"Regards to Amparito."

"Thank you."

The friar hesitated about going out, as if he wanted to return to the
attack.

"Afterwards, if you repent..." he said.

"I shall not repent," Caesar coldly replied.

"I will drink peace to you."

"Yes, if I submit. I will drink peace to you too, if I submit."

"You are going to play a dangerous game."

"It will be no less dangerous for you than for me."

"You are playing for your head."

"Pshaw! We will play for it and win it."

The friar bowed, and smiling in a forced manner, left the house.

XIX

THE FIGHT FOR THE ELECTION

The Conservatives at Castro Duro were ready to commit the greatest
outrages and the most arbitrary acts so as to win by any methods.

It was known that a committee consisting of Garcia Padilla, Father
Martin Lafuerza, and two Conservative councillors had gone to the
Minister of the Interior to beg that Caesar's victory might be prevented
by whatsoever means.

"It is necessary that Don Caesar Moncada should not be elected for the
District," said Father Martin. "If he is, the town will remain subjected
to a revolutionary dictatorship. All the Conservative classes, the
merchants, the religious communities, fervently hope that Moncada will
not be made Deputy."

The committee of Castrians visited other high personages, and they
must have attained their object, because the municipal government
was suspended a few days later, the Workmen's Club closed, the judge
transferred, the Civil Guard was reinforced, and a police inspector
of the worst antecedents was detailed to Castro as commissioner of
elections.

The Governor of the Province, a political enemy of Caesar's, was a
personal friend of his.

"For your sake I am ready to lose my future," he had said to him, "but
as for your followers, there is nothing left for me to do but knock them
over the head."

_La Libertad_, Caesar's newspaper, made a very violent campaign against
Garcia Padilla. Ortigosa succeeded in finding out that Padilla had been
tried for embezzlement, and he published that fact. The _Castro News_,
on its side, insulted Caesar and called him a crooked speculator on the
exchange, an upstart, and an atheist.

The rapidity and violence of the Government's methods produced an effect
of fear on lukewarm Liberals; on the other hand, it moved the decided
ones to show themselves all the more courageous and rash.

Moncada's party almost immediately took on a revolutionary character.
The lodge, "The Microbe," was at work, and the most radical arrangements
started there. It suited the Government and the Conservatives to have
the Moncada party take this demagogic character. The commissioner had
contaminating persons come on from the Capital for the purpose of sowing
discord in the Workmen's Club.

These suspicious persons, directed by one they called "Sparkler," used
to gather in the taverns to corrupt the workmen and the peasants,
carrying on a propaganda that was anarchistic in appearance, but in
reality anti-liberal.

"They are all the same," they used to say; "Liberals and Conservatives
are not a bit different."

The drunkards and vagabonds were in their glory during those days,
eating and drinking. Nobody knew for certain where the money came from,
but everybody could make certain that it flowed profusely.

At the same time the commissioner had the most prominent workmen of the
Club arrested and brought suit against them on ridiculous accusations.

_THE MEETING_

The Liberals tried to hold a manifestation in protest, but the
commissioner and the mayor prohibited it.

The newspaper _La Libertad_ explained what was going on, and was
reprimanded.

A meeting was organized at the school; the governor had granted
permission.

The school was not lighted, and Caesar sent a man to the Capital for
acetylene lamps, which were put up on the walls, and which made a
detestable smell. The reunion took place at nine at night. Caesar
presided, and had San Roman, the bookseller, on his right, and Dr.
Ortigosa on his left.

Behind them on a bench were some of the members of the Workmen's Club.

The audience was composed of the poorest people; the rich Liberal
element was drawing back; there were day-labourers with blankets around
their shoulders and mouths, women in shawls holding children in their
arms. Among the audience were the _agents provocateurs_ who doubtless
had the intention of making a disturbance; but the Republican bookseller
ordered them thrown out of the place, and, despite their resistance, he
managed to have it done.

The chief of police, insolent and contemptuous, took his seat at the
table with an officer of the Civil Guard in civilian's, who was there,
he said, to take notes.

San Roman, the bookseller, gave Caesar a paper with the names of those
who were going to speak. They were many, and Caesar didn't know them.

The first to whom he gave the floor, in the order of the list, was a
lame boy, who came forward on a crutch, and began to speak.

The boy expressed himself with great enthusiasm and admirable candour.

"Who is this youngster?" Caesar asked San Roman.

"He is the best pupil in our school. We call him 'Limpy.' He comes of a
very poor family. He came to the school a year ago, knowing nothing,
and see him now. He says, and I think he is right, that if he keeps on
studying, he will be an eminent man."

The audience applauded everything "Limpy" said, and when he finished
they hailed him with shouts and cheers. As he went back to his seat,
Caesar and San Roman shook his hand effusively.

_STAND FAST, FELLOW CITIZENS!_

After "Limpy," various orators spoke, in divers keys: "Furibis," "Uncle
Chinaman," "Panza," San Roman, a weaver, a railway employee, and Dr.
Ortigosa. The last-named let loose, and launched into such violent terms
that the audience shouted in horrified excitement. Caesar's speech
recommended firmness, and caused scarcely any reaction. The note had
been given by "Limpy," with his ingenuousness and his appealing quality,
and by the doctor with the violence of his words.

The next day the Governor's commissioner gave orders to close the
school, and Dr. Ortigosa and San Roman were taken to jail.

_POLITICAL TRICKS_

It was impossible to carry on a campaign of popular agitation, and
Caesar decided to open a headquarters for propaganda next door to each
voting place.

Meetings in the villages had been suppressed, because at the least
alarm, or even without any motive, the chief of police, with members of
the Civil Guard, went in among the people and dispersed them by shoving
and by pounding rifles on their feet.

The newspapers couldn't say anything without being immediately reported
and suspended.

Caesar sent no telegrams of protest, but he kept at work silently. He
was thinking of using all weapons, including even trickery and bribes.

Garcia Padilla and the Government agents found this proceeding even more
dangerous than the former. Caesar offered twenty dollars to anybody that
would give information of any electoral sharp practices which could be
proved. The week of the election he and his friends did not rest.

At one of the polls in Carrascal, where Caesar had a majority, the tile
bearing the house-number had been changed by night. The real voters had
to wait to cast their votes in one place, and meanwhile the urn was
being filled with ballots for the Government candidate at another place.

In the hamlet of Val de San Gil, another trick was tried; the polling
place was established in a hay-loft to which one went up by a ladder.
While the villagers were waiting for the ladder to be set up, the urn
was being filled. When the ladder was put into place and the voters went
up one by one, they found that they had all voted already. As the ladder
was narrow, they had to go up singly, and it was not likely they would
have ventured to protest. Besides, there were a number of ruffians in
the place, armed with sticks and pistols, who were ready to club or to
shoot any one protesting.

In spite of all, Caesar had the election won, always supposing that the
Government did not carry things to the limit; but at the last moment he
learned that more Civil Guards were going to come to Castro, and that
the Government agents had orders to prevent Moncada's victory by any
method.

In the evening on Saturday, Caesar was told that the commissioner was
in a tavern, with others of the police, giving out ballots for illegal
voters. Caesar went there alone, and entered the tavern.

The commissioner, on seeing him, grew confused.

"I know what you are doing," said Caesar. "Be careful, because it may
cost you a term in prison."

"You are the one that may have to pay by going to prison," replied the
inspector.

"Just try to arrest me, you poor fool, and I'll shoot your head off!"

The police inspector jumped up from the table where he was seated, and,
as he went out, he let one of the ballots fall. Caesar looked over the
men who were with the police inspector; one of them was "Sparkler." Some
days before he had come to Moncada's headquarters to offer to work for
him, and he was the director of the contaminating persons sent to Castro
by the Government.

A CLANDESTINE MEETING

When he returned to the headquarters, they told him there was a meeting
in "Furibis's" tavern at nine that night. Caesar got there a little
later than the time set. The place was gloomy, and had some big earthen
jars in it. They had put a table at the back of this cave, and an
acetylene light illuminated it.

Those present formed a semicircle around the table.

Caesar knocked at the tavern, and they opened the door to him; a workman
who was speaking delayed his peroration, and they waited until Caesar
had reached the table and got seated. The atmosphere was suffocating.
Everything was closed so that the Civil Guards would not see the light
through the windows and suspect that there was a meeting being
held there. The workmen were, for the most part, masons, weavers,
brickmakers. There were women there with their little ones asleep in
their bosoms. The air one breathed there was horrible. It looked like
a gathering of desperate people. They had learned that their arrested
comrades had been beaten in the prison, and that San Roman and Dr.
Ortigosa were in the infirmary as a result.

_EULOGY OF VIOLENCE_

The excitement among those present was terrible. "Limpy" was the most
strenuous; he was in favour of their all going out that moment and
storming the jail.

When they had all spoken, Caesar got up and asked them to wait. If he
won the election the next day, he promised them that the prisoners
should be freed immediately; if he did not win and the prisoners
remained there...

"Then what is to be done?" said a voice.

"What is to be done? I am in favour of violence," answered Caesar;
"burning the jail, setting fire to the whole town; I am ready for
anything."

At that moment he really did think he had been too lenient.

"Man's first duty is to break the law," he shouted, "when it is a bad
law. Everything is due to violence and war. I will go to the post of
danger this very second, whenever you wish. Shall we storm the jail?
Let's go right now."

This storming of the jail didn't seem an easy thing to the others. One
might try to climb down the hill and surprise the prison guards, but it
would be difficult. According to "Furibis," the best thing would be for
ten or twelve of them to go out into the street with guns and pistols
and shoot right and left.

At this disturbance the Civil Guard would come out, and that would be
the moment for the others to enter the jail and drag the prisoners out
into the street.

Some one else said that it seemed better to him for them to approach
the Civil Guards' quarters cautiously, kill the sentinels, and take
possession of the rifles.

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