archists. "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