als, and an officer,
seated round a little table, on which were wine and English biscuits.

The officer, an old lieutenant, tall and morose, looked a Duke of Alba,
retired into the Municipal Guard. He spoke little and dryly. One of the
monks was a young Dominican, handsome, brilliant, precociously grave;
it was the curate of Binondo. Consummate dialectician, he could escape
from a distinguo like an eel from a fisherman's nets. He spoke seldom,
and seemed to weigh his words.

The other monk talked much and gestured more. Though his hair was
turning gray, he seemed to have preserved all his vigor. His carriage,
his glance, his large jaws, his herculean frame, gave him the air of a
Roman patrician in disguise. Yet he seemed genial, and if the timbre
of his voice was autocratic, his frank and merry laugh removed any
disagreeable impression, so far even that one pardoned his appearing
in the salon with unshod feet.

One of the provincials, a little man with a black beard, had nothing
remarkable about him but his nose, which, to judge from its size,
ought not to have belonged to him entire. The other, young and blond,
seemed newly arrived in the country. The Franciscan was conversing
with him somewhat warmly.

"You will see," said he, "when you have been here several months;
you will be convinced that to legislate at Madrid and to execute in
the Philippines is not one and the same thing."

"But----"

"I, for example," continued Brother Damaso, raising his voice to
cut off the words of his objector, "I, who count twenty-three years
of plane and palm, can speak with authority. I spent twenty years
in one pueblo. In twenty years one gets acquainted with a town. San
Diego had six thousand souls. I knew each inhabitant as if I'd borne
and reared him--with which foot this one limped, how that one's pot
boiled--and I tell you the reforms proposed by the Ministers are
absurd. The Indian is too indolent!"

"Ah, pardon me," said the young man, speaking low and drawing nearer;
"that word rouses all my interest. Does it really exist from birth,
this indolence of the native, or is it, as some travellers say, only an
excuse of our own for the lack of advancement in our colonial policy?"

"Bah! ask Senor Laruja, who also knows the country well; ask him if
the ignorance and idleness of the Indians are not unparalleled?"

"In truth!" the little dark man made haste to affirm; "nowhere will
you find men more careless."

"Nor more c