A painful silence followed these words. That head was talking of priestly intrigues and impostures, and although referring to another age and other creeds, all the friars present were annoyed, possibly because they could see in the general trend of the speech some analogy to the existing situation. Padre Salví was in the grip of convulsive shivering; he worked his lips and with bulging eyes followed the gaze of the head as though fascinated. Beads of sweat began to break out on his emaciated face, but no one noticed this, so deeply absorbed and affected were they.
“What was the plot concocted by the priests of your country against you?” asked Mr. Leeds.
The head uttered a sorrowful groan, which seemed to come from the bottom of the heart, and the spectators saw its eyes, those fiery eyes, clouded and filled with tears. Many shuddered and felt their hair rise. No, that was not an illusion, it was not a trick: the head was the victim and what it told was its own story.
“Ay!” it moaned, shaking with affliction, “I loved a maiden, the daughter of a priest, pure as light, like the freshly opened lotus! The young priest of Abydos also desired her and planned a rebellion, using my name and some papyri that he had secured from my beloved. The rebellion broke out at the time when Cambyses was returning in rage over the disasters of his unfortunate campaign. I was accused of being a rebel, was made a prisoner, and having effected my escape was killed in the chase on Lake Moeris. From out of eternity I saw the imposture triumph. I saw the priest of Abydos night and day persecuting the maiden, who had taken refuge in a temple of Isis on the island of Philae. I saw him persecute and harass her, even in the subterranean chambers, I saw him drive her mad with terror and suffering, like a huge bat pursuing a white dove. Ah, priest, priest of Abydos, I have returned to life to expose your infamy, and after so many years of silence, I name thee murderer, hypocrite, liar!”
A dry, hollow laugh accompanied these words, while a choked voice responded, “No! Mercy!”
It was Padre Salví, who had been overcome with terror and with arms extended was slipping in collapse to the floor.
“What’s the matter with your Reverence? Are you ill?” asked Padre Irene.
“The heat of the room—”
“This odor of corpses we’re breathing here—”
“Murderer, slanderer, hypocrite!” repeated the head. “I accuse you—murderer, murderer, murderer!”
Again the dry laugh, sepulchral and menacing, resounded, as though that head were so absorbed in contemplation of its wrongs that it did not see the tumult that prevailed in the room.
“Mercy! She still lives!” groaned Padre Salví, and then lost consciousness. He was as pallid as a corpse. Some of the ladies thought it their duty to faint also, and proceeded to do so.
“He is out of his head! Padre Salví!”
“I told him not to eat that bird’s-nest soup,” said Padre Irene. “It has made him sick.”
“But he didn’t eat anything,” rejoined Don Custodio shivering. “As the head has been staring at him fixedly, it has mesmerized him.”
So disorder prevailed, the room seemed to be a hospital or a battlefield. Padre Salví looked like a corpse, and the ladies, seeing that no one was paying them any attention, made the best of it by recovering.
Meanwhile, the head had been reduced to ashes, and Mr. Leeds, having replaced the cloth on the table, bowed his audience out.
“This show must be prohibited,” said Don Custodio on leaving. “It’s wicked and highly immoral.”
“And above all, because it doesn’t use mirrors,” added Ben-Zayb, who before going out of the room tried to assure himself finally, so he leaped over the rail, went up to the table, and raised the cloth: nothing, absolutely nothing!40 On the following day he wrote an article in which he spoke of occult sciences, spiritualism, and the like.
An order came immediately from the ecclesiastical governor prohibiting the show, but Mr. Leeds had already disappeared, carrying his secret with him to Hong Kong.
XIX
The Fuse
Plácido Penitente left the class with his heart overflowing with bitterness and sullen gloom in his looks. He was worthy of his name when not driven from his usual course, but once irritated he was a veritable torrent, a wild beast that could only be stopped by the death of himself or his foe. So many affronts, so many pinpricks, day after day, had made his heart quiver, lodging in it to sleep the sleep of lethargic vipers, and they now were awaking to shake and hiss with fury. The hisses resounded in his ears with the jesting epithets of the professor, the phrases in the slang of the markets, and he seemed to hear blows and laughter. A thousand schemes for revenge rushed into his brain, crowding one another, only to fade immediately like phantoms in a dream. His vanity cried out to him with desperate tenacity that he must do something.
“Plácido Penitente,” said the voice, “show these youths that you have dignity, that you are the son of a valiant and noble province, where wrongs are washed out with blood. You’re a Batangan, Plácido Penitente! Avenge yourself, Plácido Penitente!”
The youth groaned and gnashed his teeth, stumbling against everyone in the street and on the Bridge of Spain, as if he were seeking a quarrel. In the latter place he saw a carriage in which was the Vice-Rector, Padre Sibyla, accompanied by Don Custodio, and he had a great mind to seize the friar and throw him into the river.
He proceeded along the Escolta and was tempted to assault two Augustinians who were seated in the doorway of Quiroga’s bazaar, laughing and joking with other friars who must
