“But, man, employing all these cut-throats!”
“My dear friend,” responded Cæsar, “political situations include such things; with their heads they touch the noblest things, the safety of one’s native land and the race; with their feet they touch the meanest things, plots, vices, crimes. A politician of today still has to mingle with reptiles, even though he be an honourable man.”
“Besides, we need have no scruples,” added Ortigosa; “the inhabitants of Castro are laboratory guinea-pigs. We are going to experiment on them, we are going to see if they can stand the Liberal serum.”
THE TWO ASYLUMS
A little after these rivalries between the Benevolent Society and the Workmen’s Club, which stirred up every one’s passions to an extreme never before known at Castro Duro, another motive for agitation transpired.
There were two asylums in the town; the Municipal Aid and the Asylum of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The Municipal Aid had its own property and was wisely organized; the old people were permitted to go out of the asylum, they had no uniform, and from time to time they were allowed to drink a glass of something. In the Little Sisters’ Home, on the contrary, discipline was most severe; all the inmates had to go dressed in a horrible uniform, which the poor hated; to be present, like a chorus, at the funerals of important persons; pray at every step; and besides all that, they were forbidden under pain of expulsion, to smoke or to drink anything.
So the result was that there were abandoned old wretches, who, if they couldn’t get a place in the Aid, let themselves die in some corner, rather than put on the uniform of the Little Sisters’ Home, degrading in their eyes.
That asylum had no income, because its Catholic managers had eaten it all up. In view of the institution’s bad economic condition, it occurred to Father Martin to consolidate the two; to make one asylum of the municipal and the religious, and to put it under the strict rule of the religious one. What Father Martin wanted was that the Little Sisters should have a finger in the whole thing, and that the income of one institution should serve for both.