"Ah!" gasped the sick man, "they recommend an operation! An operation at my age! Oh, this country, this terrible country! You see what it does for all of us, Hernando!" "And what has your reverence decided?" "To die! Could I do otherwise? I suffer too much, but--I've made others suffer. I'm paying my debt. And you? How are you? What do you bring me?" "I came to talk of the mission you gave me." "Ah! and what is there to say?" "They've told us fairy tales," answered Brother Sibyla wearily. "Young Ibarra seems a sensible fellow. He is not stupid at all, and thoroughly manly." "Is it so!" "Hostilities began yesterday." "Ah! and how?" Brother Sibyla briefly recounted what had passed between Brother Damaso and Crisostomo. "Besides," he said in conclusion, "the young man is going to marry the daughter of Captain Tiago, who was educated at the convent of our sisters. He is rich; he would not go about making himself enemies and compromise at once his happiness and his fortune." The sick man moved his hand in sign of assent. "Yes, you are right. He should be ours, body and soul. But if he declare himself our enemy, so much the better!" Brother Sibyla looked at the old man in surprise. "For the good of our sacred order, you understand," he added, breathing with difficulty; "I prefer attack to the flatteries and adulations of friends; besides, those are bought." "Your reverence believes that?" The old man looked at him sadly. "Remember this well," he went on, catching his breath; "our power lasts as long as it's believed in. If we're attacked, the Government reasons: 'They are assailed because in them is seen an obstacle to liberty: therefore we must support them!'" "But if the Government should listen to our enemies, if it should come to covet what we have amassed--if there should be a man hardy enough----" "Ah! then beware!" Both were silent. "And too," the sick man continued, "we have need of attack to show us our faults and make us better them. Too much flattery deceives us; we sleep; and more, it makes us ridiculous, and the day we become ridiculous we fall as we have fallen in Europe. Money will no longer come to our churches. No one will buy scapulary, penitential cords, anything; and when we cease to be rich, we can no longer convince the conscience. And the worst is, that we're working our own destruction. For one thing, this immoderate thirst for gain, which I've combated in vain in all our chapters, this thirst will be our ruin. I fear we are already declining. God blinds whom He will destroy." "We shall always have our lands." "But every year we raise their price, and force the Indian to buy of others. The people are beginning to murmur. We ought not to increase the burdens we've already laid on their shoulders." "So your reverence believes that the revenues----" "Talk no more of money," interrupted the old man with aversion. "You say the lieutenant threatened Father Damaso?"