"I can't help it," said the alcalde as he wiped his lips. "Opportunity, while it doesn't always make the thief, makes the poet. In my youth I composed verses which were really not bad." "So your Excellency has been unfaithful to the Muses to follow Themis," emphatically declared our mythical or mythological correspondent. "Pshaw, what would you have? To run through the entire social scale was always my dream. Yesterday I was gathering flowers and singing songs, today I wield the rod of justice and serve Humanity, tomorrow--" "Tomorrow your Honor will throw the rod into the fire to warm yourself by it in the winter of life, and take an appointment in the cabinet," added Padre Sibyla. "Pshaw! Yes--no--to be a cabinet official isn't exactly my beau-ideal: any upstart may become one. A villa in the North in which to spend the summer, a mansion in Madrid, and some property in Andalusia for the winter--there we shall live remembering our beloved Philippines. Of me Voltaire would not say, 'We have lived among these people only to enrich ourselves and to calumniate them.'" The alcalde quoted this in French, so the employees, thinking that his Honor had cracked a joke, began to laugh in appreciation of it. Some of the friars did likewise, since they did not know that the Voltaire mentioned was the same Voltaire whom they had so often cursed and consigned to hell. But Padre Sibyla was aware of it and became serious from the belief that the alcalde had said something heretical or impious. In the other kiosk the children were eating under the direction of their teacher. For Filipino children they were rather noisy, since at the table and in the presence of other persons their sins are generally more of omission than of commission. Perhaps one who was using the tableware improperly would be corrected by his neighbor and from this there would arise a noisy discussion in which each would have his partisans. Some would say the spoon, others the knife or the fork, and as no one was considered an authority there would arise the contention that God is Christ or, more clearly, a dispute of theologians. Their fathers and mothers winked, made signs, nudged one another, and showed their happiness by their smiles. "Ya!" exclaimed a countrywoman to an old man who was mashing buyo in his _kalikut_, "in spite of the fact that my husband is opposed to it, my Andoy shall be a priest. It's true that we're poor, but we'll work, and if necessary we'll beg alms. There are not lacking those who will give money so that the poor may take holy orders. Does not Brother Mateo, a man who does not lie, say that Pope Sextus was a herder of carabaos in Batangas? Well then, look at my Andoy, see if he hasn't already the face of a St. Vincent!" The good mother watered at the mouth to see her son take hold of a fork with both hands.