The craftsmen’s doors were always wide open. From inside their houses came the sound of work, of the machine’s rhythmic I movements and the worker singing as he labored. The courtyards j thronged with dirty children, domestic animals, clients. And on | Sundays the family went to church, elbowing their way through i to the best pews (on which they had had their names ostentatiously painted) and maintaining, during the service, a composure; all the more meritorious for the effort it cost them. They cast] sidelong glances at the aristocrats, with a solid satisfaction where the present was concerned, but with a secret envy of the past.

This was the public Padre Manuel addressed. His eloquence vibrated between the church’s baroque walls, rang down from the gilded altars, glanced off the somber altarpieces. His listeners cleared their throats in covert impatience, shifted in their seats, hissed to silence the noises each one of them caused. And in their vacant eyes and distracted expressions, Padre Manuel had ample and grievous evidence that he was not being heard.

Late at night, in the solitude of his bedroom, Padre Manuel meditated. The relationship between the priest and his parishioners is a curious one. The nature of the priest’s role inhibits the secular man; he changes the subject when the priest approaches; he does not dare include him. He wants to establish a distance. But the priestly character is like the tip of a scalpel. It pierces. Under cover of the confessional, and with an almost defiant shamelessness, souls lay themselves bare and stories are told.

The stories told by Coletos, Padre Manuel mused, were like plants. An excess or a defect of temperament, a hereditary flaw, a careless upbringing can be the seed. Then comes the gray seedling of the years and the unvarying customs. The thick bark of reputation, social standing. And suddenly the red flower blooms: scandal, violence, crime. Nothing produces the illusion of randomness like a slow, patient logic.

But the seed, the root, does not grow by itself. It feeds on beliefs, practices and aspirations that are legitimate, on rigid prohibitions: on morality, in other words.