Padre Manuel abandoned the rhetoric he had learned at the Seminary, the senile formulas of an oratory whose time had passed, to adopt a direct, vigorous language in which the weakness of the argument was concealed by the impetuousness of the delivery.

Attendance at Padre Manuel’s sermons grew larger with each passing Sunday. Worshippers from other parishes came from afar to watch the lightning bolt of wrath that was unsheathed before their eyes and flashed for a short while, dazzling them, helping them endure a week of gray routine and colorless inertia.

Padre Mandujano fell into his own trap. He had discovered his own force and wanted to increase it, make use of it. Did he forget to be prudent? Who, when drunk, doesn’t forget to.be prudent?

“I did nothing out of the ordinary. A talk on Sunday. . . .”

“In which you incited the people to rebel against those who govern them.”

“Those who govern are unjust. Their injustice exempts us from obeying them.”

“But the crisis the Church is going through right now can transform any incident into a provocation. You know they are persecuting us in Tabasco, humiliating the priests, burning the churches and desecrating the images. The same thing can happen here.”

“And we are to confront this threat with our hands folded in our laps?”

“The Church needs no martyrs. A martyr requires an executioner. And it is a sin without remission to try to make our adversaries into executioners. What is needed is common sense and discretion.”

Manuel stared at Don Alfonso. The bishop had the reputation of having been energetic and combative in his youth. And this empty husk was what Ciudad Real had left after grinding him down for years with its all-too benign climate, its too easily accessible countryside, its too tranquil way of life. Manuel felt a jab of alarm. No, a thousand times no! He would seek out the wilderness, the inhospitable sands, the blank horizon. He wanted to live, to pant with exhaustion, to walk, to move, to fight.

“I am neither sensible nor discreet.”

“Don’t be proud of that. You’re forcing me to send you to a place where your defects can do no harm.”

Manuel stood up. A look of incredulity convulsed his face.

“Do you mean you have yielded to our enemies’ demands and are ordering me to leave my parish?”