-Xxv- · I

If an election lasted long, it would finish off whoever manages it, through sheer weariness, exhaustion, and tension of body and spirit; for bitter hatreds, the perpetual suspicion of treachery, ardent promises, threats, gossip, incessant journeyings and letters, messages, intrigues, lack of sleep, irregular meals, compose a dizzying and unbearable existence. Concerning the practical drawbacks of the parliamentary system the mare and the donkey were in thorough agreement, which, with a sturdy young horse newly acquired by the steward for his private use, completed the stable of the Pazos de Ulloa. A fine opinion they held of elections in their equine and asinine minds, as they panted exhausted from so much trotting, their poor bodies steaming and bathed in sweat!

And what shall I say of the mule upon which Trampeta was accustomed to make his journeys to the capital! Already her ribs poked through her skin, so gaunt had she grown. Day and night the illustrious boss was straddled along the highway, and with every journey the election in Cebre presented itself as more doubtful, more thorny; and Trampeta, in desperation, vociferated in the Governor’s office that it was essential to display force, to dismiss, to appoint, to intimidate, to promise, and above all, that the government carpetbagger candidate should unloose his purse-strings, for otherwise the district was slipping, slipping, slipping through their fingers.

“Why, did you not say,” shouted the Governor one day, with vehement impulses to send the great clerk to the devil, “that the election would not be very costly; that our opponents could spend nothing; that the Carlist committee in Orense would not loose a farthing; that the house of the Pazos would not loose a farthing either, because despite its good revenues it is always at its wits’ end for money?”

“There you see, sir,” replied Trampeta. “All that is very true; but there are moments when a man... well... changes his actions, as you show me (Trampeta had this pet phrase). The Marquis of Ulloa...”

“Marquis my foot!” interrupted the Governor impatiently.

“Well, it is a habit people have of calling him so... And mind you, I have spent a month proclaiming on all sides that there is no such marquis, that the government took the title from him to give it to another more liberal man, and that this title of marquis was offered to him by Carlos VII, for when the Inquisition and the tithes return, as you show me...”

“Go on, go on,” exclaimed the Governor, who that day was evidently irritable. “You were saying that the Marquis or whatever he is... in view of the circumstances...”

“Will not stick at a couple of thousand duros more or less, no sir.”

“If he had them not, he must have borrowed them?”

“There now! He asked them of his father-in-law in Santiago; and as the father-in-law in Santiago has not a single peseta available either, as you show me... here you have it that the father-in-law at the Pazos has given them to him.”

“Are two fathers-in-law counted to this Carlist candidate?” asked the Governor, who in spite of himself was amused by the clerk’s gossip.

“He will not be the first, as you show me,” said Trampeta, laughing at the joke. “You understand of whom I speak... eh?”

“Ah! Yes, that girl who lived in the house before Moscoso married, by whom he has a child... You see how well I remember.”

“The child... the child must belong to whomever God pleases, Señor Governor... His mother will know... if she knows at all.”

“Well, that matters not a radish for the election... To the point: the resources of which Moscoso disposes...”

“Well, they have been provided for him by the steward, by Primitivo, the father-in-law on the quiet... And you will ask me: how can a wretched steward have thousands of duros? And I answer: by lending at interest of eight per cent a month, and more in years of famine, and putting fear into everyone so that they pay him well and do not deny him a miserable debt of a duro... And you will say: whence does that Primitivo or that thief obtain the money to lend? And I reply: from the pocket of his own master, robbing him in the sale of the crops, selling them at one price and crediting them to him at another, cheating him in the management and in the leases, taking him in, as you show me, actively and passively... And you will say...”

This dialogue method was a device of Trampeta’s eloquence, of which he made use when he wished to convince his audience. The Governor interrupted him:

“With your permission I will say it myself. What interest has that scoundrel in lending his master the thousands of duros he has so laboriously filched from him?”

“Zounds!...” swore the clerk. “The thousands of duros, as you show me, are not lent without a mortgage, without securities of one class or another, and Primitivo was not born yesterday. Thus the capital remains secure and the master is held fast.”

“I understand, I understand,” said the Governor eagerly. Wishing to display his penetration, he added: “And it suits his book to have the young master elected deputy, in order to command greater influence in the district and be able to do whatever he pleases...”

Trampeta looked at the official with that mixture of astonishment and joyful irony which persons of inferior education display when they hear those above them utter an egregious piece of nonsense.

“As you show me, Señor Governor,” he pronounced, “there is nothing of the kind... Don Pedro, as an opposition deputy or an independent or whatever they please to call him, will be of as much use to his friends as a wooden gun... Primitivo, by leaning upon your humble servant or upon that Jew, begging your pardon, Barbacana, would obtain whatever he wanted, eh? without any need to make his master a deputy... And Primitivo, until this maggot bit him, was always on my side... A fox like him is not to be found in the whole province... That man will end by outwitting Barbacana and me both.”

“And why, then, has Barbacana declared in favour of the young squire?”

“Because Barbacana goes with the priests wherever they lead him. He knows what he is about... You, let us suppose, are here today and gone tomorrow; but the priests are always here, and the gentry likewise... the Limiosos, the Méndezes...”

And giving vent to the torrent of his rancour, the boss added, clenching his fists:

“By God! Until we sink Barbacana, nothing will be done in Cebre.”

“Agreed! Then provide us with the means of sinking him. There is no lack of willingness.”

Trampeta remained thoughtful for a while, and with the square thumbnail of his thumb, scorched by tobacco, scratched his goatee.

“What I am turning over in my mind is, what account can that old fox Primitivo find in this deputyship for the master?... For the present he profits by two things: what he secures from him by way of mortgage, and what he milks him of by managing the election expenses and presenting him afterwards, as you show me, with the Great Captain’s accounts... But if they win and make my lord Don Pedro a deputy, and he flies off to Madrid, and there borrows money from other quarters, which he certainly will, and opens his eyes to the roguery of his steward, and remembers no more of the wench or the child... then...”

He scratched his goatee again, paused and pensive, like one who pursues the solution of an intricate problem. His razor-sharp intellectual faculties were all in exercise. But he could not find the end of the skein.

“To the point,” insisted the Governor. “The question is that we must not be disgracefully defeated. The candidate is the Minister’s cousin; we have answered for the election.”

“Against the candidate of the Orense committee.”

“Do you think they admit such distinctions up there? We must triumph against anyone. No beating about the bush; will we come out tails between our legs? Yes or no?”

Trampeta remained undecided. At length he raised his face with the pride of a great strategist, ever confident of inventing some stratagem to outwit the enemy.

“Look you,” he said, “up to the present Barbacana has not been able to finish off this priest, though he has played me two or three pretty tricks... But at trickery neither he nor God can beat me... Only, the best ruses never occur to me until the order is given to open fire... Then not even the devil can devise what I devise. I have something here,” and he dealt himself a fist-blow upon his dark forehead, “that is stirring, but will not come out for all I can do... It will come out, as you show me, when the very critical moment arrives...”

And brandishing his right arm repeatedly up and down, like a sabre, he added in a hollow voice:

“Away with fear! We shall win!”

While the town-clerk was intriguing with the chief civil authority of the province, Barbacana was giving audience to the Archpriest of Loiro, who had chosen to go in person to obtain news of how affairs were progressing in Cebre, and was lounging in the lawyer’s office, snuffing, through a silver tube, Macuba snuff, which perhaps no one used but himself in all Galicia, and which was brought to him by smugglers with great mystery and at an exorbitant price.

The Archpriest, known in Santiago by the nickname of Envelopes, on account of an ingenuous question unluckily put in a shop, had been in former days, when simple priest of Anles, the finest electoral instrument known. They told him once that the election he was managing was lost; he shouted furiously: “The priest of Anles lose an election?” and as he shouted, he dealt a sovereign kick to the ballot-box, which was an earthenware pot, sending it flying into a thousand pieces, scattering the voting-papers, and achieving, by so simple an expedient, the triumph of his candidate. The exploit earned him the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic. Nowadays, obesity, age, and deafness prevented him from taking an active part; but the fondness and the instinct remained, there being for him nothing so delectable as an electoral gathering.

Whenever the Archpriest came to Cebre, he spent a short while at the tobacco and post-office, where politics was chattered about by the hour, Madrid newspapers were read, and the policy of all rulers and statesmen past, present, and to come was amended, phrases of the following stamp being frequently heard: “If I were President of the Council of Ministers, I would settle that with a stroke of the pen.” “If I were Prim, I would not be daunted by so little.” And the voice of some tonsured cleric was wont to be raised, exclaiming: “Put me where the Pope is, and you will see how much better I will settle it in the twinkling of an eye.”