These
truths, most honorable sir, the divine Spirit spoke with that supreme
wisdom which human intelligence has not comprehended since the times
of Seneca and Aristotle, those wise priests of antiquity, even to our
sinful days, and these truths are that not always are small affairs
small, but that they are great, not by the side of the little things,
but by the side of the grandest of the earth and of the heavens and
of the air and of the clouds and of the waters and of space and of
life and of death!"
"Amen!" exclaimed the leader of the Tertiaries, crossing himself.
With this figure of rhetoric, which he had learned from a famous
preacher in Manila, Padre Damaso wished to startle his audience,
and in fact his holy ghost was so fascinated with such great truths
that it was necessary to kick him to remind him of his business.
"Patent to your eyes--" prompted the holy ghost below.
"Patent to your eyes is the conclusive and impressive proof of this
eternal philosophical truth! Patent is that sun of virtue, and I say
sun and not moon, for there is no great merit in the fact that the moon
shines during the night,--in the land of the blind the one-eyed man
is king; by night may shine a light, a tiny star,--so the greatest
merit is to be able to shine even in the middle of the day, as the sun
does; so shines our brother Diego even in the midst of the greatest
saints! Here you have patent to your eyes, in your impious disbelief,
the masterpiece of the Highest for the confusion of the great of the
earth, yes, my brethren, patent, patent to all, PATENT!"
A man rose pale and trembling and hid himself in a confessional.
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