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Then you pick up some friends and go to Primitivo Lopez' saloon for a bit of a drink before dinner; well, you sit there drinking and you've got to be sociable, so you drink more than you should and the liquor goes to your head and you laugh and you're damned happy and if you feel like it, you sing and shout and kick up a bit of a row.
"But some one has to win," rejoined the gambler Aristorenas. "The fun lies in winning!" "Well, both win, that's easy!" This idea of both winning could not be admitted by Aristorenas, for he had passed his life in the cockpit and had always seen one cock lose and the other win at best, there was a tie. Vainly Don Primitivo argued in Latin.
This was their cousin, Don Primitivo, who had memorized the "Amat," a man of some forty years, plump, big-paunched, and elegantly dressed. "Quid video?" he exclaimed as he entered. "What's happening? Quare?" "Ay, cousin!" cried the woman, running toward him in tears, "I've sent for you because I don't know what's going to become of us. What do you advise?
"Here are the keys, here are the letters from Capitan Tiago. Burn them! Don't leave a single European newspaper, for they're very dangerous. Here are the copies of The Times that I've kept for wrapping up soap and old clothes. Here are the books." "Go to the Captain-General, cousin," said Don Primitivo, "and leave us alone. In extremis extrema.
Crimes on crimes! If I hadn't come in time! Liberty in the Philippines! Ta, ta, ta! What books! Into the fire!" Harmless books, written by simple authors, were burned; not even the most innocent work escaped. Cousin Primitivo was right: the righteous suffer for the sinners. Four or five hours later, at a pretentious reception in the Walled City, current events were being commented upon.
He was so changed that he said not a word, nor even greeted his family, who wept, laughed, chattered, and almost went mad with joy. The poor man no longer ventured out of his house for fear of running the risk of saying good-day to a filibuster. Not even Don Primitivo himself, with all the wisdom of the ancients, could draw him out of his silence.
Moreover, there were cited passages from novenas, books of miracles, sayings of the curates, descriptions of heaven, and other embroidery. Don Primitivo, the philosopher, was in his glory quoting opinions of the theologians. "Because no one can lose," he stated with great authority. "To lose would cause hard feelings and in heaven there can't be any hard feelings."
A very fatal book was one entitled Opus de anno primitivo ab exordia mundi, ad annum Julianum accommodato, et de sacrorum temporum ratione. Augustae-Vindelicorum, 1621, in folio magno. It is a work of Jerome Wecchiettus, a Florentine doctor of theology. The Inquisition attacked and condemned the book to the flames, and its author to perpetual imprisonment.
The orchestra played another waltz, the audience protested, when fortunately there arose a charitable hero to distract their attention and relieve the manager, in the person of a man who had occupied a reserved seat and refused to give it up to its owner, the philosopher Don Primitivo. Finding his own arguments useless, Don Primitivo had appealed to an usher.
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