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Updated: May 23, 2025
He stopped, looked back, nudged Ben-Zayb, chuckled and swore, saying, "And that one, and that one, my ink-slinger? And that one over there, what say you?" In his contentment he even fell to using the familiar tu toward his friend and adversary. Padre Salvi stared at him from time to time, but he took little note of Padre Salvi.
Admitted. For some time El Grito has pretended to represent the Filipino people ergo, as Fray Ibañez would say, if he knew Latin. But Fray Ibañez turns Mussulman when he writes, and we know how the Mussulmans dealt with education. In witness whereof, as a royal preacher said, the Alexandrian library! Now he was right, he, Ben-Zayb!
"It smells of forty centuries," remarked some one with emphasis. Ben-Zayb forgot about his mirrors to discover who had made this remark. It was a military official who had read the history of Napoleon. Ben-Zayb felt jealous and to utter another epigram that might annoy Padre Camorra a little said, "It smells of the Church."
Don Custodio, the active Don Custodio, the most active of all the arbiters in the world, according to Ben-Zayb, was occupied with it, spending his days reading the petition and falling asleep without reaching any decision, waking on the following day to repeat the same performance, dropping off to sleep again, and so on continuously.
"By the way, captain," said Ben-Zayb, turning around, "do you know in what part of the lake a certain Guevara, Navarra, or Ibarra, was killed?" The group looked toward the captain, with the exception of Simoun, who had turned away his head as though to look for something on the shore. "Ah, yes!" exclaimed Doña Victorina. "Where, captain? Did he leave any tracks in the water?"
Ben-Zayb, the only thinking head, did not know he was not engaged in that business. "On snails, man, on snails!" exclaimed Padre Camorra. "One doesn't have to be an Indian to know that; it's sufficient to have eyes!" "Exactly so, on snails!" repeated Don Custodio, flourishing his forefinger. "And do you know where they get them?" Again the thinking head did not know.
Ben-Zayb was horrified, but after touching it with his cane and gazing toward the gates proceeded on his way, musing over a sentimental tale he might base upon the incident. However, no allusion to it appeared in the newspapers on the following days, engrossed as they were with the falls and slippings caused by banana-peels.
Words spoken by the Lord Custodio through the mouth of Ben-Zayb, in the journal El Grito de la Integridad, the second article, absurdity the one hundred and fifty-seventh. "Beloved brethren in Christ: Evil blows its foul breath over the verdant shores of Frailandia, commonly called the Philippine Archipelago.
For him the native songs were Arabic music, as was also the alphabet of the ancient Filipinos he was certain of this, although he did not know Arabic nor had he ever seen that alphabet. "Arabic, the purest Arabic," he said to Ben-Zayb in a tone that admitted no reply. "At best, Chinese!"
Horatius did not miss the opportunity, and, also without mentioning the dead, or the murdered native girl, or the assaults, answered him in his Pirotecnia: "After such great charity and such great humanity, Fray Ibañez I mean, Ben-Zayb brings himself to pray for the Philippines. But he is understood. Because he is not Catholic, and the sentiment of charity is most prevalent," etc.
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