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Manuel and Roberto returned by the San Isidro highway. The sky was still overcast; the air dry; the procession of beggars was advancing in the direction of Madrid. Before they reached the Toledo Bridge, at the intersection of the San Isidro highway and the Extremadura cartroad, Roberto and Manuel entered a very large tavern. Roberto ordered a bottle of beer.
"For two long hours we were detained in the middle of the street under the rays of a burning sun and to the scandal of the immense crowd which had been gathered together to witness the denouement of the tragedy. The priests had hardly come into the presence of Villa when Fathers Isidro and Florentino were called out for the purpose of having heaped upon them a flood of insults and affronts.
Above the mudwalls jutted the turrets and the cypresses of San Isidro cemetery; a round cupola stood out clearly in the atmosphere; at its top rose an angel with wings outspread, as if about to take flight against the flaming, blood-red background of evening.
Roberto asked Manuel. "What Doctrina?" "A place where herds of beggars meet every Friday." "I don't know." "Do you know where the San Isidro highway is?" "Yes." "Good. For that's where we're going. That's where La Doctrina is." Manuel and Roberto walked down the Paseo de los Pontones and continued in the direction of Toledo Bridge.
Nearer Buenos Ayres, on the road from that place to San Isidro, there are extensive beds, as I am informed by Sir Woodbine Parish, of the Azara labiata, lying at about forty feet above the level of the river, and distant between two and three miles from it.
The angels are less amiable nowadays, but every true child of Madrid reveres the example and envies the success of the San Isidro method of doing business. In the process of years this lazy lout has become a great saint, and his bones have done more extensive and remarkable miracle-work than any equal amount of phosphate in existence.
General Lawton was the best friend I ever had in the United States Army. I saw him almost daily when he was in Manila, and he showed me the whole telegraphic correspondence which passed between him and General Otis on the subject of the withdrawal from San Isidro and Nueva Ecija, which was certainly one of the most ill advised moves that any military commander was ever compelled to make.
The Church is lord of the holidays for the rest of the year. In the middle of May comes the feast of the ploughboy patron of Madrid, San Isidro. He was a true Madrileno in tastes, and spent his time lying in the summer shade or basking in the winter sunshine, seeing visions, while angels came down from heaven and did his farm chores for him.
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