Batiste

“ During some years of tiresome wanderings over highroads of the province, eating poorly, sleeping in the open, and suffering the torment of passing entire months away from his family, whom he adored with the concentrated affection of a rough and silent man, Batiste experienced only losses, and saw his position getting worse and worse. ”

“ On hearing her sobs, Batiste and his wife raised their heads in astonishment. They knew now that she was a good woman: he was the bad one. And a mother's and father's gratitude shone in their eyes.
Batiste even trembled when he saw how poor Pepeta embraced Teresa and her daughter, and mingled her tears with theirs. No; here was no duplicity. She herself was a victim; that was why she could understand the misfortunes of others who were also victims.
The little woman wiped away her tears, and became again the brave, strong woman accustomed to the labour of a beast of burden to keep up her house. ”

“ He lay down one day on his straw and refused to go out, gazing at Batiste with glassy yellow eyes which silenced all angry oaths and threats upon the master's lips. Poor Morrut seemed to be a human being! Batiste, remembering his glance, felt like weeping. The farm-house was all upset, and this misfortune for the time being made the family forget poor Pascualet, who was trembling with fever in his bed. ”

“ Batiste thought of his little boy, of the poor "Bishop" who probably had died by now. Perhaps that sweet chime was made by the angels who came down from heaven to bear the child's soul away; and who unable to find his farm were flying over the huerta. If only the others did not remain, those who needed the strength of his arm to support them!... The poor man longed for annihilation ”

“ Batiste smiled ironically on hearing Pimentó, who seemed confused by the serenity of the intruder, humbled by meeting a man who did not seem afraid of him.
Go away? There was not a bully in all the huerta who could make him abandon that which was now his; that which was watered by his sweat; moreover he had to earn bread for his family. He was a peaceful man, understand! but if they trifled with him, he had just as much manly spirit as most. Let every one attend to his own business, for he thought that he would do enough if he attended to his own, and failed nobody. ”

“ Batiste looked uncertainly in the direction of the city, turning his back toward the farm-house of Pimentó, which could be seen clearly now that the fields were stripped of the golden grain which hid it before the harvest.
There might be noted in the wounded man both the impulse of curiosity and the fear of seeing too much; but at last his will was conquered, and he slowly turned his gaze toward the house of his enemy.
Yes; many people swarmed before the door; men, women, children; all the people of the plain who were anxiously running to visit their fallen liberator. ”

“ We never know God's plans. Often he turns evil into good for his creatures."
And interrupting his string of commonplaces, uttered pompously as though he were in school, he lowered his voice and added, blinking his eyes maliciously:
"Did you notice, Mr. Batiste, all these people? Yesterday they were cursing you and your family; and God knows how many times I have censured them for this wickedness; today they enter your house as though they were entering their own, and overwhelm you with manifestations of affection. Misfortune makes them forget, brings them close to you." ”

“ His anger increased; he roared forth insults; his bloodshot eyes could scarcely see; he staggered like a drunken man. He was almost on the point of falling to the ground in a fit of apoplexy, agonized with anger, choked by fury, when suddenly the red clouds which surrounded him tore themselves apart, his fury gave way to weakness, he saw all his misfortune, felt himself crushed; his anger, broken by the terrible tension, vanished, and Batiste, amidst the torrent of insults, felt his voice grow stifled till it became a moan, and at last he burst out crying. ”

“ There could be no evil people here. Upon awakening, Batiste stretched himself with a pleasurable feeling of laziness, yielding to the tranquil comfort with which the atmosphere seemed to be impregnated. Roseta had gone away with the little ones to a dance at a farm-house: his wife was taking her siesta, and he was walking back and forth from his house to the road over the bit of uncultivated land which served as an entrance for vehicles.
Standing on the little bridge, he answered the salutations of the neighbours, who passed by laughing, as if they were going to witness a very funny spectacle. ”

“ The latter's name resounded ceaslessly in the silence of the twilight accompanied by all kinds of insults.
"Come down! You coward! Come out, you thug!"
And the farm-house remained silent and closed, as though it had been abandoned.
Batiste thought he heard a woman's stifled cries; the noise of a struggle; something which made him suppose a fight was going on between poor Pepeta and Pimentó, whom she was trying to prevent from going out to answer the insults; but after that he heard nothing, and his insults reverberated in a silence which made him desperate. ”

“ It was impossible to live. They had not done enough already with the men attacking poor Batiste, persecuting him and slandering him before the Tribunal, and imposing unjust fines upon him. Now here were these girls persecuting her poor Roseta, as though that unfortunate child had done anything wrong. And why was it all? Because they wished to earn a living and work, without offending anybody, as God commanded. ”

“ His big farmer's hands were encased in black gloves which had grown grey in the course of years, till now they were the colour of a fly's wing; he moved them constantly, desirous of drawing attention to the garments he wore on occasions of great solemnity.
For Batiste's benefit, he brought out the most flowery and high-sounding phrases of his repertory. The latter was his best customer; not a single Saturday had he failed to give his sons the two coppers for the school.
"It's life, Mr. Bautista; resignation. ”

“ Over the paths passed the girls returning from the city; and men coming from the fields, the tired horses dragging the heavy carts; and Batiste answered their "Good night," the greeting of all who passed near him, people from Alboraya, who did not know him or did not have the motives of his neighbours for hating him.
He left the village behind him, and as he drew nearer to his farm, the hostility stood out more plainly with every step. ”

“ He had killed him, it was true; but he should consider that he had been the first to attack him. Come! Men who are men ought to be reasonable! It was he who was to blame!
But the dead do not listen to reason, and the spectre, behaving like a bandit, smiled fiercely, and with a bound, landed on the bed, and seated himself upon him, pressing upon the sick man's wound with all his weight.
Batiste groaned painfully, unable to move and cast off the heavy mass. He tried to persuade him, calling him Toni with familiar tenderness, instead of designating him by his nickname. ”

“ Good-bye, Pimentó! You were departing from the world well-served. The farm-house and the fortune of the odious intruder were lighting up your corpse with merrier splendour than the candles bought by the bereaved Pepeta, mere yellowish tears of light.
Batistet returned desperate from his useless trip. Nobody had answered.
The plain, silent and scowling, had said good-bye to them for ever.
They were more alone than if they had been in the midst of a desert; the solitude of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature. ”

“ Fra Battista determined to brazen it out before Verona.
They lit the tapers in the sanctuary betimes; and then all the brethren in their hoods sat in choir awaiting the bishop. With him and his clergy should come the reverend prior. Fra Battista was to stand on the rood-step to make his purgation. He would be backed by the light. So much of grace they would do him, that he should face a sea of dark, and be seen but in outline by it.
The bishop's procession, long announced by the indefinable hum a great crowd breeds, swept up the nave with a slippering of countless feet. ”

“ In a rapt silence, with no preface at all, Fra Battista made direct confession to all his gods (whether remote or throned within the sanctuary-rail) that he had committed the sin whereof he was accused. A perceptible shiver of sensation swept over the church, although everybody in it was sure, before he had uttered a word, what that word ought to be. Indeed he had never denied it; but not to deny is different from bold affirmation. The prior, whose avowal had also been tacit, looked pained: avowals are painful things. The bishop, more used to avowals, did his best to look shocked ”

“ There is no mercy for the coward, and none for him that serves false gods. Go forth, thou groper after vainglory, kennel with the swine!"
The voice ceased. Fra Battista, who had been rocking under its chill breath, fell with a thud. The bishop adored the altar; the rest—priests, monks, people alike—broke into "Salve Regina," so loud, so wild, the very church seemed to shake. At that time the west doors flung open of themselves, and a roaring wind swept round, disastrous to candles. A quick flicker of blue flame jagged across the nave ”

“ There were some girls, Baptiste, Picking berries on the hillside, Where the river curls, Baptiste, You know,—on the still side. One was down by the water, She saw Isaàc Fall back.
She did not scream, Baptiste, She launched her canoe; It did seem, Baptiste, That she wanted to die too, For before you could think The birch cracked like a shell In the rush of hell, And I saw them both sink—
Baptiste! He had two girls, One is Virginie; What God calls the other Is not known to me. ”

“ From a thousand sources now the clamor arose—press, police, and public alike crying out for the capture of the master criminal of a century—lost voices hounding a specter down the alleyways of the wind. And still the meshes broke and the quarry slipped away before the hounds were well on the scent—leaving behind a trail of shattered safes and rifled jewel cases—while ever the clamor rose higher to “Get him—get him—get—”
Get whom, in God’s name—get what? Beast, man, or devil? A specter—a flying shadow—the shadow of a Bat. ”

“ Her son would far rather have a second time undergone some peril to save its life, than have had to destroy it for the prevention of a crime.
"Ah, Señor," murmured Bautista, as he crept out on to the verandah after him a few minutes later. "Ah, Señor, you have saved poor Guatchi's limbs from being mangled; but I doubt me you have made an enemy for yourself."
"You were willing to do the same in the same cause, Bautista," was the answer with a grave smile of approval. "I knew not that thou wast so staunchly ranged on the side of justice and mercy. Henceforth we are friends." ”

“ There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within it.” [442] —We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier Dialogo-Chapter, and from her Colloquies and Letters.
2. Indications of special knowledge.
I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s avowed writings and here. ”

“ But Jim Bates had his revenge. If he could not run as fast as Martin, he made an excellent pawn in the hands of fortune. Had the boy gone to the rabbit warren, he would not have seen the village again until after eight o’clock, and, possibly, the current of his life might have entered a different runnel. In the event, however, he was sauntering up the village street, when he encountered a lady and a little girl, accompanied by a woman whose dress reminded him of nuns seen in pictures. ”

“ One who carries a pistol, one who has fought with savages, cowboys, cattle-thieves, gamblers, one who has saved his enemy from a burning house--to be afraid of a silence, and in broad daylight! It is to laugh. Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Well, let us go away. Let us leave the treasure, and the old miser will give it to Jean Baptiste. Hein? You don't like that?"
"Sacré!" said Pamphile. "He shall not have it, that proud one, that peasant with the swagger of a grand seigneur, that bishop that was to be. He despises me, does he? He strikes me with a whip, like a dog. ”

“ One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium, and saw in her place a black-haired unit—unmistakably a person—pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing on the mutability of temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I went on a two weeks' vacation. Returning, I strolled through the lobby of the Acropolis, and saw, with a little warm glow of auld lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian and kind and flawless as ever, just putting the cover on her machine. ”

“ All these rhythmic, rhymed sayings have an utterly naïve, expansive tone, markedly different from the high-pitched redactional rhetoric in which they are now embedded, or again from Battista’s far more literary poetry: hence they cannot spring from this strong and busy intellect.—Thus she hears her Love say: “Chi di Mè | si fida, || di sè | non dubita”; possibly simply quoting, she says to her soul, “ama chi t’ama, | e chi non t’ama lascia” ”

“ But that Jean Baptiste, what would he? He would like to be a great lord, to ride about on a high horse looking at his lands, his houses, his cattle, his people. Yes, it would be a pleasant life, a desirable existence. But those are dreams, imaginations, castles in Spain. In verity he will be a habitant like the rest of us, a cultivator who follows the plow, who feeds the pigs, who cleans out the stable. Ha! Ha! It is laughable. Those Giroux were always too proud, too far above us, too high, too mighty, and the good God did not like it. ”