CHAPTER XI

LOS BAÑOS


His Excellency, the Captain-General and Governor of the Philippine
Islands, had been hunting in Bosoboso. But as he had to be
accompanied by a band of music,--since such an exalted personage
was not to be esteemed less than the wooden images carried in the
processions,--and as devotion to the divine art of St. Cecilia has
not yet been popularized among the deer and wild boars of Bosoboso,
his Excellency, with the band of music and train of friars, soldiers,
and clerks, had not been able to catch a single rat or a solitary bird.

The provincial authorities foresaw dismissals and transfers, the poor
gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay were restless and sleepless,
fearing that the mighty hunter in his wrath might have a notion to make
up with their persons for the lack of submissiveness on the part of the
beasts of the forest, as had been done years before by an alcalde who
had traveled on the shoulders of impressed porters because he found no
horses gentle enough to guarantee his safety. There was not lacking
an evil rumor that his Excellency had decided to take some action,
since in this he saw the first symptoms of a rebellion which should be
strangled in its infancy, that a fruitless hunt hurt the prestige of
the Spanish name, that he already had his eye on a wretch to be dressed