gratis, actually leaving money, sometimes, into the bargain; and he
often refused to attend wealthy people of "sound principles" who had
been obliged to get their confessor's permission before placing
themselves in his hands.

"Rascal!... Heretic!... Lower scum!..." doña Bernarda would exclaim.

But she said such things in a very low voice and with a certain fear,
for those days were bad ones for the House of Brull. Rafael remembered
how gloomy his father had been about that time, hardly even leaving the
_patio_. Had it not been for the respect his hairy claws and his
frowning eye-brows inspired, the rabble would have eaten him alive.
"Others" were in command, ... "others" ... everybody, in fact, except
the House of Brull.

The monarchy had been treasonably overturned; the men of the Revolution
of September were legislating in Madrid. The petty tradesmen of the
city, ever rebellious against the tyranny of don Ramón, had taken guns
in their hands and formed a little militia, ready to send a fusilade
into the _cacique_ who had formerly trodden them under foot. In the
streets people were singing the _Marseillaise_, waving tricolored
bunting, and hurrahing for the Republic. Candles were being burned
before pictures of Castelar. And meantime that fanatical Doctor, a
Republican, was preaching on the public squares, explaining the "rights
of man" at daytime meetings in the country and at night meetings in
town. Wild with enthusiasm he repeated, in different words, the orations
of the portentous Tribune who in those days was traveling from one end
of Spain to the other, administering to the people the sacrament of
democracy to the music of his eloquence, which raised all the grandeurs
of History from the tomb.