Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/179

“Do!” said Kate, rather uneasy.

“You know what Ramón is doing? she said, looking at Kate almost furtively, suspiciously.

“Does he want to bring back the old gods?” said Kate vaguely.

“Ah!” cried Doña Carlota, again with that desperate, flying jerk of her hand. “As if it were possible! As if it were possible! The old gods! Imagine it, Señora! The old gods! Why what are they? Nothing but dead illusions. And ugly, repulsive illusions! Ah! I always thought my husband such a clever man, so superior to me! Ah, it is terrible to have to change one’s idea! This is such nonsense. How dare he! How dare he take such nonsense seriously! How does he dare!”

“Does he believe in it himself?” asked Kate.

“Himself? But, Señora—" and Doña Carlota gave a pitiful, pitying smile of contempt. “How could he! As if it were possible. After all he is an educated man! How could he believe in such nonsense!”

“Then why does he do it?”

“Why? Why?” There was a tone of unspeakable weariness in Doña Carlota’s voice. “I wish I knew. I think he has gone insane, as Mexicans do. Insane like Francisco Villa, the bandit.”

Kate thought of the pug-faced notorious Pancho Villa in wonder, unable to connect him with Don Ramón.

“All the Mexicans, as soon as they rise above themselves, go that way,” said Doña Carlota. “Their pride gets the better of them. And then they understand nothing, nothing but their own foolish will, their will to be very, very important. It is just the male vanity. Don’t you think, Señora, that the bginning and the end of a man is his vanity? Don’t you think it was just against this danger that Christ came, to teach men a proper humility. To teach them the sin of pride. But that is why they hate Christ so much, and His teaching. First and last, they want their own vanity.”

Kate had often thought so herself. Her own final conclusion about men was that they were the vanity of vanities, nothing but vanity. They must be flattered and made to feel great: Nothing else.

“And now, my husband wants to go to the other extreme