The Mayor looked back. He saw that the Mexican had detached himself from the fight and was talking to the priest, flailing his arms.
"Get in quick," the Mayor said, "we have to be off."
"Not that seat. I have to drive Rocinante."
"You can't drive. You are a casualty."
"But she doesn't like a strange hand."
"My hands are no longer strange to her. Didn't I drive her all the way back to rescue you?"
"Please don't overstrain her. She's old."
"She's young enough to do a hundred."
Father Quixote gave way without further protest. He sank back in his seat as far as Rocinante permitted. Anger had always exhausted him -- and even more the thoughts which were liable to come after. "Oh dear, oh dear," he said, "whatever will the bishop say if he hears?"
"He certainly will hear, but what worries me is what the Guardia will say -- and do."
The needle on the speedometer approached a hundred.
"Causing a riot. That's the most serious crime you've committed so far. We have to find sanctuary." The Mayor added, "I would have preferred Portugal, but the monastery of Osera is better than nothing."
They had driven in silence for more than half an hour before the Mayor spoke again. "Are you asleep?"
"No."
"It's not like you to be so silent."
"I am suffering from one indisputable aspect of the Natural Law. I very much want to relieve myself."
"Can't you hold on for another half hour? We should be at the monastery by then."
"I'm afraid I can't."
Unwillingly the Mayor brought Rocinante to a halt beside a field and what looked like an ancient Celtic cross. While Father Quixote emptied his bladder the Mayor read the inscription which was nearly worn away.
"That's better. I feel able to talk again now," Father Quixote told him when he returned.
"It's very odd," the Mayor said. "Did you notice that old cross in the field?"
"Yes."
"It's not as old as you might think. 1928 is the date and it's been put up in that field far from anywhere in memory of a school inspector. Why there? Why a school inspector?"
"Perhaps he was killed at that spot. A motor accident?"
"Or perhaps the Guardia," the Mayor said with a glance in his mirror, but the road was empty behind them.
IV
HOW MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE
REJOINED HIS ANCESTOR
1
The great grey edifice of the Osera monastery stretches out almost alone within a trough of the Galician hills. A small shop and a bar at the very entrance of the monastery grounds make up the whole village of Osera. The carved exterior which dates from the sixteenth century hides the twelfth-century interior -- an imposing stairway, perhaps twenty metres wide, up which a platoon could march shoulder to shoulder, leads to long passages lined with guest rooms above the central courtyard and the cloisters. Almost the only sound during the day is the ring of hammers where half a dozen workmen are struggling to repair the ravages of seven centuries. Sometimes a white-robed figure passes rapidly by on what is apparently a serious errand, and in the dark corners loom the wooden figures of popes and of the knights whose order founded the monastery. They take on an appearance of life, as sad memories do, when the dark has fallen. A visitor has the impression of an abandoned island which has been colonized only recently by a small group of adventurers, who are now trying to make a home in the ruins of a past civilization. The doors of the church, which open on to the little square before the monastery, are closed except during visiting hours and at the time of Sunday Masses, but the monks have their private staircase which leads from the corridor, where the guest rooms lie, down to the great nave as large as many a cathedral's. Only during visiting hours or when guests are present do human voices sound among the ancient stones, as though a pleasure boat has deposited a few tourists on the shore.
2
Father Leopoldo was only too well aware that he had cooked a very bad lunch for the guest room. He had no illusions about his ability as a chef, but his fellow Trappists were used to even worse cooking and there was no real occasion for them to complain - each of them in turn would have to do his best or his worst. All the same, most guests must have been accustomed to better food and Father Leopoldo felt unhappy when he thought of the meal he had served that afternoon, all the more because he had a real reverence for the only guest at the moment who was the Professor of Hispanic Studies at Notre Dame University in the United States. Professor Pilbeam had taken -- it would appear from the plate -- not more than a spoonful or two of soup, and his fish had been left almost untouched. The lay brother who was helping Father Leopoldo in the kitchen had raised his eyebrows ostentatiously when the professor's dishes were brought in to be cleaned and he had winked at Father Leopoldo. Where there is a vow of silence, a wink can convey as much as a word, and no one there had taken a vow to refrain from communication by other means than the voice.
Father Leopoldo was glad when at last he was able to leave the kitchen and go to the library. He hoped that he would find the professor there, for then he could tell him in words how sorry he was about the meal. Speech was not forbidden with a guest, and he felt sure that Professor Pilbeam would understand his absent-mindedness with the salt. He had been thinking, as happened very often, of Descartes. The presence of Professor Pilbeam, whose second visit to Osera this was, had removed Father Leopoldo from the peace of a routine to a more confused world, the world of intellectual speculation. Professor Pilbeam was perhaps the greatest living authority on the life and works of Ignatius Loyola, and any intellectual discussion, even on a subject as unsympathetic to Father Leopoldo as a Jesuit saint, was like giving food to a starving man. It could be dangerous. So often the guests at the monastery were young people of great piety who imagined that they had a vocation for a Trappist life, and they invariably irritated him by their ignorance and by their exaggerated respect for what they believed had been his great sacrifice. They wanted in a romantic way to sacrifice their own lives. But he had come here only to find a precarious peace.
The professor was not in the library and Father Leopoldo sat down and again he thought of Descartes. It was Descartes who had led him out of scepticism into the Church in much the same way as he had led the Queen of Sweden. Descartes would certainly not have put too much salt in the soup, nor would he have over-grilled the fish. Descartes was a practical man who had worked on spectacles to find cures for blindness and on wheel-chairs to aid cripples. Father Leopoldo when a young man had had no thought of becoming a priest. He had attached himself to Descartes without thought of where he might be led. He wanted to question everything, in the manner of Descartes, searching for an absolute truth, and in the end, like Descartes, he had accepted what seemed to him the nearest thing to truth. But it was then that he had taken a greater leap than Descartes -- a leap into the silent world of Osera. He was not unhappy -- except about the soup and the fish -- but all the same he was glad of the opportunity to talk to an intelligent man, even if he had to talk about Saint Ignatius rather than Descartes.