Every election opened a new breach in the family fortune.  Don Ramon would receive orders to carry his district for some non-resident, who might not have lived there more than a day or two.  So those who governed yonder in Madrid had ordered—­and orders must be obeyed.  In every town whole muttons would be set turning over the fires.  Tavern wine would flow like water.  Debts would be cancelled and fistfulls of pesetas would be distributed among the most recalcitrant, all at don Ramon’s expense of course.  And his wife, who wore a calico wrapper to save on clothes and stinted so much on food that there was hardly anything left for the servants to eat, would be arrayed in splendor when the day for the contest came around, ready in her excitement to help her husband throw the entire house through the window, if need be.

This, however, was all pure speculation on her part.  The money that was being scattered so madly broadcast was a “loan” simply.  Some day she would get it back with interest.  Already her piercing eyes were caressing the tiny, dark-complexioned, restless little creature that lay across her knees, seeing in him the privileged heir-apparent who would one day reap the harvest from all such family sacrifices.

Dona Bernarda had taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life.  Her heart would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the church: 

“Take good care of don Ramon.  Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District.  He is the bulwark of the Lord against the impious!”

And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean, greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would pardon don Ramon all the infidelities she knew about and consider the sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.

“If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District....  The lower scum would conquer—­those wild-eyed mechanics and common laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all the time.  And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the product of the harvests—­thousands and thousands of duros paid for oranges by the Englishmen and the French—­should belong to all.”  But to stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramon, the scourge of the wicked, the champion of “the cause” which he led to triumph, gun in hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in this support of “law and order!”

The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige rose higher and higher.  The sacks of money filled by the old man at the cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring them back to normal roundness.  Don Ramon contemplated this squandering impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as much as of his power.