The reading of the religious lesson did not last quite an hour.
A bell rang; the gate was swung open; the various groups dissolved and
merged; everybody arose and the women began to walk off, balancing
their chairs upon their heads, shouting, shoving one another
violently; two or three huckstresses peddled their wares as the
tattered crowd issued through the gate in a jam, shrieking as if in
escape from some imminent danger. A few old women ran clumsily down
the road; others huddled into a corner to urinate, and all of them
were howling at the top of their lungs, overcome by the necessity of
insulting the women of La Doctrina, as if instinctively they divined
the uselessness of a sham charity that remedied nothing. One heard
only protests and manifestation of scorn.
"Damn it all! These women of God...."
"And they want a body to have faith in 'em."
"The old drunkards."
"Let them have faith, and the mother that bore 'em."
"Let 'em give blood-pudding to everybody."
After the women came the men,--blind, maimed, crippled,--in leisurely
fashion, and conversing solemnly.
"Huh! They don't want me to marry!" grumbled a blind fellow,
sarcastically, turning to a cripple.
"And what do you say," asked the latter.
"I? What the deuce! Let them get married if they have any one to marry
'em.
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