Part 36

"Señor Ibarra, will you place the box in the stone? The curate is waiting for you," said the alcalde in Ibarra's ear.

"I should do so with great pleasure," said Ibarra, "but it would be a usurpation of the honor; that belongs to the notary, who must draw up the written process."

The notary gravely took the box, descended the carpeted stairway which led to the bottom of the trench, and with due solemnity deposited his burden in the hollow of the stone already laid. The curate took the sprinkler and sprinkled the stone with holy water.

Each one was now to deposit his trowel of cement on the surface of the lower stone, to seal it to the stone held suspended by the crane when that should be lowered.

Ibarra offered the alcalde a silver trowel, on which was engraved the date of the fête, but before using it His Excellency pronounced a short allocution in Castilian.

"Citizens of San Diego," he said, "we have the honor of presiding at a ceremony whose importance you know without explanations. We are founding a school, and the school is the basis of society, the book wherein is written the future of each race.

"Citizens of San Diego! Thank God, who has given you these priests! Thank the Mother Country, who spreads civilization in these fertile isles and protects them with the covering of her glorious mantle. Thank God, again, who has enlightened you by his priests from his divine Word.

"And now that the first stone of this building has been blessed, we, the alcalde of this province, in the name of His Majesty the King, whom God guard; in the name of the illustrious Spanish Government, and under the protection of its spotless and ever-victorious flag, consecrate this act and begin the building of this school!

"Citizens of San Diego, long live the king! Long live Spain! Long live the religious orders! Long live the Catholic church!"

"Long live the Señor Alcalde!" replied many voices.

Then the high official descended majestically, to the strains of the orchestras, put his trowel of cement on the stone, and came back as majestically as he had gone down.

The Government clerks applauded.

Ibarra offered the trowel to the curate, who descended slowly in his turn. In the middle of the staircase he raised his eyes to the great stone suspended above, but he stopped only a second, and continued the descent. This time the applause was a little warmer, Captain Tiago and the monks adding theirs to that of the clerks.

The notary followed. He gallantly offered the trowel to Maria Clara, but she refused, with a smile. The monks, the alférez, and others descended in turn, Captain Tiago not being forgotten.

Ibarra was left. He had ordered the stone to be lowered when the curate remembered him.

"You do not put on your trowelful, Señor Ibarra?" said the curate, with a familiar and jocular air.

"I should be Juan Palomo, who made the soup and then ate it," replied Crisóstomo in the same light tone.

"You go down, of course," said the alcalde, taking him by the arm in friendly fashion. "If not, I shall order that the stone be kept suspended, and we shall stay here till the Day of Judgment!"

Such a menace forced Ibarra to obey. He exchanged the silver trowel for a larger one of iron, as some people noticed, and started out calmly. Elias gave him an indefinable look; his whole being seemed in it. The Mongol's eyes were on the abyss at his feet.

Ibarra, after glancing rapidly at the block over his head, at Elias, and at the Mongol, said to Señor Juan, in a voice that trembled:

"Give me the tray and bring me the other trowel."

He stood alone. Elias no longer looked at him, his eyes were riveted on the hands of the Mongol, who, bending over, was anxiously following the movements of Ibarra. Then the sound of Ibarra's trowel was heard, accompanied by the low murmur of the clerks' voices as they felicitated the alcalde on his speech.

Suddenly a frightful noise rent the air. A pulley attached to the base of the crane sprang out, dragging after it the capstan, which struck the crane like a lever. The beams tottered, the cables broke, and the whole fabric collapsed with a deafening roar and in a whirlwind of dust.

A thousand voices filled the place with cries of horror. People fled in all directions. Only Maria Clara and Brother Salvi remained where they were, pale, mute, incapable of motion.

As the cloud of dust thinned, Ibarra was seen upright among the beams, joists and cables, between the capstan and the great stone that had fallen. He still held the trowel in his hand. With eyes frightful to look at, he regarded a corpse half buried under the beams at his feet.

"Are you unhurt? Are you alive? For God's sake, speak!" cried some one at last.

"A miracle! A miracle!" cried others.

"Come, take out the body of this man," said Ibarra, as if waking from a dream. At the sound of his voice Maria Clara would have fallen but for the arms of her friends.