The ground was well prepared.

When the free towns whose municipalities were republics fell, the people also languished; the foreign seed produced in a short time an immense forest, the forest of the Inquisition and the fanaticism which still exists; the modern woodmen cut and lop, but they soon fall off wearied; the arms of one man can do little against a trunk that has grown for centuries.

Fire, nothing but fire, can exterminate that cursed vegetation." Don Antolin opened his eyes in horror.

He was not angry now, he seemed quite thunderstruck by Luna's words.
"Gabriel, my son!" he exclaimed; "you are 'greener' than I thought.
Just think where you are; remember what you are saying.

We are in the Holy Metropolitan Church of all the Spains." But Luna was fairly launched by the renewal of his historical remembrances and he was not to be stopped, driven on as he was by his propagandist zeal.