Beau Ideal

My brother caught the priest and Dolores . In the priest''s own church . My brother married them before the altar and their married life was brief! But of course God knew he was mad . As he left that desecrated church he cried ''Never will I enter the House of God again! '' And that very night the big earthquake came and shattered our village with a dozen others. As we dashed through the doorthe old mother in my brother''s arms my crippled sister on my backthe roof caved in and the very road fell from before our little posada down the hillside. My brother was in front and fell my mother still in his arms . And where did he recover consciousness? Tell me that! Before the altar upon the dead body of his victim the murdered priestwho thus saved my brother''s life for he had fallen thirty feet from the half-destroyed church-roof through which he had crashed . Yes he had entered the House of God once more! It was to South America that he fled from the policeto that El Dorado where so many of us go in search of what we never find. And there he went from worse to worse than worst defying God and slaying man and woman! For he shot his own woman merely because she kneltjust went on her knees to God . And one terrible night of awful storm when fleeing alone by mountain paths from the soldiers or guardias civiles a flash of lightning showed him a ruined building and into it he dashed and hid. It may have been the rolling thunder the streaming rain or an avalanche of stones dislodged by the horses of the police who passed along the path aboveI do not knowbut there was a terrible crash a heavy blow a blinding suffocating dustand he was pinned trapped held as in a giant fist unable to move hand or foot or head.