Monsignor quixote pdf

Tonight it will be your turn to keep vigil. In this dirty chapel that you've landed us in. Over your sword, monsignor. Much worse than that. Get up. We have to find your purple socks. He was still under the agonizing spell of his dream. They went down the dark stairs into the dark street. The old woman peered out at them as they passed with an appearance of terror.

Had she been dreaming too? She was just tired, that's all. I know Rocinante. Where do we go? I thought you would know. You are wearing a priest's suit. You didn't buy that in El Toboso. Stuck in El Toboso you haven't realized how all along the roads of Spain the ghost of Franco still patrols. Your socks will be our safeguard. A Guardia Civil respects purple socks. I will find a taxi and ask the driver to guide us.

Why, you even wanted to stay at the Palace Hotel. What is more, the Party is a legal party now. As a militant one is allowed a certain licence--for the good of the Party. The Mayor was already out of earshot, and Father Quixote was alone with the nightmare that haunted him. There are dreams of which we think even in the light of day: was this a dream or was it true--true in some way or another: did I dream it or did it in some strange way happen? The Mayor was opening the door beside him.

He said, "Follow the taxi. He assures me he will lead us to the finest ecclesiastical clothes shop outside Rome itself. The nuncio goes there and the archbishop. His heart sank as he took in the elegance of the shop and the dark well-pressed suit of the assistant who greeted them with the distant courtesy of a church authority.

It occurred to Father Quixote that such a man was almost certainly a member of Opus Dei--that club of intellectual Catholic activists whom he could not fault and yet whom he could not trust.

He was a countryman, and they belonged to the great cities. If you will come this way. And these are cotton. The best Sea Island cotton, of course. It's a question of tone--silk or nylon has a richer purple tone. Wool rather blurs the purple. We certainly don't want a non-ecclesiastical purple. Even the woollen purple," the assistant added with reluctance. It certainly has a shimmer The assistant looked at them with deepening suspicion.

The monsignor has not reached that stage yet, of course. I'm just asking for interest One must be prepared I think he took the number of the car. Like the Generalissimo did. Like Sodom and Gomorrah," Father Quixote added, with some uncertainty whether he had got the statistics right.

It was a very hot evening. The Mayor suggested that they should have dinner at the Poncio Pilato, but Father Quixote was firm in his refusal. He said, "Pontius Pilate was an evil man. The world has almost canonized him because he was a neutral, but one cannot be neutral when it comes to choosing between good and evil.

The Roman Empire was developing into a capitalist society. The Jews were held back by their religion from ever becoming industrialists, so He suspected the Mayor of teasing him. In the end they ate a rather bad meal at Los Porches where the open air made up a little for the deficiencies of the menu. They killed one bottle of wine while they waited and a second with their meal, but when the Mayor suggested that they complete the Holy Trinity, Father Quixote refused.

He said he was tired, the siesta had done him no good, but these were excuses--it was really his dream that weighed on him. He longed to communicate it, though Sancho would never understand the distress it had caused him.

If only he had been at home Teresa would have said, "It was only a dream, father," and Father Herrera It was an odd thing, but he knew that he could never communicate with Father Herrera on anything which touched the religion they were supposed to share.

Father Herrera was in favour of the new Mass, and one evening at the end of a rather silent dinner Father Quixote had been unwise enough to tell him how at the end of Mass he had the habit of silently speaking the words of St John's Gospel which had been removed from the Liturgy. I prefer St Matthew. Too late. A monsignor can only be demoted by the Pope himself. He had answered, "I have always thought that the Gospel of St Matthew could be distinguished from the others as the Gospel of fear.

What an extraordinary idea, monsignor. I believe in the virtue of courage. I don't believe in the virtue of cowardice. And we are all children, monsignor. They teach me. Do you feel the same about the other Gospels? Father Quixote told Father Herrera what he had told the Mayor.

Of course, he had his own speciality--he was the Apostle of pity. In St Luke three references--he is the great storyteller. From him come most of the great parables. It's very strange. Father Quixote put on the brake in their dark and dreary street.

As quickly as possible he slipped underneath the sheets half-undressed, but the Mayor took his time. He was more careful in folding his trousers and his jacket than Father Quixote, but he kept on his shirt and his underpants as though he too was prepared for some emergency.

I put it in my pocket at the last moment. Father Quixote lay on his back and listened to his companion turning the pages.

Once the Mayor gave a yap of laughter. He had dreamt that Christ had been saved from the Cross by the legion of angels to which on an earlier occasion the Devil had told Him that He could appeal. So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away, no discovery of an empty tomb. Father Quixote stood there watching on Golgotha as Christ stepped down from the Cross triumphant and acclaimed. The Roman soldiers, even the Centurion, knelt in His honour, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship Him.

The disciples clustered happily around. His mother smiled through her tears of joy. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no room for faith at all. The whole world knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God. It was only a dream, of course it was only a dream, but none the less Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realizes suddenly that he has taken up a profession which is of use to no one, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true.

He had found himself whispering, "God save me from such a belief. The old woman was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. There was a crack in the wood on the bottom step and Father Quixote stumbled and nearly fell. The old woman crossed herself and began to gabble at him, waving a piece of paper.

She says she's been in trouble before now with the police for not having a record of her guests. Communists they were, she says, and they were wanted men. Lend me a pen. It's not worth a fuss. Especially when he's a priest. And don't forget to put in 'Monsignor'. We might go there.

Your ancestor did. Anyway, I have never believed in confiding anything to the police. Would Father Jone have taken this for a lie? He remembered that Father Jone had divided lies rather oddly into malicious, officious and jocose lies.

This lie wasn't malicious, and it certainly wasn't jocose. Officious lies are told for one's own or another's advantage. He saw no advantage to anyone in a mis-statement. Perhaps it wasn't a lie at all. It was even possible that their wanderings might one day take them to Barcelona. Follow the road towards Salamanca until I tell you when to turn off.

He fell silent and his dream came back to him. He said, "Sancho, do you really believe that one day all the world will be Communist? I shan't see the day, of course. Russia is not yet Communist. It has only advanced along the road to Communism further than other countries.

If Spain had been entirely Catholic, of course, there would have been no Inquisition--but the Church had to defend herself against enemies. In a war there is always injustice. Men will always have to choose a lesser evil and the lesser evil may mean the state, the prison camp, yes, if you like to say it, the psychiatric hospital. The state or the Church is on the defensive, but when we arrive at Communism, the state will wither away.

Just as, if your Church had been successful in making a Catholic world, the Holy Office would have withered away. No injustice, no inequality--how would he spend his life, Sancho? The future would be there before his eyes. Can a man live without faith? There will always be things for a man to do. The discovery of new energy. And disease--there will always be disease to fight. Medicine is making great strides. I feel sorry for your great-great-grandson, Sancho. It seems to me that he may have nothing to hope for except death.

No doubt. No faith. I would prefer him to have what we call a happy death. Believing in some life eternal? Not necessarily believing. We can't always believe. Just having faith. Like you have, Sancho. Oh, Sancho, Sancho, it's an awful thing not to have doubts. Suddenly Sancho gave the same yapping laugh that Father Quixote had heard in the night. I had thought of it as just another word for masturbation.

But you should have known better, Sancho. You told me you studied at Salamanca. And I remembered last night how we all used to laugh when we came to onanism. Well, one of my fellow students, Diego, knew a very rich and pious stockbroker. He had a big estate across the river from Salamanca, not far from where the Vincentians have their monastery. I wonder if he is still alive. Well, if he is, birth control will no longer be a problem--he must be over eighty.

But certainly it was a terrible problem to him in those days, for he was a great stickler for the rules of the Church. It was lucky for him that the Church had altered the rules about usury, for there's a lot of usury in stockbroking. It's funny, isn't it, but the Church can alter its mind about what concerns money much more easily than it can about what concerns sex?

But with us the dogmas which are the most impossible to alter are just those that deal with money. Please, at the next turning, take the road to the left. Now do you see ahead the high rocky hill with a great cross on top? That's where we are going. I thought you were making fun of me.

I am too fond of you for that. What was I talking about? Oh, I remember. He had five children. He really felt he had done his duty to the Church, but his wife was terribly fecund and he enjoyed sex.

He could have taken a mistress, but I don't think Jone would allow birth control even in adultery. What you call natural birth control and what I call unnatural had consistently failed him. Perhaps the thermometers in Spain have been falsified under clerical influence. By the way what sort of priest was Jone? I don't think he was a secular; they are most of them too busy to be moral theologians.

I have been reading Father Jone with great care. When a bell in my bedroom rings twice in the pantry he takes up position outside the bedroom door and waits. I try not to keep him waiting too long, but with advancing age I'm afraid that I sometimes keep him there for a quarter of an hour or more before the next signal --a prolonged peal of the bell in the passage itself.

That is when I feel unable to contain myself much longer. The butler opens the door immediately and at this arrival of a third person I withdraw at once from the body of my wife. You can't think how Jone has simplified life for me. Now I don't have to go to confession more than once in three months for very venial little matters. I find Jone a much more interesting and amusing writer than I did when I was a student.

Unfortunately in this particular case there was a snag and Diego was unkind enough to point it out. I'm afraid in your case the butler's arrival has been only too well foreseen. Oh, you can't beat those moral theologians. They get the better of you every time with their quibbles. It's better not to listen to them at all. I would like for your sake to clear your shelves of all those old books. Remember what the Canon said to your noble ancestor.

He said, "Your face has certainly something in common with that of your ancestor. What makes me sad is when you mock my books, for they mean more to me than myself. They are all the faith I have and all the hope. Perhaps he will give you hope too. For you, Sancho, and all our world. I know I'm a poor priest errant, travelling God knows where. I know that there are absurdities in some of my books as there were in the books of chivalry my ancestor collected.

That didn't mean that all chivalry was absurd. Whatever absurdities you can dig out of my books I still have faith That Christ died on the Cross and rose again. The Seat owners had put up folding tables by their cars for a picnic. Where are we, Sancho? Here your friend Franco like a pharaoh planned to be buried.

More than a thousand prisoners were forced to excavate his tomb. Shall you say a prayer here, father? Why not? Even if it was the tomb of Judas--or Stalin--I'd say a prayer. What a rock it would need, Father Quixote thought, to close this enormous tomb. At the entrance a metal grille was decorated with the statues of forty Spanish saints, and inside stretched a hall the size of a cathedral nave, the walls covered with what appeared to be sixteenth-century tapestries.

The visitors and their voices were diminished by the size of the hall, and it seemed a long walk to the altar at the end under a great dome. And it needed slave labour to accomplish it. This was for the glory of one man. No one in this richly decorated hall felt the need to lower his voice, and yet the voices sounded as soft as whispers in the immensity.

It was difficult to believe that they were walking inside a mountain. They were silent as they took the long way back to the entrance, and from there they gave a last glance behind. The Palace Hotel could not afford those tapestries. And down there at the end you can see the cocktail bar waiting for the barman to shake a drink--the speciality of the bar is a cocktail of red wine taken with wafer biscuits.

You are silent, monsignor. Surely you find it impressive. Is something wrong? Also for you and me. He was not himself sure why, whether it was as a protection against the perils of the road or against hasty judgements, or just a nervous reaction. The Mayor said, "I have an impression we are being followed. I asked you to put on your purple bib. We had better stay at Avila. A jeep of the Guardia. It was getting a bit dry and somehow the manchegan wine had lost much of its flavour.

At least I believe it has been returned by now to the convent there--it was borrowed for a time by the Generalissimo. They say he kept it--with all reverence of course--on his desk. And at Avila there is the confessional where she used to talk to St John of the Cross. A great poet, so we won't argue about his sanctity. When I was staying in Salamanca I used often to visit Avila.

Do you know that I even felt a sort of reverence for that ring finger, though my chief attraction was a most beautiful girl--she was the daughter of a chemist in Avila? You've never told me that. It was a very happy period. You see, as the daughter of the chemist--he was a secret member of the Party--she was able to supply us with his clandestine contraceptives.

Is that why I seek your company now--to find my youth again, that youth when I half believed in your religion and everything was so complicated and contradictory--and interesting? I have always discovered the answer in the books you despise. Today it would be easy enough, but in those days Have another glass of wine, father. I drink when I have a fancy and to toast a friend. Here's to you, monsignor. What does Father Jone say about drinking? But, Sancho, Moral Theology is not the Church.

And Father Jone is not among my old books of chivalry. His book is only like a book of military regulations. He was the Bishop and Prince of Geneva. I wonder how he and Calvin would have got along. I think Calvin would have been more at home with Lenin--even Stalin. Or the Guardia Civil," he added watching the jeep returning--if it was the same jeep.

His ancestor would have gone out into the road and challenged it perhaps. He felt his own inadequacy and even a sense of guilt. The jeep slowed down as it passed their car. They both had a sense of relief when it went out of their sight and they lay for a while in silence among the debris of their meal.

Then Father Quixote said, "We have done nothing wrong, Sancho. It seems to me a very agreeable temperature. But of course I am not wearing one of those absurd collars. It's not really at all hot when you think what those Guardia are wearing.

Just try and you'll see. Give it to me. If I remember right Sancho became governor of an island, and so with your help I will become a governor of souls. Like Father Jone. It doesn't seem so hot. A bit constricting, that's all. It rubs a sore place on my neck. How odd, father, without your collar I would never take you for a priest and certainly not for a monsignor. Only for a crazy old man. Give me back my collar, Sancho.

Perhaps with this collar I might even hear a confession or two. He must have left his jeep round a bend in the road and then approached them on foot. He was a stout man and he was sweating from exhaustion or apprehension, for his fingers played on his holster. Perhaps he was afraid of a Basque terrorist. Father Quixote said, "My wallet is in the car. And yours, father," he demanded of Sancho. Sancho felt in his breast pocket for his identity card. It's not attached.

Just balanced. My friend is a monsignor. He asked, "This book is yours then? And the collar? You see, I was feeling hot and Father Quixote opened the glove compartment.

For a moment he couldn't see his identity card. The Guardia breathed heavily behind him. Then Father Quixote noticed that, perhaps impelled by the heavy panting of a tired Rocinante, the card had slipped between the red covers of a book which the Mayor had left there. He pulled the book out. His voice made the Guardia jump. It was obvious that the man's nerves were not in a good state.

This is quite an early work--his essays on Marx and Engels. Written mainly in the respectable city of Zurich. You might say--a little time-bomb made in the city of bankers. He said to Father Quixote.

Why incognito? He looked a little reassured. I am not a believer myself, but, as I understand it, that must have been the reason why there were so many Masses said for the Generalissimo. For a man like that one you have to shout to be heard. He is a good man at heart. You know the finger is kept in the convent outside the walls of Avila. He wants to do his best for the Generalissimo. Your card says you are the Mayor of El Toboso.

And the monsignor has been promoted out of his. What hotel? He said, "A little place--I don't remember--" "What street? At last, "Stay here," the Guardia said, "until I come back. If you try to start the car you will get hurt. Not in all my years in El Toboso Our task is easier. We have not thirty or forty windmills to encounter, we have only two. The words "Monsignor", "Lenin" and "purple socks" came to them over the slight afternoon breeze.

The second Guardia was very thin and decisive in his manner. He stood with his hands on his hips while Father Quixote fumbled with his key. If you would care for a couple of bottles Let me see his identity card. Have you noted the number? Published in Moscow in Spanish. It belongs to my friend. Dangerous company. Father Quixote said, "If you care to telephone to my bishop I took it while we were on the road. Where will you be staying in Avila? We take the luck of the road.

The thin one turned and the fat one followed him. In their walk Father Quixote thought they resembled two ducks--one ready for the table and one needing more nourishment. They went round the bend of road out of their sight--perhaps the pond was there. Why are they so suspicious? They are waiting too. To see whether we are really going to Avila. We are innocent. We are doing harm to no one.

Let them get tired of waiting. I think we should open another bottle of wine. He said, "If I could suspend my profound disbelief in God, I would still find it hard to believe that he really wanted those two Guardia to be born--not to speak of Hitler and the Generalissimo--or even if you like Stalin. If only their poor parents had been permitted to use a contraceptive To kill a human soul When a man makes love he kills a million million spermatozoa--minus one.

It's lucky for Heaven that there's such a lot of waste or it might become severely over-populated. What nature? Our conscience tells us when we break the law. Or I've never noticed it. Who invented the law? Monsignor Quixote , Bodley Head. Monsignor Quixote. Publisher unknown.

Monsignor Quixote Publisher unknown. Monsignor Quixote First published in Subjects Fiction , Don Quixote Fictitious character , Communists , Catholics , Priests , Automobile travel , Social conditions , Social life and customs , History , British and irish fiction fictional works by one author , Fiction, humorous , Spain, fiction , Don quixote fictitious character , fiction , Fiction, religious , Large type books , Fiction, humorous, general.

Places Spain. Times 20th century , The Physical Object Pagination p. Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Loading Related Books. March 1, , Dtv Paperback Hall in English - Large print ed. Hardcover in English - 1st edition October 4, Edited by ImportBot. August 12, September 3, August 18, Edited by IdentifierBot. October 10, The dogmatic faith of the bishop and Father Herrera , as well as their relentless deification of the institution that they serve , leads to See Elmar Schenkel, 'G.

Chesterton: The Return of Don Quixote', in As with the best kind of comic clerics in this chapter, Father Quixote represents Christian love at its most basic. He has no ambition and little learning but is dutiful and sincere.