Renous, the naturalist, tells us that he visited one of these towns
and left some caterpillars with a girl.
These she was to feed until
his return, that they might change to butterflies. When this was
rumored through the village, priest and governor consulted together
and agreed that it must be black heresy. When poor Renous returned
some time afterwards he was arrested.
The Argentine village priest is a dangerous enemy to the Protestant.
Many is the time he has insulted me to my face, or, more cowardly,
charged the school-boys to pelt and annoy me. In the larger towns the
priest has defamed me through the press, and when I have answered him
also by that means, he has heaped insult upon injury, excluded me
from society, and made me a pariah and a byword to the superstitious
people. I have been stoned and spat upon, hurled to the ground, had
half-wild dogs set on me, and my horse frightened that he might throw
me. I have been refused police help, or been called to the office to
give an account of myself, all because I was a Protestant, or
infidel, as they prefer to term it. At those times great patience was
needed, for at the least sign of resistance on my part I should have
been attacked by the whole village in one mass. The policeman on the
street has looked expectantly on, eager to see me do this, and on one
occasion he escorted me to the station for snatching a bottle from
the hand of a boy who was in the act of throwing it at my head.
Arriving there I was most severely reprimanded, although,
fortunately, not imprisoned.
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