But the masses did not move of their own accord, and it is plain that those who adopted this device, Facundo, Lopez, Bustos, etc., were completely indifferent. The religious wars of the fifteenth century in Europe were maintained on both sides by sincere believers, fanatical and devoted even to martyrdom, without political aims, and without ambition. The Puritans read the Bible at the moment of going into battle, prayed, and observed fasts and penances. The spirit of a party is evidently sincere, when after triumph it accomplishes all and even more than it promised before the contest. When this result is wanting, there is a deception in terms. When the so-called Catholic party had triumphed in the Argentine Republic, what did it do for religion or the interests of the priesthood?
As far as I know, it only drove out the Jesuits, beheaded four respectable priests in Santos Lugares, after having flayed their heads and hands, and carried in procession the host and the portrait of Rosas side by side, under a canopy. Did the Liberal party ever commit such horrible profanations?
But enough of this. While at San Juan, Facundo occupied his time in gambling; leaving to the authorities the care of providing him with the sums necessary to defray the expenses incurred in the defense of religion. All the time that he remained there he lived in a tent on the clover field, ostentatiously dressed in the chiripà, an intentional insult to a city where most of the inhabitants used English saddles, and wnere the barbarous dress and habits of the gauchos were especially disliked, San Juan being an exclusively agricultural province.
