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By Root 2052 0

the existence of the light of day. He reminded the Assembly of the fact that two persons who had met the English spy Galileo Gall and been on friendly terms with him during his stay in Bahia, the citizen Jan van Rijsted and the distinguished physician Dr. José Batista de Sá Oliveira, had identified as being his the English agent’s clothes, his frock coat, his trousers belt, his boots, and, most importantly, the bright red hair that the members of the Rural Guard who found the corpse had had the good judgment to cut off. He reminded the Honorable Deputies that both citizens had also testified as to the revolutionary ideas of the Englishman and his obviously conspiratorial intentions with regard to Canudos, and that neither of them had been surprised that his dead body had been found in that region. And, finally, he reminded his hearers that many citizens of towns in the interior had given testimony to the Rural Guard that they had seen the stranger with red hair and an odd way of speaking Portuguese trying to secure guides to take him to Canudos. The Honorable Deputy Dom João Seixas de Pondé stated that no one denied that the individual called Galileo Gall had been found dead, with rifles in his possession, in Ipupiará, but that this was not incontrovertible evidence that he was an English spy, since in and of itself his being a foreigner proved nothing. Why might he not have been a Danish, Swedish, French, or German spy, or one from Cochin China?

The Honorable Deputy Dom Epaminondas Gonçalves declared that hearing the words of the Honorable Deputies of the majority, who, instead of shaking with anger when evidence was put before them that a foreign power was attempting to interfere in the domestic affairs of Brazil to undermine the Republic and restore the old feudal and aristocratic order, tried to divert public attention toward questions of secondary importance and look for excuses and extenuating circumstances to justify the behavior of the guilty parties, constituted the most categorical proof that the Government of the State of Bahia would not lift a finger to put an end to the Canudos rebellion, since, on the contrary, it gave them intimate satisfaction. The Machiavellian machinations of the Baron de Canabrava and of the Autonomists would not succeed, however, for the Army of Brazil was there to thwart them, and just as it had thus far put down all the monarchist insurrections against the Republic in the South of the country, it would also crush that of Canudos. He declared that when the sovereignty of the Country was at stake words were superfluous, and that the very next day the Progressivist Republican Party would open a drive for funds to buy arms to be delivered to the Federal Army. And he proposed to the Honorable Deputies of the Progressivist Republican Party that they leave the halls of the Assembly to those nostalgic for the old order and make a pilgrimage to Campo Grande to renew their vow of Republicanism before the marble plaque commemorating Marshal Floriano Peixoto. They proceeded to do so immediately, to the consternation of the Honorable Deputies of the majority.

Minutes later, the Honorable President of the Assembly, His Excellency Sir Adalberto de Gumúcio, adjourned the session.

Tomorrow we shall report on the patriotic ceremony held at Campo Grande, before the marble plaque commemorating the Iron Marshal, by the Honorable Deputies of the Progressivist Republican Party, at daybreak.

[III]

“It doesn’t need so much as a comma added or taken out,” Epaminondas Gonçalves says. The look on his face is one of relief, even more than of satisfaction, as though he had feared the worst from this article that the journalist had just read aloud to him, straight through without being interrupted even once by a sneezing fit. “I congratulate you.”

“Whether true or false, it’s an extraordinary story,” the journalist, who doesn’t seem to have heard him, mutters. “That a fairgrounds mountebank who went about the streets of Salvador saying that bones are the handwriting of the soul and who preached anarchy