"What office?"
"Oh! you stupid and more than stupid, that of giving me a few blows with the lash in memory of those which our Lord received, and all the saints in example of him."
"Señorita, what are you saying? How did such a thing ever enter into your head?"
"It entered my head because I wish to mortify and humiliate myself at one and the same time. That is the true penance and the most pleasing in the eyes of the Lord, for the reason that he himself suffered it for us. I intended to inflict it upon myself, but I could not; and besides, it is not so efficacious as to suffer the humiliation of receiving it from the hands of another. And so you won't be willing to do this for me?"
"No, Señorita, not for anything. I couldn't do it—"
"Why not, tonta? Don't you see that it is for my good? If I should fail of freeing myself from a few days of purgatory because I did not do what I ask you, wouldn't you feel remorse?"
"But, my heart's dove,[24] how could you want me to maltreat you even though it were for your good?"
"Why, you have nothing left but to do it because it is a vow, and I must fulfil it; you have helped me hitherto in the road to virtue. Don't abandon me when I least expect it. You won't, Genovita? You won't, will you?"
"Señorita, for God's sake don't make me do this!"
"Come, Genovita, I beg of you by the love that you bear me—"