“But I am not scolding you, man; I am not scolding you. If you take it in that way I shall have to remain silent. Excuse my nephew, gentlemen. A little carelessness, a little heedlessness on his part is not to be wondered at. How many years is it since you set foot in a sacred place before?”
“Señora, I assure you——But, in short, let my religious ideas be what they may, I am in the habit of observing the utmost decorum in church.”
“What I assure you is——There, if you are going to be offended I won’t go on. What I assure you is that a great many people noticed it this morning. The Señores de Gonzalez, Doña Robustiana, Serafinita—in short, when I tell you that you attracted the attention of the bishop——His lordship complained to me about it this afternoon when I was at my cousin’s. He told me that he did not order you to be put out of the church only because you were my nephew.”
Rosario looked anxiously at her cousin, trying to read in his countenance, before he uttered it, the answer he would make to these charges.
“No doubt they mistook me for some one else.”
“No, no! it was you. But there, don’t get angry! We are talking here among friends and in confidence. It was you. I saw you myself.”
“You saw me!”
“Just so. Will you deny that you went to look at the pictures, passing among a group of worshippers who were hearing mass? I assure you that my attention was so distracted by your comings and goings that—well, you must not do it again. Then you went into the chapel of San Gregorio. At the elevation of the Host at the high altar you did not even turn around to make a gesture of reverence. Afterward you traversed the whole length of the church, you went up to the tomb of the Adelantado, you touched the altar with your hands, then you passed a second time among a group of worshippers, attracting the notice of every one. All the girls looked at you, and you seemed pleased at disturbing so finely the devotions of those good people.”
“Good Heavens! How many things I have done!” exclaimed Pepe, half angry, half amused. “I am a monster, it seems, without ever having suspected it.”
“No, I am very well aware that you are a good boy,” said Doña Perfecta, observing the canon’s expression of unalterable gravity, which gave his face the appearance of a pasteboard mask. “But, my dear boy, between thinking things and showing them in that irreverent manner, there is a distance which a man of good sense and good breeding should never cross. I am well aware that your ideas are——Now, don’t get angry! If you get angry, I will be silent. I say that it is one thing to have certain ideas about religion and another thing to express them. I will take good care not to reproach you because you believe that God did not create us in his image and likeness, but that we are descended from the monkeys; nor because you deny the existence of the soul, asserting that it is a drug, like the little papers of rhubarb and magnesia that are sold at the apothecary’s—”