“But picture to yourself,” said Leon, “all the odious and disreputable conditions of an illegitimate, or I would rather say an immoral, family. The children without a name—the ever-present image of the absent wife....”
“Do not name her; I tell you not to name her,” cried Pepa, making an effort not to be too vehement. “Her mad fanaticism excludes her altogether!”
“But if I am no less fanatical?”
“No, that makes no difference!”
“Well, there is one remedy for the state of mind from which you and I are doomed to suffer.”
“What is that?”
“Hope.”
“Hope!” murmured Pepa, shaking her head; the word found a melancholy echo in her brain. “Hope! that is my fate, there are lives in which hope is a torment and not a comfort.”
“Look at that little angel,” said Leon, pointing to Monina who slept in blissful ignorance at the storm that was rolling over her innocent dreams; “there is your true conscience. When all this agitation is over if your bitterness still survives and your sad memories prompt you to wander from the right path, let your thoughts dwell upon your child. You will find that act like a magic charm. A hundred sermons, and all the logic in the world, could not teach you what you will learn from one smile of that tiny creature, whose innocence hardly seems of the earth; and in her eyes you will read perfect truth.”