“I see.”
“I ought to tell you that I honestly desire that she should recover,” said Leon with firm composure. “I call God to witness that this is the truth: I hope and wish, without any kind of mental reservation, that my wife may live.”
“I perfectly understand; you wish that she should get well again—that her nervous excitement should be soothed and removed, and to that end nothing must be suggested to her that can remind her of the cause of her illness. Comforting and pleasing ideas must be kept before her, to help her to disentangle the confusion caused by her indignation and unsatisfied passions; my spiritual guidance must be qualified by a certain infusion of worldly tact, so as to foster her illusions and conceal the sad truth,—the father-confessor must be to some extent a physician, allaying jealousy and encouraging hope, so as to clutch back, as it were, the life that is fluttering to escape—that will escape, beyond recall, if the mental excitation that has imperilled it is not promptly banished.”
Leon admired the confessor’s sagacity.
“Very good,” Paoletti went on; “I will do my best. I cannot pledge myself without knowing more exactly in what spiritual frame of mind my beloved daughter may be.”
“María is at Suertebella.”
“So I understand.”
“She must on no account be made aware of it.”
“Well—let that pass—” said Paoletti looking at the ground and screwing up his mouth. “It is a subterfuge which I hold excusable.”
“She insists on displaying the affection which now—rather late in the day—she feels for me.”