“Wenceslas!” The priest confronted him fiercely. “Do you accuse me before the Bishop?”
“Accuse, amigo?” Wenceslas queried in a tone of assumed surprise. “Have I not said that your ready tongue and pen are your accusers? But,” with a conciliatory air, “we must remember that our good Bishop mercifully views your conduct in the light of your recent mental affliction, traces of which, unfortunately, have lingered to cause him sorrow. And so he graciously prepares a place for you, caro amigo, where rest and relief from the strain of teaching will do you much good, and where life among simple and affectionate people will restore you, he hopes, to soundness of mind.”
The priest turned again to the Bishop in a complexity of appeal. The soft speech of Wenceslas, so full of a double entendu, so markedly in contrast with the Bishop’s harsh but at least sincere tirade, left no doubt in his mind that he was now the victim of a plot, whose ramifications extended back to the confused circumstances of his early life, and the doubtful purposes of his uncle and his influence upon the sacerdotal directors 92 in Rome. And he saw himself a helpless and hopelessly entangled victim.
“Father!” In piteous appeal Josè held out his hands to the Bishop, who had turned his back upon him and was busy with the papers on his table.
“Amigo, the interview is ended,” said Wenceslas quietly, stepping between the priest and his superior.
Josè pushed wildly past the large form of Wenceslas and seized the Bishop’s hand.
“Santa Maria!” cried the petulant churchman. “Do you obey me, or no? If not, then leave the Church––and spend your remaining days as a hounded ex-priest and unfrocked apostate,” he finished significantly. “Go, prepare for your journey!”
Wenceslas slipped the letter and a few pesos into the hand of the smitten, bewildered Josè, and turning him to the door, gently urged him out and closed it after him.
Just why the monastery gates had opened to him after two years’ deadening confinement, Josè had not been apprised. All he knew was that his uncle had appeared with a papal appointment for him to the University of Cartagena, and had urged his acceptance of it as the only course likely to restore him both to health and position, and to meet the deferred hopes of his sorrowing mother.