We went down into the garden, and the cool evening air served to refresh our heated brains. I thought that I was not even on the verge of what is meant by intoxication, but nevertheless I attributed the strange weight on my heart, the profound melancholy which took possession of me, to the effects of wine, which sometimes produces that painful tedium. Those happy, jesting, merry people, who considered the wedding a joyous event, inspired me both with disgust and an inexplicable aversion. They roamed over the grounds, enjoying themselves and laughing, but I tried to be alone with my own dark thoughts and lugubrious fancies. My imagination took on blacker hues every moment, as though some dire misfortune was weighing me down. I wandered off instinctively to the most retired nook in the orchard, and, opening the worm-eaten gate which lead into the grove, rushed through impetuously, eager for quiet and solitude. A clear, energetic voice exclaimed:
“Where are you going, Señor Salustio?”
In voice and words I recognized Father Moreno. He was seated on a stone bench, leaning against the wall, and reading a book, which he closed as he saw me.
“I came here,” he said, “looking for a fit place to read my prayers. I was just finishing. And you, may I ask whether you also have come out from the orchard to pray?”
“No,” I replied, with the impetuous frankness which is the usual result of several glasses of strong wine inside one. “I came because all those people bored me with their noise, their jollity, and silliness, and because their stupidity made my head ache.”
“Bravo, dear sir, you are right, more than right! I also was satiated with both the food and the company. It was a veritable hullabaloo, and it is not singular that it should scare away a friar—but you——”
“Father Moreno, believe me, there are days when, taking no account of one’s belief, he feels like becoming a friar, and renouncing the follies of the world.”
The friar fastened his calm, powerful, and piercing eyes on mine, saying:
“Do you really feel so? Well, then, you’ll not be surprised if a poor friar should reply to you that in my opinion you are already at the beginning of the road to knowledge, and even happiness, as far as it is possible for man to obtain it in this world. To seek for peace and to renounce our worldly affections is not virtue; it is simply calculation and selfishness. Believe me, sir, I do not envy anybody in the world, but on the other hand, I pity a great many people.”
My pride as a layman did not rebel at his words. I was surprised at this afterward, when I reflected that the friar’s compassion, ironical though it probably was, ought to have given me offense; because, taking into consideration my ideas, my ways of thinking and feeling about religious questions, and the ridiculous significance in my mind of monastic vows, it was I that should have pitied the friar, and pitied him as one does victims of an absurdity and of a useless immolation on the altars of a mistaken idea. My strange acquiescence in Father Moreno’s words can only be explained on the supposition that there exists in the inmost depths of our soul a perpetual tendency to self-sacrifice, to renunciation; a tendency, so to speak, derived from the Christian subsoil upon which the crust of our rationalism rests. At that moment of moral depression the thought occurred to me: “Which is better, Salustio, to go on studying, to learn your profession, practice it, get married, assume the care of children, endure the trials and tribulations of life, bear everything which it must bring in its train, sorrow, disappointments, struggles, and combats, or pass your days like that good Father, who, at a wedding festival, takes his book and comes out into the grove to pray so peacefully?”