“Yes, that cannot be true. How can it be true that you are not a Christian? Come, you are saying what you do not mean.”
“And how does it matter to you, Lucía?” he exclaimed, calling her for the second time by her Christian name. “Are you Father Urtazu? Am I one who interests or concerns you in any way? Will you be called upon in any tribunal to answer for my soul? Child, this is a matter that touches you in no way.”
“Does it not, indeed? I declare, Don Ignacio, to-day you talk as if—as if you were crazy. Why should it not matter to me whether you are saved or lost, whether you are a Christian or a Jew!”
“A Jew! As far as being a Jew is concerned, I am not that,” responded Artegui, endeavoring to give a playful turn to the conversation.
“It is the same thing—to deny Christ is to be a Jew in fact.”
“Let us drop this, Lucía; I don’t want to see you look like that, it makes you ugly!” he said lightly, alluding, for the first time, to Lucía’s personal appearance. “What, do you wish to do now? Shall I take you to see some of the curiosities of the place? The hospital? The forts?”
He spoke with more cordiality of manner than he had yet manifested, and Lucía’s soul was tranquillized, as when oil is poured on the troubled waters.
“Could we not make a little excursion into the country? I am passionately fond of trees.”
Artegui turned toward the theater, before the door of which two or three little basket-carriages were standing. He made a sign to the driver of the nearest, a Biscayan, who, raising his whip, touched with it the flanks of the Tarbes ponies, that, with a shake of the mane, prepared to start. Lucía sprang in and seated herself in the light vehicle, and Artegui, taking his place beside her, called to the driver:
“To Biarritz.”