“Do you come from your citadel, San Cristobal?” asked Manuel of Don Modesto, after exchanging the preliminary compliments, and an invitation to be seated on the same stone bench where Stein was seated.
“You might join my mother, who is so good a Christian, to pray to the saints to build again the walls of the fort, contrary to that which, by report, Joshua did at the walls of Jericho.”
“I have to ask of the Lord things more important than that,” replied the grandma.
“Certainly,” said brother Gabriel, “Maria has more important things than the reconstruction of the walls of a fort to ask of the Lord. It would be better of her to implore Him to reconstruct the convent.”
Don Modesto, on hearing these words, turned with a severe gesture towards the monk, who, at this moment, went and placed himself behind the old mother, and dissimulated so well, that he disappeared almost entirely to the eyes of the others present.
“After what I see,” continued the old commandant, “brother Gabriel does not belong to the church militant. Do you not remember that the Jews, before building their Temple, had conquered the promised land, sword in hand? Would there have been churches and priests in the Holy Land if the crosses had not conquered it, lance in hand?”
“But,” then said Stein, with the laudable intention to divert from this discussion the commandant, whose bile commenced to be stirred, “why does Maria ask for what is impossible?”
“That signifies little,” replied Manuel; “all old women act the same, except she who asked God to tell her a good number in the drawing of a lottery.”
“Was it sent her?” they asked.
“It had been well kept, if I had gained the prize. He who could do all things, where the miracle?”