"It is absolutely allowable to kill a man whenever the general welfare or proper security demands it."
If any man has committed a crime, St. Liguori and other Jesuit writers hold that he may swear to a civil authority that he is innocent of it provided that he has already confessed it to his spiritual father and received absolution. It is, they say, no longer on his conscience.
"Pray," said the founder of the society, "as if everything depended on prayer, and act as if everything depended on action."
"Of what are you thinking?" Sarrion asked suddenly, when they had ridden almost to the city gates in silence.
"I was wondering what Juanita will say, some day, when she knows and understands everything."
"I was not wondering what Juanita will say," confessed Sarrion with a laugh, "but what Evasio Mon will do."
For Sarrion persisted in taking an optimistic view of Juanita and that which must supervene when she had grown into understanding and knowledge.
Marcos went back to the hotel. He had many arrangements to make. Sarrion rode to the large house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria where the school of the Sisters of the True Faith is located to this day. In an hour he joined Marcos in the little sitting-room looking on to the Plaza de la Constitucion.
"All is going well," he said, "I have seen Dolores. They go across to the Cathedral for vespers at five o'clock. It will be almost dark. You have only to wait in the inner patio, adjoining the cloisters. They pass through that way. Juanita will be sent back for something that is forgotten. And then is your time. You can have ten minutes. It is not long."
"It will do," said Marcos rather gloomily. He was not afraid of the whole Society of Jesuits, of the king, nor yet of Don Carlos. But he feared Juanita.