“Indeed, I fear we are about to lose him, your reverence,” I said, surprised at this display. It seemed inconceivable that he should have been in doubt up to this very moment.
He rolled his eyes painfully. I was forgetting the infinite might of God. Still, nothing short of a miracle———But what had we done to deserve miracles?
“Where is the ancient piety of our forefathers which made Spain so great?” he apostrophized the empty air, a little wildly, as if in distraction. “No, Don Juan; even I, a true servant of our faith, am conscious of not having had enough grace for my humble ministrations to poor sailors and soldiers—men naturally inclined to sin, but simple. And now—there are two great nobles, the fortune of a great house....”
I looked at him and wondered, for he was, in a manner, wringing his hands, as if in immense distress.
“We are all thinking of that poor child—mas que, Don Juan, imagine all that wealth devoted to the iniquitous purposes of that man. Her happiness sacrificed.”
“I cannot imagine this—I will not,” I interrupted, so violently that he hushed me with both hands uplifted.
“To these wild enterprises against your own country,” he went on vehemently, disregarding my exasperated and contemptuous laugh. “And she herself, the niña I have baptized her; I have instructed her; and a more noble disposition, more naturally inclined to the virtues and proprieties of her sex———But, Don Juan, she has pride, which doubtless is a gift of God, too, but it is made a snare of by Satan, the roaring lion, the thief of souls. And what if her feminine rashness—women are rash, my son,” he interjected with unction—“and her pride were to lead her into—I am horrified at the thought—into an act of mortal sin for which there is no repentance?”
“Enough!” I shouted at him.
“No repentance,” he repeated, rising to his feet excitedly, and I stood before him, my arms down my sides, with my fists clenched.
Why did the stupid priest come to talk like this to me, as if I had not enough of my own unbearable thoughts?