In short, I have been adjudged a man of nerve, and a horseman of the first rank.
My father could not be prouder or more happy than he is; he declares that he is completing my education, that in me you have sent him a book full of wisdom, but unconnected and unbound, which he is now making a fair copy, and putting it between covers.
On two occasions I played hombre with Pepita. Learning hombre, if that be a part of the binding and the correcting, is already done with.
The night after my equestrian feat Pepita received me with enthusiasm, and—what she had never ventured nor perhaps desired to do before—she gave me her hand.
Do not suppose that I did not call to mind what so many moralists and ascetics recommend in like cases, but in my inmost thoughts I believed they exaggerated the danger. Those words of the Holy Spirit, that it is as dangerous to touch a woman as a scorpion, seem to me to have been said in another sense. In pious books, no doubt, many phrases and sentences of the Scriptures are, with the best intentions, interpreted harshly. How are we to understand otherwise the saying that the beauty of woman, this perfect work of God, is always the cause of perdition? Or how are we to understand, in a universal and invariable sense, that woman is more bitter than death? How are we to understand that he who touches a woman, on whatever occasion or with whatsoever thought, shall not be without stain?
In fine, I made answer rapidly within my mind to these and other similar counsels, and took the hand that Pepita kindly extended to me and pressed it in mine. Its softness made me comprehend all the better the delicacy and beauty of the hand that until now I had known only by sight.
According to the usages of the world, the hand, once given, should be given always thereafter on entering a room and on taking leave. I hope that in this ceremony, in this evidence of friendship, in this manifestation of kindness, given and accepted in purity of heart, and without any mixture of levity, you will see nothing either evil or dangerous.
As my father is often obliged of an evening to see the overseer and others of the country-people, and is seldom free until half-past ten or eleven, I take his place beside Pepita at the ombre-table. The reverend vicar and the notary are generally the other partners. We each stake a penny a point, so that not more than a dollar or two changes hands in the game.
As the game possesses thus but little interest, we interrupt it constantly with pleasant conversation, and even with discussions on matters foreign to the game itself, in all which Pepita displays such clearness of understanding, such liveliness of imagination, and a grace of expression so extraordinary, as to astonish me.
I find no sufficient motive to change my opinion with respect to what I have already said in answer to your suspicions that Pepita perhaps feels a certain liking for me. She manifests toward me the affection she would naturally entertain for the son of her suitor, Don Pedro de Vargas, and the timidity and shyness that would be inspired by a man in my position, who, though not yet a priest, is soon to become one.