Then I exclaim in the depths of my perturbed heart: "My virtue faints! My God, do not thou forsake me! Hasten to my help; show thy countenance, and I shall be saved."
Thus do I recover strength to resist temptation. Thus again does the hope spring to life within me, that I shall regain my former tranquillity when I shall have left this place.
The devil longs with ardor to swallow up the pure waters of Jordan, by which are symbolized the persons who are consecrated to God. Hell conspires against them, and lets loose all her monsters, upon them. St. Bonaventure says, "We should not wonder that these persons have sinned, but rather that they have not sinned."
Notwithstanding, I shall be able to resist and not sin. The Lord will protect me.
June 6th.
Pepita's nurse—now her housekeeper—is, as my father says, a good bag of wrinkles; she is talkative, gay, and skillful, as few are. She married the son of Master Cencias, and has inherited from the father what the son did not inherit—a wonderful facility for the mechanical arts, with this difference; that while Master Cencias could set the screw of a wine-press, or repair the wheels of a wagon, or make a plow, this daughter-in-law of his knows how to make sweetmeats, conserves of honey, and other dainties. The father-in-law practiced the useful arts, the daughter-in-law those that have for their object pleasure, though only innocent, or at least lawful pleasure.
Antoñona—for such is her name—is permitted, or assumes, the greatest familiarity with all the gentry here. She goes in and out of every house as if it were her own. She says thou to all the young people of Pepita's age, or four or five years older; she calls them niño and niña, and treats them as if she had nursed them at her breast.
She behaves toward me with the same familiarity; she comes to visit me, enters my room unannounced, and has asked me several times already why I no longer go to see her mistress, and has told me that I am wrong in not going.
My father, who has no suspicion of the truth, accuses me of eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my father was about to settle his accounts with the overseer.
Would God I had not gone!