"We must do something," responded the bandit, returning, like a tortoise, into his hard and impenetrable shell.
Perico neither accepted nor refused the proposition, he remained without volition, an inert body; chance disposed of his wretched existence, as the winds dispose of the dry and heavy sands of the desert.
CHAPTER XVI.
But while Perico, after the occurrences which we have related, was dragging out a miserable existence among a band of criminals, what became of the other individuals of this family? To what extremes had they been carried by resentment, grief, despair, and revenge?
Pedro, from the fatal day on which he lost his son, had shut himself in his own house with his sorrow. The parish priest and some of his friends went from time to time to keep him company--not to console him, that was impossible, but to talk with him about his trouble, like those who relieve vessels of the bitter water of the sea, not to right them but to keep them from sinking. They had tried to persuade him to renew his intercourse with the family of Perico, but without success.
"No, no," he would answer on such occasions. "I have forgiven him before God and men; but have to do with his people as though it had not been, I cannot."
"Pedro, Pedro, that is not forgiveness," said the priest. "It is the letter but not the spirit of the law."
"Father," replied the poor man, "God does not ask what is impossible."
"No, but what he requires is possible."