“Why fall upon me, sir, in such a shower of sarcasms? Is it necessary to give so many punches to say that the bull is coming?”
“Because he comes with a purpose, and, ‘when things come with a purpose, more than the ass may fall to the ground.’ I tell you only the pure truth, and you, with your devil’s motto of ‘few words and bad ones,’ what you say has neither form nor sense! But to come back to the subject, for I don’t let go the handle this way when I am defending the right. As I was going to say, your stubbornness is worse than your father’s; because it is not so bad to be determined upon marrying one’s girl as to be determined not to forgive one’s sister. It’s better to do more than your duty than to do less. If your father lacked puncto, you have half a share too much. Your mother committed your sister to you; and you are disobeying the last will of her that bore you!”
“She committed my sister to me, but not the kept miss of a villain.”
“You are soaring as the eagle, which is a royal bird; you pronounce your sentences like a judge of the Audiencia, and make yourself believe that you are wiser than the Regency. But you are greatly out of the way, my son. It ill becomes you to go before God in casting out your sister; your own mother’s daughter, when her misfortune was partly your fault.”
“Mine, sir?”
“Yes, yours; for you threw off the burden like an untamed colt; cast
behind you the trust you received from your mother, and, without commending yourself either to God or the devil, shouldered your gun and made off; knowing that for six years, walled up in a uniform, you must lose sight of your charge; knowing, besides, that you were leaving her in a house where wickedness was well established. And so what happened, happened. The past is past, and can’t be mended now; but after this, do you think it is right, Christian, that your sister should have no one to turn to when she leaves her sinful life?”
“She ought to have remembered in time that every uphill has its down.”
“But, my son, is not this to
‘See the ulcer, see the woe:
Shut the purse, and naught bestow’?