This is to have bowels of a pagan toward a poor creature that they pushed and pushed—a child that did not know what they were doing.”
“Uncle Bartolo, ignorance does not take away sin.”
“Do you think, if you had had your evil hour—suppose it for instance, only—and had robbed or done something that had dishonored you, and had gone to your sister, that she would refuse to own you? I’ll be bound she wouldn’t!”
“Well, I should have acted badly. But the case is impossible, for it would have been my care not to put myself in her way. ‘He that touches his own with his leprosy, gives it to them, and does not cure himself.’”
“Lucas, my son, the sentence says, ‘Act with good intention, and not with passion!’”
“And the proverb says that ‘blood boils without fire,’ Uncle Bartolo.”
“Lucas, for the love of the Blessed Virgin! How can he who shows no mercy hope for the mercy of
God? Do a good deed, and, when you lie down, though it be upon a mattress of rushes, you will sleep without bad dreams, and as sweetly as if it were a bed of feathers!”
“You are wasting words, Uncle Bartolo. Even if I am condemned for it, I will not hear that vile thing spoken of, and so—stop!”
“Go to, then, Cain!” exclaimed the good old man as he rose to leave, “and God set a mark on you as he did on the cruel brother that he cursed! I’d rather have her, with her sin and her repentance, than you, with your virtue and your pride.”