“What did he say—what did he tell you?”
“No, no; not now, madamigella! I do not want to think of that man, now. I want you to help me once more to realize myself in America, where I shall never have been a priest, where I shall at least battle even-handed with the world. Come, let us forget him; the thought of him palsies all my hope. He could not see me save in this robe, in this figure that I abhor.”
“Oh, it was strange, it was not like him, it was cruel! What did he say?”
“In everything but words, he bade me despair; he bade me look upon all that makes life dear and noble as impossible to me!”
“Oh, how? Perhaps he did not understand you. No, he did not understand you. What did you say to him, Don Ippolito? Tell me!” She leaned towards him, in anxious emotion, as she spoke.
The priest rose, and stretched out his arms, as if he would gather something of courage from the infinite space. In his visage were the sublimity and the terror of a man who puts everything to the risk.
“How will it really be with me, yonder?” he demanded. “As it is with other men, whom their past life, if it has been guiltless, does not follow to that new world of freedom and justice?”
“Why should it not be so?” demanded Florida. “Did he say it would not?”
“Need it be known there that I have been a priest? Or if I tell it, will it make me appear a kind of monster, different from other men?”
“No, no!” she answered fervently. “Your story would gain friends and honor for you everywhere in America. Did he”—