d the
sick man. It was night when Padre Florentino, wiping the perspiration
from his face, arose and began to meditate. Mysterious darkness
flooded the room, so that the moonbeams entering through the window
filled it with vague lights and vaporous reflections.

Into the midst of the silence the priest's voice broke sad and
deliberate, but consoling: "God will forgive you, Senor--Simoun,"
he said. "He knows that we are fallible, He has seen that you have
suffered, and in ordaining that the chastisement for your faults
should come as death from the very ones you have instigated to crime,
we can see His infinite mercy. He has frustrated your plans one by
one, the best conceived, first by the death of Maria Clara, then by
a lack of preparation, then in some mysterious way. Let us bow to
His will and render Him thanks!"

"According to you, then," feebly responded the sick man, "His will
is that these islands--"

"Should continue in the condition in which they suffer?" finished
the priest, seeing that the other hesitated. "I don't know, sir,
I can't read the thought of the Inscrutable. I know that He has not
abandoned those peoples who in their supreme moments have trusted in
Him and made Him the Judge of their cause, I know that His arm has
never failed when, justice long trampled upon and every recourse gone,
the oppressed have taken up the sword to fight for home and wife and
children, for their inalienable rights, which, as the German poet says,
shine ever there above, unextinguished and inextinguishable, like
the eternal stars themselves. No, God is justice, He cannot abandon
His cause, the cause of liberty, without which no justice is possible."

"Why then has He denied me His aid?" asked the sick man in a voice
charged with bitter complaint.

"Because you chose means that He could not sanction," was the
severe reply. "The glory of saving a country is not for him who has
contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and iniquity
have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can
purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters
and crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue
alone can save! No, if our country has ever to be free, it will not
be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons,
deceiving some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue,
virtue sacrifice, and sacrifice love!"

"Well, I accept your explanation