to him they found him convulsed
and rigid, like a petrifaction of grief; although he walked about, heard
and saw, and covered his wounded and dying father with kisses. But he
shed not a single tear, either during the death agony of that beloved
being, when he kissed the cold face after it was dead, or when he saw
them carry the body away forever; nor when he left the house in which he
had been born, and found himself sheltered by charity in the house of a
stranger. Some praised his courage, others criticized his callousness.
Mothers pitied him profoundly, instinctively divining the cruel tragedy
that was being enacted in the orphan's heart for want of some tender and
compassionate being to make him weep by weeping with him.

Nor did Manuel utter a single word from the moment he saw his beloved
father brought in dying. He made no answer to the affectionate questions
asked him by Don Trinidad after the latter had taken him home; and the
sound of his voice was never heard during the first three years which he
spent in the holy company of the priest. Everybody thought by this time
that he would remain dumb forever, when one day, in the church of which
his protector was the priest, the sacristan observed him standing before
a beautiful image of the "Child of the Ball," and heard him saying in
melancholy accents:--

"Child Jesus, why do you not speak either?"

Manuel was saved. The drowning boy had raised his head above the
engulfing waters of his grief. His life was no longer in danger. So at
least it was believed in the parish.

Toward strangers--from whom, whenever they came in contact with him, he
always received demonstrations of pity and kindness--the orphan
continued to maintain the same glacial reserve as before, rebuffing them
with the phrase, stereotyped on his disdainful lips, "Let me alone,
now;" having said which, in tones of moving entreaty, he would go on his
way, not without awakening superstitious feelings in the minds of the
persons whom he thus shunned.

Still less did he lay aside, at this saving crisis, the profound sadness
and precocious austerity of his character, or the obstinate persistence
with which he clung to certain habits. These were limited, thus far, to
accompanying the priest to the church; gathering flowers or aromatic
herbs to adorn the image of the "Child of the Ball," before which he
would spend hour after hour, plunged in a species of ecstasy; and
climbing the neighboring mountain i