e
reverend vicar, and by almost every one here.

For my father's sake it would please me were Pepita to relinquish her
inclination for a life of seclusion, and her purpose to lead it, and to
marry him. But were it not for this--were I to see that my father had
only a caprice and not a genuine passion for her--then I should be glad
that Pepita would remain resolute in her chaste widowhood; and when I
should be far away from here, in India or Japan or some other yet more
dangerous mission, I might find a consolation in writing to her of my
wanderings and labors; and, when I returned here in my old age, it
would be a great pleasure for me to be on friendly terms with her, who
would also then be aged, and to hold spiritual colloquies with her, and
chats of the same sort as those the father vicar now holds with her. At
present, however, as I am but a young man, I see but little of Pepita; I
hardly speak to her. I prefer to be thought bashful, shy, ill-bred, and
rude, rather than give the least occasion--not that I should be thought
to feel for her in reality what I ought not to feel--but even for
suspicion or for scandal.

As for Pepita herself, not even in the most remote degree do I share the
apprehension that, as a vague suspicion, you allow me to perceive. What
projects could she form with respect to a man who, in two or three
months more, is to be a priest! She--who has treated so many others with
disdain--why should she be attracted by me? I know myself well, and I
know that, fortunately, I am not capable of inspiring a passion. They
say I am not ill-looking; but I am awkward, dull, shy, wanting in
amiability; I bear the stamp of what I am, a humble student. What am I,
compared with the gallant if somewhat rustic youths who have paid court
to Pepita--agile horsemen, discreet and agreeable in conversation,
Nimrods in the chase, skilled in all bodily exercises, singers of renown
in all the fairs of Andalusia, and graceful and accomplished in the
dance? If Pepita has scorned all these, how should she now think of me,
and conceive the diabolical desire, and the more than diabolical
project, of troubling the peace of my soul, of making me abandon my
vocation, perhaps of plunging me into perdition? No, it is not possible.
Pepita I believe to be good, and myself--and I say it in all
sincerity--insignificant; insignificant, be it understood, so far as
inspiring her with love is concerned, but not too insignificant to be
her