is, and control yourself for the
sake of Jesus and his blessed Mother."

"How easy it is to give advice!" returned Pepita, becoming a little
calmer. "How hard for me to follow it, when there is a fierce and
unchained tempest, as it were, raging in my soul! I am afraid I shall go
mad."

"The advice I give you is for your own good. Let Don Luis depart.
Absence is a great remedy for the malady of love. In giving himself up
to his studies, and consecrating himself to the service of the altar, he
will be cured of his passion. When he is far away, you will recover your
serenity by degrees, and will preserve in your memory only a grateful
and melancholy recollection of him that will do you no harm. It will be
like a beautiful poem whose music will harmonize your existence. Even if
all your desires could be fulfilled--earthly love lasts, after all, but
a short time. The delight the imagination anticipates in its
enjoyment--what is it in comparison with the bitter dregs that remain
behind, when the cup has been drained to the bottom? How much better is
it that your love, hardly yet contaminated, hardly despoiled of its
purity, should be dissipated, and exhale itself now, rising up to heaven
like a cloud of incense, than that, after it is once satisfied, it
should perish through satiety! Have the courage to put away from your
lips the cup while you have hardly tasted of its contents. Make of them
a libation and an offering to the Divine Redeemer. He will give you, in
exchange, the draught he offered to the Samaritan--a draught that does
not satiate, that quenches the thirst, and that produces eternal life."

"How good you are, father! Your holy words lend me courage. I will
control myself; I will conquer myself. It would be shameful--would it
not?--that Don Luis should be able to control and conquer himself, and
that I should not be able to do so? Let him depart. He is going away the
day after to-morrow; let him go with God's blessing. See his card. He
was here with his father to take leave of me, and I would not receive
him. I do not even want to preserve the poetical remembrance of him of
which you speak. This love has been a nightmare; I will cast it away
from me."

"Good! very good! It is thus that I want to see you--energetic,
courageous."

"Ah, father, God has cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent
in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my
self-abasement. Could I be more humbled or mor