ument, as in a controversy; but your accusation
is supported by so many reasons, and you have invested those
reasons--pardon me for saying so--with so specious an appearance of
truth, that I have no choice left me but to disprove them by other
reasons. I had no thought of being placed in the necessity of
maintaining a discussion here, and of sharpening my poor wits for that
purpose; but you compel me to do so, unless I wish to pass for a
monster. I am going to reply to the two extremes of the cruel dilemma in
which you have placed me. Though it is true that my youth was passed in
my uncle's house and in the seminary, where I saw nothing of women, do
not therefore think me so ignorant, or possessed of so little
imagination, that I can not picture to myself how lovely, how seductive
they may be. My imagination, on the contrary, went far beyond the
reality. Excited by the reading of the sacred writers and of profane
poets, it pictured women more charming, more graceful, more intelligent,
than they are commonly to be found in real life. I knew then, and I even
exaggerated to myself, the cost of the sacrifice I was making, when I
renounced the love of those women for the purpose of elevating myself to
the dignity of the priesthood. I know well how much the charms of a
beautiful woman are enhanced by rich attire, by splendid jewels, by
being surrounded with all the arts of refined civilization, all the
objects of luxury produced by the indefatigable labor and the skill of
man. I knew well, too, how much the natural cleverness of a woman is
increased, how much her natural intelligence is sharpened, quickened,
and brightened by intercourse with scientific men, by the reading of
good books, even by the familiar spectacle of the wealth and splendor of
great cities, and of the monuments of the past that they contain. All
this I pictured to myself with so much vividness, my fancy painted it in
such glowing colors, that you need have no doubt that, should I be
thrown into the society of those women of whom you speak, far from
feeling the adoration and the transports you prophesy, I shall rather
experience a disenchantment on seeing how great a distance there is
between what I dreamed of and the truth, between the living reality and
the picture of it that my fancy drew."

"This is indeed specious reasoning," exclaimed Pepita. "How can I deny
that what you have pictured in your imagination is, in truth, more
beautiful than what exists