There is no misfortune he does not seek
to alleviate, no suffering he does not strive to console, no error he
does not endeavor to repair, no necessity which he does not hasten
solicitously to relieve.

In all this, it must be confessed, he has a powerful auxiliary in
Pepita, whose piety and compassionate disposition he is always
extolling.

This species of homage which the vicar pays to Pepita is founded upon,
and goes side by side with, the practice of a thousand good works--the
giving of alms, prayer, public worship, and the care of the poor. Pepita
not only gives alms for the poor, but also gives money for _novenas_,
sermons, and other observances of the Church. If the altars of the
parish are gay, at times, with beautiful flowers, these flowers are due
to the bounty of Pepita who has sent them from her garden. If Our Lady
of Sorrows, instead of her old worn cloak, wears to-day a resplendent
and magnificent mantle of black velvet, embroidered with silver, Pepita
it is who has paid for it.

These, and other similar acts of beneficence, the vicar is always
extolling and magnifying. Thus it is, when I am not speaking of my own
aims, of my vocation, of my studies, to hear about which gives the
reverend vicar great delight, and keeps him hanging upon my words, when
it is he who speaks and I who listen, that, after a thousand turns, he
always ends by speaking of Pepita Ximenez. And of whom, indeed, should
the reverend vicar speak to me? His intercourse with the doctor, with
the apothecary, with the rich husbandmen of the place, hardly gives
motive for three words of conversation. As the reverend vicar possesses
the very rare quality, in one bred in the country, of not being fond of
scandal, or of meddling in other people's affairs, he has no one to
speak of but Pepita, whom he visits frequently, and with whom, as may be
gathered from what he says, he is in the habit of holding the most
familiar colloquies.

I know not what books Pepita Ximenez has read, nor what education she
may have received; but, from what the reverend vicar says, it may be
deduced that she possesses a restless soul and an inquiring spirit, to
which a multiplicity of questions and problems present themselves that
she longs to elucidate and resolve, bringing them for that purpose
before the reverend vicar, whom she thus puts into a state of agreeable
perplexity.

This man, educated in country fashion, a priest whose breviary is, as
one may say, h