n his way from the sick room. He, too, had his own perplexities, which
made him wipe his forehead repeatedly; afterwards he used to spread his
red bandanna handkerchief over his knees.

He sympathized with Carlos, his beloved penitent, with Seraphina, his
dear daughter, whom he had baptized and instructed in the mysteries of
"our holy religion," and he allowed himself often to drop the remark
that his "illustrious spiritual son," Don Balthasar, after a stormy
life of which men knew only too much, had attained to a state of truly
childlike and God-fearing innocence--a sign, no doubt, of Heaven's
forgiveness for those excesses. He ended, always, by sighing heartily,
to sit with his gaze on the floor.

That night he came in silently, and after shutting the door with care,
took his habitual seat, a broad wooden armchair.

"How did your reverence leave Don Carlos?" I asked.

"Very low," he said. "The disease is making terrible ravages, and my
ministrations------I ought to be used to the sight of human misery,
but------" He raised his hands; a genuine emotion overpowered him; then,
uncovering his face to stare at me, "He is lost, Don Juan," he
exclaimed.

"Indeed, I fear we are about to lose him, your reverence," I said,
surprised at this display. It seemed inconceivable that he should have
been in doubt up to this very moment.

He rolled his eyes painfully. I was forgetting the infinite might of
God. Still, nothing short of a miracle------But what had we done to
deserve miracles?

"Where is the ancient piety of our forefathers which made Spain so
great?" he apostrophized the empty air, a little wildly, as if in
distraction. "No, Don Juan; even I, a true servant of our faith, am
conscious of not having had enough grace for my humble ministrations to
poor sailors and soldiers--men naturally inclined to sin, but simple.
And now--there are two great nobles, the fortune of a great house...."

I looked at him and wondered, for he was, in a manner, wringing his
hands, as if in immense distress.

"We are all thinking of that poor child--_mas que_, Don Juan, imagine
all that wealth devoted to the iniquitous purposes of that man. Her
happiness sacrificed."

"I cannot imagine this--I will not," I interrupted, so violently that he
hushed me with both hands uplifted.

"To these wild enterprises against your own country," he went on
vehemently, disregarding my exasperated and contemptuous laugh. "And she
herself, the _nina_