ademy at "Commencement," "in which, as thou
seest, even the aged of both sexes unblushingly assist as spectators
with every expression of immodest satisfaction."

"Have they no bull-fights or other seemly recreation that they must
indulge in such wantonness?" asked Dona Maria indignantly, gazing,
however, somewhat curiously at the baleful representations.

"Of all that, my daughter, has their pampered civilization long since
wearied," returned the good padre, "for see, this is what they consider
a moral and even a religious ceremony." He turned to an illustration
of a woman's rights convention; "observe with what rapt attention the
audience of that heathen temple watch the inspired ravings of that
elderly priestess on the dais. It is even this kind of sacrilegious
performance that I am told thy nephew Don Jose expounds and defends."

"May the blessed saints preserve us; where will it lead to?" murmured
the horrified Dona Maria.

"I will show thee," said Father Felipe, briskly turning the pages with
the same lofty ignoring of the text until he came to a representation
of a labor procession. "There is one of their periodic revolutions
unhappily not unknown even in Mexico. Thou perceivest those complacent
artisans marching with implements of their craft, accompanied by the
military, in the presence of their own stricken masters. Here we see
only another instance of the instability of all communities that are
not founded on the principles of the Holy Church."

"And what is to be done with my nephew?"

The good father's brow darkened with the gloomy religious zeal of two
centuries ago. "We must have a council of the family, the alcalde, and
the archbishop, at ONCE," he said ominously. To the mere heretical
observer the conclusion might have seemed lame and impotent, but it was
as near the Holy inquisition as the year of grace 1852 could offer.

A few days after this colloquy the unsuspecting subject of it, Don Jose
Sepulvida, was sitting alone in the same apartment. The fading glow of
the western sky, through the deep embrasured windows, lit up his rapt
and meditative face. He was a young man of apparently twenty-five,
with a colorless satin complexion, dark eyes alternating between
melancholy and restless energy, a narrow high forehead, long straight
hair, and a lightly penciled moustache. He was said to resemble the
well-known portrait of the Marquis of Monterey in the mission church, a
face that was alleg