tle ball of bread. But Dona Perfecta was pale and kept her eyes fixed
on the canon with observant insistence. Rosarito looked with amazement
at her cousin. The latter, bending toward her, whispered under his
breath:

"Don't mind me, little cousin; I am talking all this nonsense only to
enrage the canon."

CHAPTER VII

THE DISAGREEMENT INCREASES

"Perhaps you think," said Dona Perfecta, with a tinge of conceit in her
tones, "that Senor Don Inocencio is going to remain silent and not give
you an answer to each and every one of those points."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed the canon, arching his eyebrows. "I will not attempt
to measure my poor abilities with a champion so valiant and at the same
time so well armed. Senor Don Jose knows every thing; that is to say, he
has at his command the whole arsenal of the exact sciences. Of course
I know that the doctrines he upholds are false; but I have neither the
talent nor the eloquence to combat them. I would employ theological
arguments, drawn from revelation, from faith, from the Divine Word; but
alas! Senor Don Jose, who is an eminent savant, would laugh at theology,
at faith, at revelation, at the holy prophets, at the gospel. A poor
ignorant priest, an unhappy man who knows neither mathematics, nor
German philosophy with its _ego_ and its _non ego_, a poor dominie, who
knows only the science of God and something of the Latin poets, cannot
enter into combat with so valiant a champion."

Pepe Rey burst into a frank laugh.

"I see that Senor Don Inocencio," he said, "has taken seriously all the
nonsense I have been talking. Come, Senor Canon, regard the whole matter
as a jest, and let it end there. I am quite sure that my opinions do not
in reality differ greatly from yours. You are a pious and learned man;
it is I who am ignorant. If I have allowed myself to speak in jest,
pardon me, all of you--that is my way."

"Thanks!" responded the presbyter, visibly annoyed. "Is that the way you
want to get out of it now? I am well aware, we are all well aware, that
the views you have sustained are your own. It could not be otherwise.
You are the man of the age. It cannot be denied that you have a
wonderful, a truly wonderful intellect. While you were talking, at the
same time that I inwardly deplored errors so great, I could not but
admire, I will confess it frankly, the loftiness of expression, the
prodigious fluency, the surprising method of your reasoning, the force
of your argu