now my past better than anyone; I have such great confidence in
you that I have told you everything. Besides, you are very quick,
and if I had not told you, you would have guessed. You know what
Visitacion is to me, and most certainly you are aware of what those
wretches say about her. Do not play the fool; everyone inside and
outside the Cathedral listens to these calumnies and believes them.
You are the only one who does not credit them because you know the
truth. But ay! the truth cannot be told, I cannot proclaim it, these
robes forbid me."

And he seized a handful of his cassock with his clenched fingers as if
he would rend it.

A long silence followed. Don Sebastian looked fixedly at the ground,
clutching with his hands as though he were trying to grasp invisible
enemies; every now and then he felt a stab of pain and sighed
uneasily.

"Why do you think about these things?" said the gardener's widow;
"they only make you ill, and you ought not to have disturbed yourself
to come and see me, you would have done better to remain in the
palace."

"No, you distract my mind from them, it is a great comfort to tell you
of my troubles. Up there I feel in despair, and have to exert all
my self-command to suppress my anger. I do not wish my servants to
understand, for they are quite capable of laughing at me, neither do I
wish poor Visitacion to know anything. I cannot dissimulate. I cannot
feign happiness when I am so irritated! What a hell I suffer! I cannot
say that I have been a man, and that I have been weak as the flesh of
which I am made, that I have with me the fruit of my faults, and that
I will not separate myself from them, though persecuted by calumny.
Every man acts as he is able, and I wish to be good in spite of my
faults. I might have separated from my children, I might have deserted
them, as others have done to preserve their reputation as saints, but
I am a man, and I am proud of them; I am a man with all his defects
and all his virtues, neither greater nor less than the general run of
humanity. The feeling of paternity is so deeply rooted in me that I
would sooner lose my mitre than abandon my children. You remember when
Juanito's father, who passed as my nephew, died, how deeply I felt it,
I thought I should have died also. Such a fine, handsome man, and
with such a brilliant future before him! I would have made him a
magistrate, president of the supreme court, minister, anything I
wished! And in twe