o really love, though he tried carefully to hide it.

"Who was the villain?"

The somewhat harsh tone of this question did not escape Maximina.

"The cure of Chamberi."

"The little old man who said mass on the ninth?"

"The very same.... Why didn't you like it that the villain was here? eh,
you rogue!" she added, giving him a tender hug.

"And what brought the cure?" asked Miguel, in his turn parrying his
wife's question.

"To put us down in his book.... I could not help laughing a little.... I
opened the door for him, and he said to me: '_Hola_, child! go and tell
your mamma the rector of Chamberi is here.'--'I haven't any mamma,' said
I.--'Then tell the lady of the house.'--'I am she,' I told him, half
dead with mortification. He began to cross himself, saying, '_Ave Maria!
Ave Maria!_ what a little, young thing!' He was still more surprised to
know that we had been married two years and three months."

"That's natural enough,--with that smooth, round, baby cheek of yours,
you would deceive any one."

"It is absurd; I am not a child any longer: I shall be eighteen next
month."

Before going to bed, they put out the lights and opened the balcony
window to enjoy for a little while the spectacle of the starry sky.

It was a clear, mild night toward the last of April. As they were on the
third floor, and the section of the city where they lived was less built
up, they could see more than half of the heavenly vault. As they stood
together, Maximina leaning her arm on her husband's shoulder, they
silently contemplated for a long time that sight which will forever be
the most sublime of all.

"How large and beautiful that star is, Miguel. What a pure, bright light
it gives!" said Maximina, pointing to the sky.

"That is Sirius. In the books of antiquity it is said that it used to
shine with a red light. However, it is not any greater or more beautiful
than the others, except that it is not so far away: it is one of three
nearest to us."

"Though Sister San Onofre kept telling us that the earth was a star like
those, only still smaller, I can never seem to believe it."

"And so small, Maximina! Each one of the stars that you see is thousands
and millions of times bigger than our earth. Our solar system, of which
we are the poorest and most insignificant part, belongs to that great
nebula that crosses the sky like a white band. Each particle of that
dust is a sun around which revolve other worlds, which, lik