emancipation should come for
him. The only and most ardent desire of his life was to be able _to
love death_. Consequently, he employed the healthy and divine power of
his imagination in creating another world, new and free, where he lived
with his wife in the same sweet communion as of yore, sharing with her
his love and his sorrows. When he completed any action of his life, he
never failed to ask himself:--

"Would Maximina approve of it?"

Every day he confessed to her and told her the inmost secrets of his
soul. And when he had the misfortune to fall into sin, profound grief
would take possession of him, and he would think how, on that day, he
had departed a little from his wife. In this way, sharing like a divine
being in the august privilege of God, he succeeded in attaining a new
life, or rather a foretaste of eternal life.

But, as a human being, his soul was many times shaken by the storm of
doubt. He suffered the cruel assaults of temptation, and; like the Son
of God in the Garden of Gethsemane, endured hours of agony which left
deep scars upon his soul and diminished, if they did not entirely
destroy, his strength. Let us witness one of them.

After he came out of the Ministerio, or from Congress, Mendoza was in
the habit of riding in an open carriage through the Retiro. Miguel
accompanied him. After whirling for a while among the throng of
carriages the minister would begin to feel drowsy and would drop off to
sleep, lulled by the gentle motion of the carriage. Miguel, almost
always neglectful of the curious and gay sights of the promenade, would
meditate, with his eyes fixed on the sky or on the landscape.

It was a mild afternoon, the mildest and most brilliant that spring had
as yet bestowed that year on the citizens of Madrid.

The sun was setting. Through the open window our young secretary saw it
descending between the trees over the wide plains of Vallecas,
descending majestically till it reached the edge of a cloud, and casting
a golden trail over the earth.

Carried away by the train of thought which often took possession of him,
he began to speculate upon the time during which this orb had thus been
hurtling through space. Toward what mysterious region of heaven, was it
taking the earth in its tremendous march? From whence had that immense
mass originally sprung? When and how would its light become
extinguished?

He thought how its history, long as it seems, is only an instant in the
hist