Throwing down the knife and fork with which she had been eating, she rose swiftly to her feet. Her nephew rose also.

"My G.o.d! Holy Virgin of Succor!" she cried, raising both her hands to her head and pressing it between them with the gesture indicative of desperation, "is it possible that I deserve such atrocious insults?

Pepe, my son, is it you who speak to me in this way? If I have done what you say, I am indeed very wicked."

She sank on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. Pepe, approaching her slowly, saw that his aunt was sobbing bitterly and shedding abundant tears. In spite of his conviction he could not altogether conquer the feeling of compa.s.sion which took possession of him; and while he condemned himself for his cowardice he felt something of remorse for the severity and the frankness with which he had spoken.

"My dear aunt," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, "if you answer me with tears and sighs, you will not convince me. Proofs, not emotions, are what I require. Speak to me, tell me that I am mistaken in thinking what I think; then prove it to me, and I will acknowledge my error."

"Leave me, you are not my brother's son! If you were, you would not insult me as you have insulted me. So, then, I am an intriguer, an actress, a hypocritical harpy, a domestic plotter?"

As she spoke, Dona Perfecta uncovered her face and looked at her nephew with a martyr-like expression. Pepe was perplexed. The tears as well as the gentle voice of his father's sister could not be insignificant phenomena for the mathematician's soul. Words crowded to his lips to ask her pardon. A man of great firmness generally, any appeal to his emotions, any thing which touched his heart, converted him at once into a child. Weaknesses of a mathematician! It is said that Newton was the same.

"I will give you the proofs you ask," said Dona Perfecta, motioning him to a seat beside her. "I will give you satisfaction. You shall see whether I am kind, whether I am indulgent, whether I am humble. Do you think that I am going to contradict you; to deny absolutely the acts of which you have accused me? Well, then, no; I do not deny them."

The engineer was astounded.

"I do not deny them," continued Dona Perfecta. "What I deny is the evil intention which you attribute to them. By what right do you undertake to judge of what you know only from appearances and by conjecture? Have you the supreme intelligence which is necessary to judge justly the actions of others and p.r.o.nounce sentence upon them? Are you G.o.d, to know the intentions?"

Pepe was every moment more amazed.

"Is it not allowable at times to employ indirect means to attain a good and honorable end? By what right do you judge actions of mine that you do not clearly understand? I, my dear nephew, manifesting a sincerity which you do not deserve, confess to you that I have indeed employed subterfuges to attain a good end, to attain what was at the same time beneficial to you and to my daughter. You do not comprehend? You look bewildered. Ah! your great mathematician's and German philosopher's intellect is not capable of comprehending these artifices of a prudent mother."

"I am more and more astounded every moment," said the engineer.

"Be as astounded as you choose, but confess your barbarity," said the lady, with increasing spirit; "acknowledge your hastiness and your brutal conduct toward me in accusing me as you have done. You are a young man without any experience or any other knowledge than that which is derived from books, which teach nothing about the world or the human heart. All you know is how to make roads and docks. Ah, my young gentleman! one does not enter into the human heart through the tunnel of a railroad, or descend into its depths through the shaft of a mine.

You cannot read in the conscience of another with the microscope of a naturalist, nor decide the question of another's culpability measuring ideas with a theodolite."

"For G.o.d's sake, dear aunt!"

"Why do you p.r.o.nounce the name of G.o.d when you do not believe in him?"

said Dona Perfecta, in solemn accents. "If you believed in him, if you were a good Christian, you would not dare to form evil judgments about my conduct. I am a devout woman, do you understand? I have a tranquil conscience, do you understand? I know what I am doing and why I do it, do you understand?"

"I understand, I understand, I understand!"

"G.o.d in whom you do not believe, sees what you do not see and what you cannot see--the intention. I will say no more; I do not wish to enter into minute explanations, for I do not need to do so. Nor would you understand me if I should tell you that I desired to attain my object without scandal, without offending your father, without offending you, without giving cause for people to talk by an explicit refusal--I will say nothing of all this to you, for you would not understand it, either, Pepe. You are a mathematician. You see what is before your eyes, and nothing more; brute matter and nothing more. You see the effect, and not the cause. G.o.d is the supreme intention of the world. He who does not know this must necessarily judge things as you judge them--foolishly.

In the tempest, for instance, he sees only destruction; in the conflagration, ruin; in the drought, famine; in the earthquake, desolation; and yet, arrogant young man, in all those apparent calamities we are to seek the good intentions--yes, senor, the intention, always good, of Him who can do nothing evil."

This confused, subtle, and mystic logic did not convince Pepe Rey; but he did not wish to follow his aunt in the tortuous path of such a method of reasoning, and he said simply:

"Well, I respect intentions."

"Now that you seem to recognize your error," continued the pious lady, with ever-increasing confidence, "I will make another confession to you, and that is that I see now that I did wrong in adopting the course I did, although my object was excellent. In view of your impetuous disposition, in view of your incapacity to comprehend me, I should have faced the situation boldly and said to you, 'Nephew, I do not wish that you should be my daughter's husband.'"

"That is the language you should have used to me from the beginning,"

said the engineer, drawing a deep breath, as if his mind had been relieved from an enormous weight. "I am greatly obliged to you for those words. After having been stabbed in the dark, this blow on the face in the light of day is a great satisfaction to me."

"Well, I will repeat the blow, nephew," declared Dona Perfecta, with as much energy as displeasure. "You know it now--I do not wish you to marry Rosario!"

Pepe was silent. There was a long pause, during which the two regarded each other attentively, as if the face of each was for the other the most perfect work of art.

"Don't you understand what I have said to you?" she repeated. "That every thing is at an end, that there is to be no marriage."

"Permit me, dear aunt," said the young man, with composure, "not to be terrified by the intimation. In the state at which things have arrived your refusal has little importance for me."

"What are you saying?" cried Dona Perfecta violently.

"What you hear. I will marry Rosario!"

Dona Perfecta rose to her feet, indignant, majestic, terrible. Her att.i.tude was that of anathema incarnated in a woman. Rey remained seated, serene, courageous, with the pa.s.sive courage of a profound conviction and an immovable resolve. The whole weight of his aunt's wrath, threatening to overwhelm him, did not make him move an eyelash.

This was his character.

"You are mad. Marry my daughter, you! Marry her against my will!"

Dona Perfecta's trembling lips articulated these words in a truly tragic tone.

"Against your will! She is of a different way of thinking."

"Against my will!" repeated Dona Perfecta. "Yes, and I repeat it again and again. I do not wish it, I do not wish it!"

"She and I wish it."

"Fool! Is nothing else in the world to be considered but her and you?

Are there not parents; is there not society; is there not a conscience; is there not a G.o.d?"

"Because there is society, because there is a conscience, because there is a G.o.d," affirmed Rey gravely, rising to his feet, and pointing with outstretched arm to the heavens, "I say and I repeat that I will marry her."

"Wretch! arrogant man! And if you would dare to trample every thing under your feet, do you think there are not laws to prevent your violence?"

"Because there are laws, I say and I repeat that I will marry her."

"You respect nothing!"

"Nothing that is unworthy of respect."

"And my authority, my will, I--am I nothing?"

"For me your daughter is every thing--the rest is nothing."

Pepe Rey's composure was, so to say, the arrogant display of invincible and conscious strength. The blows he gave were hard and crushing in their force, without any thing to mitigate their severity. His words, if the comparison may be allowed, were like a pitiless discharge of artillery.

Dona Perfecta sank again on the sofa; but she shed no tears, and a convulsive tremor agitated her frame.

"So that for this infamous atheist," she exclaimed, with frank rage, "there are no social conventionalities, there is nothing but caprice.

This is base avarice. My daughter is rich!"

"If you think to wound me with that treacherous weapon, evading the question and giving a distorted meaning to my sentiments in order to offend my dignity, you are mistaken, dear aunt. Call me mercenary, if you choose. G.o.d knows what I am."

"You have no dignity!"