"What are you saying about sins and hardness of heart? Have you taken leave of your senses? What sins can you have committed, you who are so good?"

"No, father, I am not good. I have been deceiving you; I have been deceiving myself; I have tried to deceive G.o.d."

"Come, come, calm yourself; speak with moderation and common sense, and don't talk foolishly."

"And how shall I avoid talking foolishly when the spirit of evil possesses me?"

"Holy Virgin! Don't talk nonsense, child; the demons most to be feared that take possession of the soul are three, and none of them, I am certain, can have dared to enter into yours. One is Leviathan, or the spirit of Pride; the other is Mammon, or the spirit of Avarice; and the other is Asmodeus or the spirit of Unholy Love."

"Well, I am the victim of all three; all three hold dominion over me."

"This is dreadful! Calm yourself, I repeat. The real trouble with you is that you are out of your head."

"Would to G.o.d it were so! The contrary, unhappily for me, is the case. I am avaricious, because I possess riches, and do not perform the works of charity I ought to perform; I am proud, because I scorn the addresses of my many suitors, not through virtue, not through modesty, but because I thought them unworthy of my love. G.o.d has punished me; G.o.d has permitted the third enemy you have named to take possession of me."

"How is this, child? What diabolical notion has entered into your mind?

Have you by chance fallen in love? And, if you have, what harm is there in that? Are you not free? Get married, then, and stop talking nonsense.

I am certain it is my friend Don Pedro de Vargas who has wrought the miracle. That same Don Pedro is the very devil! I confess I am surprised, though. I did not think matters had gone quite so far as that already."

"But it is not Don Pedro de Vargas I am in love with."

"And with whom, then?"

Pepita rose from her seat, went to the door, opened it, looked to see if any one was listening outside, drew near to the reverend vicar, and, with signs of the deepest distress, in a trembling voice, and with tears in her eyes, said, almost in the ear of the good old man:

"I am hopelessly in love with his son."

"With whose son?" cried the reverend vicar, who could not yet bring himself to believe what he had heard.

"With whose son should it be? I am hopelessly, desperately in love with Don Luis."

Consternation and dolorous surprise were depicted on the countenance of the kind and simple priest. There was a moment's pause; the vicar then said:

"But this is a love without hope; a love not to be thought of. Don Luis will not love you in return."

In the midst of the tears that clouded the beautiful eyes of Pepita gleamed a joyful light; her rosy, dewy lips, contracted by sorrow, parted in a smile, disclosing to view her pearly teeth.

"He loves me," said Pepita, with a faint and ill-concealed accent of satisfaction and triumph that rose exultant over her sorrow and her scruples of conscience.

The consternation and the astonishment of the reverend vicar here reached their highest pitch. If the saint to whom he paid his most fervent devotions had been suddenly cast down from the altar before him, and had fallen, broken into a thousand fragments at his feet, the reverend vicar could not have felt greater consternation than he did. He still looked at Pepita with incredulity, as if doubting whether what she had said were true, or only a delusion of feminine vanity, so firmly did he believe in the holiness of Don Luis, and in his spiritual-mindedness.

"He loves me," Pepita repeated, in answer to his incredulous glance.

"Women are worse than the very devil!" said the vicar. "You would set a snare for the old boy himself."

"Did I not tell you already that I was very wicked?"

"Come, come! calm yourself. The mercy of G.o.d is infinite. Tell me all that has happened."

"What should have happened? That he is dear to me; that I love him; that I adore him; that he loves me, too, although he strives to conquer his love, and, in the end, may succeed in doing so; and that you, without knowing it, are very much to blame for it all!"

"Well, this caps the climax! What do you mean by saying I am very much to blame?"

"With the extreme goodness that is characteristic of you, you have done nothing but praise Don Luis to me; and I am sure that you have p.r.o.nounced still greater eulogies on me to him, although very much less deserved. What is the natural consequence? Am I of bronze? Have I not the pa.s.sions of youth?"

"You are more than right; I am a dolt: I have contributed, in great part, to this work of Lucifer."

The reverend vicar was so truly good, and so full of humility, that, while p.r.o.nouncing the preceding words, he showed as much confusion and remorse as if he were the culprit and Pepita the judge.

Pepita, conscious of her injustice and want of generosity in thus making the reverend vicar the accomplice, and scarcely less than the chief author of her fault, spoke to him thus:

"Don't torment yourself, father; for G.o.d's sake, don't torment yourself!

You see now how perverse I am. I commit the greatest sins, and I want to throw the responsibility of them on the best and the most virtuous of men. It is not the praises you have recited to me of Don Luis that have been my ruin, but my own eyes, and my want of circ.u.mspection. Even though you had never spoken to me of the good qualities of Don Luis, I should still have discovered them all by hearing him speak; for, after all, I am not so ignorant, nor so great a fool. And, in any case, I myself have seen the grace of his person, the natural and untaught elegance of his manners, his eyes full of fire and intelligence, his whole self, in a word, which seems to me altogether amiable and desirable. Your eulogies of him have indeed pleased my vanity, but they did not awaken my inclinations. Your praises charmed me because they coincided with my own opinion, and were like the flattering echo--deadened, indeed, and faint--of my thoughts. The most eloquent encomium you have p.r.o.nounced, in my hearing, on Don Luis, was far from being equal to the encomiums that I, at each moment, at each instant, silently p.r.o.nounced upon him in my own soul."

"Don't excite yourself, child," interrupted the reverend vicar.

Pepita continued, with still greater exaltation:

"But what a difference between your encomiums and my thoughts! For you Don Luis was the exemplary model of the priest, the missionary, the apostle, now preaching the gospel in distant lands, now endeavoring in Spain to elevate Christianity, so degraded in our day through the impiety of some, and the want of virtue, of charity, and of knowledge, of others. I, on the contrary, pictured him to myself handsome, loving, forgetting G.o.d for me, consecrating his life to me, giving me his soul, becoming my stay, my support, my sweet companion. I longed to commit a sacrilegious theft: I dreamed of stealing him from G.o.d and from his temple, like the thief who, proclaiming himself the enemy of Heaven, robs the sacred monstrance of its most precious jewel. To commit this theft I have put off the mourning garments of the widow and orphan, and have decked myself with profane adornments; I have abandoned my seclusion, and I have sought and gathered around me society. I have tried to make myself look beautiful; I have cared for every part of this miserable body--that must one day be lowered into the grave, and be converted into dust--with an unholy devotion; and, finally, I have looked at Don Luis with provoking glances, and on shaking hands with him I have sought to transmit from my veins to his, the inextinguishable fire that is consuming me."

"Alas! my child, what grief it gives me to hear this! Who could have imagined it?" said the vicar.

"But there is still more," resumed Pepita; "I succeeded in making Don Luis love me. He declared it to me with his eyes. Yes, his love is as profound, as ardent as mine. His virtues, his aspirations toward heavenly things, his manly energy, have all urged him to conquer this insensate pa.s.sion. I sought to prevent this. One day, at the end of many days during which he had stayed away, he came to see me, and found me alone. When he gave me his hand, I wept; I could not speak, but h.e.l.l inspired me with an accursed, mute eloquence that told him of my grief that he had scorned me, that he did not return my love, that he preferred another love--a love without stain--to mine. Then he was unable to resist the temptation, and he approached his lips to my face to kiss away my tears. Our lips met. If G.o.d had not willed that you should approach at that moment, what would have become of me?"

"How shameful! my child, how shameful!" said the reverend vicar.

Pepita covered her face with both hands and began to sob like a Magdalen. Her hands were, in truth, beautiful, more beautiful even than Don Luis had described them to be in his letters. Their whiteness, their pure transparency, the tapering form of the fingers, the roseate hue, the polish and the brilliancy of the pearl-like nails, all were such as might turn the head of any man.

The virtuous vicar could understand, notwithstanding his eighty years, the fall, or rather the slip, of Don Luis.

"Child!" he exclaimed, "don't cry so! It breaks my heart to see you.

Calm yourself; Don Luis has no doubt repented of his sin; do you repent likewise, and nothing more need be said. G.o.d will pardon you both, and make a couple of saints of you. Since Don Luis is going away the day after to-morrow, it is a sure sign that virtue has triumphed in him, and that he flies from you, as he should, that he may do penance for his sin, fulfill his vow, and return to his vocation."

"That is all very well," replied Pepita; "fulfill his vow, return to his vocation, after giving me my death-wound! Why did he love me, why did he encourage me, why did he deceive me? His kiss was a brand, it was as a hot iron with which he marked me and stamped me as his slave. Now that I am marked and enslaved, he abandons and betrays and destroys me. A good beginning to give to his missions, his preachings, and gospel triumphs!

It shall not be! By Heaven, it shall not be!"

This outbreak of anger and scorned love confounded the reverend vicar.

Pepita had risen. Her att.i.tude, her gesture, had something in them of tragic animation. Her eyes gleamed like daggers; they shone like two suns. The vicar was silent, and regarded her almost with terror. She paced with hasty steps up and down the apartment. She did not now seem like a timid gazelle, but like an angry lioness.

"What!" she said, once more facing the vicar, "has he nothing to do but laugh at me, tear my heart to pieces, humiliate it, trample it under foot, after having cheated me out of it? He shall remember me! He shall pay me for this! If he is so holy, if he is so virtuous, why did he, with his glance, promise me everything? If he loves G.o.d so much, why does he seek to hurt one of G.o.d's poor creatures? Is this charity? Is this religion? No; it is pitiless selfishness."

Pepita's anger could not last long. After she had spoken the last words, it turned to dejection. She sank into a chair, weeping bitterly, and abandoning herself to an anguish heart-breaking to witness.

The vicar's heart was touched with pity; but he recovered himself on seeing that the enemy gave signs of yielding.

"Pepita, child," he said, "be reasonable; don't torment yourself in this way. Console yourself with the thought that it was not without a hard struggle he was able to conquer himself; that he has not deceived you; that he loves you with his whole soul, but that G.o.d and his duty come first. This life is short, and soon pa.s.ses. In heaven you will be reunited, and will love each other, as the angels love. G.o.d will accept your sacrifice; he will reward you, and repay you with interest. Even your self-love ought to be satisfied. How great must be your merit, when you have caused a man like Don Luis to waver in his resolution, and even to sin! How deep must be the wound you have made in his heart! Let this suffice you. Be generous! be courageous! Be his rival in firmness. Let him depart; cast out from your heart the fire of impure love; love him as your neighbor, for the love of G.o.d. Guard his image in your memory, but as that of the creature, reserving to the Creator the n.o.blest part of your soul. I know not what I am saying to you, my child, for I am very much troubled; but you have a great deal of intelligence and a great deal of common sense, and you will understand what I mean.

Besides, there are powerful worldly reasons against this absurd love, even if the vocation and the vow of Don Luis were not opposed to it. His father is your suitor. He aspires to your hand, even though you do not love him. Does it look well that the son should turn out now to be the rival of his father? Will not the father be displeased with the son for loving you? See how dreadful all this is, and control yourself for the sake of Jesus and his blessed Mother."