“Are you mad? I see you talking to him of that! The wretched miser not only watches his daughter as if she were a bag of gold, and is not disposed to give her to anybody; but he has also an ancient and profound resentment against my father, because he freed some unhappy debtors from his fangs. I tell you, that if he discovers that his daughter loves me, he will keep her locked up in an iron chest in that cellar of his where he keeps his hard cash. I don’t know what would happen if my father came to know of it. My flesh creeps just to think of it. The worst nightmare which disturbs my slumbers is that which shows me the moment when señor my father and señora my mother learn of my great love for Mariquilla. A son of Don José de Montoria enamoured of a daughter of Candiola, a young man who is formally destined to be a bishop—a bishop, Gabriel! I am going to be a bishop, in the minds of my parents!”
Saying this, Augustine dashed his head against the sacred wall on which we were leaning.
“And do you think you will go on loving Mariquilla?”
“Don’t ask me that!” he replied with energy. “Did you see her? If you saw her, how can you ask me if I will go on loving her? Her father and mine would rather see me dead than married to her. A bishop, Gabriel, they wish me to be a bishop! Think of being a bishop and loving Mariquilla for all of my life, here and hereafter, think of that and pity me!”
“But God opens unknown ways,” I said.
“It is true, and sometimes my faith is boundless. Who knows what tomorrow will bring forth? God and the Virgin shall guide me henceforth.”
“Are you devoted to this Virgin?”
“Yes. My mother places candles before the one we have in our house, that I may not fall in battle; and I say to her ‘Sovereign Lady, may this offering