"Here we are very observant of one another," continued Don Inocencio.
"We take notice of everything our neighbors do, and with such a system of vigilance public morals are maintained at a proper height. Believe me, my friend, believe me,--and I do not say this to mortify you,--you are the first gentleman of your position who, in the light of day--the first, yes, senor--/Trojoe qui primus ab oris/."
And bursting into a laugh, he clapped the engineer on the back in token of amity and good-will.
"How grateful I ought to be," said the young man, concealing his anger under the sarcastic words which he thought the most suitable to answer the covert irony of his interlocutors, "to meet with so much generosity and tolerance, when my criminal conduct would deserve--"
"What! Is a person of one's own blood, one who bears one's name," said Dona Perfecta, "to be treated like a stranger? You are my nephew, you are the son of the best and the most virtuous of men, of my dear brother Juan, and that is sufficient. Yesterday afternoon the secretary of the bishop came here to tell me that his lordship is greatly displeased because I have you in my house."
"And that too?" murmured the canon.
"And that too. I said that in spite of the respect which I owe the bishop, and the affection and reverence which I bear him, my nephew is my nephew, and I cannot turn him out of my house."
"This is another singularity which I find in this place," said Pepe Rey, pale with anger. "Here, apparently, the bishop governs other people's houses."
"He is a saint. He is so fond of me that he imagines--he imagines that you are going to contaminate us with your atheism, your disregard for public opinion, your strange ideas. I have told him repeatedly that, at bottom, you are an excellent young man."
"Some concession must always be made to superior talent," observed Don Inocencio.
"And this morning, when I was at the Cirujedas'--oh, you cannot imagine in what a state they had my head! Was it true that you had come to pull down the cathedral; that you were commissioned by the English Protestants to go preaching heresy throughout Spain; that you spent the whole night gambling in the Casino; that you were drunk in the streets?
'But, senoras,' I said to them, 'would you have me send my nephew to the hotel?' Besides, they are wrong about the drunkenness, and as for gambling--I have never yet heard that you gambled."
Pepe Rey found himself in that state of mind in which the calmest man is seized by a sudden rage, by a blind and brutal impulse to strangle some one, to strike some one in the face, to break some one's head, to crush some one's bones. But Dona Perfecta was a woman and was, besides, his aunt; and Don Inocencio was an old man and an ecclesiastic. In addition to this, physical violence is in bad taste and unbecoming a person of education and a Christian. There remained the resource of giving vent to his suppressed wrath in dignified and polite language; but this last resource seemed to him premature, and only to be employed at the moment of his final departure from the house and from Orbajosa.
Controlling his fury, then, he waited.
Jacinto entered as they were finishing supper.
"Good-evening, Senor Don Jose," he said, pressing the young man's hand.
"You and your friends kept me from working this afternoon. I was not able to write a line. And I had so much to do!"
"I am very sorry for it, Jacinto. But according to what they tell me, you accompany them sometimes in their frolics."
"I!" exclaimed the boy, turning scarlet. "Why, you know very well that Tafetan never speaks a word of truth. But is it true, Senor de Rey, that you are going away?"
"Is that the report in the town?"
"Yes. I heard it in the Casino and at Don Lorenzo Ruiz's."
Rey contemplated in silence for a few moments the fresh face of Don Nominative. Then he said:
"Well, it is not true; my aunt is very well satisfied with me; she despises the calumnies with which the Orbajosans are favoring me--and she will not turn me out of her house, even though the bishop himself should try to make her do so."
"As for turning you out of the house--never. What would your father say?"
"Notwithstanding all your kindness, dearest aunt, notwithstanding the cordial friendship of the reverend canon, it is possible that I may myself decide to go away."
"To go away!"
"To go away--you!"
A strange light shone in Dona Perfecta's eyes. The canon, experienced though he was in dissimulation, could not conceal his joy.
"Yes, and perhaps this very night."
"Why, man, how impetuous you are; Why don't you at least wait until morning? Here--Juan, let some one go for Uncle Licurgo to get the nag ready. I suppose you will take some luncheon with you. Nicolasa, that piece of veal that is on the sideboard! Librada, the senorito's linen."
"No, I cannot believe that you would take so rash a resolution," said Don Cayetano, thinking himself obliged to take some part in the question.
"But you will come back, will you not?" asked the canon.
"At what time does the morning train pass?" asked Dona Perfecta, in whose eyes was clearly discernible the feverish impatience of her exaltation.
"I am going away to-night."
"But there is no moon."
In the soul of Dona Perfecta, in the soul of the Penitentiary, in the little doctor's youthful soul echoed like a celestial harmony the word, "To-night!"
"Of course, dear Pepe, you will come back. I wrote to-day to your father, your excellent father," exclaimed Dona Perfecta, with all the physiognomic signs that make their appearance when a tear is about to be shed.
"I will trouble you with a few commissions," said the savant.
"A good opportunity to order the volume that is wanting in my copy of the Abbe Gaume's work," said the youthful lawyer.
"You take such sudden notions, Pepe; you are so full of caprices," murmured Dona Perfecta, smiling, with her eyes fixed on the door of the dining-room. "But I forgot to tell you that Caballuco is waiting to speak to you."
