with a big business—­you see what pain!  Fearing from one moment to another that they would kill you, unable to speak, unable to complain, fearful of telling my distress even to my family.  How often have I prayed in there!  Accustomed as we of the ‘household’ are to associate daily with God and the saints, we may be a little hard and narrow-minded, but misfortune softens the heart, and I addressed myself to Her who can do everything, to our patroness the Virgin of the Sagrario, begging her to remember you, who used to kneel at her shrine as a little child when you were preparing to enter the seminary.”

Gabriel smiled gently as though admiring the simplicity of his brother.

“Do not laugh, I pray you—­your smile wounds me.  The Divine Lady did all she could for you.  Months afterwards I learnt that you and others had been put on board ship with orders never to return to Spain, and, up to the present time, never a letter or a scrap of news, good or ill.  I thought you had died, Gabriel, in those distant lands, and more than once I have prayed for your poor soul, that I am sure wanted it.”

The “companion” showed in his eyes his gratitude for these words.

“Thanks, Esteban.  I admire your faith, but I did not come out of that dark adventure as well as you imagine.  It would have been far better to have died.  The aureole of a martyr is worth more than to enter a dungeon a man and come out of it a limp rag.  I am very ill, Esteban, my sentence is irrevocable.  I have no stomach left, my lungs are gone, and this body that you see is like a dislocated machine that can hardly move, creaking in every joint, as though all the bits intended to fall apart.  The Virgin who saved me at your recommendation might really have interceded a little more in my favour, softening my jailors.  Those wretches think to save the world by giving free rein to those wild beast instincts that slumber in us all, relics of a far-away past.  Since then, at liberty, life has been more painful than death.  On my return to Spain, pressed by poverty and persecution, my life has been a hell.  I dare stop in no place where men congregate; they hunt me like dogs, forcing me to live out of the towns, driving me to the mountains, into the deserts, where no human beings live.  It appears I am still a man to be feared, more to be feared than those desperadoes who throw bombs, because I can speak, because I carry in me an irresistible strength which forces me to preach the Truth if I find myself in the presence of miserable and trodden-down wretches—­but all this is coming to an end.  You may be easy, brother, I am a dead man; my mission is drawing to a close, but others will come after me, and again others.  The furrow is open and the seed is in its bowels—­’GERMINAL!’[1] as a friend of my exile shouted as he saw the last rays of the setting sun from the scaffold of the gibbet.  I am dying, and I think I have the right to rest for a few months.  I wish to enjoy for the first time