“It must be God’s gracious mercy and pity which speaks to me through you, my child.  May He bless you, and for your sake, and my sufferings, may He forgive my great sin!  It is indeed an old story of guilt and sorrow which I have to tell, and which has weighed heavily upon my heart for nineteen long years!  Listen, then, Carmen.”

Mauer sat silent a moment, as if trying to refresh in his memory the half-faded events of long years ago, and shape into more definite forms their outlines, obscured by the mists of time.

At length he spoke.

“Thirty years ago, my child, I left here with my first wife, and moved to Jamaica to carry on the linen business, for the Brothers had established themselves in business in connection with the mission there.  We arrived in May, and were in a short time quite settled.  The country and climate are lovely at that time of the year, but during the rainy season, when the wet ground sent forth its poisonous miasma, we both were stricken down with the fever.  I, being the stronger, recovered from the attack pretty soon; but my wife, a small, delicate woman, succumbed at once to the fell destroyer.

“For two years I remained a widower, and led a lonely life of hard work.  Gladly would I have returned home to Europe, but the business once begun was not so easily given up; it would have been attended with great losses.  Therefore I wrote home, saying I needed a wife, and would like one sent out to me.  I named two Sisters of whom I had thought, hoping that one or the other would come to me.  One of them was dead, the other married; so the lot was cast among the other Sisters, and it fell on Sister Julie.  When my new wife arrived, I was greatly shocked.  She was, not only homely of face, but deformed in figure.  In spite of my love for the beautiful, I conquered myself, and hoped she would be so much the more lovely in disposition.  But hers was a narrow, severe nature, from which no congeniality could be expected.  She prayed zealously and worked diligently carrying out with the greatest precision the rules prescribed for us; but she had not a single idea beyond that; and when she was not praying, was peevish, suspicious, and avaricious.  For nearly eight years I lived with her, my aversion daily increasing.  About that time, as misfortune would have it, a friend, who was living in Jamaica, died, owing me a large sum of money.  His affairs were left in such confusion that I was obliged to receive the plantation as payment for my debt.  I found the place in a wretched condition, and, in order to oversee its management to any advantage, I resolved to transfer my business in the mission to an agent, and move on the place with my wife.  Then came a fatal hour for me.  Into my darkened soul, into the comfortless, emptiness of my life, entered the power of a great passion.