“Better dead, better buried and food for worms,” affirmed Remedios, clasping her hands as if she were saying a prayer—­“than see her in the power of—­ah, senora, do not be offended if I say something to you, and that is, that it would be a great weakness to yield merely because Rosarito has had a few secret interviews with that audacious man.  The affair of the night before last, as my uncle related it to me, seems to me a vile trick on Don Jose to obtain his object by means of a scandal.  A great many men do that.  Ah, Divine Saviour, I don’t know how there are women who can look any man in the face unless it be a priest.”

“Be silent, be silent!” said Dona Perfecta, with vehemence.  “Don’t mention the occurrence of the night before last to me.  What a horrible affair!  Maria Remedios, I understand now how anger can imperil the salvation of a soul.  I am burning with rage—­unhappy that I am, to see such things and not to be a man!  But to speak the truth in regard to the occurrence of the night before last—­I still have my doubts.  Librada vows and declares that Pinzon was the man who came into the house.  My daughter denies every thing; my daughter has never told me a lie!  I persist in my suspicions.  I think that Pinzon is a hypocritical go-between, but nothing more.”

“We come back to the same thing—­that the author of all the trouble is the blessed mathematician.  Ah! my heart did not deceive me when I first saw him.  Well, then senora! resign yourself to see something still more terrible, unless you make up your mind to call Caballuco and say to him, ‘Caballuco, I hope that—­’”

“The same thing again; what a simpleton you are!”

“Oh yes!  I know I am a great simpleton; but how can I help it if I am not any wiser?  I say what comes into my head, without any art.”

“What you think of—­that silly and vulgar idea of the beating and the fright—­is what would occur to any one.  You have not an ounce of brains, Remedios; to solve a serious question you can think of nothing better than a piece of folly like that.  I have thought of a means more worthy of noble-minded and well-bred persons.  A beating!  What stupidity!  Besides, I would not on any account have my nephew receive even so much as a scratch by an order of mine.  God will send him his punishment through some one of the wonderful ways which he knows how to choose.  All we have to do is to work in order that the designs of God may find no obstacle.  Maria Remedios, it is necessary in matters of this kind to go directly to the causes of things.  But you know nothing about causes—­you can see only trifles.”

“That may be so,” said the priest’s niece, with humility.  “I wonder why God made me so foolish that I can understand nothing of those sublime ideas!”

“It is necessary to go to the bottom—­to the bottom, Remedios.  Don’t you understand yet?”

“No.”

“My nephew is not my nephew, woman; he is blasphemy, sacrilege, atheism, demagogy.  Do you know what demagogy is?”