“But what is going on around us?  Pepe, dear Pepe, do you believe in the devil?”

The engineer was silent.  The darkness of the chapel prevented Rosario from seeing the smile with which her cousin received this strange question.

“We must believe in him,” he said at last.

“What is going on?  Mamma forbids me to see you; but, except in regard to the atheism, she does not say any thing against you.  She tells me to wait, that you will decide; that you are going away, that you are coming back——­Speak to me with frankness—­have you formed a bad opinion of my mother?”

“Not at all,” replied Rey, urged by a feeling of delicacy.

“Do you not believe, as I do, that she loves us both, that she desires only our good, and that we shall in the end obtain her consent to our wishes?”

“If you believe it, I do too.  Your mama adores us both.  But, dear Rosario, it must be confessed that the devil has entered this house.”

“Don’t jest!” she said affectionately.  “Ah!  Mamma is very good.  She has not once said to me that you were unworthy to be my husband.  All she insists upon is the atheism.  They say, besides, that I have manias, and that I have the mania now of loving you with all my soul.  In our family it is a rule not to oppose directly the manias that are hereditary in it, because to oppose them aggravates them.”

“Well, I believe that there are skilful physicians at your side who have determined to cure you, and who will, in the end, my adored girl, succeed in doing so.”

“No, no; a thousand times no!” exclaimed Rosario, leaning her forehead on her lover’s breast.  “I am willing to be mad if I am with you.  For you I am suffering, for you I am ill; for you I despise life and I risk death.  I know it now—­to-morrow I shall be worse, I shall be dangerously ill, I shall die.  What does it matter to me?”

“You are not ill,” he responded, with energy; “there is nothing the matter with you but an agitation of mind which naturally brings with it some slight nervous disturbances; there is nothing the matter with you but the suffering occasioned by the horrible coercion which they are using with you.  Your simple and generous soul does not comprehend it.  You yield; you forgive those who injure you; you torment yourself, attributing your suffering to baleful, supernatural influences; you suffer in silence; you give your innocent neck to the executioner, you allow yourself to be slain, and the very knife which is plunged into your breast seems to you the thorn of a flower that has pierced you in passing.  Rosario, cast those ideas from your mind; consider our real situation, which is serious; seek its cause where it really is, and do not give way to your fears; do not yield to the tortures which are inflicted upon you, making yourself mentally and physically ill.  The courage which you lack would restore you to health, because you are not really ill, my dear girl, you are—­do you wish me to say it?—­you are frightened, terrified.  You are under what the ancients, not knowing how to express it, called an evil spell.  Courage, Rosario, trust in me!  Rise and follow me.  That is all I will say.”