“Madonna,” said the Father, “you are always urging your zeal for the Catholic church--and you, Senhor, are always reminding me of the honour of your family--I am anxious for both--and how can the interests of both be better secured than by Donna Isidora taking the veil?”--“The wish of my soul!” cried Donna Clara, clasping her hands, and closing her eyes, as if she witnessed her daughter’s apotheosis. “I will never hear of it, Father,” said Fernan; “my sister’s beauty and wealth entitle _me_ to claim alliance with the first families in Spain--their baboon shapes and copper-coloured visages might be redeemed for a century by such a graft on the stock, and the blood of which they boast would not be impoverished by a transfusion of the _aurum potabile_ of ours into it.”--“You forget, son,” said the priest, “the extraordinary circumstances attendant on the early part of your sister’s life. There are many of our Catholic nobility who would rather see the black blood of the banished Moors, or the proscribed Jews, flow in the veins of their descendants, than that of one who”---- Here a mysterious whisper drew from Donna Clara a shudder of distress and consternation, and from her son an impatient motion of angry incredulity. “I do not credit a word of it,” said the latter; “you wish that my sister should take the veil, and therefore you credit and circulate the monstrous invention.”--“Take heed, son, I conjure you,” said the trembling Donna Clara. “Take you heed, Madam, that you do not sacrifice your daughter to an unfounded and incredible fiction.”--“Fiction!” repeated Father Jose--“Senhor, I forgive your illiberal reflections on me,--but let me remind you, that the same immunity will not be extended to the insult you offer to the Catholic faith.”--“Reverend Father,” said the terrified Fernan, “the Catholic church has not a more devoted and unworthy professor on earth than myself.”--“I do believe the latter,” said the priest. “You admit all that the holy church teaches to be irrefragably true?”--“To be sure I do.”--“Then you must admit that the islands in the Indian seas are particularly under the influence of the devil?”--“I do, if the church requires me so to believe.”--“And that he possessed a peculiar sway over that island where your sister was lost in her infancy?”--“I do not see how that follows,” said Fernan, making a sudden stand at this premise of the Sorites. “Not see how that follows!” repeated Father Jose, crossing himself; “Excæcavit oculos eorum ne viderent.