“Father,” said Don Fernan, stalking back from the door, and fronting the priest--“Father, I have a favour to ask of you.”--“Glad, were it in my power to comply with it,” said Father Jose, turning over the skeleton of the fowl; “but you see here is only the thigh, and that somewhat bare.”--“It is not of that I speak or think, reverend Father,” said Fernan, with a smile; “I have but to request, that you will not renew the subject of my sister’s vocation till the return of my father.”--“Certainly not, son, certainly not. Ah! you know the time to ask a favour--you know I never could refuse you at a moment like this, when my heart is warmed, and softened, and expanded, by--by--by the evidences of your contrition and humiliation, and all that your devout mother, and your zealous spiritual friend, could hope or wish for. In truth, it overcomes me--these tears--I do not often weep but on occasions like these, and then I weep abundantly, and am compelled to recruit my lack of moisture thus.”--“Fetch more wine,” said Donna Clara.--The order was obeyed.--“Good night, Father,” said Don Fernan.--“The saints watch round you, my son! Oh I am exhausted!--I sink in this struggle! The night is hot, and requires wine to slake my thirst--and wine is a provocative, and requires food to take away its deleterious and damnable qualities--and food, especially partridge, which is a hot and stimulative nutritive, requires drink again to absorb or neutralize its exciting qualities. Observe me, Donna Clara--I speak as to the learned. There is stimulation, and there is absorption; the causes of which are manifold, and the effects such as----I am not bound to tell you at present.”--“Reverend Father,” said the admiring Donna Clara, not guessing, in the least, from what source all this eloquence flowed, “I trespassed on your time merely to ask a favour also.”--“Ask and ’tis granted,” said Father Jose, with a protrusion of his foot as proud as that of Sixtus himself. “It is merely to know, will not all the inhabitants of those accursed Indian isles be damned everlastingly?”--“Damned everlastingly, and without doubt,” returned the priest. “Now my mind is easy,” rejoined the lady, “and I shall sleep in peace to-night.” “Sleep, however, did not visit her so soon as she expected, for an hour after she knocked at Father Jose’s door, repeating, “Damned to all eternity, Father, did you not say?”--“Be damned to all eternity!” said the priest, tossing on his feverish bed, and dreaming, in the intervals of his troubled sleep, of Don Fernan coming to confession with a drawn sword, and Donna Clara with a bottle of Xeres in her hand, which she swallowed at a draught, while his parched lips were gaping for a drop in vain,--and of the Inquisition being established in an island off the coast of Bengal, and a huge partridge seated with a cap on at the end of a table covered with black, as chief Inquisitor,--and various and monstrous chimeras, the abortive births of repletion and indigestion.