“Reverend Father,” said Donna Clara, looking up to Fra Jose, who had dictated the last line, “Don Francisco will know the last line not to be mine--he heard it in one of your sermons. Let me add the extraordinary proof of my daughter’s insanity at the ball.”--“Add or diminish, compose or confound, what you will, in God’s name!” said Fra Jose, vexed at the frequent erazures and lituras which disfigured the lines of his dictation; “for though in style I may somewhat boast of my superiority, in scratches no hen on the best dunghill in Spain can contend with you! On, then, in the name of all the saints!--and when it pleases heaven to send an interpreter to your husband, we may hope to hear from him by the next post-angel, for surely such a letter was never written on earth.” “With this encouragement and applause, Donna Clara proceeded to relate sundry other errors and wanderings of her daughter, which, to a mind so swathed, crippled, and dwarfed, by the ligatures which the hand of custom had twined round it since its first hour of consciousness, might well have appeared like the aberrations of insanity. Among other proofs, she mentioned that Isidora’s first introduction to a Christian and Catholic church, was on that night of penitence in passion-week, when, the lights being extinguished, the _miserere_ is chaunted in profound darkness, the penitents macerate themselves, and groans are heard on every side instead of prayers, as if the worship of Moloch was renewed without its fires;--struck with horror at the sounds she heard, and the darkness which surrounded her, Isidora demanded what they were doing.--“Worshipping God,” was the answer.