"Wait, man, how impatient you are! How do you know whether or not he has a daughter?" he answered, hiding his agitation by these evasions. "Well, as I was just going to tell you, Candiola is detested in the city for his great avarice and wicked heart. Many poor men has he put in prison after ruining them. Worse still, during the other siege he did not give a farthing for the war, nor take up arms, nor receive the wounded into his house, nor could they wring a peseta from him; and, as he said one day it was all one to him whether he gave to John or to Peter, he was on the point of being arrested." "Well, he is a pretty piece, this man of the house of the garden of the chocolate-colored gate! And what if when the pebble strikes the window, goodman Candiola comes out with a cudgel and gives me a good beating for flirting with his daughter?" "Don't be an idiot! Hush! You must know that as soon as it gets dark, Candiola shuts himself in an underground room, and there he stays counting his money until after midnight. Bah! He is well occupied now. The neighbors say they hear a muffled sound as if bags of coins were being tumbled out." "Very well. I arrive there. I throw the stone. She comes, and I tell her--" "You tell her that I am dead. No, don't be cruel; give her this amulet. No, tell her--no, it will be better to tell her nothing." "Then I will give her the amulet?" "By no means. Do not take the amulet to her." "Now, now I understand. As soon as she comes I am to say good-night and march myself away singing, 'The Virgin del Pilar says--'" "No, it is enough that she learns of my death. You must do as I tell you." "But if you don't tell me anything." "How hasty you are! Wait. Perhaps they'll not kill me to-day." "True. And what a bother about nothing!" "There is one thing which I have left out, Gabriel, and I shall tell it to you frankly. I have had many, very many great desires to confide to you this secret which weighs upon my breast. To whom could I tell it but to you, my friend? If I did not tell you, my heart would break like a pomegranate. I have been greatly afraid of telling it at night in my dreams. Because of this fear I cannot sleep. If my father, my mother, my brother, suspected it, they would kill me." "And the fathers at the Seminary?"