"Are you mad? I see you talking to him of that! The wretched miser not only watches his daughter as if she were a bag of gold, and is not disposed to give her to anybody; but he has also an ancient and profound resentment against my father, because he freed some unhappy debtors from his fangs. I tell you, that if he discovers that his daughter loves me, he will keep her locked up in an iron chest in that cellar of his where he keeps his hard cash. I don't know what would happen if my father came to know of it. My flesh creeps just to think of it. The worst nightmare which disturbs my slumbers is that which shows me the moment when señor my father and señora my mother learn of my great love for Mariquilla. A son of Don José de Montoria enamoured of a daughter of Candiola, a young man who is formally destined to be a bishop,--a bishop, Gabriel! I am going to be a bishop, in the minds of my parents!" Saying this, Augustine dashed his head against the sacred wall on which we were leaning. "And do you think you will go on loving Mariquilla?" "Don't ask me that!" he replied with energy. "Did you see her? If you saw her, how can you ask me if I will go on loving her? Her father and mine would rather see me dead than married to her. A bishop, Gabriel, they wish me to be a bishop! Think of being a bishop and loving Mariquilla for all of my life, here and hereafter, think of that and pity me!" "But God opens unknown ways," I said. "It is true, and sometimes my faith is boundless. Who knows what to-morrow will bring forth? God and the Virgin shall guide me henceforth." "Are you devoted to this Virgin?" "Yes. My mother places candles before the one we have in our house, that I may not fall in battle; and I say to her 'Sovereign Lady, may this offering also serve to remind you that I cannot cease from loving the daughter of Candiola.'" We were in the nave upon which opened the chapel del Pilar. There is here an aperture in the wall, by which the devout, descending two or three steps, approach to kiss the pedestal which sustains the revered image. Augustine kissed the red marble. I kissed it also; then we left the church to go to our abode. CHAPTER VIII The following day, the twenty-second, Palafox said to the messenger who came under a flag of truce from Moncey to propose terms of surrender. "_I do not know how to surrender. After death, we will talk about that._" He followed this with a long and eloquent article which was published in the "Gazette;" but, according to general opinion, neither that document nor any of the proclamations which appeared with the signature of the commanding general were his own composition, but that of his friend, Basilio Boggiero, a man of great judgment, who was often seen in situations of danger, in the company of patriots and military leaders.