“You are soaring as the eagle, which is a royal bird; you pronounce your sentences like a judge of the Audiencia, and make yourself believe that you are wiser than the Regency. But you are greatly out of the way, my son. It ill becomes you to go before God in casting out your sister; your own mother’s daughter, when her misfortune was partly your fault.” “Mine, sir?” “Yes, yours; for you threw off the burden like an untamed colt; cast behind you the trust you received from your mother, and, without 198 commending yourself either to God or the devil, shouldered your gun and made off; knowing that for six years, walled up in a uniform, you must lose sight of your charge; knowing, besides, that you were leaving her in a house where wickedness was well established. And so what happened, happened. The past is past, and can’t be mended now; but after this, do you think it is right, Christian, that your sister should have no one to turn to when she leaves her sinful life?” “She ought to have remembered in time that every uphill has its down.” “But, my son, is not this to ‘See the ulcer, see the woe: Shut the purse, and naught bestow’? This is to have bowels of a pagan toward a poor creature that they pushed and pushed--a child that did not know what they were doing.” “Uncle Bartolo, ignorance does not take away sin.” “Do you think, if you had had your evil hour--suppose it for instance, only--and had robbed or done something that had dishonored you, and had gone to your sister, that she would refuse to own you? I’ll be bound she wouldn’t!” “Well, I should have acted badly. But the case is impossible, for it would have been my care not to put myself in her way. ‘He that touches his own with his leprosy, gives it to them, and does not cure himself.’” “Lucas, my son, the sentence says, ‘Act with good intention, and not with passion!’” “And the proverb says that ‘blood boils without fire,’ Uncle Bartolo.” “Lucas, for the love of the Blessed Virgin! How can he who shows no mercy hope for the mercy of God? Do a good deed, and, when you lie down, though it be upon a mattress of rushes, you will sleep without bad dreams, and as sweetly as if it were a bed of feathers!” “You are wasting words, Uncle Bartolo. Even if I am condemned for it, I will not hear that vile thing spoken of, and so--stop!” “Go to, then, _Cain_!” exclaimed the good old man as he rose to leave, “and God set a mark on you as he did on the cruel brother that he cursed! I’d rather have her, with her sin and her repentance, than you, with your virtue and your pride.” To paint the grief of the wretched Lucia when Uncle Bartolo informed her of the no-result of his mission, would be impossible.