ed. The
placid receptiveness of the Rincon mind, which for more than three
hundred years had normally performed its absorptive functions and
imbibed the doctrines of its accepted and established human
authorities, without a trace of the heresy of suspecting their
genuineness, had at last experienced a reversal. True, the boy had
been born in the early hours of nineteenth century doubt and religious
skepticism. The so-called scientific spirit, buried for ages beneath
the _debris_ of human conjecture, was painfully emerging and preening
its wings for flight. The "higher criticism" was nascent, and ancient
traditions were already beginning to totter on the foundations which
the Fathers had set. But Spain, close wrapped in mediaeval dreams, had
suffered no taint of "modernism." The portals of her mind were well
guarded against the entrance of radical thought, and her dreamers were
yet lulled into lethargic adherence to outworn beliefs and musty
creeds by the mesmerism of priestly tradition. The peculiar cast of
mind of the boy Jose was not the product of influences from without,
but was rather an exemplification of the human mind's reversion to
type, wherein the narrow and bigoted mentality of many generations had
expanded once more into the breadth of scope and untrammeled freedom
of an ancient progenitor.

As the boy grew older his ability to absorb learning increased
astonishingly. His power of analysis, his keen perception and
retentive memory soon advanced him beyond the youths of his own age,
and forced him to seek outside the pale of the schoolroom for the
means to satisfy his hunger for knowledge. He early began to haunt the
bookstalls of Seville, and day after day would stand for hours
searching the treasures which he found there, and mulling over books
which all too frequently were _anathema_ to the orthodox. Often the
owner of one of these shops, who knew the lad's parents, and whose
interest had been stirred by his passion for reading, would let him
take one or more of the coveted volumes home over night, for the
slender family purse would not permit him to purchase what his heart
craved. Then came feasts for his famished little soul which often
lasted until daybreak.

It happened one evening that, when he crept off to his little room to
peer into one of these borrowed treasures, his father followed him.
Pushing the chamber door softly open the parent found the boy propped
against his pillow in bed, absorbed