of your ancestors as on account of your father's
enemies. The continual changes, the corruption in the higher circles,
the favoritism, the low cost and the shortness of the journey, are to
blame for it all. The worst characters of the Peninsula come here,
and even if a good man does come, the country soon ruins him. So it
was that your father had a number of enemies among the curates and
other Spaniards."

Here he hesitated for a while. "Some months after your departure the
troubles with Padre Damaso began, but I am unable to explain the real
cause of them. Fray Damaso accused him of not coming to confession,
although he had not done so formerly and they had nevertheless been
good friends, as you may still remember. Moreover, Don Rafael was a
very upright man, more so than many of those who regularly attend
confession and than the confessors themselves. He had framed for
himself a rigid morality and often said to me, when he talked of
these troubles, 'Senor Guevara, do you believe that God will pardon
any crime, a murder for instance, solely by a man's telling it to a
priest--a man after all and one whose duty it is to keep quiet about
it--by his fearing that he will roast in hell as a penance--by being
cowardly and certainly shameless into the bargain? I have another
conception of God,' he used to say, 'for in my opinion one evil does
not correct another, nor is a crime to be expiated by vain lamentings
or by giving alms to the Church. Take this example: if I have killed
the father of a family, if I have made of a woman a sorrowing widow
and destitute orphans of some happy children, have I satisfied eternal
Justice by letting myself be hanged, or by entrusting my secret to one
who is obliged to guard it for me, or by giving alms to priests who
are least in need of them, or by buying indulgences and lamenting
night and day? What of the widow and the orphans? My conscience
tells me that I should try to take the place of him whom I killed,
that I should dedicate my whole life to the welfare of the family
whose misfortunes I caused. But even so, who can replace the love of
a husband and a father?' Thus your father reasoned and by this strict
standard of conduct regulated all his actions, so that it can be said
that he never injured anybody. On the contrary, he endeavored by his
good deeds to wipe out some injustices which he said your ancestors
had committed. But to get back to his troubles with the curate--these
took on