dwell a peace and a serenity as of
heaven. And yet it can not be said that there is anything of coldness in
their glance. Her eyes are full of charity and sweetness. They rest with
tenderness on a ray of light, on a flower, on the commonest object in
nature; but with greater tenderness still, with signs of a softer
feeling, more human and benign, do they rest on her fellow-man, without
his daring to imagine in that tranquil and serene glance, however young
or handsome or conceited he may be, anything more than charity and love
toward a fellow-man, or, at most, a friendly preference.

I sometimes wonder if all this can be studied, and if Pepita be, in
truth, an accomplished actress; but the acting would be so perfect, and
so purposeless the play, that it seems to me, after all, impossible that
this should be the case. Nature herself it is, then, who serves as
teacher and as type for that glance and for those eyes. First, Pepita
loved her mother; then circumstances led her to love Don Gumersindo
through duty, as the companion of her existence; and then, doubtless,
all passion that any earthly object could inspire was extinguished in
her breast, and she loved God, and loved material objects for the love
of God; and so arrived at last at a peaceful and even enviable
condition of spirit, in which, if there be anything to censure, it is
perhaps a certain vanity of which she is herself unconscious. It is very
convenient to love in this mild fashion, without allowing ourselves to
be disturbed by our feelings, to have no passion to combat, to make of
our love and affection for others an addition to, and, as it were, the
complement of self-love.

I ask myself at times if, when I censure this state of mind in Pepita,
it be not myself I censure. How do I know what passes in the soul of
this woman that I should censure her? Perhaps, in thinking I behold her
soul, it is my own soul that I behold. I never had nor have I now any
passion to conquer. All my virtuous inclinations, all my instincts, good
or bad, tend, thanks to your wise teachings, without obstacle or
impediment, to the furtherance of the one purpose. In the fulfillment of
this purpose, I should find not only my noble and disinterested desires,
but my selfish ones also, satisfied--my love of glory, my desire for
knowledge, my curiosity to see distant lands, my longing for name and
fame. All these are centered in the completing of the career upon which
I have entered. I f