o.
"We take notice of everything our neighbors do, and with such a system
of vigilance public morals are maintained at a proper height. Believe
me, my friend, believe me,--and I do not say this to mortify you,--you
are the first gentleman of your position who, in the light of day--the
first, yes, senor--_Trojoe qui primus ab oris_."

And bursting into a laugh, he clapped the engineer on the back in token
of amity and good-will.

"How grateful I ought to be," said the young man, concealing his anger
under the sarcastic words which he thought the most suitable to answer
the covert irony of his interlocutors, "to meet with so much generosity
and tolerance, when my criminal conduct would deserve--"

"What! Is a person of one's own blood, one who bears one's name," said
Dona Perfecta, "to be treated like a stranger? You are my nephew, you
are the son of the best and the most virtuous of men, of my dear brother
Juan, and that is sufficient. Yesterday afternoon the secretary of the
bishop came here to tell me that his lordship is greatly displeased
because I have you in my house."

"And that too?" murmured the canon.

"And that too. I said that in spite of the respect which I owe the
bishop, and the affection and reverence which I bear him, my nephew is
my nephew, and I cannot turn him out of my house."

"This is another singularity which I find in this place," said Pepe Rey,
pale with anger. "Here, apparently, the bishop governs other people's
houses."

"He is a saint. He is so fond of me that he imagines--he imagines that
you are going to contaminate us with your atheism, your disregard for
public opinion, your strange ideas. I have told him repeatedly that, at
bottom, you are an excellent young man."

"Some concession must always be made to superior talent," observed Don
Inocencio.

"And this morning, when I was at the Cirujedas'--oh, you cannot imagine
in what a state they had my head! Was it true that you had come to
pull down the cathedral; that you were commissioned by the English
Protestants to go preaching heresy throughout Spain; that you spent the
whole night gambling in the Casino; that you were drunk in the streets?
'But, senoras,' I said to them, 'would you have me send my nephew to
the hotel?' Besides, they are wrong about the drunkenness, and as for
gambling--I have never yet heard that you gambled."

Pepe Rey found himself in that state of mind in which the calmest man is
seized by a sudden rage,