f mine, resembling a little the officious prevision of the
fathers of former times who married their children without consulting
their wishes in the matter, and making generally inconsiderate and
unwise matches, does not seem absurd to you. God grant that this may be,
as it seems to promise, one of the happiest. It is true that you have
never seen your cousin, but we are both aware of her virtue, of her
discretion, of her modest and noble simplicity. That nothing may be
wanting, she is even beautiful. My opinion is," he added gayly, "that
you should at once start for that out-of-the-way episcopal city, that
Urbs Augusta, and there, in the presence of my sister and her charming
Rosarito, decide whether the latter is to be something more to me or
not, than my niece."

Pepe took up the letter again and read it through carefully. His
countenance expressed neither joy nor sorrow. He might have been
examining some plan for the junction of two railroads.

"In truth," said Don Juan, "in that remote Orbajosa, where, by the way,
you have some land that you might take a look at now, life passes with
the tranquillity and the sweetness of an idyl. What patriarchal customs!
What noble simplicity! What rural and Virgilian peace! If, instead of
being a mathematician, you were a Latinist, you would repeat, as you
enter it, the _ergo tua rura manebunt_. What an admirable place in which
to commune with one's own soul and to prepare one's self for good works.
There all is kindness and goodness; there the deceit and hypocrisy of
our great cities are unknown; there the holy inclinations which the
turmoil of modern life stifles spring into being again; there dormant
faith reawakens and one feels within the breast an impulse, vague but
keen, like the impatience of youth, that from the depths of the soul
cries out: 'I wish to live!'"

A few days after this conference Pepe left Puerto Real. He had refused,
some months before, a commission from the government to survey, in its
mineralogical aspects, the basin of the River Nahara, in the valley
of Orbajosa; but the plans to which the conference above recorded gave
rise, caused him to say to himself: "It will be as well to make use of
the time. Heaven only knows how long this courtship may last, or what
hours of weariness it may bring with it." He went, then, to Madrid,
solicited the commission to explore the basin of the Nahara, which he
obtained without difficulty, although he did not belong of