“Reverend Father,” said the terrified Fernan, “the Catholic church has not a more devoted and unworthy professor on earth than myself.”
“I do believe the latter,” said the priest. “You admit all that the holy church teaches to be irrefragably true?”
“To be sure I do.”
“Then you must admit that the islands in the Indian seas are particularly under the influence of the devil?”
“I do, if the church requires me so to believe.”
“And that he possessed a peculiar sway over that island where your sister was lost in her infancy?”
“I do not see how that follows,” said Fernan, making a sudden stand at this premise of the sorites.
“Not see how that follows!” repeated Father Jose, crossing himself;
“Excaecavit oculos eorum ne viderent.
But why waste I my Latin and logic on thee, who art incapable of both? Mark me, I will use but one unanswerable argument, the which whoso gainsayeth is a—gainsayer—that’s all. The Inquisition at Goa knows the truth of what I have asserted, and who will dare deny it now?”
“Not I!—not I!” exclaimed Doña Clara; “nor, I am sure, will this stubborn boy. Son, I adjure you, make haste to believe what the reverend Father has told you.”
“I am believing as fast as I can,” answered Don Fernan, in the tone of one who is reluctantly swallowing a distasteful mess; “but my faith will be choked if you don’t allow it time to swallow. As for digestion,” he muttered, “let that come when it pleases God.”
“Daughter,” said the priest, who well knew the mollia tempora fandi, and saw that the sullen and angry Fernan could not well bear more at present; “daughter, it is enough—we must lead with gentleness those whose steps find stumbling-blocks in the paths of grace. Pray with me, daughter, that your son’s eyes may yet be opened to the glory and felicity of his sister’s vocation to a state where the exhaustless copiousness of divine benignity places the happy inmates above all those mean and mundane anxieties, those petty and local wants, which—Ah!—hem—verily I feel some of those wants myself at this moment. I am hoarse with speaking; and the intense heat of this night hath so exhausted my strength, that methinks the wing of a partridge would be no unseasonable refreshment.”
At a sign from Doña Clara, a salver with wine appeared, and a partridge that might have provoked the French prelate to renew his meal once more, spite of his horror of toujours perdrix. “See, daughter, see how much I am exhausted in this distressing controversy—well may I say, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.”
“Then you and the zeal of the house will soon be quit,” muttered Fernan as he retired. And drawing the folds of his mantle over his shoulder, he threw a glance of wonder at the happy facility with which the priest discussed the wings and breast of his favourite bird—whispering alternately words of admonition to Doña Clara, and muttering something about the omission of pimento and lemon.
“Father,” said Don Fernan, stalking back from the door, and fronting the priest—“Father, I have a favour to ask of you.”
“Glad, were it in my power to comply with it,” said Father Jose, turning over the skeleton of the fowl; “but you see here is only the thigh, and that somewhat bare.”
“It is not of that I speak or think, reverend Father,” said Fernan, with a smile; “I have but to request, that you will not renew the subject of my sister’s vocation till the return of my father.”
“Certainly not, son, certainly not. Ah! you know the time to ask a favour—you know I never could refuse you at a moment like this, when my heart is warmed, and softened, and expanded, by—by—by the evidences of your contrition and humiliation, and all that your devout mother, and your zealous spiritual friend, could hope or wish for. In truth, it overcomes me—these tears—I do not often weep but on occasions like these, and then I weep abundantly, and am compelled to recruit my lack of moisture thus.”
“Fetch more wine,” said Doña Clara.—The order was obeyed.
“Good night, Father,” said Don Fernan.
“The saints watch round you, my son! Oh I am exhausted!—I sink in this struggle! The night is hot, and requires wine to slake my thirst—and wine is a provocative, and requires food to take away its deleterious and damnable qualities—and food, especially partridge, which is a hot and stimulative nutritive, requires drink again to absorb or neutralize its exciting qualities. Observe me, Doña Clara—I speak as to the learned. There is stimulation, and there is absorption; the causes of which are manifold, and the effects such as—I am not bound to tell you at present.”
“Reverend Father,” said the admiring Doña Clara, not guessing, in the least, from what source all this eloquence flowed, “I trespassed on your time merely to ask a favour also.”
“Ask and ’tis granted,” said Father Jose, with a protrusion of his foot as proud as that of Sixtus himself.
“It is merely to know, will not all the inhabitants of those accursed Indian isles be damned everlastingly?”
“Damned everlastingly, and without doubt,” returned the priest.
“Now my mind is easy,” rejoined the lady, “and I shall sleep in peace tonight.”
Sleep, however, did not visit her so soon as she expected, for an hour after she knocked at Father Jose’s door, repeating, “Damned to all eternity, Father, did you not say?”
“Be damned to all eternity!” said the priest, tossing on his feverish bed, and dreaming, in the intervals of his troubled sleep, of Don Fernan coming to confession with a drawn sword, and Doña Clara with a bottle of Xeres in her hand, which she swallowed at a draught, while his parched lips were gaping for a drop in vain—and of the Inquisition being established in an island off the coast of Bengal, and a huge partridge seated with a cap on at the end of a table covered with black, as chief Inquisitor—and various and
