Our hero smiled at this inopportune pedantry, and he felt almost tempted to encourage the young man to continue in this path of childish vanity; but, judging it more prudent to avoid intimacy, either with the nephew or the uncle, he answered simply:
"I can think nothing at all about the doctrines of Darwin, for I know scarcely any thing about him. My professional labors have not permitted me to devote much of my time to those studies."
"Well," said the canon, laughing, "it all reduces itself to this, that we are descended from monkeys. If he had said that only in the case of certain people I know, he would have been right."
"The theory of natural selection," said Jacinto emphatically, "has, they say, a great many partisans in Germany."
"I do not doubt it," said the ecclesiastic. "In Germany they would have no reason to be sorry if that theory were true, as far as Bismarck is concerned."
Dona Perfecta and Senor Don Cayetano at this moment made their appearance.
"What a beautiful evening!" said the former. "Well, nephew, are you getting terribly bored?"
"I am not bored in the least," responded the young man.
"Don't try to deny it. Cayetano and I were speaking of that as we came along. You are bored, and you are trying to hide it. It is not every young man of the present day who would have the self-denial to spend his youth, like Jacinto, in a town where there are neither theatres, nor opera bouffe, nor dancers, nor philosophers, nor athenaeums, nor magazines, nor congresses, nor any other kind of diversions or entertainments."
"I am quite contented here," responded Pepe. "I was just now saying to Rosario that I find this city and this house so pleasant that I would like to live and die here."
Rosario turned very red and the others were silent. They all sat down in a summer-house, Jacinto hastening to take the seat on the left of the young girl.
"See here, nephew, I have a piece of advice to give you," said Dona Perfecta, smiling with that expression of kindness that seemed to emanate from her soul, like the aroma from the flower. "But don't imagine that I am either reproving you or giving you a lesson--you are not a child, and you will easily understand what I mean."
"Scold me, dear aunt, for no doubt I deserve it," replied Pepe, who was beginning to accustom himself to the kindnesses of his father's sister.
"No, it is only a piece of advice. These gentlemen, I am sure, will agree that I am in the right."
Rosario was listening with her whole soul.
"It is only this," continued Dona Perfecta, "that when you visit our beautiful cathedral again, you will endeavor to behave with a little more decorum while you are in it."
"Why, what have I done?"
"It does not surprise me that you are not yourself aware of your fault," said his aunt, with apparent good humor. "It is only natural; accustomed as you are to enter athenaeums and clubs, and academies and congresses without any ceremony, you think that you can enter a temple in which the Divine Majesty is in the same manner."
"But excuse me, senora," said Pepe gravely, "I entered the cathedral with the greatest decorum."
"But I am not scolding you, man; I am not scolding you. If you take it in that way I shall have to remain silent. Excuse my nephew, gentlemen.
A little carelessness, a little heedlessness on his part is not to be wondered at. How many years is it since you set foot in a sacred place before?"
"Senora, I assure you---- But, in short, let my religious ideas be what they may, I am in the habit of observing the utmost decorum in church."
"What I assure you is---- There, if you are going to be offended I won't go on. What I assure you is that a great many people noticed it this morning. The Senores de Gonzalez, Dona Robustiana, Serafinita--in short, when I tell you that you attracted the attention of the bishop---- His lordship complained to me about it this afternoon when I was at my cousin's. He told me that he did not order you to be put out of the church only because you were my nephew."
Rosario looked anxiously at her cousin, trying to read in his countenance, before he uttered it, the answer he would make to these charges.
"No doubt they mistook me for some one else."
"No, no! it was you. But there, don't get angry! We are talking here among friends and in confidence. It was you. I saw you myself."
"You saw me!"
"Just so. Will you deny that you went to look at the pictures, passing among a group of worshippers who were hearing mass? I assure you that my attention was so distracted by your comings and goings that--well, you must not do it again. Then you went into the chapel of San Gregorio. At the elevation of the Host at the high altar you did not even turn around to make a gesture of reverence. Afterward you traversed the whole length of the church, you went up to the tomb of the Adelantado, you touched the altar with your hands, then you passed a second time among a group of worshippers, attracting the notice of every one. All the girls looked at you, and you seemed pleased at disturbing so finely the devotions of those good people."
"Good Heavens! How many things I have done!" exclaimed Pepe, half angry, half amused. "I am a monster, it seems, without ever having suspected it."
"No, I am very well aware that you are a good boy," said Dona Perfecta, observing the canon's expression of unalterable gravity, which gave his face the appearance of a pasteboard mask. "But, my dear boy, between thinking things and showing them in that irreverent manner, there is a distance which a man of good sense and good breeding should never cross. I am well aware that your ideas are---- Now, don't get angry! If you get angry, I will be silent. I say that it is one thing to have certain ideas about religion and another thing to express them. I will take good care not to reproach you because you believe that God did not create us in his image and likeness, but that we are descended from the monkeys; nor because you deny the existence of the soul, asserting that it is a drug, like the little papers of rhubarb and magnesia that are sold at the apothecary's--"
