Manuela will bring your clothes when they are
dried and mended; meantime, shift for yourself in Pepito's serape and
calzas. I will betake me to the Comandante and the Alcalde, to learn the
dispositions of your party, when the ship will sail, and if your absence
is suspected. Peace be with you, son! Manuela, attend to the caballero,
and see you chatter not."
Without doubting the substantial truth of his guest's story, the good
Padre Esteban was not unwilling to have it corroborated by such details
as he thought he could collect among the Excelsior's passengers. His own
experience in the confessional had taught him the unreliability of
human evidence, and the vagaries of both conscientious and unconscious
suppression. That a young, good-looking, and accomplished caballero
should have been the victim of not one, but even many, erotic episodes,
did not strike the holy father as being peculiar; but that he should
have been brought by a solitary unfortunate attachment to despair
and renunciation of the world appeared to him marvelous. He was not
unfamiliar with the remorse of certain gallants for peccadillos with
other men's wives; but this Americano's self-abasement for the sins
of his own wife--as he foolishly claimed her to be--whom he hated and
despised, struck Father Esteban as a miracle open to suspicion.
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