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“You belie yourself,” she said, after a pause. “It is not merely the bitterness of your heart which has made you a patriot. The needs, the wrongs, the aspirations of the time have aroused you. Had Herlinda been yours, you still must have listened to those voices. With such men as you at his call, Comonfort should not falter. The cause he espoused must triumph.”

“Humph!” muttered Vicente, doubtfully, while Feliz, with a sudden qualm at her outspoken approbation of measures subversive of an authority that her training had made her believe sanctioned by heaven cried:—

“Ave Maria Santisima! what have I said? In blaming, in casting reproach upon the clergy, am I not casting mud upon our Holy Mother the Church?”

“Feliz!” cried Vicente, impatiently, “that question too asks Comonfort. Such irrational fears as these are the real foes of progress; and so deeply are old prejudices and superstitions rooted, that they find a place in every heart; no matter how powerful the intellect, how clear the comprehension of the political situation, how scrupulous or unscrupulous the conscience, the same ghostly fears hang over all. What spells have those monks with their oppressions and their shameless lives thrown over us that we have been wax in their hands? Think of your own father,—a man of parts, generous, lofty-minded, but a fanatic. He shunned the monté table, the bull-fight, and all such costly sports as the hacenderos love; he almost lived in the Church. But that could not keep misfortune from his door: his cattle died; his horses were driven away in the revolution; his fields were devastated; and he was forced to borrow money on his lands. And to whom should he look but the clergy,—who so eager to lend, who so suave and kind as they? And when he was in the snare, who so pitiless in winding it around and about him, strangling, withering his life?”