inner fire; and that tall, angular figure that seemed taller than ever
as young Brull evoked it from the hazes of his early years. Perhaps the
Doctor had been a good fellow, who knows! At any rate Rafael thought so,
as his mind now reverted to that distant period of his life; but he
could still remember the fright he had felt as a child, when once in a
narrow street he met the terrible Doctor, who had looked at him through
those glowing pupils and caressed his cheeks gently and kindly with a
hand that seemed to the youngster as hot as a live coal! He had fled in
terror, as almost all good boys did when the Doctor petted them.

What a horrible reputation Doctor Moreno had! The curates of the town
spoke of him in terms of hair-raising horror. An infidel! A man cut off
from Mother Church! Nobody knew for certain just what high authority had
excommunicated him, but he was, no doubt, outside the pale of decent,
Christian folks. Proof of that there was, a-plenty. His whole attic was
filled with mysterious books in foreign languages, all containing
horrible doctrines against God and the authority of His representatives
on earth. He defended a certain fellow by the name of Darwin, who
claimed than men were related to monkeys, a view that gave much
amusement to the indignant doña Bernarda, who repeated all the jokes on
the crazy notion her favorite preacher cracked of a Sunday in the
pulpit. And such a sorcerer! Hardly a disease could resist Doctor
Moreno. He worked wonders in the suburbs, among the lower scum; and
those laborers adored him with as much fear as affection. He succeeded
with people who had been given up by the older doctors, wiseacres in
long frocks and with gold-headed canes, who trusted more in God than in
science, as Rafael's mother would say in praise of them. That devil of a
physician used new and unheard-of treatments he learned from atheistic
reviews and suspicious books he imported from abroad. His competitors
grumbled also because the Doctor had a mania for treating poor folk