"Esteemed Don Jose."

"My dearest Don Jose."

"My respected friend, Don Jose."

Hearing these honeyed and insinuating preliminaries, Pepe Rey exhaled a
deep sigh and gave himself up. He gave himself up, soul and body, to the
executioners, who brandished horrible leaves of stamped paper while the
victim, raising his eyes to heaven with a look of Christian meekness,
murmured:

"Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"



CHAPTER XII

HERE WAS TROY

Love, friendship, a wholesome moral atmosphere, spiritual light,
sympathy, an easy interchange of ideas and feelings, these were what
Pepe Rey's nature imperatively demanded. Deprived of them, the darkness
that shrouded his soul grew deeper, and his inward gloom imparted a
tinge of bitterness and discontent to his manner. On the day following
the scenes described in the last chapter, what vexed him more than any
thing was the already prolonged and mysterious seclusion of his cousin,
accounted for at first by a trifling indisposition and then by caprices
and nervous feelings difficult of explanation.