"What a want of respect! What, don't you intend to eat any supper?"

"I intend to take supper."

For more than a quarter of an hour no one spoke. Don Cayetano, Dona
Perfecta, and Pepe Rey ate in silence. This was interrupted when Don
Inocencio entered the dining-room.

"How sorry I was for it, my dear Don Jose! Believe me, I was truly sorry
for it," he said, pressing the young man's hand and regarding him with a
look of compassion.

The engineer was so perplexed for a moment that he did not know what to
answer.

"I refer to the occurrence of this afternoon."

"Ah, yes!"

"To your expulsion from the sacred precincts of the cathedral."

"The bishop should consider well," said Pepe Rey, "before he turns a
Christian out of the church."

"That is very true. I don't know who can have put it into his lordship's
head that you are a man of very bad habits; I don't know who has told
him that you make a boast of your atheism everywhere; that you ridicule
sacred things and persons, and even that you are planning to pull down
the cathedral to build a large tar factory with the stones. I tried my
best to dissuade him, but his lordship is a little obstinate."