mouth a truce from eating in order to talk. "Stop there--don't come now
pretending modesty, Senor Don Jose; we are too well aware of your great
merit, of the high reputation you enjoy and the important part you play
wherever you are, for that. Men like you are not to be met with every
day. But now that I have extolled your merits in this way----"

He stopped to eat a mouthful, and when his tongue was once more at
liberty he continued thus:

"Now that I have extolled your merits in this way, permit me to express
a different opinion with the frankness which belongs to my character.
Yes, Senor Don Jose, yes, Senor Don Cayetano; yes, senora and senorita,
science, as the moderns study and propagate it, is the death of
sentiment and of every sweet illusion. Under its influence the life of
the spirit declines, every thing is reduced to fixed rules, and even the
sublime charms of nature disappear. Science destroys the marvellous in
the arts, as well as faith in the soul. Science says that every thing
is a lie, and would reduce every thing to figures and lines, not only
_maria ac terras_, where we are, but _coelumque profundum_, where God
is. The wonderful visions of the soul, its mystic raptures, even the
inspiration of the poets, are all a lie. The heart is a sponge; the
brain, a place for breeding maggots."

Every one laughed, while the canon took a draught of wine.

"Come, now, will Senor Don Jose deny," continued the ecclesiastic, "that
science, as it is taught and propagated to-day, is fast making of the
world and of the human race a great machine?"

"That depends," said Don Cayetano. "Every thing has its _pro_ and its