“I will grant you absolution, and award you no worse penance than an embrace, ma fille cherie,” said the abbe, who had returned to the veranda just in time to overhear Angela’s confession.  “I rejoice in your happiness, mignonne.  To-day you make two men happy—­your lover and myself.  You have lightened my mind of the cares which threatened to darken my closing days.  The thought of leaving you without a protector and Quipai without a chief was a sore trouble.  Your husband will be both.  Like Moses, I have seen the Promised Land, and I shall be content.”

“Talk not of dying, dear father or you will make me sad,” said Angela, putting her arms round his neck.

“There are worse things than dying, my child.  But you are quite right; this is no time for melancholy forebodings.  Let us be happy while we may; and since I came to Quipai, sixty years ago, I have had no happier day than this.”

As the only law at Quipai was the abbe’s will, and we had neither settlements to make, trousseaux to prepare, nor house to get ready (the abbe’s house being big enough for us all), there was no reason why our wedding should be delayed, and the week after Angela and I had plighted our troth, we were married at the church of San Cristobal.

The abbe’s wedding-present to Angela was a gold cross studded with large uncut diamonds.  Where he got them I had no idea, but I heard afterward—­and something more.

All this time nothing, save vague generalities, had passed between us on the subject of religion—­rather to my surprise, for priests are not wont to ignore so completely their raison d’etre, but I subsequently found that Balthazar, albeit a devout Christian, was no bigot.  Either his early training, his long isolation from ecclesiastical influence, or his communings with Nature had broadened his horizon and spiritualized his beliefs.  Dogma sat lightly on him, and he construed the apostolic exhortations to charity in their widest sense.  But these views were reserved for Angela and myself.  With his flock he was the Roman ecclesiastic—­a sovereign pontiff—­whom they must obey in this world on pain of being damned in the next.  For he held that the only ways of successfully ruling semi-civilized races are by physical force, personal influence, or their fear of the unseen and the unknown.  At the outset Balthazar, having no physical force at his command, had to trust altogether to personal influence, which, being now re-enforced by the highest religious sanctions, made his power literally absolute.  Albeit Quipai possessed neither soldiers, constables, nor prison, his authority was never questioned; he was as implicitly obeyed as a general at the head of an army in the field.

I have spoken of the abbe’s communings with Nature.  I ought rather to have said his searchings into her mysteries; for he was a shrewd philosopher and keen observer, and despite the disadvantages under which he labored, the scarcity of his books, and the rudeness of his instruments, he had acquired during his long life a vast fund of curious knowledge which he placed unreservedly at my disposal.  I became his pupil, and it was he who first kindled in my breast that love of science which for nearly three-score years I have lived only to gratify.