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 contra.”

“Take some more salad, Senor Penitentiary,” said Dona Perfecta; “it is just as you like it—­with a good deal of mustard.”

Pepe Rey was not fond of engaging in useless discussions; he was not a pedant, nor did he desire to make a display of his learning, and still less did he wish to do so in the presence of women, and in a private re-union; but the importunate and aggressive verbosity of the canon required, in his opinion, a corrective.  To flatter his vanity by agreeing with his views would, he thought, be a bad way to give it to him, and he determined therefore to express only such opinions as should be most directly opposed to those of the sarcastic Penitentiary and most offensive to him.

“So you wish to amuse yourself at my expense,” he said to himself.  “Wait, and you will see what a fine dance I will lead you.”

Then he said aloud: 

“All that the Senor Penitentiary has said ironically is the truth.  But it is not our fault if science overturns day after day the vain idols of the past:  its superstitions, its sophisms, its innumerable fables—­beautiful, some of them, ridiculous others—­for in the vineyard of the Lord grow both good fruit and bad.  The world of illusions, which is, as we might say, a second world, is tumbling about us in ruins.  Mysticism in religion, routine in science, mannerism in art, are falling, as the Pagan gods fell, amid jests.  Farewell, foolish dreams! the human race is awakening and its eyes behold the light.  Its vain sentimentalism, its mysticism, its fevers, its hallucination, its delirium are passing away, and