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Updated: May 26, 2025
The door opened softly and a tall, black-robed figure was silhouetted for a moment against the daylight before the door closed again. The black figure crossed the room and sat down by the bed, silent save for a faint rustle. Although he could not see the face, Ramon knew that this was the priest, Father Lugaria.
The strong, cold grip of the priest held Ramon with increasing power. The monotonous, hypnotic voice went on and on, becoming ever more eloquent and confident. Father Lugaria was a man of imagination, and the special home of his imagination was hell.
The chief result of these labours on behalf of his soul had been to turn him strongly against the priest who instigated them. Father Lugaria seemed all kindness and sympathy now. He sat close beside Ramon and took his hand. Ramon could smell the good wine on the man’s breath, and could see faintly the brightness of his eyes. The grip of the priest’s hand was strong, moist and surprisingly cold.
A Mass of impressive length had been spoken over it by Father Lugaria assisted by numerous priests and altar boys, and at the end of the ceremony the hundreds of friends and relatives of the Don, who filled the church, had lifted up their voices in one of the loudest and most prolonged choruses of wailing ever heard in that country, where wailing at a funeral is as much a matter of formal custom as is cheering at a political convention.
He knew that Father Lugaria had come to arrange for the mass over the body of Don Delcasar. He disliked Father Lugaria, and knew that the Father disliked him. This mutual antipathy was due to the fact that Ramon seldom went to Church. There were others of his generation who showed the same indifference toward religion, and this defection of youth was a thing which the Priests bitterly contested.
Were her mother and brother keeping his message from her? Or had something turned her against him? He remembered with a keen pang of anxiety, for the first time, the insinuations of Father Lugaria. Could that miserable rumour have reached her? He had no idea how she would have taken it if it had.
Ramon was perfectly willing to make a polite compromise with them. If Father Lugaria had been satisfied with an occasional appearance at early mass, a perfunctory confession now and then, the two might have been friends. But the Priest made Ramon a special object of his attention.
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