MANUEL MANDUJANO PACED through the galleries of the Palacio Episcopal. His footsteps rang out sharply against the tiles and faded away, mingling with the house’s other sounds: the daily chores in the kitchen, barns and stables, the banging of the pail hitting the sides of the well, the strident cry of the guet, a wading bird that, according to a popular superstition, announced the arrival of a visitor. All the racket of an awakening morning.

With one hand the young priest nervously buttoned and unbuttoned his cassock, with the other he held his breviary open in front of him though he rarely focused his gaze on it. Manuel’s mind was wandering, no matter how he tried to concentrate on prayer. He hadn’t slept the previous night, and this morning his head ached and there was a bad taste in his mouth. What was more, the sudden summons from His Excellency at so untimely an hour heralded some news. He was worried. And the bishop was making him wait.

Not for long. The great front door creaked as it opened. Don Alfonso Cañaveral came in, still wearing the vestments he had donned to say mass.

Manuel closed the book and went to open the latch on the screen door that separated the entrance hall from the courtyard. The bishop thanked him for his solicitude with a tired smile.

“Good day, hijo.”

“Did you have a good night, Monseñor?”

“Tolerable. We old men don’t sleep much. Getting up so early must still be a mortification for you, though.”

“Teachers such as yourself taught me to mortify myself.” The bishop responded to this flattery with a slight shrug, “Tell them to set out breakfast. I’ll change clothes.” Without waiting for the young man’s assent (he knew him to be at his disposition, like all of his subordinates), Don Alfonso went to his rooms. He had been fond of Manuel for many years now. There is always something moving about adolescents; they are still intact and it is possible—why not?—that something could be realized in them which their elders did not achieve. The bishop was well acquainted with the boy’s aspirations and with the ambition that had sustained him during his years as a seminarist. Now that he was about to put a brake on his momentum and cause the direction of his life to take a sudden swerve, he wondered if he wasn’t doing so with an obscure complacence.

“As if I were envious. . . . He has what I lack: character. I’ve always been too serene, I’ve never caused any disturbances. I always believed this to be my principal virtue. So why, now, am I having these doubts? No one can do anything about it at this point. And what am I accusing myself of, ultimately? Of not having done what I could do? No one does. No one knows what he is capable of doing.”