Fray Damaso accused him of not coming to confession, although he had not done so formerly and they had nevertheless been good friends, as you may still remember.

Moreover, Don Rafael was a very upright man, more so than many of those who regularly attend confession and than the confessors themselves.

He had framed for himself a rigid morality and often said to me, when he talked of these troubles, 'Senor Guevara, do you believe that God will pardon any crime, a murder for instance, solely by a man's telling it to a priest--a man after all and one whose duty it is to keep quiet about it--by his fearing that he will roast in hell as a penance--by being cowardly and certainly shameless into the bargain?
I have another conception of God,' he used to say, 'for in my opinion one evil does not correct another, nor is a crime to be expiated by vain lamentings or by giving alms to the Church.

Take this example: if I have killed the father of a family, if I have made of a woman a sorrowing widow and destitute orphans of some happy children, have I satisfied eternal Justice by letting myself be hanged, or by entrusting my secret to one who is obliged to guard it for me, or by giving alms to priests who are least in need of them, or by buying indulgences and lamenting night and day?
What of the widow and the orphans?
My conscience tells me that I should try to take the place of him whom I killed, that I should dedicate my whole life to the welfare of the family whose misfortunes I caused.

But even so, who can replace the love of a husband and a father ?' Thus your father reasoned and by this strict standard of conduct regulated all his actions, so that it can be said that he never injured anybody.