The Bridge of San Luis Rey Page #8

...even in countries where the Inquisition

can read the very thoughts in our eyes.

Spare us your thesis on the merits

of the Inquisition, if you would.

You are here

to implement our statutes...

...not to praise them.

I shall spare you

brother Juniper's generalizations...

...save to say that he thought he saw...

...in the same accident

the wicked visited by destruction...

...and the good called early to Heaven.

He saw pride and wealth confounded

as an object lesson to the world...

...while at the same time

poverty and humility...

...were crowned for the edification

of the forlorn.

But brother Juniper

wasrt satisfied with his reasons.

The book, being done, must be judged

and pronounced heretical...

...and with that, undone.

I submit, Your Excellency...

...to the Inquisition

that brother Juniper here...

...has been put to use

to do the devil's work...

...that this testament,

this tome of his...

...is heretical, and should be

pronounced for the evil that it does...

...as the work of the devil.

Therefore, any copies

still in existence...

...should be burned at dawn...

...along with their author.

Your submission is accepted.

Prepare the stake for

tomorrow morning at daybreak.

Is this God's design?

The pattern that escaped me

in the lives of those five who died...

...eludes me.

Even now.

Will you do me

a kindness, my daughter?

Will you let me

show you my work?

God forgive me,

for I did not know...

...how to love.

I never knew any love,

save love as passion.

Forgive me.

My husband,

el Conde D'Abuirre...

...it is he who has sent

and charged me to command to you...

...all that has been taken

and confiscated...

...from the Franciscans

in the name of the Inquisition.

He does not wish to remove

this wealth back to Spain...

...but would rather would prefer

that you should have it...

...to enance your work here.

If you will excuse me...

...I will go into this room

of the very sick and dying...

...and say a few words for them

to think on when they cannot sleep.

Even now, almost no one remembers

Esteban and Pepita but myself.

Sister Camilla, La Perichole,

remembers her Uncle Pio and her son...

...and this woman, her mother.

Soon we shall all die...

...and all memory of those five

will have left the earth.

And yourselves

shall be loved for a while...

...and then forgotten.

But that love will have been enough.

All those impulses of love

return to the love that made them.

Even memory's not necessary

for love.

There's a land of the living

and a land of the dead...

...and the bridge is love...

...the only survivor.

The only meaning.

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