His existence was a cruel one, always a fugitive through the different countries of Europe, driven from one place to another by the vigilance of the police, thrown into prison, or expelled on the slightest suspicion. It was a return to the ancient persecution of the gipsies, the constant hunting of independent people, leading vagabond lives, of the Middle Ages. His illness and his desire for rest and peace made him return to Spain. Time had produced a certain amount of tolerance towards the exiles, and in Spain everything is soon forgotten, and though the authorities are harder and less scrupulous than in other countries, still they interfere less on account of their improvidence and the carelessness natural to the race.

Sick and without any work by which he could earn his living, precluded from seeking work among the printers, as his name was encircled by a halo which terrified the masters, Gabriel fell into such extreme poverty that the little help and succour his companions could afford were unable to relieve it, and he travelled from end to end of the Peninsula begging from his fellows and hiding from the police.

His spirit was broken, he was conquered, and he had no longer strength to continue the struggle. Nothing remained for him but to die, but merciful death came slowly to his call. He thought of his brother, the only affection remaining to him in the world; he remembered the quiet family in the Claverias, of which he had caught a glimpse on his last visit to the Cathedral, and he turned to seek them as his last hope.

On his return to Toledo, he found the happy family dissolved; misfortune had come even to that silent and stagnant corner.

But the Cathedral, insensible to all human vicissitudes was there, the same as ever, and to it he clung, hiding himself in its recesses, hoping to die there in peace, with no other hope but to be forgotten; dying before his proper time, tasting the bitter happiness of annihilation, leaving behind him at the door, like an animal who sheds its skin, all that rebellion which had drawn upon him the hatred of society.

His happiness was not to think, not to speak, to mould himself to that dead world; he would be among the living statues peopling the upper cloister, one more automaton; he would imitate those beings who seemed to have absorbed into themselves something of the austerity of the granite b.u.t.tresses, he would inhale like a healing balsam the scent of the rusty iron railings and the incense that spread through the church, the ancient perfume of the past centuries.

CHAPTER IV

On leaving the cloister in the mornings soon after daybreak, the first person Gabriel would see was Don Antolin, the "Silver Stick." This priest exercised an authority like that of Governor of the Cathedral, for all the lay servants were under his orders, and all the repairs of little importance were done under his supervision.

Down below, in the church, he watched the sacristans and the acolytes, careful that the canons and beneficiaries should have no cause of complaint in the services. Upstairs, in the cloister, he watched over the good behaviour and cleanliness of the families, being by the grace of the cardinal archbishop a sort of magistrate over that little town.

He occupied the best "habitacion" in the Claverias. At the great ceremonies he walked in front of the Chapter in his pluvial, carrying a silver stick nearly as tall as himself, making the tiles of the pavement re-echo with its blows. During High Ma.s.s and the choir in the evening he walked about the naves to check any irreverence on the part of the congregation or any inattention on that of the staff. At eight o'clock at night in the winter, and at nine in summer, he locked the door of the staircase leading to the upper cloister, putting the key in his pocket, and so all the people in the cloister remained quite isolated from the town. If now and again anyone was taken ill in the night, it was necessary to wake Don Antolin who, plunging his hand into the depths of his ca.s.sock, would produce his key, and deign to restore communication with the outer world.

He was about seventy years of age, small and wizened; age had scarcely tinged his shaven crown with grey, his forehead was broad and square, and rose straight beneath the silk cap he wore in winter. His features were rather drawn out, without a single wrinkle, and devoid of any expression that showed emotion, the jaw-bone narrow and sharp, and the eyes as inexpressive and motionless as the rest of the face, but with a cold, penetrating glance that was extremely disconcerting.

Gabriel had known him from his childhood; he was, to use his own expression, like a private soldier of the church, who by reason of his years and services had attained the rank of sergeant, but who could rise no further. When Luna first entered the seminary Don Antolin had just been ordained priest, and since then had pa.s.sed his life in the sacristy of the Primacy where he had begun as acolyte.

On account of his absolute and irrational faith and his unbending adhesion to the Church, the professors in the seminary had pushed him on in his career, in spite of his ignorance; he was a son of the soil, having been born in a village in the mountains round Toledo. The Holy Metropolitan Church was to him the second house of G.o.d in the world, only ranking after Saint Peter's in Rome, and all ecclesiastical learning was to him like rays emanating from the Divine wisdom, which blinded him, and were to be adored with the profound respect of ignorance.

He had that blessed and entire want of education so appreciated by the Church in former years. Gabriel felt sure that if Silver Stick had been born in the flourishing times of Catholicism he would have become a saint on dedicating himself to the spiritual life, or he would have played an excellent part in the Inquisition on the arrival of that militant society. Having come into the world at the wrong time, when faith was weakened and the Church could no longer impose its laws by violence, the good Don Antolin had remained hidden in the lower administration of the Cathedral, a.s.sisting the Canon Obrero in the division and a.s.signment of the money that the State allowed to the Primacy, giving long thought over the spending of each handful of farthings, endeavouring that the holy house, like the ruined families, should keep up its good outward appearance without revealing the poverty inside.

He had been promised several times a chaplaincy of nuns, but he was one of those faithful to the Cathedral, one of those quite in love with the great establishment. He was proud of the confidence that the Lord Archbishop placed in him, and of the frank friendliness with which the canons and beneficiaries spoke to him, and of his administrative conferences with the Obrero and the Treasurer. For this reason he could not repress a gesture of contemptuous superiority when having donned his pluvial, and clutching his silver stick, he advanced and spoke to any strange clergy from the neighbouring villages who visited the Primacy.

His faults were purely ecclesiastic; he saved in secret, with that cold, determined avarice so usual at all times in people attached to the Church. His greasy skull cap had been discarded as too old by its former owner, one of the canons; his ca.s.sock of a greenish black and his shoes had also belonged to some one of the beneficiaries; in the Claverias they all whispered of the monies h.o.a.rded by Don Antolin, and of his savings that were devoted to usury--loans that never went beyond two or three duros to the poorer servants of the church ground down by poverty, and which he recovered with interest at the beginning of every month when they were paid by the Canon Obrero. In him avarice and usury were joined to the most implicit honesty in regard to the interests of the church; he would punish relentlessly the smallest pilfering in the sacristy, and he made up his accounts for the Chapter with a minuteness that annoyed the Obrero. To every one his own, the church was poor and it would be a sin worthy of h.e.l.l to deprive her of a single farthing; he, as a good servant of G.o.d was poor also, and he thought he was doing no wrong in drawing a certain profit from the money he had gathered together by dint of bargaining, and by many painful privations in the midst of his poverty.

His niece, Mariquita, lived with him, an ugly woman with masculine features and a fresh colour, who had come from the mountains to look after her uncle, of whose riches and power in the Primacy all his relations and friends in the village talked a great deal. She rode roughshod over all the other women in the Claverias, taking undue advantage of Don Antolin's supreme authority. The more timid formed round her a circle of adulation, endeavouring to evoke her protection by cleaning her house and cooking for her, while Mariquita, dressed in the habit, and with her hair most carefully combed--the only luxury allowed by her uncle--loitered about the cloister hoping to meet there some cadet, or that some of the foreigners visiting the tower or the hall of the giants would take notice of her. She made sheep's eyes at every man; and she, so hard and imperious to all the women, would smile sweetly on all the bachelors living in the Claverias. The "Tato"

was a great friend of hers; he would come and visit her when her uncle was absent in order to air his graces as apprentice to a Torrero.

Gabriel, with his delicate looks, his mysterious self-containment, and the confused story of all his great travels about the world interested her not less; she would even speak with marked deference to the "Wooden Staff," as he was both a man and a widower, and, as the "Perrero" wickedly said, the very sight of a pair of trousers nearly drove the poor woman mad in that establishment where the greater part of the men wore petticoats.

Don Antolin had known Gabriel since his childhood, and spoke to him in the second person. The ignorant priest still retained the remembrance of Luna's great triumphs obtained in the seminary, and though he saw him so poor and ailing, taking refuge in the Cathedral almost on charity, his "tuteo" of superiority was not free from admiration.

Gabriel, on his side, feared Silver Stick, knowing his intolerant fanaticism. For this reason he confined himself to listening to him, careful in their conversation that not a single word should slip in which could betray his past. He would be the first to demand his expulsion from the Cathedral, where he wished to live unknown and silent.

On meeting each other in the cloister, the two men began with the same questions every morning:

"How is your health to-day?"

Gabriel showed himself an optimist. He knew that his illness had no remedy; still, that quiet life free from all emotions, and his brother's care, feeding him at all hours, like a bird and almost by force, had arrested the decay of his health. The course of the illness was slower--death was meeting with obstacles.

"I am better, Don Antolin. And yesterday, what sort of a day had you?"

Silver Stick plunged his dirty and h.o.r.n.y hands into the recesses of his ca.s.sock, and produced three greasy little ticket-books, one red, one green and the third white. He turned over the leaves, considering the counterfoils of those he had torn out; he took the most respectful care of these little books, as though they were far more important than the big music books in the choir.

"A very slack day, Gabriel! Being in the winter, so few people travel.

Our best time is in the spring, when they say the English come in by Gibraltar. They go first to the fair in Seville, and afterwards they come to have a look at our Cathedral. Besides, in milder weather the people come from Madrid, and although they grumble, the flies crowd to see the giants and the big bell, then I have to hurry with the tickets; one day, Gabriel, I took eighty duros. I remember it was at the last 'Corpus'; Mariquita had to sew up the pockets of my ca.s.sock, for they tore with the weight of so many pesetas; it was a blessing from the Lord."

He looked sadly at the little books, as though regretting that many days pa.s.sed in winter when he only tore out one or two leaves. This plan of selling entrance tickets to see the treasures and curiosities of the Cathedral filled all his thoughts. It was the salvation of the church, the modern proceeding to help it on, and he felt proud of fulfilling this function, which made him one of the most important persons in the life of the temple.

"You see these green tickets?" said he to Gabriel. "These are the dearest, they cost two pesetas each. With these you can see everything that is most important--the treasury, the chapel of the Virgin, and the Ochavo with its relics which are unique in the world. The other cathedrals are dirt compared with ours, and their relics lies, many of them invented on account of the envy that our Holy Metropolitan Church inspired. You see these red ones? These only cost six reals, and with them you can visit the sacristies, the wardrobe, the chapels of Don Alvaro de Luna and of Cardinal Albornoz, and the Chapter-house, with its two rows of portraits of the archbishops which are wonders. Who would not sc.r.a.pe their purse to see such prodigies?"

Afterwards he added, showing the last ticket book with contempt:

"These white ones are only worth two reals. They are to see the giants and the bells. We sell a great many of those to the lower cla.s.s who come to the Cathedral on feast days. Could you believe it, but many of the Protestants and Jews call this a robbery? The other day three soldiers came from the Academy with some country folks to see the giants, and they made quite a scandalous scene because we would not let them in for an old song. As if we were asking their charity! Many of them commit all sorts of nuisances about the Cathedral, just as if they were heretics, to say nothing of their drawing all sorts of abominable things and writing obscene words on the walls of the staircase. What shocking times, eh, Gabriel? What shocking times!"

Luna smiled silently, and Silver Stick, encouraged by what seemed to him acquiescence, went on with pride:

"And about these tickets, I invented them--that is to say, I am not really their inventor, but their introduction into this house is owing to me. You have travelled so much, and must have seen in those foreign countries that everything is shown on payment. The Lord Cardinal before this one, who is now in blessed glory (and he raised his hand to his skull cap) had also travelled a great deal--he was quite a 'modern,' and had he lived would have ended by putting electric light in the naves of the Cathedral. I heard him on one occasion speak of what was done in the museums and other interesting places in Rome and other towns; unrestricted entrance at all hours--on payment, an immense convenience to the public, who required to get no tickets beforehand to visit these things. So one day when the Obrero and I were biting our nails, seeing that this miserable thousand and odd pesetas (G.o.d forgive me!) that this unhappy State allows us, could not possibly suffice for our monthly expenses, I propounded my idea. Now, could you believe that some of the gentlemen in the Chapter opposed it? Some of the young canons spoke of the sellers in the Temple, you know who they were--certain Jews who drove the Lord out with scourges in their hand, for I know not what misdemeanours. The older ones said the Cathedral had always had its treasures open to all for centuries, and so it ought to go on. All the gentlemen were quite right, but you cannot do anything with a stupid canon, and at last the defunct cardinal, who is now in the enjoyment of G.o.d (another tug at his cap) interfered, and the Chapter were obliged, though with much grumbling, to accept the reform, and they ended by praising it. In all bitter there is a sweet! Do you know how much money I handed to the Lord Cardinal last year? More than three thousand duros, nearly as much as this sinful State allows us, and this without prejudice to anybody.

The public pays, they admire and they go; in any case they are only birds of pa.s.sage who come once, and when they go they do not return.

And what are four wretched pesetas, when for that money you can see one of the most glorious churches in Christendom, the cradle of Spanish Catholicism, the Cathedral of Toledo!"

The two men were walking in the cloister on the side warmed by the sun at that early hour, the cleric had put away his ticket books, and his eyes were fixed on Gabriel, who thought that to smile in his enigmatic way, which Don Antolin accepted as a.s.sent, quite met the situation, and it encouraged him to continue his confidences.

"Ay, Gabriel! You cannot think that my heavy duties can be fulfilled without hard work; the Cardinal trusts me, the Chapter distinguish me with their regard, and the Obrero has no other hope but in my a.s.sistance. Thanks to these tickets we can carry the Cathedral along, and keep up its ancient appearance of grandeur, so that the public will come and admire. But we are poorer than rats, and we must be thankful that even some crumbs are left us from the past. If the wind or the hail break some of our gla.s.s in the naves, we can still lay our hands on some of the stores left by the Obreros of former days. Ay, senor! And to think there was a time when the Chapter maintained at its own expense inside the church, cutters and painters of gla.s.s, plumbers, and I know not what beside, so that any great works could be undertaken without seeking any help outside the house! If one of the tombs gets broken, even now we have quant.i.ties of borderings carved with saints and flowers that are wonderful to see. But what will happen when all these are finished? When the last pane of gla.s.s in the stores has been broken, and the last fragments of carving in the Obreria used up? We shall have to put cheap white panes in the windows to prevent the rain and wind coming in. The Cathedral will look like an inn--may G.o.d forgive me the comparison--and the priests of the Primacy will praise G.o.d dressed like the chaplain of a hermitage."

And Don Antolin laughed sarcastically, as though this future that he was antic.i.p.ating was an absurd contradiction of the eternal laws.

"You will easily believe," he went on, "that they do not waste anything, and that they make money out of every possible thing. The garden that was for so many years in your family is now leased out by the Chapter, since your brother's death; twenty duros a year your Aunt Tomasa pays for her son to cultivate it, and this only because, as you know, the old woman is such a great friend of His Eminence, as they have known each other since they were children. I go about like a water carrier, all round the church and the cloisters, watching that no one plays tricks, for there are a lot of young light-hearted people, whom you cannot trust. One minute I am in the Ochavo, watching that your nephew the 'Tato' has sold the tickets to the foreigners (for he is quite capable of letting them in gratis if they tip him on leaving), and the next I am up in the cloister looking after that shoemaker who repairs the giants; they cannot deceive me, no one escapes me without paying; but, ay! it is a long while since I have sung ma.s.s. You can see me at mid-day when the Cathedral is closed reading my hours hurriedly in the cloisters, watching the clock in order to go down the moment the church is opened, when the strangers begin to come to see the treasury. This is not the life of a good Catholic, and if G.o.d does not lay it to my account that I am doing it all for the glory of His house, I fear that I shall lose my soul."

The two men walked up and down some time in silence, but Don Antolin could not hold his tongue for long when the subject was the economic life of the Primacy.

"And to think, Gabriel," he continued, "that having been what we were in former times, we should have come to this! You and most of those alive have no idea how rich this house used to be--as rich as a king, and often far richer. From a child no one has known as you have the history of our glorious archbishops, but of the fortune they ama.s.sed for G.o.d, you know nothing. Of course these temporalities do not interest learned people like you. Have you any idea what donations the kings and great lords gave in their lifetime to our Cathedral, or the legacies they left her on their deathbeds? You have a great deal to learn! I know all about it, I have searched in the Obreria, in the archives, in the library; everyone does what interests them, and I and the Senor Obrero have often raged at the indigence of the house, but I console myself by thinking of what we had, long before any of us were born. We were very rich, Gabriel--very, very rich. The archbishops of Toledo could have placed one or two crowns on their mitre, I dare not say three, for I think of the Supreme Pontiff. First of all, there is the Deed of Gift to the Cathedral, made by the King Alfonso VI., by reason of his having conquered Toledo. It was made a hermitage, after the election of the Bishop Don Bernardo, and I have seen it in the archives with my own sinful eyes, a parchment with Gothic letters, and at the head is written, 'The privileges of this Holy Church.' The good king gave to the Cathedral nine towns--if I wished I could tell you their names--several mills, and vineyards innumerable, houses and shops in the town, and he ends by saying with all the munificence of a Christian cavalier, 'This, therefore, in such a way I give, and I grant to this church and to you, Bernard, Archbishop, in free and perfect gift, that neither by homicide, nor any other calumny, shall it ever be forfeited. Amen.' Afterwards, Don Alfonso VII. gave us eight towns on the other side of the Guadalquiver, several ovens, two castles, the salt works of Belinchon, and a tenth of all the money coined in Toledo, for the vestments of the prebendaries. The VIII. of the name showered on the Cathedral a perfect rain of gifts, towns, villages, and mills. Illescas is ours, and a great part of Esquivias, as also the mortgage on Talavera. Afterwards came the fighting prelate, Don Rodrigo, who took much land from the Moors, and the Cathedral possesses one princ.i.p.ality, the Adelantamiento de Cazorla, with towns like Baza, Niebla, and Alcaraz. And besides the kings there is a great deal to be said about the n.o.bles, great princes who showed their generosity to the Holy Metropolitan Church. Don Lope de Haro, Lord of Vizcaya, not content with paying the cost of the building from the Puerta de los Escribanos as far as the choir, gave us the town of Alcubilete, with its mills and fisheries, and he also left a legacy so that in the choir when complines are sung, that lamp called the Preciosa should be lighted, which is placed by the great bronze eagle belonging to the big missal. Don Alfonso Tello de Meneses gave us four towns on the banks of the Guadiana, granted us t.i.thes and bridge tolls, and I know not what riches besides. We have been very powerful, Gabriel; the territory of this diocese is larger than a princ.i.p.ality.

The Cathedral had property on the earth, in the air, and in the sea!

Our dominions extended throughout the whole nation from end to end; there was not a single province in which we did not hold possessions.

Everything contributed to the glory of the Lord, and to the comfort and welfare of His ministers; everything paid to the Cathedral: bread when it was baked in the ovens, the casting of the net, wheat as it pa.s.sed through the mill, money as it came from the Mint, the traveller as he went on his way; the country people who then paid no taxes or contributions served their king and saved their own souls, giving the best sheaf in every ten, so that the granaries of the Holy Metropolitan Church were quite insufficient to contain such abundance.

What times were those, Gabriel! There was faith, Gabriel, and faith is the chief thing in life--without faith there is no virtue nor decency--nor nothing."

He stopped for a moment, quite out of breath with talking. The priest was so saturated with the atmosphere of the Cathedral, that in himself he seemed to unite all the various scents of the church; his ca.s.sock had collected the mouldy smell of the old stones and the rusty iron railings, and his mouth seemed to breathe of the gutters and the gargoyles, and the rank damp of the garrets.

With the rapid enumeration of all the past wealth Don Antolin warmed, even to indignation.

"And having been so rich, now we find ourselves in extreme poverty.

And I, my son, a priest of the Lord, am obliged to go hither and thither with those tickets so that we may all live, just as though I were a seller of entrance tickets to a bull-fight, and the Lord's house were a theatre, having to endure all those foreign heretics, who come in without blessing themselves, and who look at everything through opera-gla.s.ses. And I have to smile at them because they pay us and provide us with some dessert for our poor stew! Carape! Jesus have mercy on me! I was going to say a sacrilege."

Don Antolin continued his angry complaints till, in pa.s.sing the front of his house, Mariquita of the scowling and ugly countenance appeared at the door.

"Uncle, enough of walking. Your chocolate is getting cold."

But before the priest disappeared into his house, she went on, smiling amiably at Luna: