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Title: The Shadow of the Cathedral
Author: Vicente Blasco Ibañez
Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12041]
Language: English
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THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
BY
VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ
1919
Translated From The Spanish By
Mrs. W.A. Gillespie
With A Critical Introduction By
W.D. Howells
INTRODUCTION
There are three cathedrals which I think will remain chief of the
Spanish cathedrals in the remembrance of the traveller, namely the
Cathedral at Burgos, the Cathedral at Toledo, and the Cathedral at
Seville; and first of these for reasons hitherto of history and art,
and now of fiction, will be the Cathedral at Toledo, which the most
commanding talent among the contemporary Spanish novelists has made
the protagonist of the romance following. I do not mean that Vincent
Blasco Ibañez is greater than Perez Galdós, or Armando Palacio Valdés
or even the Countess Pardo-Bazan; but he belongs to their realistic
order of imagination, and he is easily the first of living European
novelists outside of Spain, with the advantage of superior youth,
freshness of invention and force of characterization. The Russians
have ceased to be actively the masters, and there is no Frenchman,
Englishman, or Scandinavian who counts with Ibañez, and of course no
Italian, American, and, unspeakably, no German.
I scarcely know whether to speak first of this book or the writer of
it, but as I know less of him than of it I may more quickly dispatch
that part of my introduction. He was born at Valencia in 1866, of
Arragonese origin, and of a strictly middle class family. His father
kept a shop, a dry-goods store in fact, but Ibañez, after fit
preparation, studied law in the University of Valencia and was
duly graduated in that science. Apparently he never practiced his
profession, but became a journalist almost immediately. He was
instinctively a revolutionist, and was imprisoned in Barcelona, the
home of revolution, for some political offence, when he was eighteen.
It does not appear whether he committed his popular offence in the
Republican newspaper which he established in Valencia; but it is
certain that he was elected a Republican deputy to the Cortes, where
he became a leader of his party, while yet evidently of no great
maturity.
He began almost as soon to write fiction of the naturalistic type, and
of a Zolaistic coloring which his Spanish critics find rather stronger
than I have myself seen it. Every young writer forms himself upon some
older writer; nobody begins master; but Ibañez became master while he
was yet no doubt practicing a prentice hand; yet I do not feel very
strongly the Zolaistic influence in his first novel, _La Barraca_,
or The Cabin, which paints peasant life in the region of Valencia,
studied at first hand and probably from personal knowledge. It is
not a very spacious scheme, but in its narrow field it is strictly a
_novela de costumbres_, or novel of manners, as we used to call the
kind. Ibañez has in fact never written anything but novels of manners,
and _La Barraca_ pictures a neighborhood where a stranger takes up a
waste tract of land and tries to make a home for himself and family.
This makes enemies of all his neighbors who after an interval of pity
for the newcomer in the loss of one of his children return to their
cruelty and render the place impossible to him. It is a tragedy such
as naturalism alone can stage and give the effect of life. I have read
few things so touching as this tale of commonest experience which
seems as true to the suffering and defeat of the newcomers, as to the
stupid inhumanity of the neighbors who join, under the lead of the
evillest among them, in driving the strangers away; in fact I know
nothing parallel to it, certainly nothing in English; perhaps _The
House with the Green Shutters_ breathes as great an anguish.
At just what interval or remove the novel which gave Ibañez worldwide
reputation followed this little tale, I cannot say, and it is not
important that I should try to say. But it is worth while to note here
that he never flatters the vices or even the swoier virtues of his
countrymen; and it is much to their honor that they have accepted him
in the love of his art for the sincerity of his dealing with their
conditions. In _Sangre y Arena_ his affair is with the cherished
atrocity which keeps the Spaniards in the era of the gladiator
shows of Rome. The hero, as the renowned _torrero_ whose career it
celebrates, from his first boyish longing to be a bull-fighter, to
his death, weakened by years and wounds, in the arena of Madrid, is
something absolute in characterization. The whole book in fact is
absolute in its fidelity to the general fact it deals with, and the
persons of its powerful drama. Each in his or her place is realized
with an art which leaves one in no doubt of their lifelikeness, and
keeps each as vital as the _torrero_ himself. There is little of the
humor which relieves the pathos of Valdés in the equal fidelity of his
_Marta y Maria_ or the unsurpassable tragedy of Galdós in his _Doña
Perfecta_. The _torrero's_ family who have dreaded his boyish ambition
with the anxiety of good common people, and his devotedly gentle and
beautiful wife,--even his bullying and then truckling brother-in-law
who is ashamed of his profession and then proud of him when it has
filled Spain with his fame,--are made to live in the spacious scene.
But above all in her lust for him and her contempt for him the unique
figure of Doña Sol astounds. She rules him as her brother the marquis
would rule a mistress; even in the abandon of her passion she does not
admit him to social equality; she will not let him speak to her in
thee and thou, he must address her as ladyship; she is monstrous
without ceasing to be a woman of her world, when he dies before her in
the arena a broken and vanquished man. The _torrero_ is morally better
than the aristocrat and he is none the less human though a mere
incident of her wicked life,--her insulted and rejected worshipper,
who yet deserves his fate.
_Sangre y Arena_ is a book of unexampled force and in that sort must
be reckoned the greatest novel of the author, who has neglected no
phase of his varied scene. The _torrero's_ mortal disaster in the
arena is no more important than the action behind the scenes where the
gored horses have their dangling entrails sewed up by the primitive
surgery of the place and are then ridden back into the amphitheatre to
suffer a second agony. No color of the dreadful picture is spared; the
whole thing passes as in the reader's presence before his sight and
his other senses. The book is a masterpiece far in advance of that
study of the common life which Ibañez calls _La Horda_; dealing with
the horde of common poor and those accidents of beauty and talent
as native to them as to the classes called the better. It has the
attraction of the author's frank handling, and the power of the
Spanish scene in which the action passes; but it could not hold me to
the end.
It is only in his latest book that he transcends the Spanish scene and
peoples the wider range from South America to Paris, and from Paris to
the invaded provinces of France with characters proper to the times
and places. _The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse_ has not the rough
textures and rank dyes of the wholly Spanish stories, but it is the
strongest story of the great war known to me, and its loss in the
Parisian figures is made more than good in the novelty and veracity of
the Argentinos who supply that element of internationality which the
North American novelists of a generation ago employed to give a fresh
interest to their work. With the coming of the hero to study art and
make love in the conventional Paris, and the repatriation of his
father, a cattle millionaire of French birth from the pampas, with his
wife and daughters, Ibañez achieves effects beyond the art of Henry
James, below whom he nevertheless falls so far in subtlety and beauty.
The book has moments of the pathos so rich in the work of Galdós and
Valdés, and especially of Emilia Pardo-Bazan in her _Morriña_ or _Home
Sickness_, the story of a peasant girl in Barcelona, but the grief of
the Argentine family for the death of the son and brother in battle
with the Germans, has the appeal of anguish beyond any moment in _La
Catedral_. I do not know just the order of this last-mentioned novel
among the stories of Ibañez, but it has a quality of imagination, of
poetic feeling which surpasses the invention of any other that I have
read, and makes me think it came before _Sangre y Arena_, and possibly
before _La Horda_. I cannot recall any other novel of the author which
is quite so psychological as this. It is in fact a sort of biography,
a personal study, of the mighty fane at Toledo, as if the edifice were
of human quality and could have its life expressed in human terms.
There is nothing forced in the poetic conception, or mechanical in
the execution. The Cathedral is not only a single life, it is a
neighborhood, a city, a world in itself; and its complex character
appears in the nature of the different souls which collectively
animate it. The first of these is the sick and beaten native of it who
comes back to the world which he has never loved or trusted, but in
which he was born and reared. As a son of its faith, Gabriel Luna was
to have been a priest; but before he became a minister of its faith,
it meant almost the same that he should become a Carlist soldier, and
fight on for that cause till it was hopeless. In his French captivity
he loses the faith which was one with the Carlist cause, and in
England he reads Darwin and becomes an evolutionist of the ardor which
the evolutionists have now lost. He wanders over Europe with the
English girl whom he worships with an intellectual rather than
passionate ardor, and after her death he ends at Barcelona in time to
share one of the habitual revolutions of the province and to spend
several years in one of its prisons. When he comes out it is into a
world which he is doomed to leave; he is sick to death and in hopeless
poverty; he has lost the courage of his revolutionary faith if not his
fealty to it; all that he asks of the world is leave to creep out of
it and somewhere die in peace. He thinks of an elder brother who like
himself was born in the precincts of the Cathedral where generations
of their family have lived and died, and his brother does not deny
him. In fact the kind, dull gardener welcomes him to a share of his
poverty, and Gabriel begins dying where he began living. The kindness
between the brothers is as simple in the broken adventurer whose wide
world has failed him as in the aging peasant, pent from his birth in
the Cathedral close, with no knowledge of anything beyond it. All
their kindred who serve in their several sort the stepmother church,
down to the gardener's son whose office is to keep dogs out of the
Cathedral and has the title of _perrero_, are good to the returning
exile. They do not well understand what and where he has been; the
tradition of his gifted youth when he was dedicated to the church and
forsook her service at the altar for her service in the field, remains
unquestioned, and he is safe in the refuge of his family who can offer
mainly their insignificance for his protection. The logic of the fact
is perfect, and Gabriel's emergence from the quiet of his retreat
inevitably follows from the nature of the agitator as the logic of
his own past and has the approval at least of the _perrero_ and the
allegiance of the rest. What is very important in the affair is that
most of the inhabitants of this Cathedral-world, rich and poor, good,
bad, and indifferent, mean and generous, are few of them wicked
people, as wickedness is commonly understood; they all have their
habitual or their occasional moments of good will.
The refugee is tired of his past but he does not deny his faith in
humanity; his doctrine only postpones to a time secularly remote the
redemption of humanity from its secular suffering. He begins at once
to do good; he rescues his kind elder brother from the repudiation of
the daughter whom he has cast off because her seduction has condemned
her to a life of shame; he wins back the poor prostitute to her home,
and forces her father to tolerate her in it.
Most of the Cathedral folk are of course miserably poor, but willing
to be better than they are if they can keep from starving; the fierce
and prepotent Cardinal who is over them all, has moments of the common
good will, when he forgives all his enemies except the recalcitrant
canons. He likes to escape from these, and talk with the elderly
widow of the gardener whom he has known from his boyhood, and to pity
himself in her presence and smoke himself free from, his rancor and
trouble. He is such a prelate as we know historically in enough
instances; but he is pathetic in that simplicity which survives in him
and almost makes good the loss of innocence in Latin souls. He keeps
with him the young girl who is the daughter of his youth, and whom
it cuts him to the soul to have those opprobrious canons imagine his
mistress. He is one out of the many figures that affirm their veracity
in the strange world where they have their being; and he is only the
more vivid as the head of a hierarchy which he rules rather violently
though never ignobly.
But the populace, the underpaid domestics and laborers of the strange
ecclesiastical world in their wretched over-worked lives and hopeless
deaths are what the author presents most vividly. There is the death
of the cobbler's baby which starves at the starving mother's breast
which the author makes us witness in its insupportable pathos, but his
art is not chiefly shown in such extremes: his affair includes the
whole tragical drama of the place, both its beauty and its squalor of
fact, but he keeps central the character of the refugee, Gabriel Luna,
in the allegiance to his past which he cannot throw off. When he
begins to teach the simple denizens of the Cathedral, some of them
hear him gladly, and some indifferently, and some unwillingly, but
none intelligently. He fails with them in that doctrine of patience
which was his failure, as an agitator, with the proletariat wherever
he has been; they could not wait through geological epochs for the
reign of mercy and justice which he could not reasonably promise the
over-worked and underfed multitude to-morrow or the day after. His
brother, who could not accept his teachings, warns him that the
people of the Cathedral will not understand him and cannot accept
his scientific gospel, and for a while he desists. In fact he takes
service in the ceremonial of the Cathedral; he even plays a mechanical
part in the procession of Corpus Christi, and finally he becomes one
of the night-watchmen who guard the temple from the burglaries always
threatening its treasures.
The story is quite without the love-interest which is the prime
attraction of our mostly silly fiction. Gabriel's association with the
English girl who wanders over Europe with him is scarcely passionate
if it is not altogether platonic; his affection for the poor girl for
whom he has won her father's tolerance if not forgiveness becomes
a tender affection, but not possibly more; and there is as little
dramatic incident as love interest in the book. The extraordinary
power of it lies in its fealty to the truth and its insight into
human nature. The reader of course perceives that it is intensely
anti-ecclesiastical, but he could make no greater mistake than to
imagine it in any wise Protestant. The author shares this hate or
slight of ecclesiasticism with all the Spanish novelists, so far as I
know them; most notably with Perez Galdós in _Doña Perfecta_ and _Lean
Rich_, with Pardo-Bazan in several of her stories, with Palacio
Valdés in the less measure of _Marta y Maria_, and _La Hermana de San
Sulpicio_ and even with the romanticist Valera in _Pepita Jimenez_.
But it may be said that while Ibañez does not go any farther than
Galdós, for instance, he is yet more intensively agnostic. He is the
standard bearer of the scientific revolt in the terms of fiction which
spares us no hope of relief in the religious notion of human life here
or hereafter that the Hebraic or Christian theology has divined.
It is right to say this plainly, but the reader who can suffer it from
the author will find his book one of the fullest and richest in modern
fiction, worthy to rank with the greatest Russian work and beyond
anything yet done in English. It has not the topographical range of
Tolstoy's _War and Peace_, or _Resurrection_; but in its climax it
is as logically and ruthlessly tragical as anything that the Spanish
spirit has yet imagined.
Whoever can hold on to the end of it will find his reward in the full
enjoyment of that "noble terror" which high tragedy alone can
give. Nothing that happens in the solemn story--in which something
significant is almost always happening--is of the supreme effect of
the socialist agitator's death at the hands of the disciples whom he
has taught to expect mercy and justice on earth, but forbidden to
expect it within the reach of the longest life of any man or race of
men. His rebellious followers come at night into the Cathedral where
Gabriel is watching, to rob an especially rich Madonna, whom he has
taught them to regard as a senseless and wasteful idol, and they
will not hear him when he pleads with them against the theft. The
inevitable irony of the event is awful, but it is not cruel, rather it
is the supreme touch of that pathos which seems the crowning motive of
the book.
W.D. HOWELLS.
* * * * *
THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER I
The dawn was just rising when Gabriel Luna arrived in front of the
Cathedral, but in the narrow street of Toledo it was still night. The
silvery morning light that had scarcely begun to touch the eaves and
roofs, spread out more freely in the little Piazza del Ayuntamiento,
bringing out of the shadows the ugly front of the Archbishop's Palace,
and the towers of the municipal buildings capped with black slate, a
sombre erection of the time of Charles V.
Gabriel walked for some time up and down the deserted square, wrapping
himself up to his eyes in the muffler of his cloak, while at intervals
his hollow cough shook him painfully. Without daring to stop walking
on account of the bitter cold, he looked at the great doorway called
"del Perdon," the only part of the church able to present a really
imposing aspect. He recalled other famous cathedrals, isolated,
occupying commanding situations, showing themselves freely in the full
pride of their beauty, and he compared them with this Cathedral
of Toledo, the mother-church of Spain, smothered by the swarm of
poverty-stricken buildings that surrounded it, clinging closely to its
walls, permitting it to display none of its exterior beauties, beyond
what could be seen from the narrow streets that closed it in on every
side. Gabriel, who was acquainted with its interior magnificence,
thought of the deceptive oriental houses, outwardly squalid and
miserable, but inwardly rich in alabasters and traceries. Jews and
Moors had not lived in Toledo for centuries in vain, their aversion to
outward show seemed to have influenced the building of the Cathedral,
now suffocated by the miserable hovels, pushed and piled up against
it, as though seeking its protection.
The little Piazza del Ayuntamiento was the only open space that
allowed the Christian monument to display any of its grandeur; under
this little patch of open sky the early morning light showed the three
immense Gothic arches of its principal front, the hugely massive bell
tower, with its salient angles, ornamented by the cap of the Alcuzon,
a sort of black tiara, with three crowns, almost lost in the grey mist
of the wintry dawn.
Gabriel looked affectionately at the closed and silent fane, where his
family lived, and where he himself had spent the happiest days of his
life. How many years had passed since he had last seen it! And now he
waited anxiously for the opening of its doorways.
He had arrived in Toledo by train the previous night from Madrid.
Before shutting himself up in his miserable little room in the Posada
del Sangre (the ancient Messon del Sevillano, inhabited by Cervantes)
he had felt a feverish desire to revisit the Cathedral, and had spent
nearly an hour walking round it, listening to the barking of the
Cathedral watch-dog, who growled suspiciously, hearing the sound of
footsteps in the surrounding streets. He had been unable to sleep; the
fact of returning to his native town after so many years of misery and
adventures had taken from him all desire to rest, and, while it was
still night, he again stole out to await near the Cathedral the moment
that it should be opened.
To while away the time he paced up and down the front, admiring again
the beauties of the porch, and noting its defects aloud, as though he
wished to call the stone benches of the Piazza and its wretched little
trees as witnesses to his criticisms.
An iron grating surmounted by urns of the seventeenth century ran in
front of the porch, enclosing a wide, flagged space, where in former
times the sumptuous processions of the Chapter had assembled, and
where the multitude could admire the grotesque giants on high days and
festivals.
The first storey of the façade was broken in the centre by the great
Puerta del Perdon, an enormous and very deeply-recessed Gothic arch,
which narrowed as it receded by the gradations of its mouldings,
adorned by statues of apostles, under open-worked canopies, and by
shields emblazoned with lions and castles. On the pillar dividing the
doorway stood Jesus in kingly crown and mantle, thin and drawn out,
with the look of emaciation and misery that the imagination of
the Middle Ages conceived necessary for the expression of Divine
sublimity. In the tympanum a relievo represented the Virgin surrounded
by angels, robed in the habit of St. Ildefonso, a pious legend
repeated in various parts of the building as though it were one of its
chief glories.
On one side was the doorway called "de la Torre,"[1] on the other side
that called "de los Escribanos,"[2] for by it entered in former days
the guardians of public religion to take the oath to fulfil the duties
of their office. Both were enriched with stone statues on the jambs,
and by wreaths of little figures, foliage, and emblems that unrolled
themselves among the mouldings till they met at the summit of the
arch.
[Footnote 1: Of the Tower.]
[Footnote 2: Of the Scribes.]
Above these three doorways with their exuberant Gothic rose the second
storey of Greco-Romano and almost modern construction, causing Gabriel
the same annoyance as would a discordant trumpet interrupting a
symphony. Jesus and the twelve apostles, all life size, seated at the
table, each under his own canopied niche, could be seen above the
central porch, shut in by the two tower-like buttresses which divided
the front into three parts. Beyond, two rows of arcades of inferior
design, belonging to the Italian palace, extended as far as those
under which Gabriel had so often played as a child when living in the
house of the bell-ringer.
The riches of the Church, thought Luna, were a misfortune for art; in
a poorer church the uniformity of the ancient front would have been
preserved. But, then, the Archbishop of Toledo had eleven millions of
yearly revenue, and the Chapter as many more; they did not know what
to do with their money, so started works and made reconstructions,
and the decadent art produced monstrosities like that one of the Last
Supper.
Above, again, rose the third storey, two great arches that lighted the
large rose of the central nave. The whole was crowned by a balustrade
of open-worked stone following the sinuosities of the frontage, between
the two salient masses that guarded it, the tower and the Musarabé
chapel.
Gabriel ceased his contemplation, seeing that he was no longer alone
in front of the church. It was nearly daylight, and several women with
bowed heads, their mantillas falling over their eyes, were passing in
front of the iron grating. The crutches of a lame man rang out on the
fine tiles of the pavement, and, out beyond the tower, under the
great arch of communication between the archbishop's palace and the
Cathedral, the beggars were gathering in order to take up their
accustomed positions at the cloister door. The faithful and "God's
creatures" [1] knew one another; every morning they were the first
occupants of the church, and this daily meeting had established a kind
of fraternity, and with much coughing and hoarseness they all lamented
the cold of the morning and the lateness of the bell-ringer in coming
down to open the doors.
[Footnote 1: _Pordioseres_.]
A door opened beyond the archbishop's arch, that of the tower and
the staircase leading to the dwellings in the upper cloister. A man
crossed the street rattling a huge bunch of keys, and, followed by the
usual morning assemblage, he proceeded to open the door of the lower
cloister, narrow and pointed as an arrow-head. Gabriel recognised him,
it was Mariano, the bell-ringer. To avoid being noticed he remained
motionless in the _Piazza_, allowing those to pass first through
the Puerta del Mollete,[1] who seemed so anxious to hurry into the
Metropolitan church, lest their usual places should be stolen from
them and occupied by others.
[Footnote 1: Door of the rolls, or loaves.]
At last he decided to follow them, and slowly descended the same steps
leading down into the cloister, for the Cathedral, being built in a
hollow, is much lower than the adjacent streets.
Everything appeared the same. There on the walls were the great
frescoes of Bayan y Maella, representing the works and great deeds
of Saint Eulogio, his preaching in the land of the Moors, and the
cruelties of the infidels, who, with big turbans and enormous
whiskers, were beating the saint. In the interior of the Mollete
doorway was represented the horrible martyrdom of the Child de la
Guardia; that legend born at the same time in so many Catholic towns
during the heat of anti-Semitic hatred, the sacrifice of the Christian
child, stolen from his home by Jews of grim countenance, who crucified
him in order to tear out his heart and drink his blood.
The damp was rapidly effacing this romantic fresco, that filled the
sides of the archway like the frontispiece of a book, causing it to
scale off; but Gabriel could still see the horrible face of the judge
standing at the foot of the cross, and the ferocious gesture of the
man, who with his knife in his mouth, was bending forward to tear out
the heart of the little martyr; theatrical figures, but they had often
disturbed his childish dreams.
The garden in the midst of the cloister showed even in midwinter its
southern vegetation of tall laurels and cypresses, stretching their
branches through the grating of the arches that, five on each side,
surrounded the square, and rising to the capitals of the pillars.
Gabriel looked a long time at the garden, which was higher than the
cloister; his face was on a level with the ground on which his father
had laboured so many years ago; at last he saw again that charming
corner of verdure--the Jews' market converted into a garden by the
canons centuries before. The remembrance of it had followed him
everywhere--in the Bois de Boulogne, in Hyde Park; for him the garden
of the Toledan Cathedral was the most beautiful of all gardens, for it
was the first he had even known in his life.
The beggars seated on the doorsteps watched him curiously, without
daring to stretch out their hands; they could not tell if this early
morning visitor with the worn-out cloak, the shabby hat, and the old
boots, was simply an inquisitive traveller, or whether he was one of
their own order, choosing a position about the Cathedral from whence
to beg alms.
Annoyed by this curiosity, Luna walked down the cloister, passing
by the two doors that opened into the church. The one called del
Presentacion is a lovely example of Plateresque art, chiselled like a
jewel, and adorned with fanciful and happy trifles. Going on further,
he came to the back of the staircase by which the archbishops
descended from their palace to the church; a wall covered with Gothic
interlacings, and large escutcheons, and almost on the level of the
ground was the famous "stone of light," a thin slice of marble as
clear as glass, which gave light to the staircase, and was the
admiration of all the countryfolk who came to visit the cloister. Then
came the door of Santa Catalina, black and gold, with richly-carved
polychrome foliage, mixed with lions and castles, and on the jambs two
statues of prophets.
Gabriel went on a few steps further as he saw that the wicket of the
doorway was being opened from inside. It was the bell-ringer going
his rounds and opening all the doors; first of all a dog came out,
stretching his neck as though he was going to bark with hunger, then
two men with their caps over their eyes, wrapped in brown cloaks; the
bell-ringer held up the curtain to let them pass out.
"Well, good-day, Mariano," said one of them by way of farewell.
"Good-night to the caretakers of God.... May you sleep well."
Gabriel recognised the nocturnal guardians of the Cathedral; locked
into the church since the previous night, they were now going to their
homes to sleep.
The dog trotted off in the direction of the seminary to get his
breakfast off the scraps left by the students, free till such time as
the guardians came to look for him, to lock themselves in the church
once more.
Luna walked down the steps of the doorway into the Cathedral. His feet
had scarcely touched the pavement before he felt on his face the cold
touch of the clammy air, like an underground vault. In the church
it was still dark, but above the stained glass of the hundreds of
different-sized windows glowed in the early dawn, looking like magic
flowers opening with the first splendours of day. Below, among the
enormous pillars that looked like a forest of stone, all was darkness,
broken here and there by the uncertain red spots of the lamps burning
in the different chapels, wavering in the shadows. The bats flew in
and out round the columns, wishing to prolong their possession of the
fane, till the first rays of the sun shone through the windows; they
fluttered over the heads of the devotees, who, kneeling before the
altars, were praying loudly, as pleased to be in the Cathedral at that
early hour as though it were their own house. Others chattered with
the acolytes and other servants of the church, who were coming in by
the different doors, sleepy and stretching themselves like workmen
coming to their work. In the twilight, figures in black cloaks glided
by on their way to the sacristy, stopping to make genuflections before
each image; and in the distance, invisible in the darkness, you
could still divine the presence of the bell-ringer, like a restless
hobgoblin, by the rattle of his bunch of keys and the creaking of the
doors he opened on his round.
The Cathedral was awake. Echo repeated the banging of the doors from
nave to nave; a large broom, making a saw-like noise, began to sweep
in front of the sacristy; the church vibrated under the blows of
certain acolytes engaged in removing the dust from the famous carved
stalls in the choir; it seemed as though the Cathedral had awoke
with its nerves irritated, and that the slightest touch produced
complaints.
The men's footsteps resounded with a tremendous echo, as though the
tombs of all the kings, archbishops and warriors hidden under the
tiled floor were being disturbed.
The cold inside the church was even more intense than that outside;
this, together with the damp of its soil traversed by underground
water drains, and the leakage of subterranean and hidden tanks
that stained the pavement, made the poor canons in the choir cough
horribly, "shortening their lives," as they complainingly said.
The morning light began to spread through the naves, bringing out of
the darkness the spotless whiteness of the Toledan Cathedral, the
purity of its stone making it the lightest and most beautiful of
temples. One could now see all the elegant and daring beauty of the
eighty-eight pillars soaring audaciously into space, white as frozen
snow, and the delicate ribs interlacing to carry the vaulting. In the
upper storey the sun shone through the large stained-glass windows,
making them look like fairy gardens.
Gabriel seated himself on the base of one of the pilasters between two
columns; but he was soon obliged to rise and move on, the dampness
of the stone, and the vault-like cold throughout the whole building
penetrated to his very bones.
He strolled through the naves, attracting the attention of the
devotees, who stopped in their prayers to watch him. A stranger at
that early hour, which belonged specially to the familiars of the
Cathedral, excited their curiosity.
The bell-ringer passed him several times, following him with uneasy
glance, as though this unknown man, of poverty-stricken aspect, who
wandered aimlessly about at an hour when the treasures of the church
were, as a rule, not so strictly watched, inspired him with little
confidence.
Another man met him near the high altar. Luna recognised him also: it
was Eusebio, the sacristan of the chapel of the Sagrario, "Azul de la
Virgen,"[1] as he was called by the Cathedral staff, on account of the
celestial colour of the cloak he wore on festival days.
[Footnote 1: Virgin's blue.]
Six years had passed since Gabriel had last seen him, but he had not
forgotten his greasy carcase, his surly face with its narrow, wrinkled
forehead fringed with bristly hair, his bull neck that scarcely
allowed him to breathe, and that made every breath like the blast of a
bellows. All the servants of the Cathedral envied him his post, which
was the most lucrative of all, to say nothing of the favour he enjoyed
with the archbishop and the canons.
"Virgin's blue" considered the Cathedral as his own peculiar property,
and he often came very near turning out those who inspired him with
any antipathy.
He fixed his bold eyes on the vagabond he saw walking about the
church, making an effort to raise his overhanging brows. Where had he
seen this strange fellow before? Gabriel noted the effort he made
to recall his memory, and turned his back to examine with pretended
interest a coloured panel hanging on a pillar.
Flying from the curiosity excited by his presence in the fane, he went
out into the cloister; there he felt more at his ease, quite alone.
The beggars were chattering, seated on the doorsteps of the Mollete;
many of the clergy passed through them, entering the church hurriedly
by the door of the Presentacion; the beggars saluted them all by name,
but without stretching out their hands. They knew them, they all
belonged to the "household," and among friends one does not beg. They
were there to fall on the strangers, and they waited patiently for the
coming of the English; for, surely, all the strangers who came from
Madrid by the early morning train could only be from England.
Gabriel waited near the door, knowing that those coming from the
cloister must enter by it. He crossed the archbishop's arch, and,
following the open staircase of the palace, descended into the street,
re-entering the church by the Mollete door. Luna, who knew all the
history of the Cathedral, remembered the origin of its name. At first
it was called "of justice," because under it the Vicar-General of
the Archbishopric gave audience. Later it was called "del Mollete,"
because every day after high mass the acolytes and vergers assembled
there for the blessing of the half-pound loaves, or rolls of bread
distributed to the poor. Six hundred bushels of wheat--as Luna
remembered--were distributed yearly in this alms, but this was in the
days when the yearly revenues of the Cathedral were more than eleven
millions.
Gabriel felt annoyed by the curious glances of the clergy, and of the
devout entering the church. They were people accustomed to seeing each
other daily at the same hour, and they felt their curiosity excited by
seeing a stranger breaking in on the monotony of their lives.
He drew back to the further end of the cloister, then some words from
the beggars made him retrace his steps.
"Ah! here comes old 'Vara de palo.'"[1]
[Footnote 1: Wooden staff.]
"Good-day, Señor Esteban!"
A small man dressed in black, and shaved like a cleric, came down the
steps.
"Esteban! Esteban!" cried Luna, placing himself between him and the
door of the Presentacion.
"Wooden Staff" looked at him with his clear eyes like amber, the quiet
eyes of a man used to spending long hours in the Cathedral, with never
a rebellious thought arising to disturb his immovable beatitude. He
stood doubting for some time, as though he could scarcely credit the
remote resemblance in this thin, pale face, to another that lived in
his memory, but at last, with a pained surprise, he became convinced
of its identity.
"Gabriel! my brother! is it really you?"
And the rigidly set face of the Cathedral servant, which seemed to
have acquired the immobility of its pillars and statues, relaxed with
an affectionate smile.
"When did you come? Where have you been? What is your life? Why have
you come?"
"Wooden Staff" expressed his surprise by incessant questions, never
giving his brother time to answer.
Gabriel at length explained, that he had arrived the previous night,
and that he had waited outside the church since early dawn in the
hopes of seeing his brother.
"I have now come from Madrid, but before that I was in many places:
in England, in France, in Belgium, who knows where besides. I have
wandered from one town to another, always struggling against hunger
and the cruelty of men. My footsteps have been dogged by poverty and
the police. When I rest a little, worn out by this Wandering Jew's
existence, Justice, inspired by fear, orders me to move on, and so
once again I begin my march. I am a man to be feared, Esteban, even as
you now see me, with my body ruined before old age, and the certainty
before me of a speedy death. Again, yesterday in Madrid, they told me
I should be sent once more to prison if I stayed there any longer, and
so in the evening I took the train. Where shall I go? The world is
wide; but for me and other rebels it is very small, and narrows till
it does not leave a hand's breadth of ground for our feet. In all the
world nothing was left me but you, and this peaceful silent corner
where you live so happily, and so, I came to seek you. If you turn me
out, nothing will be left me but to die in prison, or in a hospital,
if indeed they would take me in when they know my name."
And Gabriel, spent with his words, coughed painfully, a hollow
cavernous cough that seemed to tear his chest. He expressed himself
vehemently, moving his arms freely, with the gestures of a man used to
speaking in public, burning with the zeal of his cause.
"Ah! brother, brother!" said Esteban, with an accent of mild reproof,
"what has it profited you reading so many books and newspapers? What
is the use of trying to disturb and upset things that are all right;
and if they are all wrong, is there no other means of righting them
possible? If you had followed your own path quietly, you would have
been a beneficiary of the Cathedral, and, who knows, you might have
had a seat in the choir among the canons, for the honour and profit of
the family! But you were always wrong-headed, although you were the
cleverest of us all. Cursed talent that leads to such misery! What
I have suffered, brother, trying to hear about your affairs! What
bitterness have I not gone through since you last came here! I thought
you were contented and happy in the printing office in Barcelona,
receiving a salary that was a fortune compared to what we earn here.
I was disturbed at reading your name so often in the papers, at those
meetings, where the division of everything is advocated, the death of
religion and of the family, and I do not know what follies besides.
The 'companion' Luna said this, or the 'companion' Luna has done the
other, and I tried to hide from the people of the 'household' that
this 'companion' could be you, guessing that such madness must turn
out ill--furiously ill--and after--after came the affairs of the
bombs."
"I had nothing to do with that," said Gabriel sadly. "I am only a
theorist; I condemned the action as premature and inefficacious."
"I know it, Gabriel. I always thought you innocent. You so good, so
gentle, who since you were a little one always astonished us by your
kindness; you who seemed like a saint, as our poor mother used to say!
You kill, and so treacherously, by means of such infernal artifices!
Holy Jesus!"
And the "Wooden Staff" was silent, overcome by the recollection of
those attempts that had overwhelmed his brother.
"But what is certain is," he continued after a little, "that you fell
into the trap spread by the Government after those affairs. What I
suffered for a while! Now and again I heard firing in the castle ditch
beyond there, and I searched anxiously in the papers for the names
of those executed, always fearing to find yours. There were rumours
current of horrible tortures inflicted on those taken to make them
confess the truth, and I thought of you, so frail, so delicate, and
I feared that some day you would be found dead in a dungeon. And I
suffered even more from my anxiety that no one here should know of
your situation; you a Luna! a son of Señor Esteban, the old gardener
of the Primate, with whom all the canons and even the archbishop
talked. You mixed up with those infernal scoundrels who wish to
destroy the world. For this reason when Eusebio the 'Virgin's Blue,'
asked me if you could possibly be the Luna of whom he read in the
papers, I replied that my brother was in America, that I heard from
him now and again, but that he was occupied with a big business--you
see what pain! Fearing from one moment to another that they would
kill you, unable to speak, unable to complain, fearful of telling
my distress even to my family. How often have I prayed in there!
Accustomed as we of the 'household' are to associate daily with
God and the saints, we may be a little hard and narrow-minded, but
misfortune softens the heart, and I addressed myself to Her who can do
everything, to our patroness the Virgin of the Sagrario, begging her
to remember you, who used to kneel at her shrine as a little child
when you were preparing to enter the seminary."
Gabriel smiled gently as though admiring the simplicity of his
brother.
"Do not laugh, I pray you--your smile wounds me. The Divine Lady did
all she could for you. Months afterwards I learnt that you and others
had been put on board ship with orders never to return to Spain, and,
up to the present time, never a letter or a scrap of news, good or
ill. I thought you had died, Gabriel, in those distant lands, and more
than once I have prayed for your poor soul, that I am sure wanted it."
The "companion" showed in his eyes his gratitude for these words.
"Thanks, Esteban. I admire your faith, but I did not come out of that
dark adventure as well as you imagine. It would have been far better
to have died. The aureole of a martyr is worth more than to enter a
dungeon a man and come out of it a limp rag. I am very ill, Esteban,
my sentence is irrevocable. I have no stomach left, my lungs are gone,
and this body that you see is like a dislocated machine that can
hardly move, creaking in every joint, as though all the bits intended
to fall apart. The Virgin who saved me at your recommendation might
really have interceded a little more in my favour, softening my
jailors. Those wretches think to save the world by giving free rein
to those wild beast instincts that slumber in us all, relics of a
far-away past. Since then, at liberty, life has been more painful than
death. On my return to Spain, pressed by poverty and persecution, my
life has been a hell. I dare stop in no place where men congregate;
they hunt me like dogs, forcing me to live out of the towns, driving
me to the mountains, into the deserts, where no human beings live. It
appears I am still a man to be feared, more to be feared than those
desperadoes who throw bombs, because I can speak, because I carry in
me an irresistible strength which forces me to preach the Truth if
I find myself in the presence of miserable and trodden-down
wretches--but all this is coming to an end. You may be easy, brother,
I am a dead man; my mission is drawing to a close, but others will
come after me, and again others. The furrow is open and the seed is in
its bowels--'GERMINAL!'[1] as a friend of my exile shouted as he saw
the last rays of the setting sun from the scaffold of the gibbet. I am
dying, and I think I have the right to rest for a few months. I wish
to enjoy for the first time in my life the sweets of silence, of
absolute quiet, of incognito; to be no one, for no one to know me; to
inspire neither sympathy nor fear. I should wish to be as a statue
on the doorway, as a pillar in the Cathedral, immovable, over whose
surface centuries have glided without leaving the slightest trace or
emotion. To wait for death as a body that eats or breathes, but cannot
think or suffer, nor feel enthusiasm; this to me would be happiness,
brother. I do not know where to go; men are waiting for me out beyond
these doors to drive me on again. Will you let me stay with you?"
[Footnote 1: "It will sprout."]
For all answer the "Wooden Staff" laid his hand affectionately on
Gabriel's arm.
"Let us come upstairs, madman--you shall not die, I will nurse you;
what you want is care and quiet. We will cure that hot head, which
seems like that of Don Quixote. Do you remember when you were a child
reading us his history in the long evenings? Go along, dreamer, what
does it signify to you if the world is better or worse regulated?
As we found it, so it has always been. What does signify is that we
should live like Christians, with the certainty that the other life
will be a better one, as it will be the work of God and not of man. Go
up--let us go up."
And taking hold of the vagabond affectionately, they passed out of
the cloister through the beggars, who had followed the interview with
curious eyes, without, however, being able to hear a single word. They
crossed the street and entered the staircase of the tower. The steps
were of red brick, worn and broken; the whitewashed walls were covered
on all sides with grotesque drawings and various inscriptions,
scrawled by those who had ascended the tower, attracted by the fame of
the big bell.
Gabriel went up slowly, gasping, and stopping at every step.
"I am ill, Esteban, very ill; these bellows let out the wind in every
part."
Then, as though repenting his forgetfulness, he suddenly asked:
"And Pepa, your wife? I hope she is all right."
The brows of the Cathedral servant contracted, and his eyes became
bright as though full of tears.
"She died," he said with laconic sadness.
Gabriel stopped suddenly, clinging to the handrail, struck with
surprise; then, after a short silence, he went on, wishing to console
his brother.
"But, Sagrario, my niece, she must have grown a beauty. The last time
I saw her she looked like a queen, with her crown of auburn hair and
her smiling face, with its golden bloom, like a ripe apricot. Did she
marry the cadet, or is she still with you?"
The "Wooden Staff" appeared even more sad, and he looked grimly at his
brother.
"She also died," he said drily.
"Sagrario also dead!" exclaimed Gabriel astounded.
"She is dead to me, which is the same thing. Brother, by all you love
best in the world, do not speak to me of her."
Gabriel understood that he had opened some deep wound by his
inquiries, and so said no more, beginning once more his ascent. During
his absence a terrible event had happened in his brother's life--one
of those events that break up a family and separate for ever those
that survive.
They crossed the gallery covered by the archbishop's archway and
entered the upper cloister called "the Claverias": four arcades
of equal length to those of the lower cloister, but quite bare of
decoration, and with a poverty-stricken aspect. The pavement was
chipped and broken, the four sides had a balustrade running round
between the flat pillars that supported the old beams of the roof. It
had been a provisional work three hundred years ago, and had always
remained in the same state. All along the whitewashed walls, the doors
and windows belonging to the "habitacions" of the Cathedral servants
opened without order or symmetry. These were transmitted with the
office from father to son. The cloister, with its low arcade, looked
like a street having houses on one side only; opposite was the flat
colonnade with its balustrade, against which the pointed branches of
the cypresses in the garden rested. Above the roof of the cloister
could be seen the windows of another row of "habitacions," for nearly
all the dwellings in the Claverias had two stories.
It was the population of a whole town that lived above the Cathedral,
on a level with its roofs; and when night fell, and the staircase of
the tower was locked, it remained quite isolated from the city. This
semi-ecclesiastical tribe was born and died in the very heart of
Toledo without ever going down into the streets, clinging with
traditional instinct to the carved mountain of stone, whose arches
served it as a refuge. They lived saturated with the scent of incense,
breathing the peculiar smell of mould and old iron belonging to
ancient buildings, and with no more horizon than the arches of the
bell tower, whose height soared into the small patch of blue sky
visible from the cloister.
The "companion" Luna thought he was returning with one step to the
days of his childhood. Little children like the Gabriel of former days
were playing about the four galleries, and sitting in that part of the
cloister bathed by the first rays of the sun. Women, who reminded
of his mother, were shaking the bedclothes out over the garden, or
sweeping the red bricks opposite their dwellings; everything seemed
the same. Time had left it quite alone, evidently thinking there was
nothing there that he could possibly age. The "companion" could now
see two sketches of lay brothers that he had drawn with charcoal when
he was eight years old; had it not been for the children one might
have thought that life had been suspended in that corner of the
Cathedral, as though this aerial population could neither be born nor
die.
The "Wooden Staff," frowning and gloomy since the last words were
spoken, tried to give some explanation to his brother.
"I live in our same old house. They left it to me out of respect to
the memory of my father. I am grateful to the clergy of the Chapter,
taking into consideration that I am nothing but a sad old 'Wooden
Staff.' Since my misfortune happened I have had an old woman to keep
house, and Don Luis, the Chapel-master, lives with me. You will come
to know him, a young priest of great talent, but quite hidden here:
one of God's souls, whom they think crazy in the Cathedral, but who
lives like an angel."
They entered into the house of the Lunas, which was one of the best in
the Claverias. By the door two rows of flower vases in the shape of
a clock-case fastened to the walls were filled with hanging plants;
inside, in the sitting room, Gabriel found everything the same as
during his father's lifetime. The white walls that with years had
become like ivory, were still decorated with the old engravings of
saints, the chairs of mahogany, bright with constant rubbing, looked
like new, in spite of their curves, which showed them to belong to
a previous century, and their seats almost ready to drop through.
Through a half-open door he could see into the kitchen, where his
brother had gone to give some orders to a timid-looking old woman. In
one corner of the room, half hidden, was a sewing machine. Luna had
seen his niece working at it the last time he came to the Cathedral.
It was the permanent remembrance the "little one" had left behind her
after that catastrophe which had filled her father with such gloomy
sadness. Through a back window of the room Gabriel could see the inner
court, which made this "habitacion" one of the most charming in the
Claverias, the open expanse of sky, and the upper rooms on all four
sides, supported by rows of slender pillars, that made the courtyard
look like a little cloister.
Esteban came back and rejoined his brother.
"You must say what you would like for breakfast. It would soon be
ready; ask, man, ask for what you want, for though I am poor I shall
take little credit to myself unless I can make you pick up a little
and lose that look of a resuscitated corpse."
Gabriel smiled sadly.
"It is useless your troubling; my stomach is quite gone; a little milk
is enough for it, and I am thankful if it retains it."
Esteban ordered the old woman to go into the town in search of the
milk, and he had hardly seated himself by his brother's side when the
door giving into the cloister opened, and the head of a young man
appeared.
"Good-day, uncle!" he exclaimed.
His face was unhealthy and currish, the eyes were malicious, and above
his ears were combed two large tufts of glossy hair.
"Come in, vagabond, come in," said the "Wooden Staff."
And he added, turning to his brother:
"Do you know who this is? No? It is the son of our poor brother, whom
God has taken to his glory. He lives in the upper dwellings of the
cloister with his mother, who washes the linen of the choir, and of
the señores canons; and it is a delight to see how she crimps the
surplices. Thomas, lad, bow to the gentleman; it is your uncle
Gabriel, who has just arrived from America, and from Paris, and I
don't know from where else besides! From very far off countries, very
far off."
The young man saluted Gabriel, though he seemed rather scared by the
sad and suffering face of their relative, whom he had heard his mother
speak of as a mysterious and romantic being.
"Here, as you see him," proceeded Esteban, speaking to his brother,
and pointing to his nephew, "he is the worst lot in the Cathedral.
The Señor Obrero[1] would more than once have turned him out into
the street, were it not for respect to the memory of his father and
grandfather, and also to the name he bears, for everybody knows the
Lunas are as ancient in the Cathedral as the stones in its walls. No
escapade enters his head but he hastens to carry it out, and he swears
like a pagan even in full sacristy, under the very noses of the
beneficiaries. Don't dare to deny it! Grumbler!"
[Footnote 1: Canon in charge of the fabric.]
And he shook his first at the lad, half severely, half smiling, as
though in the bottom of his heart he felt some pride in his nephew's
scrapes, who received his reprimand with grimaces that made his face
twitch like that of a monkey, while his eyes retained their fixed and
insolent stare.
"It is a real shame," continued the uncle, "that you should comb your
hair in that fashion, like the Merry Andrews that come to Toledo from
the Court on great festivals. In the good old times of the Cathedral
they would have shaved your head for you. But in these days of
alienation, of universal licence and misfortunes, our holy church is
as poor as a rat, and poverty does not give the señores canons much
inclination to examine details. It is a grievous pity to see how
everything is going down. What desolation, Gabriel! If you could only
see it! The Cathedral is as beautiful as ever, but we do not now see
the former beauty of the Lord's worship. The Chapel-master says the
same thing, and he is indignant to see that on great festivals only
about half-a-dozen musicians take their place in the middle of the
choir. The young people who live in the Claverias have not our great
love for the mother-church; they complain of the shortness of their
salaries without considering that it is the temporalities that support
religion. If this goes on I should not be surprised to see this
popinjay and other rascals like him playing at 'Rayuelo'[1] in the
crossways in front of the choir. May God forgive me!"
[Footnote 1: A game of drawing lines.]
And the simple "Wooden Staff" made a gesture as though scandalised at
his own words. He went on:
"This young fellow you see here is not satisfied with his position in
life, and yet, though he is only a youth, he occupies the place his
poor father could only attain to after thirty years' service. He
aspires to be a toreador, and often on a Sunday he dares to take part
in the bull-fight in the bull-ring of Toledo. His mother came down,
dishevelled like a Magdalen, to tell me all about it, and I, thinking
that as his father was dead I ought to act in his place, I watched for
our gentleman as he returned tricked out smartly from the bull-ring,
and I thrashed him up the tower staircase to his rooms with the same
wooden staff that I use in the Cathedral, and he can tell you if I
have not a heavy hand when I am angry. Virgin of the Sagrario! A Luna
of the Holy Metropolitan Church lowering himself to be a bull-fighter!
The canons did laugh, and even the Lord Cardinal himself, as I have
been told, when they heard about the affair! A witty beneficiary has
since nicknamed him the 'Tato,'[1] and so they all call him now in
the Cathedral. So you see, brother, how much respect this rascal pays
to his family."
[Footnote 1: _Tato_--Armadillo.]
The "Silenciario"[1] attempted to annihilate the "Tato" with his
glance, but this latter only smiled without paying much attention,
either to his uncle's words or looks.
[Footnote 1: _Silenciario_--Officer appointed to keep silence.]
"You would hardly believe, Gabriel," he continued, "that this creature
often wants a bit of bread, and it is for this reason he commits all
these follies. In spite of his wrong-headedness, since the age of
twenty he has occupied the position of 'Perrero'[3] in the holy
church, he has obtained what in better times only those could obtain
who had served well and striven hard for years. He gets his six reals
a day, and as he can go freely about the church he can show the
curiosities to strangers; and so with the salary and the tips he
gets, he is much better off than I am. The foreigners who visit the
Cathedral, excommunicated people who look upon us as strange monkeys,
and who think that anything interesting of ours is only worthy of a
laugh, take a fancy to him. The English ask him if he is a toreador,
and he--what does he want better than that! When he sees they pay him
according as he pleases them, he brings out his pack of lies, for,
unfortunately, no one has any check on the deceit, and he tells them
about all the great bull-fights in which he has taken part in Toledo,
and all about the bulls he has killed; and these blockheads from
England make a note of it in their albums, and even some coarse hand
may make a sketch of this imposter's head; all he cares for is that
they should believe all his lies and give him a peseta on leaving. It
matters very little to him, if when these heretics return to their
own country they spread the report that in Toledo, in the Holy
Metropolitan Church of all Spain, the Cathedral servants are
bull-fighters, and assist in the ceremonies of worship between the
bull runs. The sum total is, that he earns more than I do, but in
spite of this he considers his employment beneath him. And such
beautiful duties, too. To walk in the great processions before
everyone, close to the Primate's great banner, with a staff covered
with red velvet to support him should he chance to fall, and wearing a
robe of scarlet brocade like a cardinal. Our Chapel-master, who knows
a great deal about such things, says that when he wears that robe
he looks like a certain Diente, or some name of the sort, who
lived hundreds of years ago in Italy, and went down into hell, and
afterwards described his journey in poetry."
[Footnote 3: _Perrero_--Beadle whose special duty it is to chase the
dogs out of church.]
Sounds of footsteps were heard on the narrow circular staircase in the
thickness of the wall that led from the sitting-room to the storey
above.
"It is Don Luis," said the "Wooden Staff," "he is going to say his
mass in the chapel of the Sagrario, and afterwards to the choir."
Gabriel rose from his sofa to salute the priest. He was feeble and
small of stature, but the thing about him that struck you at first
sight was the disproportion between his shrunken body and his immense
head. The forehead, round and prominent, seemed to crush with its
weight the dark and irregular features, much pitted by smallpox.
He was very ugly, but still the expression of his blue eyes, the
brilliancy of his white and regular teeth, and the ingenuous smile,
almost childlike, that played on his lips, gave his face that
sympathetic expression which showed him to be one of those simple
souls wrapped up in their artistic fancies.
"And so this gentleman is the brother of whom you have spoken to me so
often," said he, hearing the introduction made by Esteban.
He held out his hand in a friendly way to Gabriel. They both looked
very sickly, but their bodily infirmities seemed to be a bond of
attraction.
"As the señor has studied in the seminary," said the Chapel-master,
"he will know something about music."
"It is the only thing that I remember of all those studies."
"But having travelled so much all over the world, you must have heard
a great deal of good music."
"That is so. Music is to me the most pleasing of all the arts. I do
not know much about it, but I feel it."
"Very well, very well, we shall be good friends. You must tell me all
sorts of things; how I envy you having travelled so much."
He spoke like a restless child, without sitting down. Although the
"Silenciario" offered him a chair at each of his flirtings round the
room, he wandered from side to side in his shabby cloak, his hat in
his hand--a poor worn-out hat with not a trace of pile left, knocked
in, with a layer of grease on its flaps, miserable and old, like the
cassock and the shoes. But in spite of this poverty the Chapel-master
had a certain refinement about him. His hair, rather too long for his
ecclesiastical dress, curled round his temples, and the dignified way
in which he folded his cloak round his body reminded one of the cloak
of a tenor at the opera. He had a sort of easy grace that betrayed the
artist who, under the priestly robes, was longing to get rid of them,
leaving them at his feet like a winding sheet.
Some deep notes from the bell, like distant thunder, floated into the
room through the cloister.
"Uncle, they are calling us to the choir," said the "Tato." "We ought
to have been in the Cathedral before now; it is nearly eight o'clock."
"It is true, lad. I am glad you were here to remind me; let us be
going."
Then he added, speaking to the musical priest:
"Don Luis, your mass is at eight o'clock. You can talk with Gabriel
later on; now we must fulfil our obligations, for those who are late
will, as you say, be turned out, even though our office hardly gives
us enough to eat."
The Chapel-master assented sadly with a movement of his head, and
went out, following the two Cathedral servants. He seemed to go
unwillingly, as though forced to a task that was to him both irksome
and painful. He hummed absently while giving his hand to Gabriel, who
thought he recognised a fragment of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in
the low and uneven tones that came from the lips of the young priest.
Now that he was alone Luna stretched himself on the sofa, giving
himself up to the fatigue he felt from his long wait before the
Cathedral. His brother's old servant placed a little pitcher of
milk by his side, and filling a cup, Gabriel drank, endeavouring to
overcome the repugnance of his weak stomach, which almost refused to
retain the liquid. His body, fatigued by his restless night and the
long morning wait, at last assimilated the nourishment, and a soft,
dreamy languor spread over him that he had not felt for a long time.
He soon fell asleep, remaining for more than an hour motionless on the
sofa, and though his breathing was disturbed, and his chest racked by
his hollow cough, they were unable to wake him from his slumber.
When he did awake, it was suddenly, with a nervous start that shook
him from head to foot, making him bound from the sofa as though a
spring had been touched. It was the wariness produced by his ever
present danger, that had become habitual to him; the habit of
restlessness formed in dark dungeons, expecting hourly to see the door
open, to be beaten like a dog, or led off between a double file of
muskets to the square of execution; the habit of living perpetually
watched, of feeling in every country the espionage of the police
around him, the habit of being awoke in the middle of the night in his
wretched room in some inn by the order to leave at once; the unrest of
the ancient Asheverus, who, as soon as he could enjoy a moment's rest,
heard the eternal cry--"Go on. Go on."
He did not try to sleep again, he preferred the present reality, the
silence of the Cathedral which was to him as a gentle caress, the
noble calm of the temple, that immense pile of worked stone, which
seemed to press on him, enveloping him, hiding for ever his weakness
and his persecutions.
He went out into the cloister, and, resting his elbows on the
balustrade, looked down into the garden.
The Claverias seemed quite deserted. The children who had enlivened
them in the early morning had gone to school, the women were inside
their houses preparing their mid-day meal, there seemed to be no one
in the cloister except himself; the sunlight bathed all one side,
and the shadow of the pillars cut obliquely the great golden spaces
flooding the pavement. The majestic silence, the holy calm of the
Cathedral overpowered the agitator like a gentle narcotic. The seven
centuries surrounding those stones seemed to him like so many veils
hiding him from the rest of the world. In one of the dwellings of the
Claverias you could hear the incessant tap, tap, of a hammer; it was
that of a shoemaker whom Gabriel had seen through the window-panes,
bending over his bench. In the square of sky framed by the roofs some
pigeons were flying, lazily moving their wings, soaring in the vault
of intense blue; some flew down into the cloister, and, perching on
the balustrade, broke the religious silence with their gentle cooing;
now and again the heavy door-curtains of the church were lifted, and
a breath of air charged with incense floated over the garden of the
Claverias, together with the deep notes of the organ, and the sound of
voices chanting Latin words and solemnly prolonging the cadences.
Gabriel looked at the garden surrounded by its arcades of white stone,
with its rough buttresses of dark granite, in the chinks of which the
rain had left an efflorescence of fungus, like little tufts of black
velvet. The sun struck on one angle of the garden, leaving the rest
in cool green shade, a conventual twilight. The bell-tower hid one
portion of the sky, displaying on its reddish sides, ornamented with
Gothic tracery and salient buttresses, the fillets of black marble
with heads of mysterious personages, and the shields with the arms of
the different archbishops who had assisted at its building; above,
near the pinnacles of white stone, were seen the bells behind enormous
gratings; from below they looked like three bronze birds in a cage of
iron.
Three deep strokes from a bell, echoing round the Cathedral, announced
that the High Mass had arrived at its most solemn moment, the mountain
of stone seemed to tremble with the vibration, which was transmitted
through the naves and galleries, to the arcades and down to the lowest
foundations.
Again there was silence, which seemed even deeper after the bronze
thunders; the cooing of the pigeons could again be heard, and, down in
the garden, the twittering of the birds, warmed by the sun's rays that
began to gild its cool twilight.
Gabriel felt himself deeply moved; the sweet silence, the absolute
calm, the feeling almost of non-existence overpowered him; and beyond
those walls was the world, but here it could not be seen, it could not
be felt; it remained respectful but indifferent before that monument
of the past, that splendid sepulchre, in whose interior nothing
excited its curiosity. Who would ever imagine he was there? That
growth of seven centuries, built by vanished greatness for a dying
faith, should be his last refuge. In the full tide of unbelief the
church should be his sanctuary, as it had been in former days to
those great criminals of the Middle Ages, who, from the height of the
cloister mocked at justice, detained at the doors like the beggars.
Here should be consummated in silence and calm the slow decay of his
body, here he would die with the serene satisfaction of having died to
the world long before. At last he realised his hope of ending his days
in a corner of the sleepy Spanish Cathedral, the only hope that had
sustained him as he wandered on foot along the highways of Europe,
hiding himself from the civil guards and the police, spending his
nights in ditches, huddled up, his head on his knees, fearing every
moment to die of cold.
He clung to the Cathedral as a shipwrecked and drowning man clings
to the spar of a sinking ship; this had been his hope, and he was
beginning to realise it. The church would receive him, like an old and
infirm mother, unable to smile, but who could still stretch out her
arms.
"At last! At last!" murmured Luna.
And he smiled, thinking of the world of sorrows and persecutions that
he was leaving behind him, as though he were going to some remote
place, situated in another planet, from which he would never return;
the Cathedral would shelter him for ever.
In the profound stillness of the cloister, that the sound of the
street could not reach, the "companion" Luna thought he heard far off,
very far off, the shrill sound of a trumpet and the muffled roll
of drums, then he remembered the Alcazar of Toledo, dominating the
Cathedral from its height, intimidating it with the enormous mass of
its towers; they were the drums and trumpets of the Military Academy.
These sounds were painful to Gabriel; the world had faded from his
sight, and when he thought himself so very far from it, he could still
feel its presence only a little way beyond the roof of the temple.
CHAPTER II
Since the times of the second Cardinal de Bourbon Senior Esteban Luna
had been gardener of the Cathedral, by the right that seemed firmly
established in his family. Who was the first Luna that entered the
service of the Holy Metropolitan Church? As the gardener asked himself
this question he smiled complacently, raising his eyes to heaven, as
though he would inquire of the immensity of space. The Lunas were as
ancient as the foundations of the church; a great many generations
had been born in the abode in the upper cloister, and even before the
illustrious Cisneros built the Claverias the Lunas had lived in houses
adjacent, as though they could not exist out of the shadow of the
Primacy. To no one did the Cathedral belong with better right than
to them. Canons, beneficiaries, archbishops passed; they gained the
appointment, died, and others came in their places. It was a constant
procession of new faces, of masters who came from every corner of
Spain to take their seats in the choir, to die a few years afterwards,
leaving the vacancies to be filled again by other newcomers; but the
Lunas always remained at their post, as though the ancient family were
another column of the many that supported the temple. It might happen
that the archbishop who to-day was called Don Bernardo, might next
year be called Don Caspar, or again another Don Fernando. But what
seemed utterly impossible was that the Cathedral could exist without
Lunas in the garden, in the sacristy, or in the crossways of the
choir, accustomed as it had been for centuries to their services.
The gardener spoke with pride of his descent, of his noble and
unfortunate relative the constable Don Alvaro, buried like a king in
his chapel behind the high altar; of the Pope Benedict XIII., proud
and obstinate like all the rest of his family; of Don Pedro de Luna,
fifth of his name to occupy the archiepiscopal throne of Toledo, and
of other relatives not less distinguished.
"We are all from the same stem," he said with pride. "We all came
to the conquest of Toledo with the good King Alfonso VI. The only
difference has been, that some Lunas took a fancy to go and fight
the Moors, and they became lords, and conquered castles, whereas my
ancestors remained in the service of the Cathedral, like the good
Christians they were."
With the satisfaction of a duke who enumerates his ancestors, the
Señor Esteban carried back the line of the Lunas till it became misty
and was lost in the fifteenth century. His father had known Don
Francisco III. Lorenzana, a magnificent and prodigal prince of the
church, who spent the abundant revenues of the archbishopric in
building palaces and editing books, like a great lord of the
Renaissance. He had known also the first Cardinal Bourbon, Don Luis
II., and used to narrate the romantic life of this Infante. Brother of
the King Carlos III., the custom that dedicated some of the younger
branches to the church had made him a cardinal at nine years old. But
that good lord, whose portrait hung in the Chapter House, with white
hair, red lips and blue eyes, felt more inclination to the joys of
this world than to the grandeurs of the church, and he abandoned the
archbishopric to marry a lady of modest birth, quarrelling for ever
with the king, who sent him into exile. And the old Luna, leaping
from ancestor to ancestor through the long centuries, remembered the
Archduke Alberto, who resigned the Toledan mitre to become Governor of
the Low Countries, and the magnificent Cardinal Tavera, protector
of the arts, all excellent princes, who had treated his family
affectionately, recognising their secular adhesion to the Holy
Metropolitan Church.
The days of his youth were bad ones for the Señor Esteban; it was the
time of the war of Independence. The French occupied Toledo, entering
into the Cathedral like pagans, rattling their swords and prying into
every corner at full High Mass. The jewels were concealed, the canons
and beneficiaries, who were now called _prebendaries_, were living
dispersed over the Peninsula. Some had taken refuge in places that
were still Spanish, others were hidden in the towns, making vows for
the speedy return of "the desired." It was pitiful to hear the choir
with its few voices; only the very timid, who were bound to their
seats and could not live away from them, had remained, and had
recognised the usurping king. The second Cardinal de Bourbon, the
gentle and insignificant Don Luis Maria, was in Cadiz, the only one of
the family remaining in Spain, and the Cortes had laid their hands
on him to give a certain dynastic appearance to their revolutionary
authority.
When the war was over and the poor cardinal returned to his seat, the
Señor Esteban was moved to pity to see his sad and childlike face,
with the small round head, and insignificant appearance; he returned
discouraged and disheartened, after receiving his nephew Ferdinand
VII. in Madrid. All his colleagues in the regency were either in
prison or in exile, and that he did not suffer a like fate was solely
due to his mitre and to his name. The unfortunate prelate thought
he had done good service in maintaining the interests of his family
during the war, and now he found himself accused of being Liberal, an
enemy to religion and the throne, without being able to imagine how he
had conspired against them. The poor Cardinal de Bourbon languished
sadly in his palace, devoting his revenues to works in the Cathedral,
till he died in 1823 at the beginning of the reaction, leaving his
place to Inguanzo, the tribune of absolutism, a prelate with iron-grey
whiskers, who had made his career as deputy in the Cortes at Cadiz,
attacking as deputy every sort of reform, and advocating a return to
the times of the Austrians as the surest means of saving his country.
The good gardener saluted with equal cordiality the Bourbon Cardinal,
hated by the kings, as the prelate with the whiskers, who made all
the diocese tremble with his bitter and harassing temper, and his
arrogance as a revolutionary Absolutist. For him, whoever occupied the
throne of Toledo was a perfect man, whose acts no one should dare to
discuss, and he turned a deaf ear to the murmurs of the canons and
beneficiaries, who, smoking their cigarettes in the arbour of his
garden, spoke of the genialities of this Señor de Inguanzo, and were
indignant at the Government of Ferdinand VII. not being sufficiently
firm, through fear of the foreigners, to re-establish the wholesome
tribunal of the Inquisition.
The only thing that troubled the gardener was to watch the decadence
of his beloved Cathedral. The revenues of the archbishop and of the
Chapter had been greatly wasted during the war. What had occurred was
what happens after a great flood, when the waters begin to subside
and carry everything away with them, leaving the land bare and
uninhabited. The Primacy lost many of its rights, the tenants made
themselves masters, taking advantage of the disorders of the State;
the towns refused to pay their feudal services, as though the
necessity of defending themselves and helping in the war had freed
them for ever from vassalage; further, the turbulent Cortes had
decreed the abolition of all lordships, and had very much curtailed
the enormous revenues of the Cathedral, acquired in the centuries when
the archbishops of Toledo put on their casques, and went out to fight
the Moors with double-handed swords.
Even so, a considerable fortune remained to the church of the Primacy,
and it maintained its splendour as if nothing had happened, but the
Señor Esteban scented danger from the depths of his garden, hearing
from the canons of the Liberal conspiracies, the executions by
shooting and hanging, and the exiling, to which the king Señor Don
Fernando appealed, in order to repress the audacity of the "Negros,"
the enemies of the Monarchy and of religion.
"They have tasted the sweets," said he, "and they will return--see if
they do not return, and take what is left! During the war they took
the first bite, taking from the Cathedral more than half that was
hers, and now they will come and take the rest; they will try and
catch hold of the handle of the fryingpan."
The gardener was angry at the possibility of such a thing happening.
Ay! and was it for this that so many lord archbishops of Toledo fought
against the Moors? Conquering towns, assaulting castles and annexing
pasture lands, which all came to be the property of the Cathedral,
contributing to the great splendour of God's worship! And was
everything to fall into the dirty hands of the enemies of anything
that was holy? Everything that so many faithful souls had willed to
them on their deathbeds, queens and magnates, and simple country
gentlemen, who left the best part of their fortunes to the Holy
Metropolitan Church, in the hope of saving their souls! What would
happen to the six hundred souls, big and little, clerics and seculars,
dignitaries and simple servants who lived from the revenues of the
Cathedral?.... And was this called liberty? To rob what did not
belong to them, leaving in poverty innumerable families who were now
supported by the "great pot" of the Chapter?
When the sad forebodings of the gardener began to be realised, and
Mendizabal decreed the dismemberment, the Señor Esteban thought he
would have died of rage. But the Cardinal Inguanzo did better. Placed
in his seat by the Liberals as his predecessor had been by the
Absolutists, he thought it best to die in order to take no part in
these attempts against the sacred revenues of the Church.
The Señor Luna, who was only a humble gardener, and who therefore
could not imitate the illustrious Cardinal, went on living. But every
day he felt more and more sorrowful, knowing that for shamefully low
prices, many of the Moderates, who still came to High Mass, were
stealthily acquiring to-day a house, to-morrow a farm, another day
pasture lands, properties all belonging to the Primacy, but which had
lately been put on the list of what was called national property.
Robbers! this slow subversion and sale, that rent in pieces the
revenues of the Cathedral, caused the Señor Esteban as much
indignation as though the bailiffs had entered his house in the
Claverias to remove the family furniture, each piece of which embalmed
the memory of some ancestor.
There were times in which he thought of abandoning his garden, and
going to Maestrazgo, or to the northern provinces, in search of some
of the loyal defenders of the rights of Charles V. and of the return
to the old times. He was then forty years of age, strong and active,
and though his temperament was pacific and he had never touched a
musket, he felt himself fired by the example of certain timid and
pious students, who had fled from the seminary, and were now, so it
was said, fighting in Catalonia behind the red cloak of Don Ramon
Cabrera.
But the gardener, in order not to be alone in his big "habitacion" in
the Claverias, had married three years previously the daughter of the
sacristan, and he had now one son; besides, he could not tear himself
away from the church, he was another square block in the mountain of
stone, he moved and spoke as a man, but he felt a certainty that he
should perish at once if he left his garden. Besides, the Cathedral
would lose one of the most important props if a Luna were wanting in
its service, and he felt terrified at the bare thought of living out
of it. How could he wander over the mountains fighting, and firing
shots, when years had passed without his treading any other profane
soil beyond the little bit of street between the staircase of the
Claverias and the Puerta del Mollete?
And so he went on cultivating his garden, feeling the melancholy
satisfaction that he was at least sheltered from all the wicked
revolutionaries under the shadow of that colossus of stone, which
inspired awe and respect from its majestic age. They might curtail
the revenues of the temple, but they would be powerless against the
Christian faith of those who lived under its protection.
The garden, deaf and insensible to the revolutionary tempests that
broke over the church, continued to unfold its sombre beauty between
the arcades, the laurels grew till they reached the balustrade of the
upper cloister, and the cypresses seemed as though they aspired
to touch the roofs; the creepers twined themselves among the iron
railings, making thick lattices of verdure, and the ivy mantled the
wall of the central arbour, which was surmounted by a cap of black
slate with a rusty iron cross. After the evening choir the clergy
would come and sit in here and read, by the soft green light that
filtered through the foliage, the news from the Carlist Camp, and
discuss enthusiastically the great exploits of Cabrera, while above,
the swallows quite indifferent to human presence, circled and screamed
in the clear blue sky. The Señor Esteban would watch, standing
silently, this bat-like evening club, which was kept quietly hidden
from those belonging to the National Militia of Toledo.
When the war terminated, the last illusions of the gardener vanished,
he fell into the silence of despair and wished to know of nothing
outside the Cathedral. God had abandoned the good and faithful, and
the traitors and evil-doers were triumphant; his only consolation
was the stronghold of the temple, which had lived through so many
centuries of turmoil, and could still defy its enemies for so many
more.
He only wished to be the gardener, to die in the upper cloister like
his forefathers, and to leave fresh Lunas to perpetuate the family
services in the Cathedral. His eldest son, Tomas, was now twelve years
old, and able to help him in the care of the garden. After an interval
of many years a second son had been born, Esteban, who, almost before
he could walk, would kneel before the images in the "habitacion,"
crying for his mother to carry him down into the church to see the
saints.
Poverty entered into the Cathedral, reducing the number of canons and
prebendaries; at the death of any of the old servants, their places
were suppressed, and a great many carpenters, masons, and glaziers
who previously had lived there as workmen specially attached to the
Primacy, and were continually working at its repairs, were dismissed.
If from time to time certain repairs were indispensable, workmen were
called in from outside, by the day; many of the "habitacions" in the
Claverias were unoccupied, and the silence of the grave reigned where
previously the population of a small town had gathered and crowded.
The Government of Madrid (and you should have seen the expression of
contempt with which the old gardener emphasised those words) was in
treaty with the Holy Father to arrange something called the Concordat.
The number of canons was limited as though the Holy Metropolitan was
a college, they were to be paid by the Government the same as the
servants, and for the maintenance of worship in this most famous
Cathedral of all Spain--which, when it formerly collected its tithe,
scarcely knew where to lock up such riches--a monthly pension of
twelve hundred pesetas was now granted.
"One thousand two hundred pesetas, Tomas!" said he to his son, a
silent boy, who took very little interest in anything but his garden.
"One thousand two hundred pesetas, when I can remember the Cathedral
having more than six millions of revenue! Bad times are in store for
us, and were I anyone else I would bring you up to an office, or
something outside the church; but the Lunas cannot desert the cause of
God, like so many traitors who have betrayed it. Here we were born,
here we must die, to the very last one of the family." And furious
with the clergy, who seemed to put a good face on the Concordat and
their salaries, thankful to have come out of the revolutionary tumults
even as well as they had done, he isolated himself in his garden,
locking the door in the iron railing, and shrinking from the
assemblies of former times!
His little floral world did not change, its sombre verdure was like
the twilight that had enveloped the gardener's soul. It had not the
brilliant gaiety, overflowing with colours and scents of a garden in
the open, bathed in full sunlight, but it had the shady and melancholy
beauty of a conventual garden between four walls, with no more light
than what came through the eaves and the arcades, and no other birds
but those flying above, who looked with wonder at this little paradise
at the bottom of a well. The vegetation was the same as that of the
Greek landscapes, and of the idylls of the Greek poets--laurels,
cypress and roses, but the arches that surrounded it, with their
alleys paved with great slabs of granite in whose interstices wreaths
of grass grew, the cross of its central arbour, the mouldy smell of
the old iron railings, and the damp of the stone buttresses coloured a
soft green by the rain, gave the garden an atmosphere of reverend age
and a character of its own.
The trees waved in the wind like censers, the flowers, pale and
languid with an anaemic beauty, smelt of incense, as though the air
wafted through the doors of the Cathedral had changed their natural
perfumes.
The rain, trickling from the gargoyles and gutters of the roofs, was
collected in two large and deep stone tanks; sometimes the gardener's
pail would disturb their green covering, letting one perceive for an
instant the blue-blackness of their depths, but as soon as the circles
disappeared, the vegetation once more drew together and covered them
over afresh, without a movement, without a ripple, quiet and dead as
the temple itself in the stillness of the evening.
At the feast of Corpus, and that of the Virgin of the Sagrario in the
middle of August, the townspeople brought their pitchers into the
garden, and the Señor Esteban allowed them to be filled from these two
cisterns. It was an ancient custom and one much appreciated by the
old Toledans, who thought much of the fresh water of the Cathedral,
condemned as they were during the rest of the year to drink the red
and muddy liquid of the Tagus. At other times people came into the
garden to give little presents to Señor Esteban, the devout entrusted
him with palms for their images, or bought little bunches of flowers,
believing them to be better than those they could buy at the farms,
because they came from the Metropolitan Church, and the old women
begged branches of laurel for flavouring and for household medicines.
These incomings, and the two pesetas that the Chapter had assigned to
the gardener after the final dismemberment, helped the Señor Esteban
and his family to get on. When he was getting well on in years his
third son Gabriel was born, a child who from his fourth year attracted
the attention of all the women in the Claverias; his mother affirmed
with a blind faith that he was a living image of the Child Jesus that
the Virgin of the Sagrario held in her arms. Her sister Tomasa, who
was married to the "Virgin's Blue," and was the mother of a numerous
family which occupied nearly the half of the upper cloister, talked a
great deal about the intelligence of her little nephew, when he could
hardly speak, and about the infantile unction with which he gazed at
the images.
"He looks like a saint," she said to her friends. "You should see how
seriously he says his prayers.... Gabrielillo will become somebody;
who knows if we may not see him a bishop! Acolytes that I knew when
my father had charge of the sacristy now wear the mitre, and possibly
some day we may have one of them in Toledo."
The chorus of caresses and praises surrounded the first years of the
child like a cloud of incense; the family only lived for him, the
Señor Esteban, a father in the good old Latin style who loved his
sons, but was severe and stern with them in order that they might grow
up honourable, felt in the presence of the child a return of his own
youth; he played with him, and lent himself smilingly to all his
little caprices; his mother abandoned her household duties to please
him, and his brother hung on his babbling words. The eldest, Tomas,
the silent youth who had taken the place of his father in the care of
the garden, and who even in the depths of winter went barefooted over
the flower-beds and rough stones of the alleys, came up often bringing
handfuls of sweet-scented herbs, so that his little brother might play
with them. Esteban, the second, who was now thirteen and who enjoyed
a certain notoriety among the other acolytes on account of his
scrupulous care in assisting at the mass, delighted Gabriel with his
red cassock and his pleated tunic, and brought him taper ends and
little coloured prints, abstracted from the breviary of some canon.
Now and then he carried him in his arms to the store-room of the
giants, an immense room between the buttresses and the arches of the
nave, vaulted with stone. Here were the heroes of the ancient
feasts and holidays. The Cid with a huge sword, and four set pieces
representing as many parts of the world: huge figures with dusty and
tattered clothes and broken faces, which had once rejoiced the streets
of Toledo, and were now rotting under the roofs of its Cathedral. In
one corner reposed the Tarasca, a frightful monster of cardboard,
which terrified Gabriel when it opened its jaws, while on its wrinkled
back sat smiling, idiotically, a dishevelled and indecent doll, whom
the religious feeling of former ages had baptised with the name of
Anne Boleyn.
When Gabriel went to school all were astonished at his progress. The
youngsters of the upper cloister who were such a trial to "Silver
Stick," the priest charged with maintaining good order among the tribe
established in the roofs of the Cathedral, looked upon the little
Gabriel as a prodigy. When he could scarcely walk he could read
easily, and at seven he began to recite his Latin, mastering it
quickly, as though he had never spoken anything else in his life, and
at ten he could argue with the clergy who frequented the gardens, and
who delighted in putting before him questions and difficulties.
The Señor Esteban, growing daily more bent and feeble, smiled
delightedly before his last work; he was going to be the glory of his
house! His name was Luna, and therefore he could aspire to anything
without fear, because even Popes had come from that family.
The canons would take the boy into the sacristy after choir, and
question him as to his studies. One of the clergy belonging to the
archbishop's household presented him to the cardinal, who, after
hearing him, gave him a handful of sugared almonds and the promise of
a scholarship, so that he could continue his studies at the seminary
gratuitously.
The Lunas and all their relations more or less distant, who were
really nearly the whole population of the upper cloister, were
rejoiced at this promise; what else could Gabriel be but a priest? For
these people, attached to the church from the day of their birth, like
excrescences of its stones, who considered the archbishops of Toledo
as the most powerful beings in the world after the Pope, the only
profession worthy of a man of talent was the Church.
Gabriel went to the Seminary, and to all the family the Claverias
seemed quite deserted. The long, pleasant evenings in the house of
the Lunas came to an end, at which the bell-ringer, the vergers, the
sacristans and other church servants had been used to assemble, and
listen to the clear and well modulated voice of Gabriel, who read like
an angel--sometimes the lives of the saints, at other times Catholic
newspapers that came from Madrid, or chapters from a Don Quixote with
pages of vellum and antiquated writing--a venerable copy which had
been handed down in the family for generations.
Gabriel's life in the Seminary was the ordinary and monotonous life of
a hard-working student: triumphs in theological controversies, prizes
in heaps, and the satisfaction of being held up to his companions as a
model.
Sometimes one of the canons who lectured in the seminary would come
into the garden:--
"The lad is getting on very well, Esteban; he is first in everything,
and besides, is as steady and pious as a saint. He will be the comfort
of your old age."
The gardener, always growing older and thinner, shook his head. He
should only be able to see the end of his son's career from the
heavens, should it please God to call him there. He would die before
his son's triumph; but this did not sadden him, for the family
would remain to enjoy the victory and to give thanks to God for His
goodness.
Humanities, theology, canons, everything, the young man mastered with
an ease which surprised his masters, and they compared him to the
Fathers of the Church, who had attracted attention by their precocity.
He would very soon finish his studies, and they all predicted that his
Eminence would give him a professorship in the seminary, even before
he sang his first mass. His thirst for learning was insatiable, and it
seemed as though the library really belonged to him. Some evenings he
would go into the Cathedral to pursue his musical studies, and talk
with the Chapel-master and the organist, and at other times in the
hall of sacred oratory he would astound the professors and the Alumni
by the fervour and conviction with which he delivered his sermons.
"He is called to the pulpit," they said in the Cathedral garden. "He
has all the fire of the apostles; he will become a Saint Bernard or
a Bossuet. Who can tell how far this youth will go, or where he will
end?"
One of the studies which most delighted Gabriel was that of the
history of the Cathedral, and of the ecclesiastical princes who had
ruled it. All the inherent love of the Lunas for the giantess who was
their eternal mother surged up in him, but he did not love it blindly
as all his belongings did. He wished to know the why and the wherefore
of things, comparing in his books the vague old stories that he had
heard from his father, that seemed more akin to legends than to
historical facts.
The first thing that claimed his attention was the chronology of the
archbishops of Toledo--a long line of famous men, saints, warriors,
writers, princes, each with his number after his name, like the kings
of the different dynasties. At certain times they had been the real
kings of Spain. The Gothic kings in their courts were little more than
decorative figureheads that were raised or deposed according to the
exigencies of the moment. The nation was a theocratic republic, and
its true head was the Archbishop of Toledo.
Gabriel grouped the long line of famous prelates by characters. First
of all the saints, the apostles in the heroic age of Christianity,
bishops as poor as their own people, barefooted, fugitives from the
Roman persecution, and bowing their heads at last to the executioner,
firm in the hope of gaining fresh strength to the doctrine for which
they sacrificed their lives--Saint Eugenio, Melancio, Pelagio, Patruno
and other names that shone in the past scarcely breaking through the
mists of legend. Then came the archbishops of the Gothic era; those
kingly prelates who exercised that superiority over the conquering
kings by which the spiritual power succeeded in dominating the
barbarian conquerors. Miracles accompanied them to confound the
Arians, and celestial prodigies were at their orders to terrify and
crush those rude men of war. The Archbishop Montano, who lived with
his wife, and was indignant at the consequent murmurs, placed red-hot
coals in his sacred vestments the while he said mass, and did not
burn, demonstrating by this miracle the purity of his life. Saint
Ildefonso, not content with only writing books against heretics,
induced Santa Leocadia to appear to him, leaving in his hands a piece
of her mantle, and he enjoyed the further honour of this same Virgin
descending from heaven to present him with a chasuble embroidered by
her own hands. Sigiberto, many years after, had the audacity to
vest himself in this chasuble, and was in consequence deposed,
excommunicated and exiled for his temerity.
The only books that were produced in those times were written by the
prelates of Toledo. They compiled the laws, they anointed the heads
of the monarchs with the holy oil, they set up Wamba as king, they
conspired against the life of Egica, and the councils assembled in
the basilica of Santa Leocadia were political assemblies in which the
mitre was on the throne and the crown of the king at the feet of the
prelate.
At the coming of the Saracen invasion the series of persecuted
prelates begins again. They did not now fear for their lives as during
the time of Roman intolerance; for Mussulmen as a rule do not martyr,
and furthermore, they respect the beliefs of the conquered.
All the churches in Toledo remained in the hands of the Christian
Muzarabés[1] with the exception of the Cathedral, which was converted
into the principal mosque.
[Footnote 1: Muzarabés--Christians living among the Moors and mixing
with them; also an ancient form of service still continued in one
chapel in Toledo and in one at Salamanca.]
The Catholic bishops were respected by the Moors, as were also the
Hebrew rabbis; but the Church was poor, and the continual wars between
the Saracens and the Christians, together with the reprisals which set
a seal on the barbarities of the reconquest, made the continuance and
life of worship extremely difficult.
Having arrived at this point Gabriel read the obscure names of Cixila,
Elipando and Wistremiro. Saint Eulogio termed this last "the torch of
the Holy Spirit, and the light of Spain"; but history is silent as to
his deeds, and Saint Eulogio was martyred and killed by the Moors
in Cordova on account of his excessive religious zeal. Benito,
a Frenchman who succeeded to the chair, not to be behind his
predecessors, made the Virgin send him down another chasuble to a
church in his own country before he came to Toledo.
After these, came the interesting chronology of the warrior
archbishops, warriors of coat-of-mail and two-edged sword, the
conquerors who, leaving the choir to the meek and humble, mounted
their war-horses and thought they were not serving God unless during
the year they added sundry towns and pasture lands to the goods of the
Church. They arrived in the eleventh century, with Alfonso VI., to the
conquest of Toledo. The first were French monks from the famous Abbey
of Cluny, sent by the Abbot Hugo to the convent of Sahagun, and they
were the first to use the "don" as a sign of lordship. To the pious
tolerance of the preceding bishops, accustomed to friendly intercourse
with Arabs and Jews in the full liberty of the Muzarabé worship,
succeeded the ferocious intolerance of the Christian conqueror. The
Archbishop Don Bernardo was scarcely seated in the chair before he
took advantage of the absence of Alfonso VI. to violate all his
promises. The principal mosque had remained in the hands of the Moors
by a solemn compact with the king, who, like all the monarchs of the
reconquest, was tolerant in matters of religion. The archbishop,
using his powerful influence over the mind of the queen, made her
the accomplice of his plans, and one night, followed by clergy and
workmen, he knocked down the doors of the mosque, cleansed it and
purified it, and next morning when the Saracens came to pray towards
the rising sun, they found it changed into a Catholic cathedral. The
conquered, trusting in the word given by the conqueror, protested,
scandalised, and that they did not rise was solely due to the
influence of the Alfaqui Abu-Walid, who trusted that the king would
fulfil his promises. In three days Alfonso VI. arrived in Toledo from
the further end of Castille, ready to murder the archbishop and even
his own wife for their share in this villainy that had compromised his
word as a cavalier, but his fury was so great that even the Moors were
moved, and the Alfaqui went out to meet him, begging him to condone
the deed as it was accomplished, as the injured parties would agree to
it, and in the name of the conquered he relieved him from keeping his
word, because the possession of a building was not a sufficient reason
for breaking the peace.
Gabriel admired as he read the prudence and moderation of the good
Moor Abu-Walid; but with his enthusiasm as a seminarist he admired
still more those proud, intolerant and warlike prelates, who trampled
laws and people under foot for the greater glory of God.
The Archbishop Martin was Captain-General against the Moors in
Andalusia, conquering towns, and he accompanied Alfonso VIII. to the
battle of Alarcos. The famous prelate Don Rodrigo wrote the chronicle
of Spain, filling it with miracles for the greater prosperity of the
Church, and he practically made history, passing more time on his
war-horse than on his throne in the choir. At the battle de las Navas
he set so fine an example, throwing himself into the thick of the
fight, that the king gave him twenty lordships as well as that of
Talavera de la Reina. Afterwards, in the king's absence, he drove
the Moors out of Quesada and Cazorla, taking possession of vast
territories, which passed under his sway, with the name of the
Adelantamiento.[1] Don Sancho, son of Don Jaime of Aragon, and brother
to the Queen of Castille, thought more of his title of "Chief Leader"
than of his mitre of Toledo, and on the advance of the Moors went out
to meet them in the martial field. He fought wherever the fighting was
fiercest, and was finally killed by the Moslems, who cut off his hands
and placed his head on a spear.
[Footnote 1: _Adelantamiento_--Advancement.]
Don Gil de Albornoz, the famous cardinal, went to Italy, flying from
Don Pedro the Cruel, and, like a great captain, reconquered all the
territory of the Popes, who had taken refuge in Avignon. Don Gutierre
III. went with Don Juan II. to fight against the Moors. Don Alfonso de
Acuna fought in the civil war during the reign of Enrique IV.; and as
a fitting end to this series of political and conquering prelates,
rich and powerful as true princes, there arose the Cardinal Mendoza,
who fought at the battle of Toro, and at the conquest of Granada,
afterwards governing that kingdom; and Jimenez de Cisneros, who,
finding no Moors left in the Peninsula to fight, crossed the sea and
went to Oran, waving his cross and turning it into a weapon of war.
The seminarist admired these men, magnified by the mists of ancient
history and the praises of the Church. For him they were the greatest
men in the world after the Popes, and, indeed, often far superior to
them. He was astonished that the Spaniards of the present times were
so blind that they did not entrust their direction and government to
the archbishops of Toledo, who in former centuries had performed
such heroic deeds. The glory and advancement of the country was so
intimately connected with their history, their dynasty was quite as
great as that of the kings, and on more than one occasion they had
saved these latter by their counsels and energy.
After these eagles came the birds of prey; after the prelates with
their iron morions and their coats-of-mail came the rich and luxurious
prelates, who cared for no other combats but those of the law courts,
and were in perpetual litigation with towns, guilds, and private
individuals in order to retain the possessions and the vast fortune
accumulated by their predecessors.
Those who were generous like Tavera built palaces, and encouraged
artists like El Greco, Berruguete and others, creating a Renaissance
in Toledo, an echo from Italy. Those who were miserly, like Quiroga,
reduced the expenses of the pompous church, to turn themselves into
money-lenders to the kings, giving millions of ducats to those
Austrian monarchs on whose dominions the sun never set, but who,
nevertheless, found themselves obliged to beg almost as soon as their
galleons returned from their voyages to America.
The Cathedral was the work of these priestly ecclesiastics; each one
had done something in it which revealed his character. The rougher
and more warlike its framework, that mountain of stone and wood which
formed its skeleton; those who were more cultivated, elevated to the
See in times of greater refinement, contributed the minutely-worked
iron railings, the doors of lace-like stonework, the pictures, and
the jewels which made its sacristy a veritable treasure house. The
gestation of the giantess had lasted for three centuries; it seemed
like those enormous prehistoric animals who slept so long in their
mother's womb before seeing the light.
When its walls and pilasters first rose above the soil Gothic art was
in its first epoch, and during the two and a half centuries that its
building lasted architecture made great strides. Gabriel could follow
this slow transformation with his mind's eye as he studied the
building, discovering the various signs of its evolution.
The magnificent church was like a giantess whose feet were shod with
rough shoes, but whose head was covered with the loveliest plumes. The
bases of the pillars were rough and devoid of ornament, the shafts of
the columns rose with severe simplicity, crowned by plain capitals
at the base of the arches, on which the Gothic thistle had not yet
attained the exuberant branching of a later florid period; but the
vaulting which was finished perhaps two centuries after the first
beginning, and the windows with their multi-coloured ogives, displayed
the magnificence of an art at its culminating point.
At the two extreme ends of the transepts Gabriel found the proof
of the immense progress made during the two centuries in which the
Cathedral had been rising from the ground. The Puerta del Reloj[1],
called also de la Feria[2], with its rude sculptures of archaic
rigidity, and the tympanum, covered with small scenes from the
creation, was a great contrast to the doorway at the opposite end
of the crossway, that of Los Leones[3], or by its other name, de la
Alegria[4], built nearly two hundred years afterwards, elegant and
majestic as the entrance to a palace, showing already the fleshly
audacities of the Renaissance, endeavouring to thrust themselves into
the severity of Christian architecture, a siren fastened to the door
by her curling tail serving as an example.
[Footnote 1: _Reloj_--Clock.]
[Footnote 2: _Feria_--Of the fair.]
[Footnote 3: _Los Leones_--Lions.]
[Footnote 4: _Alegria_--Joy.]
The Cathedral, built entirely of a milky white stone from the quarries
close to Toledo, rose in one single elevation from the base of the
pillars to the vaulting, with no triforium to cut its arcades and to
weaken and load the naves with superimposed arches. Gabriel saw in
this a petrified symbol of prayer, rising direct to Heaven, without
assistance or support. The smooth, soft stone was used throughout
the building, harder stone being used for the vaultings, and on
the exterior the buttresses and pinnacles, as well as the flying
buttresses like small bridges between them, were of the hardest
granite, which from age had taken a golden colour, and which protected
and supported the airy delicacy of the interior. The two sorts of
stone made a great contrast in the appearance of the Cathedral, dark
and reddish outside, white and delicate inside.
The seminarist found examples of every sort of architecture that had
flourished in the Peninsula. The primitive Gothic was found in the
earliest doorways, the florid in those del Perdon and de los Leones,
and the Arab architecture showed its graceful horseshoe arches in the
triforium running round the whole abside of the choir, which was the
work of Cisneros, who, though he burnt the Moslem books, introduced
their style of architecture into the heart of the Christian temple.
The plateresque style showed its fanciful grace in the door of the
cloister, and even the chirruguesque showed at its best in the famous
lanthorn of Tome, which broke the vaulting behind the high altar in
order to give light to the abside.
In the evenings of the vacation Gabriel would leave the seminary,
and wander about the Cathedral till the hour at which its doors were
closed. He delighted in walking through the naves and behind the high
altar, the darkest and most silent spot in the whole church. Here
slept a great part of the history of Spain. Behind the locked gates of
the chapel of the kings, guarded by the stone heralds on pedestals,
lay the kings of Castille in their tombs, their effigies crowned, in
golden armour, praying, with their swords by their sides. He would
stop before the chapel of Santiago, admiring through the railings of
its three pointed arches the legendary saint, dressed as a pilgrim,
holding his sword on high, and tramping on Mahomedans with his
war-horse. Great shells and red shields with a silver moon adorned the
white walls, rising up to the vaulting, and this chapel his father,
the gardener, regarded as his own peculiar property. It was that of
the Lunas, and though some people laughed at the relationship, there
lay his illustrious progenitors, Don Alvaro and his wife, on their
monumental tombs. That of Doña Juana Pimental had at its four corners
the figures of four kneeling friars in yellow marble, who watched over
the noble lady extended on the upper part of the monument. That of
the unhappy constable of Castille was surrounded by four knights of
Santiago, wrapped in the mantle of their Order, seeming to keep guard
over their grand master, who lay buried without his head in the stone
sarcophagus, bordered with Gothic mouldings. Gabriel remembered what
he had heard his father relate about the recumbent statue of Don
Alvaro. In former times the statue had been of bronze, and when mass
was said in the chapel, at the elevation of the Host, the statue, by
means of secret springs, would rise and remain kneeling till the
end of the ceremony. Some said that the Catholic queen caused the
disappearance of this theatrical statue, believing that it disturbed
the prayers of the faithful; others said that some soldiers, enemies
of the constable, on a day of disturbance, had broken in pieces the
jointed statue. On the exterior of the church the chapel of the Lunas
raised its battlemented towers, forming an isolated fortress inside
the Cathedral.
In spite of his family considering this chapel as their own, the
seminarist felt himself more attracted by that of Saint Ildefonso
close by, which contained the tomb of the Cardinal Albornoz. Of all
the great past in the Cathedral, that which excited his greatest
admiration was the romantic figure of this warlike prelate; lover of
letters, Spanish by birth, and Italian by his conquests. He slept in a
splendid marble tomb, shining and polished by age, and of a soft
fawn colour; the invisible hand of time had treated the face of the
recumbent effigy rather roughly, flattening the nose, and giving the
warlike cardinal an expression of almost Mongolian ferocity. Four
lions guarded the remains of the prelate. Everything in him was
extraordinary and adventurous even to his death. His body was brought
back from Italy to Spain with prayers and hymns, carried on the
shoulders of the entire population, who went out to meet it in order
to gain the indulgences granted by the Pope. This return journey to
his own country after his death lasted several months, as the good
cardinal only went by short journeys from church to church, preceded
by a picture of Christ, which now adorns his chapel, and spreading
among the multitude the sweet scent of his embalming.
For Don Gil de Albornoz nothing seemed impossible; he was the sword of
the Apostle returned to earth in order to enforce faith. Flying from
Don Pedro the Cruel, he had taken refuge in Avignon, where lived
exiles even more illustrious than himself. There were the Popes driven
out of Rome by a people who, in their mediaeval nightmare, tried to
restore at the bidding of Rienzi the ancient republic of the Consuls.
Don Gil was not a man to live long in the pleasant little Provençal
court; like a good archbishop of Toledo, he wore the coat-of-mail
underneath his tunic, and as there were no Moors to fight he wished to
strike at heretics instead. He went to Italy as the champion of the
Church; all the adventurers of Europe and the bandits of the country
formed his army. He killed and burnt in the country, entered and
sacked the towns, all in the name of the Sovereign Pontiff, so that
before long the exile of Avignon was again able to return and occupy
his throne in Rome. The Spanish cardinal after all these campaigns,
which gave half Italy to the Papacy, was as rich as any king, and he
founded the celebrated Spanish college in Bologna. The Pope, well
aware of his robberies and rapacity, asked him to give some sort of
accounts. The proud Don Gil presented him with a cart laden with keys
and bolts.
"These," said he proudly, "belong to the towns and castles I have
gained for the Papacy. These are my accounts."
The irresistible glamour that a powerful warrior throws over a man
physically feeble was strongly felt by Gabriel, and it was augmented
by the thought that so much bravery and haughtiness had been joined
in a servant of the Church. Why could not men like this arise now, in
these impious times, to give fresh strength to Catholicism?
In his strolls through the Cathedral Gabriel greatly admired the
screen before the high altar, a wonderful work of Villalpando, with
its foliage of old gold, and its black bars with silvery spots like
tin. These spots made the beggars and guides in the church declare
that all the screen was made of silver, but that the canons had had
it painted black so that it might not be plundered by Napoleon's
soldiers.
Behind it shone the majestic decorations of the high altar, splendid
with soft old gilding, and a whole host of figures under carved
canopies representing various scenes from the Passion. Behind the
altar and the screen the gilding seemed to spring spontaneously from
the white walls, marking with brilliant lights the divisions between
the stalls. Beneath highly-decorated pointed arches were the tombs of
the most ancient kings of Castille, and that of the Cardinal Mendoza.
Under the arches of the triforium an orchestra of Gothic angels with
stiff dalmatics and folded wings sang lauds, playing lutes and flutes,
and in the central parts of the pillars the statues of holy bishops
were interspersed with those of historical and legendary personages.
On one side the good Alfaqui Abu-Walid, immortalised in a Christian
church for his tolerant spirit, on the opposite side the mysterious
leader of Las Navas who, after showing the Christians the way to
victory, suddenly disappeared like a divine envoy--a statue of
exceeding ugliness with a haggard face covered by a rough hood. At
either end of the screen stood as evidences of the past opulence of
the church two beautiful pulpits of rich marbles and chiselled bronze.
Gabriel cast a glance at the choir, admiring the beautiful stalls
belonging to the canons, and he thought enthusiastically that perhaps
some day he might succeed in gaining one to the great pride of his
family. In his wanderings about the church he would often stop before
the immense fresco of Saint Christopher, a picture as bad as it
was huge--a figure occupying all one division of the wall from the
pavement to the cornice, and which by its size seemed to be the
only fitting inhabitant of the church. The cadets would come in the
evenings to look at it; that colossus of pink flesh, bearing the child
on its shoulders, advancing its angular legs carefully through the
waters, leaning on a palm tree that looked like a broom, was for them
by far the most noticeable thing in the church. The light-hearted
young men delighted in measuring its ankles with their swords and
afterwards calculating how many swords high the blessed giant could
be. It was the readiest application that they could make of those
mathematical calculations with which they were so much worried in the
academy. The apprentice of the church was irritated at the impudence
with which these dressed up popinjays, the apprentices of war,
sauntered about the church.
Many mornings he would go to the Muzarabé Chapel, following
attentively the ancient ritual,[1] intoned by the priests especially
devoted to it. On the walls were represented in brilliant colours
scenes from the conquest of Oran by the great Cisneros. As Gabriel
listened to the monotonous singing of the Muzarabe priests he
remembered the quarrels during the time of Alfonso VI. between the
Roman liturgy and that of Toledo--the foreign worship and the national
one. The believers, to end the eternal disputes, appealed to the
"Judgment of God." The king named the Roman champion, and the Toledans
confided the defence of their Gothic rite to the sword of Juan Ruiz,
a nobleman from the borders of Pisuerga. The champion of the Gothic
breviary remained triumphant in the fight, demonstrating its
superiority with magnificent sword thrusts, but, in spite of the will
of God having been manifested in this warlike way, the Roman rite by
slow degrees became master of the situation, till at last the Muzarabé
ritual was relegated to this small chapel as a curious relic of the
past.
[Footnote 1: The Muzarabé ritual is still sung in Arabic both in
Toledo and Salamanca.]
Sometimes in the evenings, when the services were ended and the
Cathedral was locked up, Gabriel would go up to the abode of the
bell-ringer, stopping on the gallery above the door del Perdon.
Mariano, the bell-ringer's son, a youth of the same age as the
seminarist, and attached to him by the respect and admiration his
talents inspired, would act as guide in their excursions to the upper
regions of the church; they would possess themselves of the key of the
vaultings and explore that mysterious locality to which only a few
workmen ascended from time to time.
The Cathedral was ugly and commonplace seen from above. In the very
early days the stone vaultings had remained uncovered, with no other
concealment beyond the light-looking carved balustrade, but the rain
had begun to damage them, threatening their destruction, and so the
Chapter had covered the Cathedral with a roof of brown tiles, which
gave the Church the appearance of a huge warehouse or a great barn.
The pinnacles of the buttresses seemed ashamed to appear above this
ugly covering, the flying buttresses became lost and disappeared among
the bare-looking buildings, built on to the Cathedral, and the little
staircase turrets became hidden behind this clumsy mass of roofing.
The two youths climbing along the cornices, green and slippery from
the rain, would mount to quite the upper parts of the building. Their
feet would become entangled in the plants that a luxuriant nature
allowed to grow amid the joints of the stones, flocks of birds would
fly away at their approach; all the sculptures seemed to serve as
resting-places for their nests, and every hollow in the stone where
the rain-water collected was a miniature lake where the birds came
to drink; sometimes a large black bird would settle on one of the
pinnacles like an unexpected finial; it was a raven who settled there
to plume his wings, and it would remain there sunning itself for
hours; to the people who saw it from below it appeared about the size
of a fly.
These vaultings caused Gabriel a strange impression; no one could
guess the existence of such a place in the upper regions of the
building. He would walk through the forest of worm-eaten posts which
supported the roof, through narrow passages between the cupolas of the
vaulting that arose from the flooring like white and dusty tumours;
sometimes there would be a shaft through which he could see down into
the Cathedral, the depth of which made him giddy. These shafts were
like narrow well-mouths at the bottom of which could be seen people
walking like ants on the tile flooring of the church. Through these
shafts were lowered the ropes of the great chandeliers, and the golden
chains that supported the figure of Christ above the railing of the
high altar. Enormous capstans showed through the twilight their cogged
and rusty wheels, their levers and ropes like forgotten instruments
of torture. This was the hidden machinery belonging to the great
religious festivals; by these artifices the magnificent canopy of the
holy week was raised and fastened.
As the sun's rays shone in between the wooden posts the dust of ages
that lay like a thick mantel on the roof of the vaulting would rise
and dance in them for a few seconds, and the huge old spiders' webs
would wave like fans in the wind, while the footsteps of the intruders
would occasion wild and precipitous scrambles of rats from all the
dark corners. In the furthest and darkest corners roosted those black
birds who by night flew down into the church through the shafts in
the vaulting, and the eyes of the owls glowed with phosphorescent
brilliancy, while the bats flew sleepily about sweeping the faces of
the lads with their wings.
The bell-ringer's son would examine the deposits dropped in the dust,
and would enumerate all the different birds who took refuge in the
summit of the mountains of stone: this belonged to the hooting owl,
and that to the red owl, and this again to the raven, and he spoke
with respect of a certain nest of eagles that his father had seen as a
young man, fierce birds who had endeavoured to tear out his eyes,
and who had so thoroughly frightened him that he had been obliged to
borrow the gun belonging to the night watchers on each occasion that
his duties took him to the roof.
Gabriel loved that strange world, harbouring above the Cathedral with
its silence and its imposing solitude. It was a wilderness of wood,
inhabited by strange creatures who lived unnoticed and forgotten under
the roof-tree of the church. Truly the good God had a house for the
faithful down below, and an immense garret above for the creatures of
the air.
The savage solitude of the higher regions was a great contrast to the
wealth of the chapel of the Ochava, full of relics in golden vessels
and caskets of enamel and precious marbles, to the quantities of
pearls and emeralds in the magnificent treasury, heaped up as though
they had been peas, and to the elegant luxury of the wardrobe, full
of rare and costly stuffs and vestments exquisitely embroidered with
every colour of the rainbow.
Gabriel was just eighteen when he lost his father. The old gardener
died quietly, happy in seeing all his family in the service of the
Cathedral and the good old tradition of the Lunas continued without
interruption. Thomas, the eldest son, remained in the garden, Esteban,
after serving many years as acolyte and assistant to the sacristans,
was Silenciario, and had been given the Wooden Staff and seven reals
a day, the height of all his ambition; and as far as regarded the
youngest, the good Señor Esteban had the firm conviction that he
had begotten a Father of the Church, for whom a place in heaven was
especially reserved at the right hand of God Omnipotent.
Gabriel had acquired in the seminary that ecclesiastic sternness that
turns the priest into a warrior more intent on the interest of the
Church than on the concerns of his family. For this reason he did
not feel the death of his father very greatly; besides, much greater
misfortunes soon occurred to preoccupy the young seminarist.
CHAPTER III
There was great excitement both in the Cathedral and in the seminary,
everyone discussing from morning till night the news from Madrid, for
these were the days of the September revolution. The traditional and
healthy Spain, the Spain of the great historical tradition had fallen.
The Cortes Constituyentes were a volcano, a breath from the infernal
regions, to those gentlemen of the black cassock who crowded round the
unfolded newspaper, and, if they found comfort and satisfaction in a
speech of Maesterola's they would suffer the agonies of death at the
revolutionary harangues, which dealt such terrible blows at the olden
days. The clergy had turned their eyes towards Don Carlos, who
was beginning the war in the northern provinces; the king of the
Vascongados[1] mountains would be able to remedy everything when he
came down into the plains of Castille. But years passed by, Amadeus
had come and gone, they had even proclaimed a republic! And yet the
cause of God did not seem to advance much, and Heaven seemed deaf. A
republican deputy proclaimed a war against God, challenging Him to
silence him; and so impiety stalked along immune and triumphant, and
its eloquence flowed abroad like a poisonous spring.
[Footnote 1: Provinces of Alava, Guipuscoa, and the lordship of
Biscay.]
Gabriel lived in a state of bellicose excitement--he forgot his books,
he disregarded his future, he never thought now of singing his mass.
What would happen to his career now that the Church was in peril, and
that the sleepy poetry of past ages, that had enveloped him from his
cradle like a perfumed cloud of old incense and dried roses, was on
the point of vanishing?
Often some of the pupils disappeared from the seminary, and the
professors would reply to the inquiries of the curious with a sly
wink.
"They have gone out--with the good sort. They could not see quietly
what was happening--'child's play,' 'follies.'"
But nevertheless such follies made them smile with paternal
satisfaction.
He thought to be himself among those who fled, as the world seemed
to be coming to an end. In certain towns the revolutionary mob had
invaded and profaned the churches; as yet they had not murdered any of
the ministers of God as in other revolutions, but still the priests
were unable to go about the streets in their cassocks for fear of
being hooted and insulted. The remembrance of the archbishops of
Toledo, those brave ecclesiastical princes, implacable warriors
against the infidels, fired his warlike feelings. As yet he had never
been away from Toledo, away from the shadow of its Cathedral; Spain
seemed to him as vast as all the rest of the world put together, and
he began to feel the ardent desire of seeing something new, of seeing
closer all the wonderful things he had read about in his books,
stirring within him.
One day he kissed his mother's hand, without feeling any very great
emotion towards the trembling and nearly blind old woman, for the
seminary had for him more tender memories than the house of his
fathers, smoked his last cigar with his brothers in the garden without
revealing his intentions to them, and that night he fled from Toledo
with a scapulary of the Heart of Jesus sewed into his waistcoat, and a
beautiful silk scarf in his wallet, one of those worked by white hands
in the convents of the city. The son of the bell-ringer went with
him. They joined one of the insignificant bands who were devastating
Murcia, but they soon went on to Valencia and Catalonia, anxious to
perform greater exploits for the cause of God than merely stealing
mules and extorting contributions from the rich.
Gabriel felt an intense delight in this wandering life, with its
continual alarms owing to the proximity of the troops.
He had been made an officer at once, on account of his education, and
because of the letters of recommendation that certain of the prebends
of the Metropolitan Church had given him; letters lamenting greatly
that a youth of so much theological promise should go and risk his
life like a simple sacristan.
Luna enjoyed the free and lawless life of war with the zest of a
collegian out of bounds; but he could not hide the feeling of painful
disillusion that the sight of those armies of the Faith caused him.
He had expected to find something akin to the ancient crusading
expeditions: soldiers who fought for an ideal, who bent the knee
before beginning the fight, so that God might be on their side, and
who at night, after a hard-fought field, slept the pure sleep of an
ascetic; instead of which he found an armed mob, mutinous to their
leaders, incapable of that fanaticism which rushes blindfold to death,
anxious only that the war might last as long as possible, so that they
might continue the life of lawless wandering at the expense of the
country, which they considered the best life possible; people who
at the sight of wine, women or plunder would disband themselves,
hungering, turning against their leaders.
It was the ancient life of the horde, surging up through civilisation,
the atavic custom of stealing the stranger's bread and women by force
of arms, the ancient Celtiberic love of factions and internal strife,
that only caught hold of a political pretext in order to revive.
Gabriel, with very rare exceptions, found none in those badly-armed
and worse-clothed bands who fought with a fixed idea; they were
adventurers who wished for war for the sake of war; visionaries
anxious for fortune; country lads from the fields, who in their
passive ignorance had joined the factions, just as they would have
stayed at home if they had had better counsels; simple souls who
firmly believed that in the towns they were burning and destroying
God's ministers, and who had thrown themselves into the fray so that
society should not lapse into barbarism.
The common danger, the misery of the interminable marches to deceive
the enemy, the scarcity suffered in the barren fields and on the rough
hilltops on which they took refuge, made them all equals, enthusiasts,
sceptics or rustics. They all felt the same desire to compensate
themselves for their privations, to appease the ravenous beast they
felt inside, awakened and irritated by a life of such sudden changes;
as much by the wild abundance and plundering of a sack as by the
distress endured in the long marches over interminable plains without
ever seeing the slightest sign of life. On entering a town they would
shout, "Long live religion," but on the slightest provocation they
would do this, that and the other in the name of God and all the
saints, not omitting in their filthy oaths to swear by everything most
sacred in that same religion.
Gabriel, who soon became accustomed to this wandering life, ceased
to feel shocked. The former scruples of the seminarist vanished,
smothered under the crust of the fighting man, which became hardened
with war.
The romantic figure of Doña Blanca, the king's sister-in-law passed
before him, like a person in a novel; in her romantic energy this
princess wished to emulate the deeds of the heroines of La Vendeé, and
mounted on a small white horse, her pistol in her belt, and the white
scarf tied over her floating tresses, she put herself at the head of
these armed bands, who revived in the centre of the Peninsula
the strife of almost prehistoric times. The flutter of the dark
riding-habit of this heroine served as a standard to the battalions of
Zouaves, to the troop of French, German, and Italian adventurers, the
scum of all the wars on the globe, who found it pleasanter to follow
a woman anxious for fame than to enlist themselves into the foreign
legion of Algeria.
The assault of Cuenca, the sole victory of the campaign, made a deep
impression on Gabriel's memory; the troops of men wearing the scarf,
after they had knocked down the ramparts as weak as mud walls, rushed
like overflowing streams through the streets. The firing from the
windows could not stop them; they rushed in pale, with discoloured
lips and eyes brilliant with homicidal mania, the danger overcome, and
the knowledge that they were at length masters of the place drove them
mad; the doors of the houses fell under their blows, terrified men
rushed out to be pierced with bayonets in the streets, and in the
houses you could see women struggling in the arms of the assailants,
striking them in the face with one hand, while with the other they
struggled to retain their clothes.
Gabriel saw how the roughest of the mountaineers destroyed in the
Institute all the apparatus of the Cabinet of Physical Science,
breaking it in pieces. They were furious with these inventions of the
evil one, with which they thought the unbelievers communicated with
the Government of Madrid, and they smashed on the ground with the butt
ends of their muskets, and trampled with their feet, all the
gilt wheels of the apparatus, and all the discs and batteries of
electricity.
The seminarist was delighted at all this destruction; he also hated,
but it was with a calm, reflective hate bred in the seminary, all
positive and material sciences, for the sum total of his reasoning was
that they came perilously near to the negation of God; those sons of
the mountains in their blessed ignorance, had without knowing it done
a great deed. Ah! if only the whole nation would imitate them! In
former times there were none of these ridiculous inventions of
science, and Spain was far happier. To live a holy life, the learning
of the priests and the ignorance of the people was sufficient, for
both together produced a blessed tranquillity; what did they want
more? For so the country had existed for centuries, all through the
most glorious period of its existence.
The war came to an end, the closely pursued rebels passed through the
centre of Catalonia and were finally driven over the frontier, where
they were compelled to give up their arms to the French custom-house
officers. Many availed themselves of the amnesty, anxious to return to
their own homes. Mariano, the bell-ringer, was one of these. He did
not wish to live in a foreign land; besides, during his absence his
father had died, and it was extremely probable that he might succeed
to the charge of the Cathedral tower if he laid due stress on the
merits of his family, his three years' campaigning for the sake of
religion, and a wound he had received in his leg; he would really be
able to compare himself with the martyrs for Christianity.
Gabriel preferred emigration. "He was an officer and therefore
could not take the oath of allegiance to a usurping dynasty." This
declaration he made with all the pride learnt in this caricature of an
army, which emphasised all the ceremonies of ancient warfare, and who,
ragged and shoeless as they were, with their swords by their sides,
never failed to transmit orders to each other as "high-born officer."
But the real reason which prevented Luna from returning to Toledo was
that he wished to follow the course of events, to see new countries
and different customs. To return to the Cathedral would mean to remain
there for ever, to renounce everything in life, and he, who during the
war had tasted of worldly delights, had no desire to turn his back on
them quite so soon; also he was not yet of age, so he had plenty of
time before him in which to finish his studies; the priesthood was a
sure retreat, but one to which he was in no hurry to return just at
present; besides, his mother was dead, and his brother's letters told
him of no alteration in the sleepy life of the upper cloister, beyond
that the gardener was married and that the "Wooden Staff" was courting
a girl in the Claverias, it being against all the good traditions of
these people to ally themselves with anyone outside the Cathedral.
Luna lived for more than a year in the emigrants' cantonments; his
classical education and the sympathy aroused by his youth smoothed his
path to a certain extent; he talked Latin with the French abbés, who
were delighted to hear about the war from the young theologian, and
at the same time they taught him the language of the country. These
friends procured for him Spanish lessons among the upper middle
classes who were friendly to the Church. In these days of penury he
was saved by his friendship with an old legitimist Countess, who
invited him to spend several days in her country house, introducing
the warlike seminarist to all the grave and pious friends at her
assemblies as though he had been a crusader newly returned from
Palestine.
Gabriel's great desire was to go to Paris; his life in France had
radically changed his ideas, he really felt as though he had fallen
into a new planet. Accustomed to the monotonous life in the seminary,
and to the nomadic existence during that mountainous and inglorious
war, he was astonished at the material progress, the refinement of
civilisation, the culture and the well-being of the people in France.
He remembered now with shame his Spanish ignorance, all that Castilian
phantasmagoria, fed by lying literature, that had made him believe
that Spain was the first country in the world, and its people the
noblest and bravest, and that all the other nations were a sort of
wretched mob, created by God to be victims of heresy, and to receive
overwhelming punishment each time that they ventured to interfere with
this privileged country, which, though it eats little and drinks less,
has yet produced the holiest saints and the greatest captains of
Christendom.
When Gabriel could express himself fluently in French and had
contrived to save a few francs for his journey, he went to Paris. A
friendly abbé had procured him employment as corrector of proofs in a
religious library close to Saint Sulpice. In this priestly quarter of
Paris, with its hostels for the clergy and for religious families, as
gloomy as convents, with its shops full of pious images, which flood
the globe with varnished and smiling saints, was accomplished the
great transformation of Gabriel.
This quarter of Saint Sulpice with its streets almost Spanish in their
silence and peacefulness, with the sisters in black veils gliding by
the walls of the seminary, drawn by the sound of the bells, was for
the Spanish seminarist what the road to Damascus had been for the
Apostle. The French Catholicism, cultivated, reasoning and respectful
to human progress, bewildered Gabriel, whose fierce Spanish bigotry
had taught him to despise all profane science. There was only one true
learning in the world, and that was theology. The other sciences were
only toys, only fit to amuse the eternal infancy of humanity. To know
God and to meditate on the greatness of His power, this was the only
serious study to which men could devote themselves; machinery, the
discoveries of the positive sciences, in fact everything which did not
treat of divinity and the future life, was only a bagatelle for the
amusement of fools and people of no faith.
The former seminarist, who from his earliest childhood had despised
all human progress, was stupefied when he perceived how earnestly all
French Catholicism spoke of it. In correcting the proofs of so many
religious works he could not but notice the profound respect which
this despised science inspired in the good French priests, men of such
far superior culture to that of the canons down there. And moreover he
noticed a certain humble shrinking in the representatives of religion
when they came face to face with science--a desire to please, not
to be censorious, to help on with their sympathy any conciliatory
solutions, so that dogma should not fall to the ground, finding no
place in the rapid march of events that was hurrying humanity into
the future with the whirl of its new discoveries. Entire books were
written by eminent priests with the view of adjusting and bringing
into line the revelations of the holy books and the discoveries of
modern science, even at the risk of doing some violence to the former.
The ancient and venerable Church that Gabriel had seen in his own
country, immovable in its antiquated majesty, unwilling to move a
single fold of its mantle for fear of losing some of the dust of ages,
was stirring in France, endeavouring to renew itself, throwing on one
side the ancient garments of tradition, like old rags that would turn
it into ridicule, and stretching out its hands with almost despairing
strength to catch hold of the modern achievements of science; the
great enemy of yesterday, whose appearance had been ushered in with
bonfires and shameful abjurations was triumphant to-day.
What had that fatal apple of Paradise contained, that after six
thousand years of malediction that same Church had begun to venerate
it, striving to make it forget its ancient persecutions? Why was
religion, firm as a rock throughout the centuries, which had defied
persecutions, schisms and wars, beginning to dissolve before the
discoveries of a few men, and entering into that wild current which
sought for the cause and explanation of everything? If it had the
secular support of faith, why should it seek the assistance of reason
to maintain its traditions and to justify its dogmas?
Gabriel felt the same fever of curiosity which had obliged him as a
child to bend his back over the old volumes, bound in parchment, in
the library of the seminary; he wished to be acquainted with the
mysterious perfume of that hated science which had so disturbed God's
priests, and had made them indirectly deny the beliefs of nineteen
centuries. He wished to know why the sacred books were being
dislocated and tortured in order to explain by geological periods the
creation which God had accomplished in six days. What danger did they
hope to avoid by making the divinity appear before science in order to
explain its acts and fit them into the decisions of the latter?
Whence came the instinctive fear of the religious authors of roundly
affirming miracles? attempting instead to justify them by intricate
and tentative reasonings, without daring to adduce as the decisive
proof the incomprehensibility of supernatural prodigies.
For the time being Gabriel abandoned the tranquil atmosphere of the
religious library. His reputation as a humanist had reached the ears
of an editor living near the Sorbonne, so, without leaving the left
bank of the Seine, he moved into the Latin quarter to undertake the
correction of proofs in Latin and Greek. He earned in this way twelve
francs a day--far more than those canons of Toledo, who formerly had
appeared to him as great dukes. He lived in a small inn for students
near to the School of Medicine, and his vehement discussions at night
with his fellow-lodgers over the smoke of their pipes taught him as
much as the books of that hated science. Those students who lent him
books, or who told him of those he should search for in his free
hours in the library on the hill of Saint Genevieve, laughed like
pagans at the exalted ideas of the former seminarist.
For two years young Luna did little else but read; now and again he
accompanied his friends in some escapade, throwing himself into the
free and joyous life of the Quartier, wearing out the elbows of his
sleeves on the tables of the beershops. The Mimi of Murger often
passed before him, but less melancholy than the creation of the poet,
and the ex-seminarist found his Sunday evening idylls in the woods
surrounding Paris. But Gabriel was not of an amorous temperament;
curiosity and the thirst for knowledge mastered him, and after these
escapades from which he returned fresher, and with his brain keener,
he threw himself with greater ardour into his studies.
History, true history, whose cold clearness contrasted so strongly
with that intricate morass of miracles in the chronicles that he had
read in his childhood, beat down the greater part of his beliefs.
Catholicism was no longer for him the only religion, neither could
he any longer divide the history of humanity into two periods, that
before and that after the appearance in Judea of a handful of obscure
men, who, spreading themselves over the world, preached a cosmopolitan
morality drawn from the maxims of Orientals, and from the teachings of
Greek philosophy.
Religions were for him human inventions, subject to the conditions of
existence belonging to all organisms, its generous infancy capable of
blind sacrifices, its self-contained and masterful manhood, in which
the early sweetness was changed by the authoritative imposition of its
power, and its inevitable age, with a long agony, in which the sick
man, guessing his speedy end, clings to life with all the energy of
desperation.
His faith in Catholicism as the only religion disappeared completely;
losing his belief in dogmas he lost also, by inevitable logic, that
belief in the monarchy which had driven him to fight in the mountains,
and he understood clearly now the history of his country without
prejudices of race. The foreign historians showed him the sad fate of
Spain, arrested in the most critical period of her development, when
she was emerging young and strong during the most fertile period of
the Middle Ages, by the fanaticism of priests and inquisitors, and the
folly of some of her kings, who, with utterly inadequate means, wished
to revive the empire of the Caesars, draining the country for this mad
enterprise. Those people who had broken with the Papacy, turning their
backs for ever on Rome, were far happier and more prosperous than that
Spain, which slept like a beggar at the door of the Church.
At this period of his intellectual development Gabriel had an ideal,
and often of an evening he would leave his work to go and listen to
him for an hour at the College of France: this was Ernest Renan;
Gabriel admired him for a double reason, for his talent and for his
history. The great man had also passed through a seminary, and even
now had a priestly look as though he had suffered deeply from the
pressure of the ecclesiastical yoke; he was a rebel, and Gabriel felt
as though he belonged to his own family. "Truly the hammers to destroy
the temple are forged within the temple," and the law fatal to all
religions was being accomplished, when faith vanishes, and the
multitude no longer feel the fervour of early days.
Gabriel was astonished to hear how the teacher could penetrate the
intellectual development of the Hebrew people, which had served as the
basis of Christianity, as he heard him demolish bit by bit the
immense altarpiece, before which humanity had knelt for over nineteen
centuries. The Spanish seminarist revolted against his old faith with
all the impetuosity of his vehement temperament. How could he have
believed all that and have considered it the height of human wisdom!
Certainly Christianity had exercised a beneficial influence at one
period of the infancy of humanity, it had filled men's lives in the
Middle Ages when there was little to think of beyond religion, and, in
a land desolated by strife, there was no other refuge for intellectual
thought but the cathedral in the towns and the monastery in the
country. "The fairs--the assemblies for business and pleasure," said
the master, "were religious feasts; the scenic representations were
mysteries, the journeys were pilgrimages and the wars crusades." After
this the ways of life divided--religious life took one way and human
life the other. Art placed nature above the ideal, and men thought
more of earth than of heaven. Reason was born, and every advance that
it made was one step backward for faith, and at last the time arrived
when the clear-sighted, those who were anxious about the future, began
to ask themselves what the new belief was likely to be which would
replace the moribund religion. Luna had no doubts on the point--it was
science, and science alone, which could fill the vacuum caused by that
religion now dead for ever.
Influenced by the Hellenism of his master, which he assimilated
easily, being accustomed to daily intercourse with the Greek authors,
he dreamed that the humanity of the future would be an immense Athens,
an artistic and learned democracy governed by great thinkers, with
no strifes but those of the mind, with no ambition but that of
cultivating the intellect, of gentle manners, and devoted to the joys
of the mind and the culture of reason.
Of all his old beliefs, Gabriel only retained that of a creative
God from a certain superstitious scruple. His ideas were rather
disconcerted by astronomy, which he had taken up with an almost
childish eagerness, attracted by the charm of the marvellous.
That infinite space in which in olden days legions of angels had
manoeuvred, and which had served the Virgin as a pathway in her
terrestrial descents, he suddenly found to be peopled with thousands
of millions of worlds, and the more powerful men's instruments became
the more numerous they seemed to be, the distances being infinitely
prolonged to immensities that were inconceivable. Bodies were
attracted to one another travelling in space at the rate of millions
of miles a minute, and all this cloud of worlds revolved without ever
passing twice over the same spot in this immensity of silence, in
which fresh stars, and again others and others, were continually being
discovered as the instruments of observation became more perfect.
This God of Gabriel's having lost the corporeal form given to Him by
religion, and as divulged in the history of the creation, lost at once
all His attributes, and being magnified to fill the infinite and being
absorbed into it, became so impalpable and subtle to the intellect as
to appear a phantasm.
Nothing remained to Gabriel of all his ancient beliefs. His mind was
like a bare field over which the whirlwind had passed, for his last
belief, which had remained standing like a monolith in the midst of
ruins, the belief in the history of creation, had now fallen.
But it was impossible to the former seminarist to remain inactive with
his cargo of new ideas. He felt obliged to believe in something, to
devote to the defence of some ideal all the faith in his character, to
make some use of that fervour of proselytising which had been so
much admired in the class of eloquence in the seminary, and so
revolutionary sociology took possession of him. First of all it was
Proudhon with his audacious writings, and afterwards the work was
completed by some "militantes" who were working in the same printing
office as himself--old soldiers of the Commune, who had lately
returned from their exile in the prisons of Oceania, and were renewing
their campaign against social organisation with an ardour increased
tenfold by their painful sufferings and their desire of vengeance.
With them he went to the anarchist meetings; there he heard Reclus
and Prince Kropotkine, and the words of the since deceased Miquel
Bakronhine came to him as the gospel of a Saint Paul of the future.
Gabriel had met with his new religion, and he gave himself over to
it entirely, dreaming of the regeneration of humanity through its
stomach. Believing in a future life, misfortunes gave the false
consolation of happiness after death; but all religion was a lie,
there was no other life but that of the present, and Luna rose in
anger against the social injustice that condemned millions of beings
to poverty and misery for the happiness of a few privileged thousands.
Authority, which was the fount of all evil, was to him the greatest
enemy; it must be destroyed, but men must be created who were capable
of living without masters, priests or soldiers. The natural gentleness
of his character, and the horror of violence with which his three
years' campaigning had filled him, caused him rather to draw back from
his new companions, who, dreaming of hecatombs from dynamite and the
dagger to reform the world, obliged him to accept these new doctrines
through fear. No; he believed in the strength of the "idea," and in
the innocent evolution of humanity; he had only to work like the first
apostles of Christianity certain of the future, but without hurrying,
to see his ideas realised; he had only to fix his eyes on the day's
work, without thinking of the long years and centuries before it would
bear its fruit.
The ardour of his proselytising made him leave Paris at the end of
five years. He was anxious to see the world, to study for himself all
these social miseries, so as to judge what forces these disinherited
could command for their great transformation. Besides, he began to
find himself incommoded by the vigilance of the French police, on
account of his intimacy with the Russian students of the Quartier
Latin--young men with cold eyes and limp and dishevelled hair who were
endeavouring to implant in Paris the vengeances of Nihilism. In London
he came to know a young Englishwoman of weak health, but burning like
himself with all the ardour of revolutionary propaganda, who would
walk from morning till night in the lanes and surroundings of
workshops and laboratories, distributing pamphlets and printed
leaflets that she kept in a band-box that was always hanging on her
arm. In a short time Lucy became Gabriel's companion; they loved each
other without excitement, with a cold and quiet passion, more from
community of ideas than anything else, for the love of revolutionists,
dominated with the thought of rebellion against everything existing,
has not much room for any other feeling.
Luna and his companion went to Holland and thence to Belgium, settling
afterwards in Germany, always travelling from group to group of
"companions," taking up different work with that facility of
adaptation which seems universal among revolutionaries, who wander
over the world penniless, enduring every sort of privation, but
finding always in their difficulties some brotherly hand to raise them
and set them again on the path.
After eight years of this life Gabriel's friend died of consumption.
They were then in Italy, and Luna, finding himself alone, understood
for the first time how much support the gentle companion of his life
had given him. In his sorrow for the loss of Lucy he forgot for a
while his revolutionary enthusiasm, lamenting only the void left in
his life. He had not loved her as most men love, but she was his
companion, his sister, they were alike in their pleasures and their
sorrows, and their common poverty had welded them into one will.
Moreover, Gabriel felt himself aged before his time by this life
of soul-stirring adventures and painful privations. He had been
imprisoned in many places in Europe, being suspected of complicity
with the terrorists, he had often been beaten by the police, and he
began to find a difficulty in travelling about the Continent, as his
photograph figured with that of several other "companions" in the
central police offices of the principal nations. He was a vagabond and
dangerous dog, who would end by being kicked out of every place.
Gabriel could not live alone; he was accustomed to see those kind blue
eyes near him, and to hear the caressing voice with its bird-like
inflexions which had so much encouraged him in times of trial and
difficulty, and he could not endure the solitude in a strange land
after Lucy's death. A great longing for his native land awoke in him,
he wished to return to Spain, to that land he had so often ridiculed,
and which now in spite of its backwardness seemed to him so
attractive. He thought of his brothers, fixed like plants to the
stones of the Cathedral, never interesting themselves with what took
place in the world, never seeking for news of him, as though they had
entirely forgotten him.
With a sudden impulse, as though he were afraid of dying away from
his native land, he returned to Spain. In Barcelona some of the
"companions" had obtained for him the management of a printing press,
but before taking up his post he wished to spend a few days in Toledo.
He returned an old man, though he was barely forty, speaking four or
five languages, and poorer than when he had left it. He found that
his brother the gardener had died, and that the widow and her son had
taken refuge in a garret in the Claverias, where she supported herself
by washing the canon's linen. Esteban, the "Wooden Staff," received
him with the same admiration he had felt for him while in the
seminary. He talked a great deal about his travels, gathering together
all the people in the upper cloister, so that they should listen to
this man who had travelled all over the world, just as though he were
going about his own house. In their inquiries they painfully entangled
geography, as they could only comprehend two divisions in it, the
countries of heretics, and the countries of Christians.
Gabriel pitied the great poverty of these people, and admired the
humbleness of these Cathedral servants, content to live and die in the
same place, without any curiosity as to what was taking place outside
the walls. The church seemed to him a huge derelict. It was like the
petrified skeleton of one of those immense and powerful animals of
former days, that had been dead for ages, its body decayed, its soul
evaporated, and nothing left but this framework, like to the shells
found by geologists in prehistoric strata by whose structure they can
guess at the soft parts of the vanished being. Seeing the ceremonies
of worship which in former days had so moved him, he felt roused to
protest, a longing to shout to the priests and acolytes to stop, and
withdraw, as their times were passed, and faith was dead, and it was
only from routine and the fear of outside opinion that people now
frequented these places, which formerly religious fervour had filled
from morning till night.
On his arrival in Barcelona Gabriel's life was a whirlwind of
proselytising, of struggles, and of persecutions. The "companions"
respected him, seeing in him the friend of all the great propagandists
of "the idea," and one who might himself rank among the most famous
revolutionists. No meeting could be held without the "companion" Luna;
that natural eloquence which had caused such wonder on his entry into
the seminary, bubbled up and spread like an intoxicating gas in these
revolutionary assemblies, firing that ragged, hungry, and miserable
crowd, making them tremble with emotion at the description of future
societies set forth by the apostle, that celestial city of the
dreamers of all ages, without property, without vices, without
inequalities, where work would become a pleasure, and where there
would be no other worship but that of science and art. Some of his
hearers, the darker spirits, would smile with a compassionate gesture,
listening to his maledictions against authority, and his hymns to
the sweetness and triumph to be won by passive resistance. He was an
idealist, one to whom they must listen because he had served the cause
well; they who were the strong men, the fighters, knew well enough how
to crush in silence that cursed society if it should show itself deaf
to the voice of Truth.
When they exploded bombs in the streets the "companion" Luna was the
first to be surprised at the catastrophe, he was also the first to be
taken to prison on account of the popularity of his name. Oh! those
two years passed in the castle of Montjuich! They had ploughed a deep
furrow in Gabriel's memory, a deep wound that could not heal, that
made him tremble at the slightest remembrance, disturbing his calm,
and making him hot and cold with terror.
The madness of fear had taken possession of society, and all laws and
regard to humanity, were trampled under foot to defend it. The justice
of former ages, with its violent procedure was resuscitated in full
civilisation. The judge was distrusted as being too cultured and
scrupulous, and a free hand was given to the petty officers of
justice, ordering them to introduce afresh all the old instruments of
torture.
In the darkness of the night Gabriel saw his Moorish dungeon lighted
up; some men in uniform seized him and dragged him down the staircase
to a room where others were waiting with huge cudgels. A young man
with a soft voice, in the uniform of a lieutenant, and with the lazy
manners of a Creole, questioned him as to the various attempts that
had occurred months before down in the town. Gabriel knew nothing, had
seen nothing. But all the same these men were your companions; but
he, having fixed his eyes on high, contemplating his visions of the
future, had never realised that all around him this violence was
surging and germinating. His reiterated negative rendered the men
furious; the soft voice of the Creole became harsh with anger, and
with menaces and blasphemies they all threw themselves upon him, and
the cruel hunt of the man round and round the dungeon began, the
cudgels falling on his body, beat his head or his legs indifferently,
pursuing him into corners, following him as with a desperate bound he
reached the opposite wall, opening the way with his bent head, his
back resounding like an empty box beneath the blows. Now and then the
desperation of pain inflamed the victim, the lamb turned into a wild
beast, and before falling to the ground, cowering like a child before
superior numbers, he would throw himself on the executioners, tearing
them, and trying to bite them. Gabriel kept a button from the
lieutenant's uniform which had remained in his fingers after one of
these revolts of his weakness.
Afterwards, his tormentors, wearied by the inutility of their
violence, left him forgotten in the dungeon. A loaf of bread and some
bits of dry salt cod were his only food. Thirst, an infernal thirst,
racked his bowels, contracted his throat, and burnt his mouth. At
first he called piteously under the door for water, but afterwards he
would beg no more, knowing beforehand what the answer would be. It was
a calculated torture; they promised him as much water as he wished,
after he should have disclosed the names of the guilty, confessing
things of which he had no knowledge. Hunger strove in him against
thirst, but fearing this latter most, he would throw this salted food
into a corner as though it were poison. He was delirious with the
delirium of a shipwrecked man tormented with visions of fresh water
in the midst of the salt waves. In his nightmare he saw clear and
murmuring brooks, great rivers; and seeking freshness for his mouth
he would pass his tongue over the filthy walls, finding a certain
alleviation in the lime of the whitewash.
The privations and the incarceration disturbed his mind with horrible
ravings; often Gabriel was surprised at finding himself on all fours,
growling and barking opposite the door without knowing how or why.
His tormentors seemed to forget him; they had other prisoners to look
after. The jailors gave him water, but whole months passed without
anyone entering his cell. Some nights he would hear vaguely and
far off through the greasy walls wailing and sobs in the adjacent
dungeons. One morning he was awoke by sounds as of thunder, in spite
of a tiny ray of sunlight filtering through his loophole; hearing the
jailors in the corridors near, he understood the mystery. They had
been shooting some of the prisoners.
Luna received as a happiness this hope of death; he would renounce
with pleasure that shadow of a life in a small stone box, tormented by
physical pain and the fear of men's ferocity. His stomach, weakened by
all these privations, refused for many days, with horrible nausea, to
receive the bitter bread and the coppery mess. His want of exercise,
the want of air, and the bad and scanty nourishment had made him
fall into a mortal anaemia; he coughed continually, suffering great
oppression on his chest. The knowledge he had acquired of the human
body in his thirst for knowing everything did not admit of his being
mistaken; he would die as poor Lucy had died.
After a year and a half of imprisonment he appeared before a council
of war, mixed up with a mob of old men, women, and even quite young
people, all weakened and broken by imprisonment, with their skin white
and thick as chewed paper, and that dazed look in their eyes that
comes from solitary confinement. Gabriel hoped he would be executed.
When the fiscal came to the name of Luna on the long list he stopped
an instant, shooting a ferocious glance at him--this man was among the
theorists. It appeared from the declarations of witnesses that he took
no direct part in the deeds of violence, and that in his speeches he
had always deprecated them; still it must be remembered that he was
one of the principal propagandists of anarchism, and that he had
delivered speeches in all the workmen's societies frequented by the
authors of the attempts.
An elderly captain bent towards another member of the council,
speaking in his ear, but Gabriel caught his words:
"It is on these gentlemen who make speeches that we must lay our hand,
so that they may be warned not to lecture any more on Tolstoi or
Ibsen, or any of those foreign worthies who advocate throwing bombs."
Gabriel spent many months of solitary confinement in his prison.
From words now and then dropped by his jailors he could guess at the
fluctuations of his fate. Sometimes he would gather that he and all
his companions in misfortune were to be sent to the jail in Africa, or
again they would hint at his immediate liberation, or would prophesy
that they were all to be shot _en masse_. When at the end of two
years he left this gloomy castle, it was to be embarked with all his
companions for exile. He was only the shadow of a man; his weakness
made his walk as uncertain and tremulous as that of a child, but he
forgot his own misery in trying to assist those of his companions who
were even weaker than himself, and who bore the cruel scars of the
torments they had endured.
The return to liberty recalled all his former gentleness and the
philosophic pity with which he surrounded all men, pitying and
pardoning their faults. On landing in England the more violent of
his companions spoke of future vengeance on their persecutors, while
Gabriel asked pardon for them, as blind instruments employed by
society in a moment of terror, thinking they had saved it by their
barbarity.
The climate of London aggravated Gabriel's illness, and in about two
years he was obliged to move to the Continent, although England with
its absolute liberty was the only land where he could have lived
quietly and ignored.
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 buttresses, 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 Mass 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 cassock, 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 passed 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 God 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, assisting the Canon Obrero in the
division and assignment 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 cassock 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 hoarded 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 hell to deprive her of
a single farthing; he, as a good servant of God 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 horny hands into the recesses of
his cassock, 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 cassock,
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 passed 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 scrape 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 class 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 (God 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 God (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 passage 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 assent, 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
assistance. 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 glass in the naves, we can still lay our
hands on some of the stores left by the Obreros of former days. Ay,
señor! And to think there was a time when the Chapter maintained at
its own expense inside the church, cutters and painters of glass,
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 quantities 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 glass 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 God forgive me the comparison--and the priests of the
Primacy will praise God dressed like the chaplain of a hermitage."
And Don Antolin laughed sarcastically, as though this future that he
was anticipating 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 mass. 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 God 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 amassed
for God, 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 Señor 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 principality, 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 nobles, 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 tithes 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 principality.
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
passed 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 cassock
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-glasses. 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 passing 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:
"Will you have some, Don Gabriel?"
And with her bold eyes, like a hungry wolf, she invited Luna to enter.
She liked the masterful ways of the man, she said, and the ease which
his former intercourse with the world had given him, and, moreover,
for her woman's imagination Gabriel's mysterious past possessed
a great attraction; his proud silence, the vague reports of his
adventures, and the smile, as much compassionate as disdainful, with
which he listened to the people of the upper cloister.
The insinuating Mariquita withdrew, and Gabriel continued his walk
through the cloister, after finishing the little jar of milk that his
brother brought him up every morning.
At eight o'clock, Don Luis, the Chapel-master, came out, his cloak
wrapped as usual theatrically round him, and his big hat well tilted
back, like a glory, round his enormous head; he was humming absently,
restless with perpetual nervous movements; he inquired anxiously if
the bell had yet rung for the choir, frightened by the threats of a
fine in case he were late. Gabriel felt himself very much attracted
by this poor priestly musician, who lived so despised in the furthest
corner of the church, thinking far more of music than of dogma.
In the evenings Gabriel would often go up to the little room inhabited
by the Chapel-master, on the tipper floor of the Lunas' house; the
room contained all the priest's fortune--a little iron bed, which had
belonged formerly to the seminarist, two plaster busts of Beethoven
and Mozart, and an enormous pile of bundles of music, bound scores,
loose sheets of ruled paper, so big and so piled up and disorderly
that every now and then a pile would slip down, covering the floor of
the little room with white sheets to its furthest corner.
"That is how all his money goes," said the Wooden Staff with an air of
good-natured reproof, "he will never have a farthing. As soon as he
gets his pay he orders more music from Madrid. It would be far better
for Don Luis if he were to buy himself a new hat, even if it were a
cheap one, so that the gentlemen of the choir should not laugh at the
covering he has on his head."
In the winter evenings, after the choir, the musician and Gabriel took
refuge in this little room. The canons, wishing to avoid the cold
winds and the rain, took their daily walk in the galleries of the
upper cloister, not wishing to forego this exercise to which their
methodical existence had accustomed them. The rain would beat on the
window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician
would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the
harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who was seated on the
bed.
The musician would grow excited, speaking of his love of art. In the
midst of some peroration he would become suddenly silent, and bending
over the instrument its melodies would fill the room, and floating
down the staircase would reach the ears of the walkers in the cloister
like a distant echo. Suddenly he would cease playing and resume his
chattering, as though afraid that with his absent-mindedness his ideas
would evaporate.
The silent Luna was the only listener he had met with in the
Cathedral; the first who would listen to him for long hours without
ridiculing him or thinking him crazy, and who often showed by his
short interruptions and questions the pleasure with which he listened.
The end of the evening's conversation was always the same--the
greatness of Beethoven, the idol of the poor musician.
"I have loved him all my life," said the Chapel-master, "I was
educated by a Jeronomite friar, an old man driven from his convent
who, after leaving it, had wandered over the world as a professor
of the violoncello. The Jeronomites were the great musicians of the
Church. You did not know this, neither should I have known it if this
holy man had not taken me under his protection soon after I was born,
and been to me a real father. It appears that in olden days each order
devoted itself to some special thing. One, I think the Benedictines,
copied and annotated old books; others made sweet liqueurs for the
ladies, others were wonderfully clever in training cage birds, and
the Jeronomites studied music for seven years, each one playing the
instrument of his choice, and to these we owe that there has been
preserved in the Spanish churches a little, but very little, good
musical taste. And from what my little father told me, what wonderful
orchestras these Jeronomites must have had in their convents! For the
ladies it was a great delight to go on Sunday evenings to the parlour,
where they met the good fathers, each one a master of his own
particular instrument. These were the only concerts in those days, and
with their pittance assured, and no anxiety as to housing or clothing
themselves, and with the love of art as their only duty, you may
imagine, Gabriel, what musicians they could become. For this reason,
when the friars were expelled from their convents the Jeronomites were
not the worst off. There was no need to beg masses in the churches
or to live on the charity of devout families; they were able to earn
their bread by an art conscientiously studied, and consequently they
soon got places as organists and Chapel-masters; the Chapters really
fought for them. Some were more venturesome, and, anxious to see more
of that musical world which had seemed to them while in their convents
a vision of Paradise, entered the orchestras of theatres, many
travelling even to Italy, transforming themselves so entirely that
even their own former prior could not have recognised them. One of
these was my little father. What a man! He was a good Christian, but
he had thrown himself so thoroughly into music that he retained
very little of the former friar. When he was told that probably the
convents would be re-established, he shrugged his shoulders with
indifference, a new sonata interested him much more. He sometimes said
things that have always lived in my memory. I remember one day when I
was a child he took me to a meeting of musical friends in Madrid, who
played, for their own pleasure only, the famous 'Seventh Symphony.' Do
you know it? It is the freshest and most graceful of all Beethoven's
works. I remember my little father leaving the room quite wrapped up
in himself, with his head bent, dragging me along, for I could hardly
keep up with his long footsteps, and when we got home he looked at me
fixedly, as though I had been a grown-up person. 'Listen, Luis,' he
said, 'and remember this well. There is only one Lord in the world,
Our Lord Jesus Christ, and there are two lesser lords, Galileo and
Beethoven.'"
The musician looked lovingly at the plaster bust which faced the room
from one corner, with its leonine brows and the diffident eyes of a
deaf person.
"I do not know much about Galileo," continued Don Luis. "I know that
he was a very wise man, and a scientific genius. I am only a musician
and I know very little about other things, but I adore Beethoven,
and I think my little father did the same--he is a god; the most
extraordinary man the world has ever produced. Don't you think so,
Gabriel?"
His nerves were quivering with his excitement, and getting up, he
walked rapidly up and down the room, trampling on all the loose sheets
of music.
"Ay! how I envy you, Gabriel, having travelled so much, and having
heard so many good things! The other night I could not sleep for
thinking of all you had told me about your life in Paris--those
beautiful Sunday afternoons when you would go to the Lamoureax
concerts, or sometimes to Colonnas, giving yourself a surfeit of
sublimity! And here am I, shut up, my only hope being perhaps to
conduct a Mass of Rossini's at one of the great festivals! My only
comfort is to read music, instructing myself thoroughly in those great
works that so many fools in the towns can listen to half asleep and
bored. Here I have, in this pile, the nine symphonies of the great
man--his innumerable sonatas, his masses, and together with him,
Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, in fact all the great writers. I have even
Wagner. I read them, and I play what is possible on the harmonium.
But--it is just as if you were to describe the drawing and colours of
a picture to a blind man, buried in this cloister. I know, blindly,
that there are most beautiful things in this world--for those who can
hear them."
The Chapel-master kept from the previous year the remembrance of a
great happiness, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. He had been
chosen by the Cardinal Archbishop to go to Madrid, to be one of a
board of examiners for organists.
"That was the best time I ever had in my life, Gabriel. One evening
I listened to Wagner, dressed in the clothes of a friend of mine, a
violinist, who plays here in Toledo at the great festivals. I heard
the Walkyria in the pit of the Real Theatre, another night I went to
a concert; but the greatest night of all was the one on which I heard
the Ninth Symphony of that ugly old fellow, of that deaf, bad-tempered
genius who is listening to us."
And with one bound the musician rushed to the bust, kissing it
with childish humility, just as a child would caress a stern and
domineering father.
"You know the Ninth Symphony; true, Gabriel? And what did you feel as
you listened to it? When I listen to music strange things happen to
me. I close my eyes and I see unknown countries and strange faces, and
whenever I hear the same works the same visions are repeated. If I
speak about this with any of the people down below they say I am mad,
but I know that you feel as I do, and I am not afraid that you will
laugh at me. There are musical passages that make me see the sea, blue
and boundless, with silvery waves, and this, though I have never seen
the ocean; other works bring before me woods and castles, or groups
of shepherds with white flocks; with Schubert I always see two lovers
sighing at the foot of a linden tree, and certain French composers
bring before my mind's eye beautiful women walking among beds of
roses, dressed in violet, always violet. And you, Gabriel, do not you
see these things?"
The anarchist assented--yes, music awoke in him also a world of
fantastic visions, far more beautiful than reality.
"I remember," went on the priest, "what the Ninth Symphony made me
see. I see it still if I only hum some of its passages. Oh! that
graceful Scherzo with its strange tremolos! I thought, hearing it,
that God and his court of saints had left the heavens to take a
walk, leaving the little angels masters of the house, full liberty!
Universal gambols! The heavenly children, without any restraint,
sported from cloud to cloud, amusing themselves by scattering on the
earth the garlands of flowers that the saints had left behind them;
one let loose the rain and made it fall on the earth; another seized
the key of the thunder and touched it, fearful peals which frightened
all the revellers and made them fly. But they returned again to
continue their graceful play, beginning afresh their noisy games that
the thunder had disturbed. And the Adagio! What do you say about that?
Do you know anything softer, more loving or so divinely peaceful?
Human beings will never speak like this again, however much progress
they make. Hearing it, I thought of those fresco-painted ceilings with
mythological figures--gods and goddesses with pink flesh and flowing
curves, Apollo and Venus reclining on a mountain of pink and gold
clouds, like a lovely dawn."
"Chaplain, what has come to you?" said Gabriel; "this is not very
Christian."
"No, but it is artistic," said the musician simply. "I do not trouble
myself much about religion, I believe what I was taught, and I have
never taken the trouble to inquire any further. Music alone occupies
me, of which someone has said 'that it will be the religion of the
future,' the purest manifestation of the ideal. Everything that is
beautiful delights me, and I believe in it as a work of God. 'I
believe in God and in Beethoven,' as his pupil said--and besides, how
much religion the grandeur of music contains! Do you know the last
quartet that Beethoven wrote? He felt he was dying, and he wrote on
the edge of the score this terrible question: 'Must it be?' and lower
down he added, 'Yes, it must be, it must be.' It was necessary to die,
even for such a genius to leave life, while he still carried in his
mind such glorious things, to pay the tribute of human renovation;
and then he wrote that lament, that farewell to life, whose greatness
cannot be equalled by any song, or by any words of religion."
The musician sat down to the harmonium, and for a long while played
that last lament of the genius, his sorrowful complaint on crossing
the threshold, not despairing and trembling through fear of the
unknown, but with a brave melancholy, sinking into the eternal shadow,
confident that nothing could obscure his genius.
These evenings of artistic communion in that corner of the sleepy
Cathedral drew the two men together with an ever increasing affection.
The musician talked, turning over his scores, or playing his
harmonium; the revolutionist listened silently, only interrupting his
friend by his painful cough. They were evenings of sweet sadness that
these two men spent together, one dreaming of leaving the stone prison
of the Cathedral to see the world, the other returning from life
wounded and breathless, content with the obscure repose of the
beautiful church, and guarding with prudent silence the secret of his
past. Art shone for them like the rays of the sun in the grey and
monotonous atmosphere of the Cathedral.
When they met in the early mornings in the cloister the conversation
between the two friends generally ran on the same lines.
"This evening, eh?" the Chapel-master would say mysteriously. "I have
some fresh music, we shall enjoy something new that I have been sent
to-day, and besides, I wrote a little thing last night."
The anarchist nodded affirmatively, quite ready to serve as
entertainment for this pariah of art, who saw in him his only
audience, and who took so much kindly trouble to interest him.
While the services lasted Gabriel would walk alone in the cloisters;
all the men were in the Cathedral, except the shoemaker, who was
mending the giants. Tired of the chattering of the women who stood
at the doors of the Claverias, he would go up to the dwelling of the
bell-ringer, his old companion in arms, or he would go down into the
garden by the remarkable staircase del Tenorio when it was open, or by
the archbishop's archway crossing the street.
He delighted in passing an hour under the trees; he found in the
garden as many memories of his family as in the "habitacion" upstairs.
Besides, he was tired of always finding his walks bounded by stone
walls, which reminded him of his prison, and he wanted the movement of
the vegetation caressed by the breeze to foster the illusion that he
was living in complete liberty in the open country.
In the arbour, where he had formerly so often seen his father, infirm
and crippled with age, directing his eldest son, who received all his
orders impassively, he would now meet his Aunt Tomasa, knitting her
stockings, and watching with vigilant eyes the work of a boy whom she
had taken into her service.
Gabriel's aunt was by far the most important person in the Claverias;
her word was worth quite as much as Don Antolin's, the Silver Stick
was afraid of her, bending before the powerful protection that they
all guessed stood behind the poor old woman. In the days when her
father, Gabriel's maternal grandfather, was sacristan in the Cathedral
the functions of acolyte were exercised by a small boy, nephew of one
of the beneficiaries of the Cathedral, who ended by paying for his
education in the seminary. This little acolyte of half a century
before was now a prince of the church, and the Cardinal Archbishop of
Toledo. Old Tomasa and he had known each other as children, fighting
over trifles in the upper cloister, or playing tricks on the beggars
who sat at the Puerta del Mollete. The imposing Don Sebastian, whose
look alone made the Chapter and all the clergy in the diocese tremble,
became happy, fraternal and confidential, when now and then in the
evenings he saw Tomasa. She was the only living reminder of his
childhood in the Cathedral. The old woman would kiss his ring with
great reverence, but very soon she would lapse into talking to him as
one of her own family, often very nearly speaking to him in the second
person. The cardinal, always surrounded by fear and adulation, often
felt the necessity of the old woman's careless and frank conversation.
The people belonging to the Cathedral declared that the Señora Tomasa
was the only person who dared to tell the cardinal home-truths face to
face, and the neighbours in the Claverias felt their pride flattered
when they saw the prince of the church sweeping down the stone steps
in his brilliant scarlet robes to sit in the arbour and gossip for
a good hour with the old woman, while his attendants remained
respectfully standing at the gate of the iron railings.
Tomasa was not puffed up with this honour; to her this ecclesiastical
prince was only the friend of her childhood, who had had a certain
amount of good luck; and in the end, he was only Don Sebastian,
without going any further into ceremonies and formulas of respect. But
her family knew how to take advantage of this friendship, especially
her son-in-law, "Virgin's Blue," a hypocrite, as the old woman
declared, who would make money out of the very cobwebs of the
Cathedral; an insatiable locust who, profiting by the friendship of
the cardinal and his mother-in-law, went on continually obtaining
fresh privileges, without the priests and sacristans daring to make
the slightest protest, seeing him so well protected.
Gabriel much enjoyed his aunt's talk. She was the only person born
in the cloister who seemed to have freed herself from the soporific
influence of the church. She loved the Cathedral, as being her ancient
roof-tree, but she did not retain much respect for the saints in the
chapels, nor for the human dignitaries who sat in the choir. She
laughed with the happiness of a healthy and placid old woman, her
seventy years being, as she said, quite free from any evil done to her
neighbour. Her language was free and easy, like that of a woman who
has seen much, and does not believe in human majesty or irreproachable
virtues; but the bed-rock of her character was its tolerance, her
compassion for all faults, but she Was indignant with those who
attempted to hide them.
"They are all men, Gabriel," she would say to her nephew, speaking of
the clergy of the Cathedral. "Don Sebastian is only a man; all sinners
who have much to answer for before God. They cannot be anything else,
and so I forgive them. But believe me, nephew, I often feel inclined
to laugh when I see the people kneeling before them. I believe in the
Virgin of the Sagrario, and a little in God; but in these gentlemen!
If you only knew them as I do! But, when all is said and done, we must
all live, and the evil is not in having faults, but in attempting to
hide them; playing a farce with the shamelessness of my son-in-law
who, here as you see him, is as proud as a castle, beats his breast,
kisses the ground like the Beatas,[1] and yet he is anxious for my
death, thinking I have something laid away in my chest; he filches
what he can from the Virgin's poor-box, steals the wax tapers, and
plays tricks with what is paid for masses, and yet he would be in
the street if it were not for me, who always think of my poor sick
daughter and my poor little grandchildren."
[Footnote 1: _Beata_--woman engaged in works of charity who wears the
religious habit.]
When Gabriel went down to see her in the garden, she always received
him with the same salutation:
"Hola, you ghost! but to-day you are looking better, you are being
patched up. I believe your brother will pull you through with all his
care."
And then followed a comparison between her healthy and vigorous old
age and his ruined youth, which was fighting so tenaciously against
death.
"Here you see my seventy years, and never an illness in all my life.
Summer and winter I never hear four o'clock strike in bed, and all my
teeth are as sound as in the days when Don Sebastian came in his red
dress as server in the church and wanted to steal half my breakfast.
You Lunas have always been delicate; your father, long before he was
my age, could barely walk, and was always complaining of rheum and of
the damp in this garden. Here am I in it constantly, and I feel just
the same as when I am upstairs in the Claverias. We, the Villalpandos,
are made of iron; for, of course, we are descended from that famous
Villalpando who made the screen of the high altar, the custodia, and
an innumerable quantity of other things. He really must have been a
giant, to judge by the ease with which he twisted and moulded every
sort of metal."
Gabriel's ill-health awoke in her the deepest compassion, but all the
same not quite free from malicious suggestions.
"How much you must have amused yourself about the world, eh, nephew?
But that war was your perdition; without it you would now have had
your stall in the choir, and who knows if you might not have come to
be another Don Sebastian. The truth is, that from his childhood no one
spoke half as much about him in the seminary as they did of you, and
he certainly was no prodigy of learning. But you saw the world, and
you took a fancy to those countries where they say the ladies are
very pretty, and wear hats as large as parasols. You are a monster of
ugliness now, but you were very smart, though I, who am your aunt, say
so. And now you have come back so lean and suffering! You must have
lived very fast; who knows what you have done in the world--sly boots!
And your poor mother, who thought you would be a saint! God have mercy
on us! Don't deny it; you have done no good and I hate lies. You did
right to enjoy yourself and to take advantage of every opportunity,
but the misfortune is that you should have returned as you are, for it
is pitiful to see you, but I have known a great many like you. I don't
know what evil spirit possesses people belonging to the church, but
once they throw themselves into life, they don't know where to stop,
and they burn the candle at both ends till there is next to nothing
left; many of them, like you, have passed through the seminary."
One morning Gabriel asked a question of his aunt that he had been long
thinking about, but that he had never before dared to put into words.
He wanted to know all about his niece, Sagrario, and what had happened
in his brother's house.
"You who are so kind, aunt, you will tell me; everyone seems afraid to
speak about it; even my nephew the Tato, who is such a chatterer
and skins everyone in the Claverias, is silent when I ask him. What
happened, aunt?"
The old woman's face grew very sad.
"A great misfortune, my son, such as was never known before in the
upper cloister. The madness of the world came into the Cathedral, and
made a nest in the most honoured, most ancient, and most respectable
house in the Claverias. We are all good people, though we have never
seen as much of the world as can be seen from a skylight, and live
here as though wrapped in cotton wool, but you Lunas have always been
the best among the best, to say nothing of us Villalpandos, who come
close behind. Ay! if your mother could raise her head! If your father
were alive! But I lay all the blame on your brother, as being weak and
a simpleton, having that cursed blindness of all fathers, who ignore
the danger in the hope of marrying their daughters well."
"Well, but how was it, aunt? What passed between my niece and the
cadet?"
"What happens frequently in the world, but what has never happened
here before. A thousand times I said to my brother, 'See, Esteban,
this young gentleman is not for your daughter'--very sympathetic,
very lively, and wearing the uniform of the Academy like no one else,
leader of a group of the wildest cadets in all their escapades about
the town, besides a son of a great family--wealthy people who did not
allow him to come to Toledo with his purse empty. And she--the poor
Sagrario, crazy with love, flattered by her cadet, as proud as
possible when she walked on Sundays through the Zocodover and the
Miradero between her mother and that handsome young lover, that all
the girls in the place envied her. The beauty of your niece was
the talk of all Toledo; the girls in the college for noble ladies,
nicknamed her the 'sacristana' of the Cathedral; but the poor girl
lived only for her cadet, and she seemed to devour him with her
beautiful blue eyes. That idiot, your brother, let him come to the
house, proud of the honour that was being done to the family. You
know, Gabriel, the eternal blindness of those middle-class Toledans,
who encourage with pride the courtship of one of their girls by a
cadet, though they are perfectly well aware that it is most rare that
one of these courtships should end in marriage. There is no woman here
with the slightest pretence to a pretty face who has escaped without
her mouthful of love for one of those red pantaloons. Even I remember
when I was a girl how I would smooth my hair and pull out my dress
when I heard the rattle of a sword on the flags of the cloister. It is
a blindness that descends from mothers to daughters, and the worst
is, that those cursed ones have all their cousins and their lovers in
their own country, and to them they return as soon as they leave the
Academy."
"That is true, aunt, but what happened to my niece?"
"When the young man passed out a lieutenant, his family decided he
ought to return to Madrid. The farewells were like a scene at the
theatre. I believe that even your brother and that simpleton his wife,
who is now in glory, wept as though the lover were theirs. The young
people sat for hours with clasped hands, gazing into each other's
eyes, as though they would devour each other. He was the calmest; he
promised to come every Sunday and to write every day, and at first he
did so, but before long many weeks passed without his coming, and the
postman came up less often to the Claverias, and at last did not come
at all--it was ended, the young lieutenant found other amusements in
Madrid. Your poor niece was like one demented; the colour in her face
faded, she was no longer like the beautiful ripe apricot, with the
soft skin that made you long to bite it. She wept like a Magdalen in
every corner--and one day the foolish girl fled--and up to now--"
"But where was she? Did no one search for her?"
"Your brother seemed quite dazed. Poor Esteban! several nights we
found him half dressed in the upper cloister, as stiff as a post,
gazing up at the heavens with eyes that looked like glass. He became
furious if any of us spoke of searching for the child; the scandal
was past remedy, and he did not wish to aggravate it by her return,
bringing back a lost one to the Holy Metropolitan Church, and to the
honoured house of the Lunas. For more than a year everyone in the
Claverias seemed crushed by this blow; it seemed as though we were all
in mourning. You see, that such a thing should occur in the Cathedral
where the years pass by in blessed peace without any of us saying
one word louder than the other! And then I remembered you. It seemed
impossible that from these Lunas, so quiet and steady, should have
sprung a girl with sufficient pluck to run away to Madrid, where she
had never been before, to join a man, without fear of God or of her
own people. To whom could I liken the unhappy child? To her uncle, to
Gabriel who passed for a saint, but who, nevertheless, after fighting
like a wolf, wandered all over the world just like a gipsy."
Gabriel made no protest at the conception his aunt had formed of his
past.
"And after her flight? What did you know about the child?"
"At first a good deal, but latterly not a word. The two were living
in Madrid together, peacefully and quietly, away from the world, as
though they were man and wife. This lasted for a good while, and I,
hearing about it, began to wonder if I had not been mistaken, and that
the man we had blamed so much had repented and would end by marrying
Sagrario. But at the end of the year everything was ended; he grew
tired, and the family intervened, in order that the escapade should
not cut short the career they had marked out for the young man. They
even sought the aid of the police, to frighten the child, so that she
should not molest the young officer in the first angry transports of
her desertion. Afterwards--nothing certain is known. Now and again
those who have gone to Madrid told me a little; some of them had seen
her, but it would have been far better if they had not seen her. It is
a disgrace, Gabriel; a dishonour for your family which is mine. This
unhappy girl is the worst of the worst. I heard that she had been very
ill, and I believe that she is so still. Just imagine, what a life!
And for five years! What will have happened to the unfortunate girl!
And to think that she is my sister's daughter!"
The Señora Tomasa spoke with deep feeling.
"Afterwards, Gabriel, you know what happened here; your poor
sister-in-law died, we hardly knew why, it was only a matter of a few
days; possibly she may have died of the shame, as she died saying that
the fault was entirely hers. It broke one's heart to see the state
your brother was in after all this. Esteban has never been good for
much, and now after this affair of his daughter he seemed to become
quite imbecile. Ay, nephew! I also have felt it greatly, even though
you see me so happy, and so satisfied with life, every now and then
the remembrance of that unhappy girl strikes me here, in my head, and
I eat badly and sleep worse, thinking that a girl who, after all, is
of our own blood, is wandering lost over the world, a plaything for
men, without anyone sheltering her, as though she were all alone, as
though she had no family."
The Señora Tomasa wiped her eye with the point of her forefinger, her
voice shook and the tears fell over her wrinkled old cheeks.
"Aunt, you are very kind," said Gabriel, "but you ought to have
searched more for this poor girl; you ought to have recovered her, to
have saved her, to have brought her back here. We must be merciful to
the weakness of others, especially when that other is one of our own
flesh."
"Ay, son! Who do you say it to? A thousand times I have thought this,
but I was afraid of your brother. He is like a bit of dough, but he
turns into a wild beast if you speak to him of his daughter. Even if
we found her and brought her here he would not receive her; he would
be as angry as if you were proposing some sacrilege to him. He could
not calmly bear her presence in the house which was that of your
forefathers. Besides, though he does not say so, he fears the scandal
among the neighbours in the Claverias who know what had happened. This
is the easiest part to arrange, as they would be very careful not to
open their mouths when I am among them. But your brother frightens me,
and I do not dare."
"I will help you," said Gabriel firmly. "Let us seek for the child,
and once we have found her I will undertake to manage Esteban."
"It will be most difficult to find her. For a long time we have heard
nothing. Doubtless those who do see her are careful to say nothing
for fear of paining us. But I will try and find out--we will see,
Gabriel--we will think about her."
"And the canons? and the cardinal? Will they not oppose the return of
the poor girl to the Claverias?"
"Bah! The thing happened some time ago, and few of them will remember
it; besides, we might place the girl in a convent, where she would be
looked after and quiet, and cause scandal to no one."
"No, not that, aunt. It is a cruel remedy. We have no right to try and
save this poor girl at the cost of her liberty."
"You are right," said the old woman, after a few moments' reflection.
"I don't care much for these nuns myself. Where would she be more
likely to follow a good example than in the heart of her own family?
We will bring her back to this house if she repents and wishes for
peace. And I will scratch out the eyes of the first woman in the
Claverias who dares to say anything against her. My son-in-law will
probably pretend to be scandalised, but I will settle him. It would be
much better if he did not wink at the walks that Juanito, that
cadet nephew of Don Sebastian's, takes in the cloister whenever my
granddaughter stands at the door. The crackbrained fellow dreams of
nothing less than becoming related to the cardinal, and seeing his
daughter a general's wife; he might remember poor Sagrario. And as far
as regards Don Sebastian, you may be quite easy, Gabriel. He will say
nothing but that we ought to bring the child back--and what should he
say? People ought to be charitable one to another, and none more than
they; for after all, Gabriel, believe me--they are only men, nothing
but men!"
CHAPTER V
The people of the Primacy always received with obstinate silence the
slightest allusion to the reigning prelate. It was a traditional
custom in the Claverias, and Gabriel remembered to have noticed the
same in his childhood.
If they spoke of the preceding archbishop, these people, so used to
grumbling, like all those who live in solitude, would loose their
tongues and comment on his history and his defects. There was nothing
to fear from a dead prelate, and besides, it was an indirect praise to
the living archbishop and his favourites to speak ill of the defunct.
But if during the conversation the name of His reigning Eminence
arose, they were all silent, raising their hands to their caps to
salute, as though the prince of the church were able to see them from
the neighbouring palace.
Gabriel, listening to his companions of the upper cloister, remembered
the funeral judgment of the Egyptians. In the Primacy no one dared to
speak the truth about the prelates, or to discuss their faults till
death had taken possession of them.
The most that they dared to do was to comment on the disagreements
among the canons, to compare their lists of those who saluted one
another in the choir, or who glared at one another between versicle
and antiphon like mad dogs ready to fly at one another, or to speak
with wonder about a certain polemic discussed by the Doctoral and the
Obrero in the Catholic papers in Madrid, which had lasted for three
years, as to whether the deluge was partial or universal; answering
each other's articles with an interval of four months.
A group of friends had collected round Gabriel. They sought him,
feeling the necessity of his presence, experiencing that attraction
exercised by those who are born to be leaders of men even though they
remain silent. In the evenings they would meet in the dwelling of the
bell-ringer, or when it was fine weather they would go out into the
gallery above the Puerta del Perdon. In the mornings the assembly
would be in the house of the shoemaker who mended the giants, a yellow
little man, who suffered from continual pains in his head, which
obliged him to wear sundry coloured handkerchiefs tied round his head
in the fashion of a turban.
He was the poorest in all the Claverias; he had no appointment, and
mended the giants without any remuneration in the hopes of succeeding
to the first vacant place, feeling very grateful to those gentlemen of
the Chapter who gave him his house rent free, on account of his wife
being the daughter of a former old servant of the church. The smell
of the paste and of the damp floor infected his house with the rank
atmosphere of poverty. A hopeless fecundity aggravated this poverty;
his sad, placid wife with her big yellow eyes appeared every year with
a new baby tugging at her flabby breast, and several children crept
along the cloister walls, dull and inert with hunger, with enormous
heads and thin necks, always sickly, though none of them managed to
die; afflicted by all the pains of anaemia, by boils that arose and
vanished on their faces, and watery eruptions covering their hands.
The shoemaker worked for the shops in the town, without, however,
earning much money. From the rising of the sun one could hear the
sound of his hammer in the cloister. This sole evidence of profane
work attracted all the unoccupied to the miserable and evil-smelling
dwelling. Mariano, the Tato, and a verger who also lived in the
cloister, were those who most frequently met Gabriel, seated on the
shoemaker's ragged and broken chairs, so low that one could touch the
floor of red and dusty bricks with one's hands.
Often the bell-ringer would run to his tower to ring the usual
bells, but his vacant place would be immediately occupied by an old
organ-blower, or some of the servants from the sacristy, all attracted
by what they heard of these meetings of the lower servants of the
Primacy. The object of the assembly was to listen to Gabriel. The
revolutionary wished to keep silence, and listened absently to their
grumblings at the daily round of worship; but his friends longed to
hear about those countries in which he had travelled, with all the
curiosity of people who lived confined and isolated; listening to his
descriptions of the beauties of Paris and the grandeur of London they
would open their eyes like children listening to a fairy tale.
The shoemaker with his head bent, never ceasing his work, listened
attentively to the recital of such marvels; when Gabriel was silent
they all agreed on one point, those cities must be far more beautiful
than Madrid; and just think how beautiful Madrid was! Even the
shoemaker's wife, standing in the corner forgetful of her sickly
children, would listen to Luna with wonder, her face enlivened by a
feeble smile, which showed the woman through the animal resigned to
misery, when Luna described the luxury of the women in foreign parts.
All these servants of the church felt their narrowed and dulled minds
stirred by these descriptions of a distant world that they were never
likely to see; the splendours of modern civilisation touched them much
more nearly than the beauties of heaven as described in the sermons,
and in the pungent and dusty atmosphere of the dirty little house they
would see unrolled before their mind's eye beautiful and fantastic
cities, and they would ask questions in all innocence as to the food
and habits of those distant people, as though they believed them
beings of a different species.
Towards evening, at the hour of the choir, when the shoemaker was
working alone, Gabriel, tired of the monotonous silence of the
cloister, would go down into the church.
His brother, in a woollen cloak with a white neck band, and a staff as
long as an ancient alguacil's, stood as sentry in the crossways, to
prevent the inquisitive passing between the choir and the high altar.
Two tablets of old gold with Gothic letters, hung on to one of the
pilasters, set forth that anyone talking in a loud voice or making
signs in the church would be excommunicated; but this menace of former
centuries failed to impress the few people who came to vespers and
gossiped behind one of the pillars with some of the church servants.
The evening light, filtering through the stained glass, threw on the
pavement great patches of colour, and the priests as they walked
over this carpet of light would appear green or red according to the
colours flashed from the windows.
In the choir the canons sang for themselves only in the emptiness of
the church; the shutting of the iron gates of the screen, opened to
admit some late-coming priest, echoed like explosions throughout the
building, and above the choir the organ joined in at times between the
plain song, but it sounded lazily, timidly, as though from necessity,
and seemed to lament its feebleness in the gathering twilight.
Gabriel had not completed the round of the Cathedral before he was
joined by his nephew, the Perrero, who left his conversation with
the servers and acolytes, and with the errand boy belonging to the
Secretary of the Chapter, whose fixed seat was at the door of the
Chapter-house. Luna was always very much diverted by the pranks of the
Tato, and the confidence and carelessness with which he moved about
the temple, as though having been born in it deprived him of all
feeling of respect The entry of a dog into the nave caused great
excitement.
"Uncle," said he to Luna, "you shall see how I can open my cloak."
Seizing the two ends of his garment he advanced towards the dog with
the contortions and bounds of a wrestler; the animal, knowing this of
old, endeavoured to escape through the nearest door, but the Tato,
cutting off his retreat, drove him into the nave, and, pretending to
pursue him, drove him from chapel to chapel, finally rounding him up
where he could give him some good sound whacks. The dismal howlings
disturbed the singing of the canons, and the Tato laughed more than
ever to see behind the iron railing of the choir, the angry gesture of
the good Esteban threatening him with his wooden staff.
"Uncle," said the depraved Perrero one evening, "you, who think you
know the Cathedral so well, have you ever seen the lively things in
it?"
The wink of his eye, and the gesture accompanying the words showed
that the things might very well be more than lively.
"I am always very much interested," he went on, "with the jokes the
ancients allowed themselves. Come along, uncle, it will amuse you for
a little; you, like all those who think they know the Cathedral, will
have passed many times by these things without noticing them."
Going along the outside of the choir, the Tato led Gabriel to the
front opposite the door del Perdon. Under the great medallion, which
serves as a back to the Mount Tabor, the work of Berruguete, opens the
little chapel of the Virgin of the Star. "Look well at that image,
uncle. Is there another like it in all the world? She is a courtezan,
a siren who would drive men mad if she only fluttered her eyelids."
For Gabriel this was no new discovery; from his childhood he had known
that beautiful and sensual figure, with its worldly smile, its rounded
outlines, and its eyes with their expression of wanton gaiety as
though she were just going to dance.
The child in her arms was also laughing and placing his hand on the
bosom of the beautiful woman, as though he intended to tear the
covering from her breast. The image of painted stone, stuffed and
gilt, wore a blue mantle strewn with stars, from whence its name.
"Even you, who have read so much, uncle, may possibly not know the
history of this chapel, which is far more ancient than the Cathedral.
The woolstaplers, carders, and weavers of Toledo had their patroness
here long before the church was built, and they only gave up their
right to the ground on the condition that they should be entire
masters of the chapel, and do in it whatever they pleased and in all
this piece of the Cathedral as far as those nearest pillars. Oh! the
trouble this wrought! On the days they held their feasts to the Virgin
they never paid any heed to the canons in the choir, and they greatly
disturbed all the offices with 'rabeles,'[1] lutes and disorderly
songs. If the canons begged them to be silent, they replied that it
was they in the choir who ought to keep silence, considering that
they were in their own chapel, which was far more ancient than the
Cathedral. Did you know this, uncle?"
[Footnote 1: An ancient instrument with three strings, played with a
bow.]
"Yes, I remember it now. The Archbishop Valero Loza brought a suit
against them at the beginning of the eighteenth century; you can see
his tomb at the foot of the altar. He lost his suit, and died from
disappointment. He desired to be buried in that place, so that the
insolent wool merchants should trample on him in death, even as
they had vanquished him in his lifetime. The haughtiness of these
ecclesiastical princes drove them to the proudest humility. But is
this all you wished to show me?"
"You shall see better things than this. Let us say good-bye to the
Virgin. But do look at her! What a face! What alluring eyes! The
beautiful woman! I spend hours looking at her; she is my sweetheart.
Oh! the many nights I have dreamt of her."
They walked on a little towards the great doorway of the Cathedral, so
as to obtain a better view of the exterior face of the choir. Above
the three hollows or chapels that pierce it runs a frieze of ancient
relievos, the work of some obscure mediaeval artist. Gabriel
recognised these coarse sculptures as being contemporaneous with the
Puerta del Reloj, and by far the most ancient work in the Cathedral.
"Look you, in the first medallion Adam and Eve are as naked as worms;
but the Lord drives them out of Paradise, and they are obliged to
dress themselves to appear in the world; and see what they do directly
they get their clothes. But look at the fifth medallion on our right
hand; the old gossip who cut that had a lively turn of mind."
Gabriel looked for the first time attentively at these forgotten
sculptures. They were carved with all the naturalistic simplicity
of the Middle Ages, with all the directness with which the artists
represented their profane conceptions, with the desire to perpetuate
the triumph of the flesh in some ignored corner of the mystical
buildings, in order to testify that human life was not dead.
The Tato was delighted at the surprise on his uncle's face.
"Eh! what do you think of that? I discovered it wandering about the
church. The canons sing every day on the other side of this wall
without ever suspecting what gay doings they have over their heads.
And the stained glass, uncle, look at it well. At first so many
colours blind one and the forms are indistinct; besides, the lead cuts
the figures and it is difficult to make out anything, but I know them
to my fingers' ends. They are stories, things of their own times, that
these glass-workers painted; the intrigues have been forgotten, and no
one has disentangled them."
He pointed to the windows of the second nave, through which the
evening light was shining with a ruddy glow.
"Look up there," went on the Perrero. "A gallant in a red cape and
sword mounts by a rope ladder; at the window a nun is waiting for him.
It seems something like the Don Juan Tenorio that they represent at
All Saints'. Further on, you see those two in bed, and people knocking
at the door. They must be the same pair of birds with the family
surprising them. Then in the next window--look well at it--lovers,
with scarcely any clothes beyond bare skin. These things belong to the
days when people had no shame, when they went with their heads covered
and the rest of their flesh bare."
Gabriel smiled at the whimsical ideas with which ancient art inspired
the Perrero.
"But in the choir, uncle, there is also something to see. Let us go
there; the service is over and the canons are coming out."
Luna felt overpowered by admiration as he always did on entering the
choir. Those magnificent stalls, the work on one side of Philip of
Burgundy, and on the other side of Berruguete, bewildered him with
their profusion of marbles, jaspers, gildings, statues and medallions.
It was the genius of Michael Angelo reviving in the Toledan Cathedral.
The Perrero examined the lower stalls, ferreting out among the Gothic
relievos the discoveries enjoyed by his unwholesome curiosity. This
first row of stalls, almost on a level with the ground, were occupied
by the inferior clergy, and were anterior by half a century to the
upper stalls; but in those fifty years art had made a great stride,
from the hard and rigid Gothic to the flowing lines and good taste of
the Renaissance. They had been carved by Maestre Rodrigo at the time
when Christian Spain, roused to enthusiasm, was helping the Catholic
kings with all its strength to complete the reconquest. On the backs
of the stalls, and on the entablature of the frieze fifty-four carved
pictures represented the principal incidents of the conquest of
Granada.
The Tato did not look at these carvings of walnut or oak, with troops
of horsemen and companies of soldiers scaling the walls of Moorish
towns. What interested him most were the arms of the stalls, the
handrails of the steps leading to the upper seats, and the salients
dividing the stalls which served to rest the head, all covered with
animals, grotesque beings, dogs, monkeys, big birds, friars, and
little birds, all in difficult postures, some beautiful, some obscene.
Hogs and frogs wound themselves up together in inextricable tangles,
monkeys with ignoble gestures were mixed up with interlaced birds in
never ending variety--it was a world of caricatures of voluptuousness,
of monkey-like actions and satirical suggestions, in which appeared
carnal passion with the most grotesque animal grimaces.
"Look here, uncle. Is not this capital--it is far the best."
And the Tato showed Gabriel the little chubby figure of a preaching
friar with enormous donkey's ears.
When they came out of the choir Gabriel spied the Chapel-master close
to the fresco of Saint Christopher. He had just emerged from a little
door close to the giant, which led by a circular staircase to the
musical archives. He was carrying under his arm a big book with dusty
pages which he showed to Gabriel.
"I am taking it upstairs. You shall hear something out of it; it is
worth the trouble."
And turning his eyes from the book to the little door close by he
exclaimed:
"Ay! these archives, Gabriel, how it pains one! Each time I visit them
I come out sadder. The vandals have been at work there; nearly all the
music books have pages torn out, pieces cut out wherever there was an
illuminated letter, a vignette or anything pretty. The señor canons
do not care for music, neither do they understand it, and they are
incapable of devoting a few pesetas so that it might be heard on
festival days. It is quite enough for them to walk in procession to
some piece of Rossini's; and as far as regards the organ, all they
care about is that it must play slowly, very slowly. The slower it
plays, the more religious they think it, even though the organist may
be playing a Habanera."
He continued looking at the little door with melancholy eyes as though
he were ready to weep over the decay of music.
"In there, Gabriel, are many beautiful works, that ought not to be
forgotten as long as art lives in the world. In profane music we have
not been great, but believe me that Spain has been far otherwise with
religious authors. That is, provided that profane music and religious
music really exist, which I doubt; for me there is only--music--and I
think he will be a clever man who draws the line where one ends and
where the other begins. Behind this wall of Saint Christopher's, the
works of all the great Spanish musicians sleep, mutilated and covered
with dust. Perhaps it is better they do sleep, when you hear what is
sung in this choir! Here you will find Christobal Morales, who three
hundred years ago was Chapel-master here, and began the reform of
music twenty years before Palestrina. In Rome he shares the glory
with the famous master; his portrait is in the Vatican, and his
lamentations, his motets, and his Magnificat rest here, forgotten for
centuries. And Victoria? Do you know him? Another of the same period;
his jealous contemporaries called him 'Palestrina's monkey' taking
all his works to be imitations, in consequence of his long sojourn in
Rome; but, believe me, instead of being plagiarisms from the Italian,
they are far superior. Here also is Rivera, a Toledan master who no
one remembers, but in the archives there is a whole volume of his
masses, and Romero de Avila, who more than anyone had studied the
Muzarabé chants, and Ramos de Pareja, not the least musician of
the fifteenth century, who wrote in Bologna his book 'De Musica
Tractatus,' and destroyed the ancient system of Guido de Arezzo,
discovering the tonality of sound; and the Monk Urena, who added the
note 'si' to the scale, and Javier Garcia, who in the last century
reformed music, leading it towards Italy (God forgive him!), a beaten
track from which we have not yet emerged; and Nebra, the great
organist of Carlos III., who, a century before Wagner was born, used
musical discords. When he wrote the Requiem for the funeral of Dona
Barbara di Braganza, foreseeing the surprise and difficulties that the
musicians and singers would meet with in the innovations in his score,
he wrote on the margin, 'This is to give notice that there are no
mistakes in the score.' His Litany became so celebrated that it was
forbidden to copy it, under pain of excommunication; but I think
to-day the persons who remember it would be the excommunicated.
Believe me, Gabriel, these archives are a pantheon of great men, but a
pantheon, unluckily, from which no one emerges."
Then he added, lowering his voice:
"The Church has never been a great lover of music. To feel and
understand it you must be born a musician, and you know well enough
that these gentlemen who are paid to sing in the choir know nothing
about music. When I see you, Gabriel, smiling at religious things,
I guess by your manner how much you conceal, and I am sure you are
right. I was interested to know the history of music in the Church.
I have followed step by step the long Calvary of this unhappy art,
carrying the cross of worship uphill through the long centuries. You
have heard people often talk of religious music, as if it were a thing
apart, believed in by the Church; but it is all a lie, for religious
music does not exist."
The Perrero had moved off when he heard that the Chapel-master, whose
loquacity was indefatigable when he spoke of his art, had started on
the theme of music. He had formed his own opinion of Don Luis and told
it to everyone in the upper cloister. He was a simpleton who only knew
how to play melancholy ditties on his harmonium, without ever thinking
of enlivening the poor people in the Claverias by playing something to
which they could dance, as the niece of Silver Stick had asked him.
The priest and Gabriel walked slowly through the silent naves talking
the while; the only people to be seen were a group of the household at
the door of the sacristy, and two women kneeling before the railing
of the high altar praying aloud. The early twilight of the winter
evenings was beginning to darken the Cathedral, and the first bats
were coming down from the vaulting and fluttering through the columns.
"Ecclesiastical music," said the artist, "is a real anarchy; but in
the Church everything is anarchy. I believe there is a great deal to
be said for the unity of the Catholic worship throughout the world.
When Christianity began to form itself into a religion it did not
invent even a single bad melody; it borrowed its hymns and the manner
of singing them from the Jews, a primitive and barbarous music that
would shock our ears if we heard it now. Out of Palestine, and where
there were no Jews, the earliest Christian poets--Saint Ambrose,
Prudencio and others--adopted their new hymns and psalms to the
popular songs that were then in vogue in the Roman world, or possibly
to Greek music. It seems as though that word 'Greek music' ought to
mean a great deal; is it not so, Gabriel? The Greeks were so great in
their poetry and in the plastic arts that anything that bears their
name would seem to be surrounded by an atmosphere of undying beauty.
But it is not so: the march of the arts has not been parallel in human
life; when sculpture had its Phidias, and had reached its climax,
painting had hardly passed that rudimentary stage that we see in
Pompeii, and music was only a childish babbling. Writing could not
perpetuate music, for there seemed as many musical styles as there
were peoples, and everything was left to the judgment of the
executant. You could not fix on parchment what mouths and instruments
played, and so progress was impossible. For this reason, though there
was a Renaissance for sculpture, for painting, for architecture, at
the revival of the arts after the Middle Ages, music was found in the
same elementary stage in which it was at the break-up of the ancient
world."
Gabriel nodded his head assenting to the words of the Chapel-master.
"This was the first Christian music," continued Don Luis. "Confided
to tradition and transmitted orally, the religious songs soon became
disfigured and corrupt. In every church they sang in a different way,
and religious music became a hotch-potch. The mystics leaned to
rigid unity, and in the sixth century Saint Gregory published his
'Antifonario,' a collection of all liturgic melodies, purifying them
according to his ideas. They were a mixture of two elements: the
Greek, rather oriental and florid, very much like the present debased
style; and the grave and rough Roman. The notes were expressed
by letters, the Phrygian and Lydian styles followed, and so the
intricacies of Greek music continued though much altered, with
fioriture, rests, and breathing pauses. The collection became lost,
and many who think a return to the old style would be best, much
regret it. To judge by the fragments that remain, if such music was
now executed it would have very little that was religious about it, as
we understand religion in art to-day; it would more resemble the songs
of the Moors, or the Chinese, or those of some schismatic Greeks who
still use the ancient liturgies. The harp was the principal instrument
in the churches till the organ appeared in the tenth century, a rough
and barbarous instrument that had to be played with blows, and was
supplied with wind from inflated skins. Guido di Arezzo made a musical
rule on the basis of Gregory's collection, and this was sufficient for
the invention of the pentagramma[1] to be assigned to the Benedictine.
They continued to use the letters of Boccio and Saint Gregory as
notes, but they placed them on lines of three different colours. The
imbroglio continued; to learn music badly took twelve years, and then
they could not manage that singers from different towns could read
from the same score. Saint Bernard, dry and austere as his times,
ridiculed this music as not being solemn enough; he was a man
antagonistic to all art; he would have liked to see the churches
dismantled and without any architectural adornments; and the slower
the music was, the better it seemed to him. He was the father of plain
song, and he maintained that the more drawn out the music was, the
more religious it became. But in the thirteenth century Christians
found this chant most wearisome. The cathedrals in those days were the
point of attraction: the theatre, the centre of all life. People went
to the church to pray to God and to amuse themselves, forgetting for
the moment all the wars and the violence and confusion outside. Once
again popular music came into the churches, and you could hear intoned
in the cathedrals all the songs most in vogue, and which were often
obscene. The people took part in the religious music, singing in
different tones, each one as seemed best to him, and these were the
first beginnings of concerted singing. In those days religion was
joyful, popular--democratic as you would say, Gabriel; there was
no Inquisition, nor suspicion of heresy to embitter the soul with
fanaticism and fear. All the coarse wind and stringed instruments that
the artisans had in the towns, or the labourers in the fields, came
into the churches, and the organ was accompanied by violas, violins,
bagpipes, flutes, guitars and lutes. The plain song was the
established liturgy almost throughout Europe; but the people disliked
it, and interspersed it with songs, and at the great festivals,
religious hymns were sung, adapted to the popular melodies then in
fashion, such as 'The song of the armed man,' 'Morencia, give me a
kiss,' 'I know not what confuses me,' 'Weep for me, lady,' 'Bad luck
to him who married you,' and others in the same style. And Rome, you
will ask, and the Church? What did it say about such disorders? The
Church lived without artistic perception: it never had any. What are
the boundaries between religious and profane music? From the sixteenth
to the seventeenth century all critics have asked themselves this
question, but the Church let them talk, accepting everything without
remark. Now and again Rome made itself heard by a Papal bull, to which
no one paid any attention, because the Pontiff was incapable of saying
this is religious art, and the other is profane. Palestrina was
entrusted with the task of reforming church music; the Pope showed
himself disposed not to leave anything but plain song, and to suppress
even that if necessary. The mass of Papa Marcelo and other melodies
was the result of this, but things did not advance much. It was
necessary in order that music should be purified inside the Church
that the great secular musical movement should begin with the Italian
Monteverde, with the Frenchman Rameau, and with the Germans Sebastian
Bach and Handel; what splendid times, Gabriel! And just think what
genius followed: Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Mehül, Boieldieu, and, above
all, our good friend Beethoven."
[Footnote 1: The stave.]
The Chapel-master was silent for a little as though the name of his
idol imposed on him a religious silence. Presently he continued.
"All this avalanche of art passed over the Church, and she, according
to her habit, appropriated everything that was most to her taste; in
any country the Catholic religion adopted the music most in accordance
with its traditions--in Spain we have been saturated with the Italian
style since the days of Palestrina, and German or French music never
came to us. We were first of all fuguists and contrapuntists; but
after the 'Stabat Mater' of Rossini we felt the attraction of
theatrical melody so strongly that we have never wished to taste a
fresh dish. Religious music in Spain has run parallel with Italian
opera, a thing of which the canons are ignorant; they would be furious
if at the mass you played them anything by Beethoven, which they would
consider profane, but they listen with mystic unction to fragments
which have gone the round of all the theatres in Italy. And about the
plain song, you will ask? The plain song had its nest in this Primacy.
It was preserved here for centuries and purified; all the best was
collected in Toledo, and from the books in this Cathedral have gone
forth the chorales of all the churches in Spain and America. Poor
plain song! it has long been dead. You see for yourself, Gabriel, who
comes to the Cathedral at the hour of the choir? No one, absolutely no
one. The matins are recited, and all the offices are intoned in the
midst of perfect solitude. The people who still believe know nothing
of the liturgy; they do not prize it and have forgotten all about it;
they are only attracted by the novenas, the triduos and retreats, all
that is termed tolerated and extra-liturgic worship. The Jesuits, with
their cunning, guessed that they must give their services a theatrical
attraction, and for this reason their churches--gilt, carpeted, and
decked with flowers like dressing-rooms--are always full, whereas the
old cathedrals are as empty as tombs. They have not proclaimed the
necessity for this reform aloud, but they have put it into practice
by abolishing the singing in Latin, and substituting all sorts of
romances and songs. In the churches, with the exception of the
Tantum-ergo, nothing is sung in Latin, sermons and hymns are in the
language of the country, just as in a Protestant church. For the mass
of devout people, who believe without thinking, religions only differ
in their exterior forms. It would be impossible to consign such a
multitude to the bonfires, or that half Europe should again be in the
clutches of the thirty years' war, or that the Popes should launch
excommunication after excommunication, only to find in the end that
the only difference between a Catholic or an evangelical church is a
few images and a few wax tapers, but that the worship in both is the
same. But we must go, Gabriel; they are going to lock up."
The bell-ringer was hurrying through the naves, shaking his bunch
of keys and startling the bats which were becoming more and more
numerous. The two devout women had disappeared; no one remained in the
Cathedral save Gabriel and the Chapel-master. From the farther end of
the nave were coming the night watchmen, to take up their charge till
the following morning, preceded by the dog.
The two friends went out into the cloister, guided through the dusk by
the rich glow from the stained glass windows; outside, the last rays
of the sun were touching both the garden and the cloister of the
Claverias with crimson.
"I repeat," continued the musical priest, looking back at the door
from which they had come out, "that in there they do not love music
and they do not understand it. The Church has only rendered one
service to music, and that without wishing it: they have been obliged
to have instrumentalists and vocalists for the services, and that
made them support the chapels and choir-schools that have served for
musical education in default of schools. We who represent art in the
cathedrals are as much despised as were the minstrels in the old
chapels, players of the clarion and bassoon. For the canons, all that
sleeps in the musical archives is so much Greek, and we, the artistic
priests, form a race apart, and are only just a step above the
sacristans. The Chapel-master, the organist, the tenor, contralto, and
the bass form the chapel. We are clergy like the canons, we become
beneficiaries by appointment, we have studied religious science as
they have, and, moreover, we are musicians; but in spite of this
we receive less than half the salary of a canon, and to remind us
constantly of our inferior position we have to sit in the lower
stalls. We, the only ones in the choir who know anything about music,
have to occupy the lowest places. The precentor is by right the chief
of the singers, and the precentor is a canon named by Rome without
competition, probably not knowing a note of the pentagramma. Oh! the
anarchy, friend Gabriel! Oh! the contempt of the Church for music
which has always been its slave and never its daughter! In many
convents of nuns the organist and the singers are despised and called
sergeants. There seems money for everything in the Church: the
revenues of the building are ample for everything except for music.
The canons look upon us as fools masking in ecclesiastical robes. When
the feast of Corpus or that of the Virgin of the Sagrario comes round,
and I dream of a fine mass worthy of the Cathedral, the Canon Obrero
attacks me and begs for something Italian and simple, an affair of
half-a-dozen musicians that I must pick up in the town, and then I
have to conduct a few bungling musicians, raging to hear how the
miserable orchestra sounds under these vaults, which were built for
something grander. In the end, friend Luna, it is dead, quite dead."
The complaint of the Chapel-master did not surprise Gabriel. Everyone
in the Cathedral complained of the miserable and sordid way in which
the services were conducted. Some, like the Silver Stick, declared
that it was due to the impiety of the age, others, like the musician,
made that same religion responsible, but they did not dare to say so
aloud. Respect to the Church and to the higher powers, instilled since
their childhood, kept the population of the Cathedral silent. The
greater part of the servitors of the Church were living morally in the
sixteenth century, in an atmosphere of servility and superstitious
fear of their superiors, feeling the injustice of their position, but
without daring to give form, even in their thoughts, to their vague
notions of protest.
Only at night, in the silence of the upper cloister, in the privacy
of those families who were born and died among the stones of the
Cathedral, did they dare to repeat the murmurs of the Church,
the interminable tangle of tattle which grew over the monotonous
ecclesiastical existence, the complaints of the canons against His
Eminence, and what the cardinal said about the Chapter, an underground
war which was reproduced at every archiepiscopal elevation, intrigues
and heart-burnings of celibates, embittered by ambition and
favouritism, primitive hatreds that reminded one of the time when the
clergy elected their own prelates and ruled over them, instead of
groaning as now under the iron rule of the archbishop's will.
Everyone in the cloister knew of these quarrels, and the remarks that
the canons allowed themselves to make in the sacristy reached their
ears; but these humble servitors kept silence when these murmurs were
repeated in their presence, fearing to be reported by their neighbour,
who possibly might covet their post. It was the terror of the
Inquisition still alive amidst this little stagnant world.
The Perrero was the only one who seemed to have no fear, and who spoke
openly about the Chapter and the cardinal. What did it matter to him!
Possibly he may have wished to be turned out of "that den" to give
himself up to his favourite pursuit, going to the bull-ring without
any objections from the household. Moreover, he delighted in speaking
evil of the gentlemen of the Chapter, who had given him more than one
cuff when he was an acolyte.
He gave nicknames to all the canons, and pointing them out one by one
to Gabriel, related the most intimate secrets of their lives. He knew
the houses where each prebendary passed the evening after the choir
time, and the names of all the ladies and nuns who crimped their
surplices, and could tell of the fierce and deadly rivalries between
these admirers of the Chapter, endeavouring to vanquish each other
by the exquisite way in which they washed and ironed the canonical
batiste. As the choir were coming out he pointed out the precentor, an
obese prebendary with his face covered with red spots.
"Look at him, uncle," he said to Gabriel, "that rash on his face is a
record of the past. He was a great gallant, never fixing himself long
anywhere. The other evening he said to a chaplain of the chapel of the
kings, 'Those captain professors at the Academy think that in point
of women they cull the best in Toledo, but where is the Church! The
seculars must lower their flag!'"
He laughed as he pointed out a group of young priests, carefully
shaved, with their cheeks blue and shining, dressed in silk mantles
that diffused a strong scent of musk as they moved. These were the
dandies of the Chapter, the young canons, who often made journeys to
Madrid to confess their patronesses--ancient marchionesses who, by
dint of influence, had gained for them a seat in the choir. At the
Puerta del Mollete they stopped a few moments to arrange the folds of
their cloaks before they went into the street.
"They are going out to court the ladies," said the Tato. "Brrrum! make
way for Don Juan Tenorio!"
When they had watched all the canons come out, the Perrero spoke to
his uncle about the cardinal.
"In these days he is given over to the fiends. No one in the palace
can manage him; his internal complaint nearly drives him mad."
"But is it true he is so very ill?" asked Gabriel.
"Everyone says so; ask your Aunt Tomasa. They say they are such great
friends because she makes a lotion that calms him like an angel's
hand. In the morning when he wakes in a bad temper all the palace
trembles, and very soon all the diocese. He is a good man, but when
the mad dog bites him everyone must fly. I have seen him on pontifical
days wearing his mitre, looking at us with such eyes, as though he
were ready to seize his crozier and belabour us all with it, from what
the aunt says--if he did not drink!"
"Then the complaints of the Chapter are true."
"He does not get drunk. No, señor, give the devil his due, but a glass
now, and another presently, and a third if a friend comes to see him,
must obfuscate him. It is a habit he brought with him from Andalusia,
where he was bishop before coming here. But nothing common, a fine and
refreshing drink, only to keep up his strength, nothing more. And the
wine is first class, uncle; I know it from one of his household. He
gives as much as fifty duros the arroba![1] They keep him the best in
all la Mancha, a vintage from the time of the French, a syrup that
warms the stomach and tempers it as though it were an organ. From what
the Aunt Tomasa says, the doctors patch him up, and then he does his
best to get ill again with this glorious wine."
[Footnote 1: _Arroba_--Measure containing thirty-two pints.]
The Tato, in the midst of his cynical mockery, still showed a regard
for the prelate.
"Do not believe, uncle, that he is a nonentity. Apart from his bad
temper he is really a strong man, even as you see him here, with his
small white and shining head like a baby's, that seems even smaller
above his immense corporation; but it carries something in it! He has
spoken a great deal in Madrid, and all the newspapers took as much
notice of him as though he were Guerra. His wisdom finds a remedy for
everything. If they speak of the poverty and misery in the world, he
sings the old song: bread for the poor, charity from the rich, and
much Christian doctrine for everyone; that men ought not to quarrel
because I have more than you, and there ought to be patience and
decency in the world, for that is what is wanting. What nonsense, eh,
uncle? You laugh at it? But His Eminence's recipe rather pleases me,
especially that about the bread; but the cursed Catechism is in fault
as we have all learnt from our childhood."
The Perrero grew quite excited speaking about his prince:
"And as a man? A masterful man; no hypocrisy about him, nor hiding his
head. Everyone knows he was a soldier in his younger days. The Aunt
Tomasa remembers seeing him in the cloister with his helmet with
horse-hair crest, his sergeant's epaulets, and his rattling broad
sword. He is not afraid of anything, is not easily scandalised, and
does not make a fuss about things. Last year a Portuguese lady arrived
here, who nearly drove all the cadets out of their senses with her
silk stockings and her big hats. You know Juanito, and you are aware
that he is the son of a nephew of His Eminence who died some years
ago. Well, the youngster paraded up and down the Zocodover in his
uniform with the Portuguese lady on his arm to arouse the jealousy
of his companions in the Academy. One day the young woman presented
herself at the palace, and the servants, seeing her so beautifully
dressed, made no difficulty about letting her in, thinking she was
some lady from Madrid. His Eminence received her with a paternal
smile, and listened to her without winking. A friend of mine, one of
the pages who was present, told me about it. She came to complain to
the cardinal that his nephew, the cadet, had entertained her for two
days without giving her a farthing. His Eminence smiled modestly:
'Lady, the Church is poor, but I do not wish that for this misfortune
the good name of the family should suffer. Take this and it will be
remedied,' and he handed her two duros. The Portuguese, encouraged by
her good reception, began to bawl and complain, thinking she would
terrify Don Sebastian by making a scandal. But you should have seen
the fury of His Eminence as he shouted to the page, 'Boy, call the
police'; and the look on his face was such that the Portuguese lady
vanished as quickly as she could, leaving the two pieces of silver on
the table."
Gabriel laughed, listening to the story.
"He is a strong man, believe me, uncle. I like him because he holds
the Chapter in his fist. He is not like his predecessor, who was like
a sop in milk, who only knew how to pray, and trembled before the
last-made canon. He is quite capable of going down into the choir one
evening and turning them all out with blows from his crozier. It
is more than two months since he has been down into the Cathedral,
neither has he seen the canons. The last time they sent a deputation
to the palace everybody trembled. They went to propose I know not what
reform to the Primate, and they began by saying, 'My lord, the Chapter
thinks--.' Don Sebastian, turned into a basilisk, interrupted them,
'The Chapter cannot think anything; the Chapter has not common sense,'
and he turned his back, leaving them petrified. Afterwards, he began
shouting, and thumping the furniture with his fists, saying he would
fill all the vacancies in the Cathedral with the dregs of the clergy,
that he would fill the Chapter with drunkards, with impostors, etc. 'I
will harass the Chapter,' he shouted, 'I will dirty it; I will teach
them to talk less of me; I will cover them, yes, sir, I will cover
them with....' And you may guess, uncle, with what His Eminence wished
to cover the canons. And the poor man was right. Why should those
in the choir interfere with this way or that way that Don Sebastian
lives, or if he has those bonds or others? Does not he let them live
as they choose? Does he ever say a word to them about their scandalous
visits, although all Toledo knows of them?"
"And what do the canons say about the cardinal?"
"They say Juanito is his grandson, and that his father, who died, and
who passed as nephew of His Eminence, was really his son by a certain
lady when he was bishop in Andalusia. But this does not seem to
irritate Don Sebastian much; but what does irritate him and makes him
behave like a fiend is when they speak of Doña Visitacion."
"And who is that lady?"
"Come, that is good! You do not know Doña Visitacion? When no one
inside the Cathedral or out of it can speak of anybody else? She is
the niece of Don Sebastian, who lives with him in the palace. It is
she who rules everything, and Don Sebastian, who is so terrible with
everyone else, becomes like an angel when he sees her. He rages and
screams and bites the days when he is ill, but if Doña Visita appears,
he controls himself at once; he suffers in silence, moans like a
child, and it is sufficient for her to say a soft word, or give him a
caress for His Eminence to slobber with delight. He loves her dearly."
"But what is she?" asked Gabriel with interest.
"Clearly she is what you think. What else could she be? She was from
her childhood in the college for noble ladies, and as soon as the
cardinal came to Toledo he took her out, and brought her to the
palace. What a blind infatuation is Don Sebastian's! And the thing is,
the object is hardly worth it--a very thin, pale little girl, with
large eyes and a soft skin; that is all. They say she sings, and plays
the piano, and reads and knows a great many things that they teach
in that wealthy college, and by God's grace can keep His Eminence in
order. She comes sometimes into the Cathedral by the arch, dressed
as a beatita with the habit and mantilla, accompanied by a very ugly
servant."
"She cannot be what you think, youngster."
"Go on; all the Chapter affirm it, and even the most steady canons
thoroughly believe it. Even those who are friends and favourites of
His Eminence, and carry him tales about all the grumbling against him,
do not deny it with any warmth. And Don Sebastian gets angry, and is
furious each time any murmurs about this reach his ears. If they told
him the choir intended to give a dance he would be less irritated than
when he hears them wag their tongues about Doña Visita."
The Perrero was silent for a few moments as though he were doubtful
about saying something serious.
"The lady is very good and kind. They all love her in the palace
because she speaks so gently. Besides, she makes use of the great
power she has over the cardinal to prevent the violence of His
Eminence, who very often, when he is racked with excessive pain, would
throw cups and plates at the heads of his servants. Why should they
interfere with her? Does she do them any harm? Let everyone do as he
likes in his own house, and he who does evil, let God punish him."
He scratched his head as though he were once more doubtful.
"And as to what Doña Visita is to the Cardinal," he added, "I have
no doubt whatever. I have facts to go on, uncle, and I know how they
live. One of the servants has often seen them kissing--that is to
say, not the two kissing. No, she does the kissing, and Don Sebastian
receives her kittenish ways with the smile of an angel. The poor man
is so old!"
And the Tato ended his confidences with various indecent remarks.
All this grumbling against the cardinal, that came from the sacristy
up to the cloister, annoyed Gabriel's brother greatly. The "Wooden
Staff," who was a staunch private soldier of the Church, could not
bear to hear with equanimity those attacks on his superiors; in his
opinion they were all calumnies. The canons had spoken of all the
preceding archbishops precisely as they now spoke of Don Sebastian,
but this did not in the least prevent their all being called saints
after their deaths. When he discovered the Tato repeating in the
Claverias all the gossip from down below, he threatened him with all
his authority as head of the house.
Esteban was also very much concerned at the state of his brother's
health. He was pleased at the very prudent behaviour of the latter,
who conformed with silent respect to all the customs of the Cathedral,
never permitting a word to escape him that could reveal his past;
he felt beyond measure proud of the atmosphere of admiration that
surrounded his brother, and the attention with which the simple
inhabitants of the cloister listened to the account of his travels,
but the state of his health was a continual anxiety, the certainty
that death had laid its hand upon him, and that it was solely the care
with which he was surrounded that retarded the fatal moment.
There were days in which the Silenciario smiled with pleasure, seeing
Gabriel a better colour, and hearing less frequently his painful
cough.
"You are going on well, brother," he would say joyfully.
"Yes," replied Gabriel, "but do not have any illusions. _That_ will
come at its own hour, it has me in its grasp. It is only you who are
holding it back, but one day it will be stronger than you."
The certainty that death would at last be victorious made Esteban
redouble his efforts. He thought that frequent nourishment was the
only remedy, and he scarcely ever approached Gabriel without something
in his hands.
"Eat this. Drink what I bring you."
He struggled valiantly with that broken constitution, with that
stomach disordered by poverty, with those lacerated lungs and with
that heart subject to constant disturbance of its functions, with that
human machine dislocated by a life of suffering and trials.
The constant watching over the sick man had upset Esteban's economic
life; his miserable wages and the poor assistance the Chapel-master
could give were insufficient even for that extra mouth, which consumed
more than all the others in the household put together. At the end of
the month Esteban was obliged to invoke the aid of Silver Stick to
enable him to get along the last few days, entering thus into the
humble and miserable flock bound by the priest's usury. Sometimes the
Chapel-master, waking for an instant to reality, would give him a few
pesetas, sacrificing the joy of obtaining a fresh score.
Gabriel guessed the privations that his brother underwent, and was
anxious to contribute to the expenses of the little household. But
what work could he obtain in his concealment in the Cathedral? He
wished for some post in the service of the church, in order to receive
at the beginning of every month a few pesetas from the hands of Silver
Stick; but all the posts were occupied, death alone could cause a
vacancy, and there were many eager ones watching for the opportunity
to urge their family claims.
The impossibility of being useful to his brother, of helping to
make his sacrifices less expensive, weighed heavily on Gabriel, and
disturbed the otherwise placid monotony of his life. He inquired of
Esteban as to what he could possibly do, not to remain inactive, but
his brother always answered with his kindly expression: "Take care of
yourself, only take care of yourself; you have no other duty but to
look after your own health, I am here to do all the rest."
When Holy Week came round Gabriel found an opportunity of getting a
few days' work. They were going to put up in the Cathedral the famous
"Monument" between the choir and the Puerta del Perdon. It was a heavy
and complicated erection, of a sumptuous and rococo style, which had
cost the second Cardinal de Bourbon a fortune at the beginning of last
century. A real forest of woodwork formed the basis of the monument;
the riches of the cardinal had created a prodigality of solidity and
sumptuousness, and several days were required to fit together the Holy
Catafalque, and not a few workmen.
Gabriel interviewed Don Antolin asking for a place on the works. The
wages were seven reals a day, which he would be able to give his
brother for two weeks; and he, who had been used in former days to
have his work so lavishly paid, accepted this small daily wage as a
piece of unexpected good fortune.
The "Wooden Staff" was indignant. Gabriel was ill and ought not to
risk his poor health in the fatigues of this work. What was he going
to do, coughing and suffocating every moment? How was he going to
undertake the heavy work of carrying the framework and fixing it
together? The invalid tranquillised him. He knew what those works were
in the church; everything was done with parsimony, but without much
regard to time. The workmen in the service of the church worked with
that calm laziness, and that slow prudence which characterised every
act of religion. Besides, Silver Stick, knowing his condition, would
reserve the least heavy work for him; he could fix screws and bolts,
place the candelabra in line on the steps, and arrange the tapestry;
he trusted him as a man of good taste who had seen much in his
travels.
Gabriel worked for two weeks on the monument. This time of relative
activity seemed to give him a certain amount of relief. He moved
about, intent on giving orders to his fellow-workers; he went from the
church to the top of the Claverias, where the monument was stored, and
seeing himself covered with dust, and with his limbs fatigued by the
constant coming and going, he deluded himself into thinking he was
strong again.
During these two weeks he never went to the shoemaker's house, and so
lost sight of his various friends. The bell-ringer and his friends
were lost in astonishment. A man of so much learning, to work like one
of themselves in order to help his brother!
The Señora Tomasa stopped him one morning by the iron railing of the
garden.
"I have news, Gabriel. I think I know where our child is. I won't say
any more; but be ready to help me. The day when you least expect it
you may see her in the Cathedral."
The erection of the monument was finished. All that part of the church
between the choir and the door del Perdon was occupied by this showy
and ponderous fabric. According to their traditional custom all the
Toledans gathered to admire--the steps covered with rows of burning
lights, the Roman legionaries in alabaster leaning on their lances,
and the rich curtain with its innumerable folds that hung from the
vaulting down to the platform of the monument.
On the evening of Holy Thursday Gabriel stood considering what was
in some sense his work, surrounded by a group of worshippers. The
Cathedral shone with its immaculate whiteness, in spite of the black
veils that covered both statues and altars. The clouds of colour from
the lovely rose windows relieved the funereal aspect of the religious
ceremony, while from the choir a tenor voice intoned the lamentations
of the oriental prophet.
Gabriel felt someone pulling his jacket, and turning, saw the
gardener's widow.
"Come, nephew, we have got her here; she is waiting for you in the
cloister."
Coming out, the Señora Tomasa pointed to a woman sitting crouched on
the stone coping of the garden, wrapped in an old cloak, and with the
headkerchief drawn down over her eyes.
Gabriel would never have recognised her. He remembered the pretty
smiling face of former years, and he looked almost with horror at
the tarnished youth, haggard with prominent cheek-bones, of the face
before him. The eyes deep sunk in the sockets without eyebrows or
eyelashes, with the pupils still beautiful, but dulled with a glassy
opacity. Everything about her revealed poverty and desolation; the
dress was a summer one, and from under it showed her split boots much
too large for her feet.
"Salute him, child," said the old woman. "It is your Uncle Gabriel,
one of God's angels, in spite of his misfortunes, and you owe it to
him that we searched for you."
The gardener's widow pushed Sagrario towards her Uncle, but the young
woman lowered her head, moved her shoulders and drew back, as though
she could not endure the presence of a member of her family; she
covered her face with her wretched cloak to hide her tears.
"Aunt, let us go home," said Gabriel, "it is not good for the child to
be here."
At the cloister staircase they made the young woman pass on in front;
she went up with her head bent and without looking, as though her feet
trod those broken steps instinctively.
"We arrived from Madrid this morning," said the gardener's widow as
they went up. "I kept her at an inn till it was time to bring her to
the Cathedral in the evening. It is the best time, for Esteban is in
the choir, and you will have time to settle things here. I spent three
days there. Ay, Gabriel, my son, what things I have seen, what hells
there are for poor women! and we call ourselves Christians, but I
think we are fiends! Mercifully I had friends at court--some old
bell-ringers who had been in the Cathedral and who remembered the
gardener's widow. I wanted everything, even money, to get this unhappy
girl out of the devil's clutches."
The upper cloister was quite deserted. On arriving at the door of the
Lunas the girl seemed to wake up, and drew quickly back with a look
of terror, as though inside the "habitation" some great danger was
awaiting her.
"Go in, woman, go in," said the aunt; "it is your home. You had to
come back some time or other."
And she pushed her till she was through the door. Once inside the
sitting-room her tears ceased; she looked round with astonishment, no
doubt surprised at finding herself there. Her eyes examined everything
with a sort of stupefaction, as though marvelling that everything
should be in the same place as five years before, and with an
exactitude that made her doubt if such a long time had really elapsed.
Nothing seemed changed in that little world under the shadow of the
Cathedral. She only, who had left it in the bloom of her youth, now
returned aged and broken.
There was a long silence between the three people.
"Your room, Sagrario," said Gabriel at last gently, "is the same as
when you left it. Go in and do not come out till I call you. Be calm
and do not cry; trust me. You do not know me well, but the aunt will
have told you that I am interested in your fate. Your father will soon
be coming; hide yourself and be silent. I repeat it again, do not come
out till I call you."
When the old woman and her nephew were alone they could hear the
girl's suffocating sobs that burst out on seeing her old room.
Afterwards they heard a sound as though she were throwing herself on
the bed, and the violence of her grief seemed to become more and more
uncontrolled.
"Poor child!" said the old woman, who was very nearly crying also,
"she is good, and she has repented of her sins; if only her father had
sought her out when that rascal deserted her, what shame and misery
it would have spared her. And her health? I really think she is worse
than you are, Gabriel. Oh, those men! with their honour which is
nothing more than lies! What is honourable is to be charitable and
compassionate to others, and to harm no one. I said this the other
day when I was shocked at the shamelessness of my son-in-law, who
was furious at my going to Madrid to find the child. He spoke of the
honour of the family, and that if Sagrario returned no decent people
could live in the Cathedral, and that he could not allow his daughter
to stand at the door; and he such a thief that he steals the Virgin's
wax every day, and deceives the devout who pay him for masses that are
never said; that is why his skin shines so and he is so fat. With so
much honour."
After a short silence the old woman looked undecidedly at Gabriel.
"Well, shall we begin the struggle? Shall I call Esteban?"
"Yes, call him, he will be in the Cathedral. And you, shall you dare
to be present at the interview?"
"No, son, manage it yourself. You know Esteban, and you know me. I
should either begin to cry, or I should turn and rend him for his
obstinacy. You will manage better by yourself, for this God has given
you those talents that you have used so badly."
The old woman went away, and Gabriel remained alone for more than
half an hour, looking out of a window into the deserted cloister. The
yearly commemoration of the death of God spread in the priestly tribe
on the roofs, an atmosphere of sadness even more marked than that
inside the church. All the women and children of the Claverias were
down below admiring the monument, the "habitacions" seemed quite
deserted. As he sat Gabriel saw his brother pass by the window, and in
another moment he appeared at the door.
"What do you want, Gabriel? What has happened to you? The aunt
frightened me with her summons. Are you worse?"
"Sit down, Esteban. I am well, calm yourself."
The "Wooden Staff" looked with surprise at Gabriel; his strange
seriousness alarmed him and the prolonged silence in which he appeared
to be arranging his thoughts without knowing where to begin.
"Speak, man! Do make a beginning; you alarm me."
"Brother," said Gabriel gravely, "you know very well that I have
respected the mystery in your life that I found on my return here. You
said to me, 'My daughter is dead,' and you never showed any wish to
speak of her, and you can say if I have ever touched your old wound by
the slightest allusion."
"Well, and what then? When are you going to stop?" said Esteban,
becoming very gloomy; "why do you speak to me on a day so holy of
things that cause me so much pain?"
"Esteban, we shall never understand each other if you hold on to your
prejudices. Do not make that gesture, but listen to me calmly; do
not act like an automaton, pulled by the same wires that moved our
grandfathers and our ancestors. Be a man, and act according to your
own thoughts. You and I have different beliefs. Setting aside religion
which I know is a consolation to you, you know that I am silent as
to mine, so as not to render my life here impossible. But apart from
this, you believe that the family is a work of God, an institution of
supernatural origin. I believe it to be a human institution based
on the necessities of the species. You condemn for ever anyone who
betrays the laws of the family, or who deserts his banner, you
sentence him to death and oblivion. I pity his weakness and forgive.
We understand honour from a different point of view. You believe in
the Castillian honour--that traditional and barbarous honour, more
cruel and dismal even than dishonour; a theatrical honour, whose
impulses are never founded on human feeling, but on the fear of what
others will say, the desire to appear greater and more dignified in
the eyes of others than to your own conscience. For the adulterous
wife, death; for the murderer, revenge; for the fugitive daughter,
contempt and forgetfulness; this is your gospel. I have another
standard; for the wife who forgets her duties, contempt and oblivion;
for that fragment of our own flesh who flies from us, love, support,
gentleness, even endeavouring to compass her return to us. Esteban, we
are separated by our beliefs, the gulf of centuries lies between us,
but you are my brother, we love each other, and I only desire your
good. I bear the same name of which you are so proud, and I loved our
poor parents as much as you could love them, and in the name of all
these I tell you that this situation must come to an end; you must not
live insensible and frozen in what you call your dignity, without the
remembrance of your daughter wandering about the world, troubling you.
You, who are so kind, who have sheltered me in the most difficult
crisis of my life, how can you sleep, how can you eat, without your
life being embittered by the remembrance of your lost daughter? What
do you know about her now? May she not be dying of hunger while you
eat? May she not be lying in a hospital while you are living in the
home of your fathers?"
Esteban's brow contracted, and he wore his gloomiest look as he
listened to his brother.
"It is useless for you to strive, Gabriel, nothing can come of it.
Have I denied you anything? Am I not ready to do anything for my
brother? But do not speak to me of that; she has caused me much pain,
she has broken my life, how I did not die, I know not. Have you
thought well that for centuries the family of the Lunas have been the
mirror of the Cathedral, respected by even the archbishops, and now,
suddenly to find oneself among the lowest, exposed to the ridicule of
all and looked upon with compassion by the veriest little acolyte!
What I have suffered! The times I have wept with rage alone in this
home, hearing what they were saying behind my back. And then," he
added quietly as though grief were paralysing his voice, "there was
that unhappy martyr who died of shame; my poor wife who left the world
so as not to see my grief and the contempt of others! And do you wish
me to forget all this? For the rest, Gabriel, I cannot express what
I feel as well as you do. But honour--is honour. It is to live in my
house without fear of being shamed, to sleep at night without fearing
to see in the darkness our father's eyes, asking why I allow a lost
woman to live under the same roof that the Lunas won for themselves
by centuries of service to the house of God; it is to avoid people
mocking at our family. Let them say, 'Those Lunas! how unfortunate
they are,' but they shall never say the Lunas are a family wanting in
shame. By our love, brother, leave me; do not speak to me of this.
Those evil doctrines have poisoned your mind; not only have you ceased
to believe in God, but you have ceased to believe in honour."
"And what is all this?" said Gabriel, warming. "You yourself do not
know. 'Honour is honour.' Well, I say, children are children. You, man
of prejudices, you do not wait to consider that those beings are the
continuation of our own existence. Your religion makes you think
children are a fruit from God, nevertheless you think yourself better
and more perfect when you reject and curse those gifts of Heaven if
they cause you any trouble. No, Esteban, the love of children and pity
for their faults ought to come before all prejudices. This eternal
life of the soul, that lying promise of religion, is only true through
our children. The soul dies with the body; it is no more than a
manifestation of our own thoughts, and thought is a cerebral function,
but children perpetuate our own being throughout the generations and
the centuries; it is they who make us immortal, and that preserve
and transmit something of our personality, even as we have inherited
something from our ancestors. He who forgets those beings who are his
own creation is more worthy of execration than he who leaves life by
suicide. The disappointments of life, the laws and customs invented by
men, what are they before the instinctive affection we feel for beings
that have proceeded from ourselves, and who perpetuate the infinite
variety of our habits and thoughts? I abhor those wretches who, in
order not to disturb the commonplace peace of matrimony, abandon the
children they have outside the house. Paternity is the most noble of
all animal functions, but the animals have more courage and dignity
than man in fulfilling it. No animal of the higher sort abandons or
disowns its cub, and yet there are many men who turn their backs on
their children for fear of what people will say. If I, having a son,
were enamoured of the most beautiful woman in the world, and she
required me to forget that son, I would stifle my passion sooner than
abandon the little one. If my son sinned against every human law,
and was sent to prison, even there would I follow him, defying the
execration of the world, sooner than deny that he is my work. We
are united for ever to the creatures to whom we give life, it is a
compromise of solidarity that we make with the species when we work
for its continuance. He who breaks the chain and flies is a coward."
"You will not convince me, Gabriel," screamed Esteban. "I will not!--I
will not!"
"I repeat it is cowardly on your part. This honour that weighs so
heavily on you is a cruel and antiquated honour that settles all the
conflicts of life by shedding blood. Why do you not seek the man who
stole your daughter? Why do you not kill him like a father in an old
play? Is it because you are a fearful man and have not learnt the art
of murder, and that arms are his profession? If you had taken lawless
vengeance, relying only on what you think your right, his powerful
family would have retaliated on you; but you have not revenged
yourself through an instinct of self-preservation, through fear of
prison and all the punishments invented by society; you have been
afraid in spite of your anger, and this fear you indulge at the
expense of cruelty to the weaker creature. Your anger only falls on
your daughter. Come, Esteban, this is not worthy of a man."
The "Wooden Staff" shook his head obstinately.
"You will not convince me, I do not wish to hear you. That woman shall
not return here; did she not leave me? Let her follow her own path."
"She left you from impulses of that instinct which all healthy beings
possess. That instinct for the preservation of the species, which
poetry beautifies and which it calls 'Love.' If she had left you after
receiving the blessing of a man before an altar, you would have been
delighted, and would have received her with open arms whenever she
came to see you. She left you to be deceived, to fall into misery and
shame, and, seeing her so unhappy, does she not deserve more pity at
your hands than if you saw her living happily? Reflect, Esteban, on
the way in which your poor daughter fell. What had you taught her to
enable her to defend herself from the evil in the world? How was she
armed to preserve intact what you call honour? You and your wife had
set her the example of the respect due to wealth and high birth by
allowing that young man to come to your house, thinking it an honour
that a gentleman should have fallen in love with your daughter. When
the inevitable results of social inequality came about she could not
give him up; she had one of those noble natures that rise in revolt
against the prejudices of the world, even at the risk of suffering all
the bitterness of their rebellion, and she fell vanquished. Whom can
you blame? Her ignorance, her life of isolation from the world, or
yourselves who never taught her better, and who, blinded by ambition,
let her wander to the edge of the precipice? Blame her less than
anybody. Unhappy girl! She has paid with interest her noble defiance
of social prejudices. She has been vanquished in the social fight--a
corpse that has to be buried; and you, her father, ought to be the one
to fulfil that work of mercy."
Esteban, with his head bent, continued to make gestures of refusal.
"Brother," said Gabriel solemnly; "if you hold tenaciously to your
refusal I have only one thing more to say. If your daughter does not
return here, I must go. Everyone has his scruples; you fear the gossip
of the people; I fear myself and what my thoughts can throw in my face
in my solitary moments. Since I have been your guest I have thought
constantly of your daughter, and ever since I have known what happened
in this house I have proposed to myself that the unhappy victim should
return here. You will not let her return? Well then, I must go. I
should be a thief if I ate your bread while a creature who is flesh
of your flesh suffers hunger, or if I should be nursed in my illness
while she, who is possibly worse than I am, has no friendly hand to
comfort her. If she does not return, I am not your brother, but an
intruder, usurping the share of affection and comfort that ought to
fall to her. Brother, everyone has his own code of morality; yours is
taught by the priests, mine I have made for myself, and though it is
less apparent, it may very likely be more strict. In the name of my
morality I say to you, Esteban, my brother, either your daughter
returns here or I go away. I must return to the world to be persecuted
like a wild beast, to the hospital, to the prison, to die like a dog
in the ditch by the roadside. I do not know what will become of me,
but one thing is certain, it is that I shall go to-morrow, or even
to-day, so as not to enjoy a moment more what is not mine. I, who
consider the appropriation of the goods of the world by a privileged
minority as an iniquitous robbery, cannot enjoy knowingly the comforts
that belong by natural right to another unhappy being. I can only
enjoy them sharing them with her."
Esteban had risen to his feet with a gesture of despair.
"Are you mad, Gabriel? Do you wish to leave me? And you say it so
calmly? Your presence here is the only joy of my life after so many
misfortunes. I am accustomed to see you. I must care for you, you are
my whole family; before I had no interest, I lived without hope. Now
I have one, to see you strong and well, and can you say so carelessly
that you will leave me? No, you shall not go--only this was wanting to
me--after the daughter, the brother; kill me once for all!--Lord God,
take me to Thyself!"
And the simple servant of the Church raised his hands in supplication
while his eyes filled with tears.
"Be calm, Esteban. Let us speak like men, without exclamations and
tears. Look at me, I am calm, but do not think for that it is less
certain that I shall go to-day if you do not grant me what I pray."
"But--and she? Where is she that you plead so earnestly for her?" said
Esteban. "Have you seen her and spoken to her? Is she in Toledo? Have
you with the insolence of your unbelief even brought her into the
Cathedral?"
Gabriel, seeing him tearful and broken by his threat of leaving,
thought the decisive moment had arrived, and opening the door of
Sagrario's room he called:
"Come out, child, ask your father's pardon."
He looked astounded, then he fixed his eyes on Gabriel as though
he could not guess who that woman was. What joke had his brother
prepared?
With a brutal impulse he tore the woman's hands from her face, looking
at her earnestly; even so he did not recognise her. In the midst of
a painful silence he stood a long while looking at her. Little by
little, in that face so altered by illness, he began to trace the
well-known features. In the tearful eyes devoid of eyelashes something
reminded him of the blue eyes of the lost daughter. The discoloured
lips, surrounded by deep lines, quivered painfully, murmuring always
the same word:
"Pardon! pardon!"
At the sight of such a wreck the father felt his courage fail; his
eyes expressed an immense, an overwhelming sadness.
He retreated backwards to the door of the "habitacion," followed by
the young woman, dragging herself on her knees and stretching out her
hands.
"Brother, it is well," he said despairingly; "you are stronger than I
am, let your will be accomplished. Let her remain, as you wish it, but
do not let me see her!--remain, both of you. It is I that will go."
CHAPTER VI
The sewing machine clicked from early morning till night in the house
of the Lunas. This and the hammering of the shoemaker were the only
sounds of work that disturbed the holy silence of the upper cloister.
When Gabriel left his bed at sunrise, after a night of painful
coughing, he would find Sagrario already in the entrance room
preparing her machine for the day's work. From the day following that
of her return to the Cathedral she had devoted herself to work with
sullen silence as a means of returning unnoticed to the Claverias,
trusting that the people would forgive her past. The gardener's widow
procured her work, and so the sound of the stitching was continually
heard in the old "habitacion," accompanied very often by melodies from
the Chapel-master's harmonium.
The "Wooden Staff" moved about his house like a shadow. He remained
continually in the Cathedral or in the lower cloister, only coming up
to the "habitacion" when it was absolutely necessary. He ate his meals
with his head bent, in order not to look at his daughter, who was
seated opposite to him at the other end of the table, ready to burst
into tears at the sight of her father before her. A painful silence
oppressed the family. Don Luis being so absent-minded, seemed the only
one not to perceive the situation, and chatted gaily with Gabriel
about his hopes and his musical enthusiasms. Everything seemed to him
quite natural; nothing disturbed him, and the return of Sagrario to
the family hearth had not caused him the slightest surprise.
When dinner was over Esteban fled, not to return to the house till
night-time; after supper he locked himself into his own room,
leaving his brother and his daughter in possession of the entrance
sitting-room. The machine began to work again, and Don Luis fingered
his harmonium till nine o'clock, when Silver Stick locked the tower
staircase, rattling his bunch of keys with a noise that equalled a
curfew. Gabriel felt indignant at his brother's obstinacy.
"You will kill the child; what you are doing is unworthy of a father."
"I cannot help it, brother; it is impossible for me to look at her. It
is sufficient for me to tolerate such things in the house. Ay! if you
could only tell how the people's looks wound me!"
In reality the scandal produced by the return of Sagrario to the
Claverias had been much less than he had feared. She seemed so ill and
so weary that none of the women felt any animosity against her, and
the energetic protection of her Aunt Tomasa imposed respect. Besides,
those simple women of instinctive passions could not now feel towards
her that hostile envy that her beauty and the cadet's courtship had
formerly inspired. Even Mariquita, Silver Stick's niece, found a
certain salve to her vanity in protecting with disdainful tolerance
that unhappy girl who in former days had attracted the attention of
every man who visited the upper cloister.
Curiosity only disturbed the calm of the Claverias for about a week.
Little by little the women ceased to stand about the Luna's door
to watch Sagrario bending over her machine, and the girl quietly
continued her sad and hard-working life. Gabriel seldom left the
"habitacion." He spent whole days by the young woman's side,
endeavouring by his presence to atone for the hostile aloofness of her
father. It pained him that she should find herself so despised and
solitary in her own house. Every now and then the Aunt Tomasa came to
see them, enlivening them with the optimism of her happy old age. She
was pleased with her niece's conduct; to work hard so as not to be a
drag on her obstinate old father, and to help towards the maintenance
of the house, was clearly what was required; but all the same there
was no reason she should kill herself with work--calm and good humour,
this bad time would lead to a better; she was there to get things
straight with that fiend-possessed Gabriel, and she made the gloomy
"habitacion" ring with her healthy laugh and lively words.
At other times Gabriel's friends would invade the house, abandoning
the assemblies at the shoemaker's. They could not bear Luna's absence,
they wanted to hear him, to consult him, and even the shoemaker when
his work was not urgent would leave his bench and, smelling of paste,
with his apron tucked into his belt and his head rolled up in striped
handkerchiefs, would come and sit by Sagrario's machine.
The young woman fixed her sad eyes with admiration on her uncle. She
had always from her childhood heard her parents speak with respect of
that extraordinary relative who was travelling in foreign countries;
she vaguely remembered him as a shadow crossing her love dream when he
had spent a few days in the Cathedral before establishing himself in
Barcelona, astonishing them all by the accounts of his travels and
his foreign customs. Now she returned to find him aged, as sickly as
herself, but influencing all who surrounded him by the mysterious
power of his words, that were like heavenly music to those poor
narrow-minded souls.
In the midst of her sadness Sagrario had no other pleasure but to
listen to her uncle; she felt the same as did those simple men who
left their work to seek Luna in their anxiety to hear fresh things
from his lips. Gabriel was the modern world that for so many years had
rolled on far from the Cathedral, never touching it, but which had at
last entered in to stir and awaken a handful of men who were still
living in the sixteenth century.
The appearance of Sagrario had brought about a change in Luna's life;
he became more communicative, and he lost a great deal of the reserve
he had imposed upon himself when he took refuge in the stony lap of
the church. He no longer forced himself to keep silence and to hide
his thoughts; the presence of a woman seemed to enliven him and
wake once more his propagandist fervour. His companions saw a new
Gabriel--more loquacious and more disposed to communicate to them the
"new things," that were already upheaving the traditional course of
their thoughts, and that even now had on many nights disturbed their
sleep.
They talked, discussed and consulted Luna, so that he could clear
their confused ideas, and above the voices of the men sounded the
continual click, click of the sewing machine, always busy, like an
echo of the universal work surging in the world, while the calm of the
Infinite spread itself through the precincts of the church.
All those men, accustomed to the slow, regular, quiet duties of the
church, with long periods of rest, admired the nervous activity of
Sagrario.
"You will kill yourself, child," said the old organ-blower. "I know
very well what it is like, I have done something of the same sort; I
blow and blow at those bellows, and when it is a mass with much
music, such as Don Luis loves, I end by cursing the organ and him who
invented it, for indeed it nearly breaks my arms."
"Work!" said the bell-ringer with emphasis. "Work is a punishment from
God! You all know its origin. It was the eternal penalty imposed on
our first parents by the Lord when He drove them out of Paradise. It
is a chain that we must drag on for ever."
"No, señor," replied the shoemaker. "As I have read in the newspapers,
work is the greatest of all the virtues, not a punishment; laziness is
the mother of vice, and work is a virtue. Is it not so, Don Gabriel?"
The shoemaker looked at the master, watching for his words as a
thirsty man looks for water.
"Work," said Gabriel, "is neither a punishment nor a virtue; it is a
hard law to which we have to submit for self-preservation and for the
welfare of the species. Without work life could not exist."
And with the same fervid enunciation with which he had in former times
swayed the multitude at those meetings of protest against society, he
explained to this half-dozen men and the quiet sewer, who stopped her
machine to listen, the greatness of universal work, which every day
laboured on the earth, to subdue it and force it to yield sustenance
for man.
It was a struggle the whole twenty-four hours against the blind forces
of Nature. The army of work extended over the whole globe, exploring
the continents, leaping to the islands, sailing the seas, and
descending to the bowels of the earth. How many were its soldiers? No
one could count them--millions and millions. At daybreak no one was
absent from the roll-call; the casualties were replaced, the gaps that
poverty and misfortune opened in the ranks were filled up immediately.
As soon as the sun rose the factory chimney began to smoke, the hammer
broke the stone, the file bit the metal, the plough furrowed the
earth, the ovens were lighted, the pump worked its piston, the hatchet
sounded in the wood, the locomotive moved amidst clouds of vapour, the
cranes groaned on the wharves, the steamers cut the waters, and the
little barks danced on the waves dragging their nets. None were absent
from work's review. All hurried on, driven by the fear of hunger,
defying danger, not knowing if they would live till night, or if the
sun rising over their heads would be the last in their lives. And that
daily concentration of human energies began with the first light of
day in all parts of the world, wherever men had assembled and built
towns and constituted societies, or even in the deserts to be
reclaimed by their energies.
The stonemason breaks the stone with his hammer, and at every breath
is poisoned by inhaling the invisible particles. The miner descends to
the hell of modern times with no other guide than the glimmer from
his lamp, to wrest from the strata of the earliest ages relics of the
earth's infancy, those carbonised trees that gave shade to prehistoric
animals. Far from the sun and far from life, he defies death, just as
the mason, poised on a slight scaffolding despises giddiness, watched
only by the birds, surprised to see a creature without wings perched
on such a dizzy height.
The workman in the factory, changed by a fatal and mistaken progress
into a slave of machinery, lives fastened to it like another wheel, a
spring of human flesh, struggling with his physical weariness against
the iron muscles that never tire; brutalised daily by the deafening
cadence of pistons and wheels to give us the innumerable products of
industry rendered necessary by the life of civilisation.
And these millions and millions of men who support the existence
of society, who fight for it against the blind and cruel forces of
Nature, who every morning return to the struggle, seeing in this
monotonous and continual sacrifice the sole aim of their existence,
form the immense family of wage-earners, living on the surplus of a
privileged minority, contenting themselves to subsist on the smallest
part of what these reject, submitting to a wretched remuneration,
always the lowest, without hope of saving or of emancipation.
"It is this egotistical minority," said Gabriel, having arrived at
this point, "who have falsified truth, endeavouring to persuade the
majority of workers that work is a virtue, and that the only mission
of man on earth is to work till he perishes. This code, invented, by
the great capitalists, misquotes science, declaring that people can
only live healthily who devote themselves to work, and that all
inaction is fatal, but is silent as to what science adds--that
excessive work destroys men with far greater rapidity than if they
were living in idleness. They say that work is a painful necessity for
the preservation of life, but they do not say it is a virtue, because
repose and sweet inaction are far more grateful to men and to all
animals than exertion and fatigue. The fable of Paradise, the story of
the Biblical God imposing the sweat of labour as a punishment in order
to earn subsistence, shows that in all times the natural temperament
of man considered rest as the pleasantest condition, and that work
must be considered as an evil indispensable to life, but all the same
an evil. Ruled by the instinct of preservation, man ought only to work
just as much as is necessary for food. But as the immense majority do
not work for themselves alone, but for the profits of a minority of
employers, these require that a man should work as much as he is able,
even if he dies from his over-exertion, and in this way they become
rich, hoarding the surplus from production. Their contention is that
a man should work more than is required for himself, that he should
produce more than is required for his own necessities. In this surplus
lies their wealth, and to obtain it they have invented a monstrous and
inhuman morality, that by means of religion and even of philosophy,
glorifies work, saying that work is the greatest of all virtues and
idleness the source of all vices. And this makes me ask, if idleness
is a vice in the poor, how is it that among the rich it is counted as
a sign of distinction and even of elevation of mind? And if work is
the greatest of all virtues, how is it that capitalists endeavour to
amass wealth in order to free themselves and their descendants from
the practice of so great a virtue? Why is it that this society which
exalts work with every sort of poetical conception relegates the
worker to the lowest rank? Why do they receive with greater enthusiasm
a soldier who has fought, more or less, than an aged workman who has
spent seventy years working without any one praising him or being
grateful to him for so much virtue?"
The servants of the Cathedral nodded their heads, assenting to what
fell from the master; they looked up to him as simple people always
look up to those who come down to them as apostles of a new idea.
The continual friction with Gabriel had caused to germinate in their
minds, stunted by the traditional atmosphere, a growth of ideas, like
the microscopic mosses the winter rains had formed on the granite
buttresses of the church. Hitherto they had lived resigned to the
life that surrounded them, moving like somnambulists on the undecided
boundary which separates soul from instinct, but the unexpected
presence of that fugitive from social battles was the impulse that
launched them into full thought, walking tentatively and with no other
light than that of their master.
"You," went on Gabriel, "do not suffer from the slavery of work like
those who live among modern factories. The Church does not require
great exertions from you, and the service of God does not destroy you
from over-fatigue, though it kills you with hunger. There exists a
monstrous inequality between the salaries of those down below who sit
in the choir and sing and what you earn, who lend to worship all the
strength of your arms. You will not die of fatigue, it is true; many a
workman in the towns would laugh at the lightness of your duties; but
you languish from poverty. I see in this cloister the same anaemic
children that I saw in workmen's slums, I see what you eat and what
you are paid. The Church pays its servants as in the days of faith;
she believes that we still live in the times when whole towns would
throw themselves into the work with the hope of gaining heaven, and
would help to raise cathedrals without any more positive recompense
than the workman's stew and the blessing of the bishop; and all this
while, you, beings of flesh who require nourishment, deceive your
stomachs and those of your wives and children with potatoes and bread,
while down below those wooden images are covered with pearls and gold
in senseless profusion, and without its ever occurring to you to ask
yourselves why the idols who have no wants should be so rich, while
you are unable to satisfy your own and live in misery."
The listeners looked at each other in astonishment, as though these
words were an illuminating flash. They were doubtful for a moment as
though frightened, and then the faith of conviction illuminated their
faces.
"It is true," said the bell-ringer in a gloomy tone.
"It is true," repeated the shoemaker, throwing into his words all
the bitterness of his grinding life of poverty, with a constantly
increasing family, and with no other help but his inadequate work.
Sagrario remained silent. She did not understand many of her uncle's
sayings, but she received them all as gospel coming from him, and they
sounded in her ears like delicious music.
Gabriel's reputation spread among the humble inhabitants of the
church, and all the servants of the Primacy gossiped about his wisdom.
The clergy took notice of him, and more than once on rainy evenings
the canon librarian, taking his walk in the cloisters, tried to make
Gabriel talk; but the fugitive, with a remnant of prudence, showed
himself towards the cassocks, as they themselves said, coldly
courteous and reserved, fearing that they would expel him if they
became acquainted with his views.
Only one priest of all those he saw in the upper cloister had inspired
him with any confidence. This was a young man of wretched appearance,
with worn-out clothes, a chaplain of one of the innumerable convents
of nuns in Toledo. He received seven duros a month, which were all
his means of supporting himself and his old mother, a common peasant
woman, who had denied herself bread in order to give an education to
her son.
"You see, Gabriel," said the priest. "You see how it is--such a great
sacrifice to earn less than a common labourer earns in my village. Why
did they ordain me with so much ceremony? Was it for this I sang mass
in the midst of so much pomp, as though in wedding the Church I were
uniting myself to wealth?"
His poverty made him the slave of Don Antolin, and in the last third
of the month he came almost every day to the cloister, trying to
soften Silver Stick with his prayers and induce him to lend a few
pesetas. He even flattered Mariquita, who could not show herself shy
with him, in spite of his cassock.
"He has a very good appearance," she said to the women of the
Claverias with the enthusiasm inspired by every man. "I like to see
him by the side of Don Gabriel and to hear them talk as they walk in
the cloister. They look like two great noblemen. His mother called him
Martin, no doubt because he resembled the Saint Martin by that painter
they call El Greco, that hangs in some parish church, but I forget
which."
To cajole Don Antolin was a far more arduous task, and the poor little
curate suffered much in his endeavours to propitiate the miser, who
was irritated if his miserable loans were not repaid at the proper
time. Silver Stick with his love of authority was delighted to hold a
priest and an equal under his thumb, so that those in the Claverias
should see that he did not order about the small fry only. Don Martin
was for him only a servant in a cassock, and he made him come up to
the cloister nearly every evening on various pretexts. His delight
Was to keep him whole hours standing in front of his door, obliged to
listen and to pay attention to all his words.
Gabriel felt pity for the moral dependency in which the poor young man
lived, and he would often leave his niece, going out into the cloister
to join them. His other friends were not long in discovering him;
first of all the bell-ringer, then the organ-blower, and presently the
verger, the Perrero, and the shoemaker would join the group, of which
Silver Stick was the nucleus. Don Antolin was delighted to see himself
surrounded by so many people, never imagining that Gabriel was the
attraction, thinking always it was his authority that inspired fear
and respect.
Recognising equality with no one but Luna, to him only he addressed
his conversation, as though the others had no other duty but to listen
to him in silence; if anyone spoke to him he pretended not to hear,
but continued addressing Gabriel. Mariquita, huddled up in a shawl,
followed them with her eyes from the door, sharing her uncle's pride
in seeing himself surrounded by such a group, who accompanied him in
his stroll up and down the cloister; the proximity of so many men
seemed to turn her head.
"Uncle! Don Gabriel!" she called in a coaxing voice. "Won't you come
in; you will be more comfortable inside the house, because, even
though it is sunny, it is very cold."
But the uncle paid no attention to her words, and continued his walk
on the side of the cloister bathed by the sun, talking pompously on
his favourite theme, the present poverty of the Cathedral and its
greatness In former times.
"These cloisters in which we are," he said; "do you believe that they
were built to serve as a refuge to the humble secular people who now
live in them? No, señor, although the Church was generous, she would
not have built these 'habitaciones,' with their inner courtyards and
their colonnades for Wooden Staffs and vergers, etc. This cloister,
which was to have been as large and beautiful as the one below, was
begun by the great Cardinal Cisneros" (Don Antolin raised his hand to
his cap) "so that the canons should live in them subject to conventual
regulations; but the canons in those days were very rich, and,
being great lords, would not consent to live shut up here; they all
protested, and the cardinal, who was very quick-tempered, wished to
keep them in leading strings, but one of them started to Rome with
their complaints, sent by his comrades. Cisneros, being governor of
the kingdom, placed guards at all the ports, and the emissary was
arrested as he was going to embark at Valencia. The end of it all
was that after a long suit the gentlemen of the Chapter came off
victorious, and lived out of the Primacy, and the Claverias remained
unfinished with this low roof and this balustrade, both provisional.
But even as it is kings have lived in this cloister; that great
monarch, Philip II., spent several days here. What glorious times!
when the kings, who had palaces at their command, preferred living in
these rooms, so as to be inside the Cathedral and nearer to God. Such
kings, such people. For this reason Spain was greater then than ever.
We were masters of the world. We had power and money, and we lived
happily on earth in the certainty of reaching heaven after death."
"That is true," said the bell-ringer; "those were the good times, and
for their return we fought in the mountains. Ay! if only Don Carlos
had been victorious! if only there had not been traitors amongst us!
Is it not true, Gabriel? You who fought in the war as I did, you can
say if I am not right."
"Hold your tongue, Mariano," said Gabriel, smiling sadly. "You do not
know what you are saying. You fought and shed your blood for a cause
that even now you do not understand. You went to the war as blindly as
I did. Do not look so sullen; it is no use contradicting. Well then,
let us see, what did you wish for when you went out to fight for Don
Carlos?"
"I? First of all that every man should come by his own. Did not the
crown belong to his family? Well, let it be given to him."
"And is this all?" asked Luna with displeasure.
"That was the least of it. What I wanted, and do want, is that
the nation should have a good master, an upright lord, and a good
Catholic, who without restraints of laws or Cortes, should govern us
all with bread in one hand and a stick in the other. For the robber,
garrote him! for the honoured, 'you are my friend!' A king who will
not allow the rich to crush the poor, and who will not allow any one
to die of hunger who wishes to work. Come, I think I am explaining
myself clearly."
"And all this, do you believe that it existed at any time, or that
your king would be able to restore it? Those centuries that you
describe as those of greatness and well-being were really the worst
in our history; they were the cause of Spanish decadence, and the
beginning of all our ills."
"Stop there, Gabrielillo," said Silver Stick. "You know a great deal,
and have travelled and read much more than I have, but we cannot
swallow that. I am very much interested in the question, and I will
not allow you to take advantage of the ignorance of Mariano and these
others. How can you say that those times were evil, and that the
fault is theirs of what is happening to us now? The true culprit is
liberalism, the unbelief of the age, which has let the devil loose in
our house. Spain, when it does not trust its kings and has no faith in
Catholicism, is like a lame man who drops his crutches and falls to
the ground. We are nothing without the throne and the altar, and the
proof of this is everything that has happened to us since we had
revolutions. We have lost our islands, we count for nothing among the
other countries. The Spaniards who are the bravest men in the world,
have been defeated, there is not a peseta anywhere, and all those
gentlemen who harangue in Madrid vote fresh taxes and we are always
involved in difficulties. When was this ever seen in former times?
When?"
"Worse and more shameful things were seen," said Luna.
"You are mad, youngster! Those travels have corrupted you, till I
believe you are hardly a Spaniard! Look you, that he denies what
everybody knows, what is taught in all the schools! And the Catholic
kings; were they nothing? You need no books to know that. Go into the
choir, and you will see on the lower stalls all the battles that those
religious kings gained over the Moors with the help of God. They
conquered Granada and drove out the infidels who had held it seven
centuries in barbarism. Afterwards came the discovery of America. Who
could accomplish that? No one but ourselves; and that good queen who
pawned her jewels so that Columbus should accomplish his voyage. You
cannot deny all this, it seems to me. And the Emperor Charles V.! What
have you to say about him? Do you know any more extraordinary man! He
fought all the kings of Europe, and half the world was his, 'the sun
never set on his dominions,' we Spaniards were masters of the world;
you cannot either deny this. And still we have said nothing of Don
Philip II., a king so wise and so astute that he made all the monarchs
of Europe dance at his pleasure, as though he were pulling them with
a string. Everything was for the greater glory of Spain and the
splendour of religion. Of his victories and greatness we have said
nothing; if his father was victorious at Pavia, he overturned his
enemies at St. Quintin. And what do you say about Lepanto? Down in the
sacristy we preserve the banners of the ship that Don Juan of Austria
commanded. You have seen them; one of them represents Jesus crucified,
and they are so long, so very long, that when they were fastened to
the triforium, the ends had to be turned up so that they should not
trail on the ground. So, was Lepanto nothing? Come, Gabriel, you
really must be mad to deny certain things. If someone had to conquer
the Moors lest they should possess themselves of all Europe and
endanger the Christian faith, who did it? The Spaniards. When the
Turks threatened to become masters of the seas, who went out to meet
them? Spain and her Don Juan. And who went to discover a new world
but the ships of Spain; and who sailed round the world but another
Spaniard, Magallanes; and for everything great it has always been us,
always us, in those days of religion and prosperity. And what can
we say about learning? Those centuries produced Spain's most famous
men--great poets and most eminent theologians; no one has equalled
them since. And to show that religion is the source of all greatness,
the most illustrious writers have worn the religious habit. I guess
what will be your argument, that after such glorious kings came others
less distinguished, and so the decadence commenced. I know something
about that also. I have heard the librarian of the Cathedral and other
people of great learning say this. But this really means nothing.
These are the designs of God, by which He puts His people to the
proof, just as He does with individuals, bringing them down to low
estate, to raise them again to great honour, so that they may continue
in the right way. But we will not speak of this; if there has been
a decadence we do not want to know anything about it. We want the
glorious past, the brilliant times of the Catholic kings, of Don
Carlos and the two Philips, and it is on them that we fix our eyes
when we talk of Spain returning to her good old times."
"But those centuries, Don Antolin," said Gabriel calmly, "were those
of Spanish decadence; in them was begun our ruin. I am not surprised
at your anger; you repeat what you have been taught. There are people
here of the highest education who are not less irritated if you touch
what they call their golden age. The fault is in the education that
is given in this country. All history is a lie, and to know it so
misrepresented it would be far better not to know it at all. In the
schools the past of the country is taught from the point of view of a
savage, who appreciates a thing because it shines and not because of
its worth or utility. Spain was great, and was on the high road to
become the first nation in the world, by solid and positive merits
that the hazards of war or policy could not have destroyed; but that
was before the centuries that you praise, before the times of the
foreign kings: in the Middle Ages which held great hopes, which have
vanished since the consolidation of national unity. Our Middle Ages
produced a cultivated, industrious and civilised people like none
other in the world; they had in them the materials for the building of
a great nation; but foreign architects came in who hastily ran up this
edifice; those first few years of existence that astound you with the
splendour of novelty, and among whose ruins we are still groping."
Gabriel forgot all his prudence in the ardour of discussion. He felt
no fear of Silver Stick, with his manner of an inquisitor incapable of
reasoning. He wished to convince him; he felt all the fervour, all the
irresistible impulse of his proselytising days, without trying in any
way to disguise his feelings from consideration of the atmosphere
surrounding him. Don Antolin listened to him in astonishment, fixing
on him his cold glance. The others listened, feeling confusedly the
marvel that such ideas should be enunciated in the cloister of a
cathedral. Don Martin, the chaplain of the nuns, who stood behind his
miserly protector, showed in his eyes the eager sympathy with which he
heard Luna's words.
He described the Hispano-Roman people over whom the Gothic invasion
swept, without, however, causing a gap, because before long the
conquerors had succumbed to the lower Latin degeneration, remaining
without strength, spending themselves in theological struggles and
dynastic intrigues like those of Byzantium. The regeneration of Spain
did not come from the north with the hordes of barbarians, but from
the south with the invading Arabs. At first they were few, but they
were sufficient to conquer Roderick and his corrupt courtiers. The
instinct of the Christian nationality revolting against the invaders,
and the gathering together of the whole soul of Spain on the rocky
heights of Covadonga to fall once more upon their conquerors, was all
a lie. The Spain of those days gratefully welcomed the people from
Africa and submitted without resistance. A squadron of Arab horsemen
was sufficient to make a town open its gates. It was a civilising
expedition more than a conquest, and a continual current of
immigration was established over the Straits. Over them came that
young and vigorous culture, of such rapid and astonishing growth,
which seemed to conquer though it was scarcely born: that civilisation
created by the religious enthusiasm of the Prophet, who had
assimilated all that was best in Judaism and in Byzantine
civilisation, carrying along with it also the great Indian traditions,
fragments from Persia and much from mysterious China. It was the
Orient entering into Europe, not as the Assyrian monarchs into Greece,
which repelled them seeing her liberties in danger, but the exact
opposite, into Spain, the slave of theological kings and warlike
bishops, which received the invaders with open arms. In two years they
became masters of what it took seven centuries to dispossess them. It
was not an invasion contested by arms, but a youthful civilisation
that threw out roots in every part. The principle of religious liberty
which cements all great nationalities came in with them, and in the
conquered towns they accepted the Church of the Christians and the
synagogues of the Jews. The Mosque did not fear the temples it found
in the country, it respected them, placing itself among them without
jealousy or desire of domination. From the eighth to the fifteenth
century the most elevated and opulent civilisation of the Middle Ages
in Europe was formed and flourished. While the people of the north
were decimating each other in religious wars, and living in tribal
barbarity, the population of Spain rose to thirty millions, gathering
to herself all races and all beliefs in infinite variety, like the
modern American people. Christians and Mussulmans, pure Arabs,
Syrians, Egyptians, Jews of Spanish extraction, and Jews from the East
all lived peaceably together, hence the various crossings and mixtures
of Muzarabes, Mudejares, Muladies and Hebrews. In this prolific
amalgamation of peoples and races all the habits, ideas, and
discoveries known up to then in the world met; all the arts, sciences,
industries, inventions and culture of the old civilisations budded
out into fresh discoveries of creative energy. Silk, cotton, coffee,
oranges, lemons, pomegranates, sugar, came with them from the East, as
also carpets, silk tissues, gauzes, damascene work and gunpowder. With
them also came the decimal numeration algebra, alchemy, chemistry,
medicine, cosmology and rhymed poetry. The Greek philosophers, who
were nearly vanishing into oblivion, saved themselves by following the
footsteps of the Arab conquerors. Aristotle reigned in the university
of Cordoba. That spirit of chivalry arose among the Spanish Arabs,
which has since been appropriated by the warriors of the north, as
though it were a special quality belonging to Christian people. While
in the barbarous Europe of the Franks, the Anglo-Normans, and the
Germans, the people lived in hovels, and the kings and barons in rocky
castles blackened by the smoke of their fires, devoured by vermin,
dressed in coarse serge, and fed like prehistoric man, the Spanish
Arabs were raising their fantastic Alcazars, and, with the refinement
of ancient Rome, they met at their baths to converse on all literary
and scientific questions. If any monk from the north felt the hunger
of learning, he came to the Arab universities or the Jewish synagogues
of Spain, and the kings of Europe thought they would be cured of their
infirmities if, by dint of golden bribes, they could procure a Spanish
physician.
When little by little the aboriginal element separated itself from the
invaders and small Christian nationalities arose, the Arabs and the
old Spaniards (if indeed after the constant mingling of blood there
was any difference between the two races) fought chivalrously without
exterminating each other after the battles, mutually respecting one
another, with long intervals of peace, as though they wished to
retard the moment of final separation, and often joining in various
enterprises.
A system of liberty ruled in most of the Christian States. The Cortes
arose much earlier than in the other western countries of Europe, and
the Spanish people governed and regulated their expenses themselves,
seeing only in their king a military chief. The municipalities were
little republics with their own elected magistrates. The town militia
realised the ideal of a democratic army. The Church at one with the
people lived peacefully with the other religions in the country; an
intelligent bourgeoisie created large industries in the interior, and
fitted out the first navy of the times at their own cost, and Spanish
products were more sought after than any other in all the ports
of Europe. There were towns then as populous as any of the modern
capitals; whole populations devoted themselves to weaving different
kinds of stuffs, and everything was cultivated on the soil of the
Peninsula.
The Catholic kings marked the apogee of national strength, but it was
the beginning also of its decadence. Their reign was great because the
flow of energy begun in the Middle Ages lasted till their times; but
it was execrable, because their tortuous policy turned Spain from the
right way, rousing in us religious fanaticism and the ambition of
universal empire. Two or three centuries ahead of the rest of Europe,
Spain was for the world of those days what England is for our own
times. If we had followed the same policy of religious toleration, of
fusion of races, of industrial and agricultural work in preference to
military enterprises, where should we not be now?
Gabriel asked this question, interrupting his ardent description of
the past.
"The Renaissance," continued Luna, "was more Spanish than Italian. In
Italy the literature of antiquity, and Greco-Roman art revived, but
the Renaissance was not entirely literary. The Renaissance represents
the springing into life of a new and cultivated society, with arts
and manufactures, armies and, scientific knowledge, etc. And who
accomplished this but Spain, that Arab-Hebrew-Christian Spain of the
Catholic kings? The Gran Capitan taught the world the art of modern
warfare; Pedro Navarro was a wonderful engineer; the Spanish troops
were the first to use firearms, and they created also the infantry,
making war democratic, as it gave the people the superiority over the
noble horsemen clad in armour; finally, it was Spain who discovered
America."
"And does all this seem little to you?" interrupted Don Antolin. "Do
you not exactly agree with what I said? We have never seen so much
power and greatness united in Spain as in the times of those kings,
who with reason some call the Catholics."
"I agree that it was a grand period of our history; the last that was
really glorious, the last gleam that flashed before that Spain, who
alone walked in the right way, was extinguished. But before their
deaths the Catholic kings commenced the decadence by dismembering that
strong and healthy Spain of the Arabs, the Christians and the Jews.
You are right, Don Antolin, to say that those kings are not called
the Catholics for nothing. Doña Isabel with her feminine fanaticism
established the Inquisition, so science extinguished her lamp in the
mosques and synagogues, and hid her books in Christian convents.
Seeing that the hour for praying, instead of reading, had come,
Spanish thought took refuge in darkness, trembling in cold and
solitude, and ended by dying. What remained devoted itself to poetry,
to comedies and theological tracts. Science became a pathway that led
to the bonfire; and then came a fresh calamity, the expulsion of the
Spanish Jews, so saturated with the spirit of this country, loving it
so dearly, that even to-day, after four centuries, scattered on the
shores of the Danube or the Bosphorus there are Spanish Jews who weep,
like old Castillians, for their lost country:
'Perdimos la bella Sion;
Perdimos tambien España
Nido de consolacion.'[1]
[Footnote 1: 'We lost our lovely Sion; we also lost our Spain, that
nest of consolation.]
"That people who had given Maimonides to the science of the Middle
Ages, and who were the mainstay of all the industries and commerce
of Spain, left our country _en masse_. Spain, deceived by its
extraordinary vitality was opening its own veins to satisfy the
growing fanaticism, believing that it could survive this loss without
danger. Afterwards came what a modern writer has called 'the foreign
body,' interposing itself in our national life--those Austrians who
came to reign and caused Spain to lose her distinctive character."
"Gabriel," interrupted the priest, "you are talking absurdities. The
true Spain began with the emperor, and went on equally gloriously
under Don Philip II. This is the pure and uncorrupted Spain that we
ought to take as an example, and which we hope to restore."
"No. The pure and uncorrupted Spain, the Spanish Spain without foreign
admixture, is that of the Arabs, Moors and Jews, that of religious
tolerance, that of industrial and agricultural wealth, and of free
municipalities; that which perished under the Catholic kings. What
came after was a Teutonic and a Flemish Spain turned into a German
colony, serving as a mercenary under foreign standards, ruining itself
in undertakings in which it had no interest, shedding blood and gold
for the ambition of the so-called Holy Roman Empire. I can understand
the enchantment that the emperor exercised over the bigoted and
ignorant people who worshipped the past. A great man that Don Carlos!
Brave in fight, astute in politics, jolly and hearty as one of the
burgomasters of his own country; a great eater, a great drinker, and
loving to catch the girls round the waist. But he had nothing Spanish
about him. He only appreciated his mother's heritage for what he could
wring out of it. Spain became a servant to Germany, ready to supply
as many men as were required, and to furnish loans and taxes. All the
exuberant life garnered in this country by Hispano-Arab culture
was absorbed by the north in less than a hundred years. The free
municipalities disappeared, their defenders went to the scaffold both
in Castille and Valencia; the Spaniard abandoned his plough or his
weaving to range the world with an arquebus on his shoulder, and the
town militias were transformed into bands which fought all over Europe
without knowing why. The flourishing towns became villages; churches
were turned into convents; the popular and tolerant clergy were
changed into friars who imitated with servile complacency the German
fanaticism. The fields remained barren for want of hands to cultivate
them, the poor dreamt of becoming rich from the sack of the enemy's
towns and left their work; the industrious burghers abandoned commerce
as only fit for heretics, and became nurseries of clerks and petty
magistrates; and the armies of Spain as unbeaten and glorious as they
were ragged, with no pay but pillage and in continual mutiny against
their chiefs, flooded our country with a swarm of wretched vagabonds,
from whence proceeded the bully, the beggar with his blunderbuss, the
highwayman, the wandering hermits, the starving nobleman, and all
those characters of which picturesque novels have availed themselves."
"But, the devil, Gabriel!" cried indignantly Silver Stick; "do you
deny that Don Carlos, who built the Alcazar of Toledo, and Don Philip
II., who lived in this very cloister, were two great kings?"
"I do not deny it; they were two extraordinary men, but they killed
Spain for ever. They were two foreigners, two Germans; Philip II.
clothed himself with a false Spaniardism to continue the German policy
of his father. This masquerading caused us great harm, because there
are many men now who think of him as the noblest representation of a
Spaniard. The absurd inventions and lapses from truth to which those
times give rise are enough to drive one mad. Many Catholics dream of
canonising Philip II. for the cold cruelty with which he exterminated
heretics, but such a king had really no Catholicism but his own; he
was heir to the German Cæsarism, that eternal hammer of the Popes.
Driven by pride, he was always sailing to the windward of schism and
heresy; that he did not break with the Pontificate was solely that
this latter feared that the Spanish soldiery, who had twice entered
Rome, would remain there for ever, and that it would have to submit to
all their extortions. The father and son robbed us with dissimulation
of our nationality, and dissipated our life for their purely personal
plans of reviving the Cæsarism of Charlemagne and forming the Catholic
religion to their own imagination and taste. They nearly destroyed the
ancient religious feeling of Spain, so cultivated and tolerant from
its continual intercourse with Mahomedanism and Judaism; that Spanish
Church, whose priests lived peacefully in the towns with the alfaqui
and the rabbi, and who punished with moral penalties those who from
excess of zeal disturbed the worship of the infidels. That religious
intolerance which foreign historians consider a purely Spanish product
was really imported by the German Caesars. It was the German friar who
came with his devout brutality and his crazy theology, not tempered
as in Spain by Semitic culture. With their intolerance and
impracticability they provoked the revolution of the Reformation in
the northern countries, and, driven out of them, they came here to
plant afresh their ignorance and fanaticism. The ground was well
prepared. When the free towns whose municipalities were republics
fell, the people also languished; the foreign seed produced in a
short time an immense forest, the forest of the Inquisition and the
fanaticism which still exists; the modern woodmen cut and lop, but
they soon fall off wearied; the arms of one man can do little against
a trunk that has grown for centuries. Fire, nothing but fire, can
exterminate that cursed vegetation."
Don Antolin opened his eyes in horror. He was not angry now, he seemed
quite thunderstruck by Luna's words.
"Gabriel, my son!" he exclaimed; "you are 'greener' than I thought.
Just think where you are; remember what you are saying. We are in the
Holy Metropolitan Church of all the Spains."
But Luna was fairly launched by the renewal of his historical
remembrances and he was not to be stopped, driven on as he was by his
propagandist zeal. He was fired by the old oratorical fervour, and he
spoke as at those meetings when he could scarcely continue his speech
for the applause, and the protests and surging of the multitude
obstructing the police.
The horror of the priest only seemed to excite him more.
"Philip II.," he continued, "was a foreigner, a German to the very
bones. His grave taciturnity, his slow and penetrating mind, were not
Spanish, they were Flemish. The impassibility with which he received
the reverses which ruined the nation was that of a foreigner who was
bound by no ties of affection to the country. 'It is better to reign
over corpses than over heretics,' he said, and corpses the Spaniards
really were, condemned not to think, but to lie in order to conceal
their thoughts. All the ancient offices had disappeared. Outside
the Church there was no future for any adventurous soul, except in
America--which ceased to be of any use to the nation after it became
converted into the treasure chest of the king--or to be a soldier
fighting in Europe for the rehabilitation of the Holy German Empire,
for the subjection of the Pope to the Emperor or the extinction of the
reformed religion, undertakings that in no way concerned Spain, but
were all the same very blood-letting affairs, even for those who
escaped with their lives. All the handicraftsmen disappeared, carried
away to the armies, and the towns became filled with invalids and
veterans, carrying their rusty swords, their only proof of personal
valour. All the middle-class guilds were suppressed; there only
remained nobles proud of being servants to the king and a populace
who only asked for bread and entertainments, like the Romans, and
contented themselves with the broth from the convents and the burning
of heretics organised by the Inquisition.
"After this, ruin overwhelmed us; after the great Caesars, so fatal to
Spain, came the little ones--Philip III., who gave the final blow by
expelling the Moors; Philip IV., a degenerate with literary fancies,
who wrote verses and courted nuns, and the miserable Charles II.
"Spain had never been so religious, Don Antolin," said Luna. "The
Church was mistress of everything; the ecclesiastical tribunals judged
even the king himself, but secular justice could not touch even the
hem of a garment of the lowest sacristan, even though he committed the
greatest crimes in the public streets. Only the Church could judge its
own; as Barrioneuva relates in his memoirs, friars armed to the teeth
wrested from the king's justice at the foot of the scaffold, in broad
daylight in the midst of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, one of their own
brothers condemned for murder. The Inquisition, not satisfied with
burning heretics, judged and punished gangs of cattle-lifters. Men of
letters, terrified, took refuge in ornamental literature as the last
refuge of thought, confining themselves to the production of witty
novels or plays, in which a fantastic honour was exalted which only
existed in poets' imagination, while the greatest corruption of morals
reigned. The great Spanish genius ignored or feigned to ignore what
the religious revolution beyond the frontiers was saying. Quevedo
only, who was the most daring, ventured to say:
'With the Inquisition....
Hush! Silence!'
the sad epitaph of Spanish thought which preferred to perish as it
could not speak the truth. In order to live quietly and support
themselves in those days of ignorance, many poets sought the shadow
of the Church and wore its vestments. Lope de Vega, Calderon, Tirsode
Molina, Miradamerscua, Tarriga, Argensola, Gongora, Rioja, and others
were priests, many of them after stormy lives. Montalban was a priest
and employed in the Inquisition, and even the poor Cervantes, in
his old age, had to take the habit of St. Francis. Spain had eleven
thousand convents, more than a hundred thousand friars, and forty
thousand nuns, and to these must be added seventy-eight thousand
priests and the innumerable servitors and dependents of the Church,
such as alguaciles, familiars, jailors, and notaries of the
Inquisition, sacristans, stewards, buleros,[1] convent door-porters,
choristers, singers, lay brothers, novices--and I know not how many
other people. In exchange, the nation from a population of thirty
millions had shrunk to seven millions in less than two hundred
years. The expulsion of Jews and Moors by religious intolerance, the
continual foreign wars, the emigration to America in the hopes of
growing rich without work, hunger, the lack of sanitation, and the
abandonment of agriculture, had brought about this rapid depopulation.
The revenues of Spain had fallen to fourteen million ducats, whereas
the clerical revenue had risen to eight millions; the Church possessed
more than half the national fortune! What times! Eh, Don Antolin?"
[Footnote 1: _Buleros_--One charged with distributing crusading bulls
and collecting alms for them.]
Silver Stick listened coldly, as though he had formed some definite
idea about Luna, and therefore did not make much account of his words.
"However bad they were," he said slowly, "they could not be worse than
they are at present. At all events no one robbed the Church. Everyone
was contented in his poverty, thinking of heaven, which is the only
truth, and the worship of God which corresponds to it. Is it that you
possibly do not believe in God?"
Gabriel avoided an answer, and went on talking of those times.
"It was a period of barbarism and stagnation, and while Europe was
developing and progressing the people who had been foremost in all
civilisation were now left far behind. The kings, inspired by Spanish
pride and the hereditary pretensions of the German Caesars, conceived
the mad idea of mastering all Europe, with no more support than
a nation of seven million of inhabitants, and a few companies of
ill-paid and starving soldiers. The gold from America had gone to fill
the Dutchmen's purses, and in this undertaking, worthy of Don Quixote,
the nation received blow after blow. Spain became more and more
Catholic, poorer and more barbarous. She aspired to conquer the whole
world, yet in the interior she had whole provinces uninhabited; many
of the old towns had disappeared, the roads were obliterated and no
one in Spain knew for certain the geography of the country though few
were ignorant of the situation of heaven and of purgatory. The farms
of any fertility were not occupied by granges but by convents, and
along the few highways bivouacked bands of robbers, who took refuge,
when they found themselves pursued, in the monasteries, where they
were welcomed for their piety, and for the many masses they ordered
for their sinful souls.
"The ignorance was atrocious, the kings were advised even in warlike
matters by priests. Charles II., when the Dutch troops offered to
garrison the Spanish towns in Flanders, consulted with the clerics as
on a case of conscience, because this might facilitate the diffusion
of heresy, and he ended by preferring to let them fall into the hands
of the French, who, although they were enemies, were at all events
Catholics. In the university of Salamanca the poet Torres de
Villarroel could not find a single work on geography, and when he
spoke of mathematics, the pupils assured him it was a kind of sorcery,
a devilish science that could only be understood by anointing oneself
with an ointment used by witches. The theologians rejected the project
of a canal to unite the Tagus and the Manzanares, saying that this
would be a work against the will of God; but having laid this
down--fiat--the two rivers joined themselves even though they had
been separated from the beginning of the world. The doctors of Madrid
begged Philip IV. to allow the refuse to remain in the streets
'because the air of the town being exceedingly keen, it would cause
great ravages unless it were impregnated with the vapours from the
filth,' and a century later, a famous theologian in Seville registered
in a public document with those who were discussing with him, 'that
we would far rather err with Saint Clement, Saint Basil and Saint
Augustin, than agree with Descartes and Newton.'
"Philip II. had threatened with death and confiscation anyone who
published foreign books or who circulated manuscripts, and his
successors forbade any Spaniard to write on political subjects, so,
finding no ways of expansion for thought, they devoted themselves to
fine arts and poetry; painting and the theatre rose to a higher level
than in any other country; they were the safety valves of the national
genius; but this spring of art was only ephemeral, for in the midst of
the seventeenth century a grotesque and debasing decadence overwhelmed
everything.
"The poverty in those centuries was horrible; that same Philip II.,
though he was lord of the world, put up titles of nobility for sale
for the sum of six thousand reals, noting on the margin of the decree
'that it was not necessary to inquire much into the quality and origin
of the people.' In Madrid the people sacked the bakeries, fighting
with their fists for the bread. The president of Castille travelled
through the province with the executioner to wring the scanty harvest
from the peasants. The collectors of taxes, finding nothing that they
could collect in the towns, tore off the roofs of the houses, selling
the woodwork and the tiles. The families fled to the mountains
whenever they saw in the distance the king's representative, and so
the towns remained deserted and fell into ruins. Hunger came in even
to the royal palaces, and Charles II., Lord of Spain and of the
Indies, was unable on several occasions to procure food for his
servants. The ambassadors of England and Denmark were obliged to sally
forth with their armed servants to seek for bread in the suburbs of
Madrid.
"And amidst all this the innumerable convents, masters of more than
half the country and the sole possessors of wealth, showed their
charity by distributing soup to those who had strength to fetch it,
and by founding asylums and hospitals, where the people died of misery
though they were certain of reaching heaven. The ancient manufactures
had all disappeared. Segovia, so famous for its cloth, that had
employed over 40,000 persons in its manufacture, only held 15,000
inhabitants, and these had so completely forgotten the art of weaving
wool that when Philip V. wished to re-establish the industry, he was
obliged to import German weavers.
"And it was the same thing in Seville, in Valencia, and in Medina del
Campo, so famous for their fairs and their manufactures," continued
Gabriel. "Seville which in the fifteenth century had 16,000 silk
weavers, at the end of the seventeenth could only produce 65. Though
it is true in exchange its Cathedral clergy numbered 117 canons, and
it had 78 convents, with more than 4,000 friars and 14,000 priests
in the diocese. And Toledo? At the close of the fifteenth century
it employed 50,000 artisans in its silk and wool weaving and in its
factory of arms, to say nothing of curriers, silversmiths, glovers,
and jewellers; at the end of the seventeenth century it had hardly
15,000 inhabitants. Everything was decayed, everything was ruined;
twenty-five houses belonging to illustrious families had passed into
the hands of the convents, and the only rich people in the town were
the friars, the archbishop and the Cathedral. Spain was so exhausted
at the end of the Austrian rule that she saw herself nearly divided
among the different powers of Europe, like Poland, another Catholic
country like ours. The quarrels among the kings were the only thing
that saved her."
"If those times were so bad, Gabriel," said Silver Stick, "how was
it the Spaniards showed such unanimity? How was it there were no
'pronunciamientos' and risings in these deplorable times?"
"What could they do? The despotism of the Caesars had imposed on the
Spaniards a blind obedience to the kings as the representatives
of God, and the clergy had educated them in this belief from the
community of interests between the Church and the throne. Even the
most illustrious poets corrupted the people, exalting servility to the
monarchy in their plays. Calderon affirmed that the property and life
of a citizen did not belong to himself but to the king. Besides,
religion filled everything; it was the sole end of existence, and the
Spaniards meditating always on heaven, ended by accustoming themselves
to the miseries of earth. Do not doubt but the excess of religion was
our ruin, and came very near exterminating us as a nation. Even now we
are dragging along the consequences of this plague which lasted for
centuries. To save this country from death what had to be done? The
foreigners had to be called in, and the Bourbons came. See how low we
had fallen that we had not even soldiers. In this land, even if we
were wanting in other advantages, we could from the earliest days
reckon on good warlike leaders; but look, in the war of succession we
had to have English and French generals, and even officers, for there
was not a Spaniard who could train a cannon or command a company; we
had no one to serve us as a minister, and under Philip V. and Fernando
VI. all the Government were foreigners, strangers called in to revive
the lost manufactures, to reclaim the derelict lands, to repair the
ancient irrigation channels, and to found colonies in the deserts
inhabited by wild beasts and bandits. Spain, who had colonised half
the world after her own fashion, was now re-discovered and colonised
by Europeans.[1] The Spaniards seemed like poor Indians, guided by
their Cacique the friar, with their rags covered with scapularies and
miracle-working relics. Anti-clericalism was the only remedy against
all this superstition and ruin, and this spirit came in with the
foreign colonists. Philip V. wished to suppress the Inquisition and to
end the naval war with the Mussulman nations which had lasted for a
thousand years, depopulating the shores of the Mediterranean with the
fear of the Barbary and Turkish pirates. But the natives resisted any
reform coming from the colonists, and the first Bourbon had to desist,
finding his crown in danger. Later on his immediate successors, having
deeper roots in the country dared to continue his work. Carlos III.
in his endeavour to civilise Spain laid a heavy hand on the Church,
limiting its privileges and curtailing its revenues, being careful of
earthly things and forgetful of the heavenly. The bishops protested,
speaking in letters and pastorals 'of the persecutions of the poor
Church, robbed of its goods, outraged in its ministers, and attacked
in its immunities,' but the awakened country rejoiced in the
only prosperous days it had known in modern times before the
disestablishment. Europe was ruled by philosophic kings and Charles
III. was one of them. The echo of the English revolution still
vibrated through the world; the monarchs now wished to be loved and
not feared, and in every country they struggled against the ignorance
and brutality of the masses, bringing about progressive reforms
by royal enactment and even by force. But the great evil of the
monarchical system was its heredity, the power settled in one family,
for the son of a clever man with good intentions might be an imbecile.
After Charles III. came Charles IV., and as if this were not
sufficient, in the year of his death the French revolution broke out,
which made all the kings in Europe tremble, and the Bourbons of Spain
quite lost their heads, which they were never able to recover. They
went astray, wandering from the right way, throwing themselves once
more into the arms of the Church as the only means of avoiding the
revolutionary danger, and they have not yet returned, nor will they,
to the right track. Jesuits, friars and bishops became once more the
counsellors at the palace, as they still are, as in the times when
Carlos II. concocted his military and political plans with a council
of theologians. We have had false revolutions which have dethroned
people, but not ideas. It is true we have advanced a little, but
timidly, with halting footsteps and disorderly retreats, like one who
advances fearfully, and suddenly, at the slightest noise, rushes back
to the point of departure. The transformation has been more exterior
than interior. The minds of the people are still in the seventeenth
century; they still feel the fear and cowardice engendered by the
inquisitorial bonfires. The Spaniards are slaves to their very marrow;
their pride and their energies are all on the surface; they have not
lived through three centuries of ecclesiastical servitude for nothing.
They have made revolutions, they are capable of rebelling, but they
will always stop short at the threshold of the Church, who was their
mistress by force and remains so still, even though its power has
vanished. There is no fear of them entering here. You may remain quite
easy, Don Antolin, though in justice many accounts might be required
of her from the past. Is it because they are as religious as formerly?
You know that this is not the case, though they complain with reason
of the way in which the ancient grandeur of the Church has been
extinguished without popular aid."
[Footnote 1: In 1897 an Act was passed "to colonise derelict land in
Spain."]
"That is true," said Silver Stick; "there is no faith. No one is
capable of making any sacrifice for the house of God. Only in the hour
of death, when fear comes in, do some of them remember to assist us
with their fortune."
"There is no faith, that is the truth. The Spaniard, after that
religious fever that nearly killed him, lived in a state of perfect
indifference, not from scientific reflection but from inability to
think at all. They know they will go either to heaven or hell; they
believe it because they have been taught so, but they let themselves
be carried on by the stream of life, without the strength to choose
either one place or the other. They accept the established, living
in a sort of an intellectual somnambulism. If now and then thought
awakening suggests some criticism it is smothered at once by fear;
the Inquisition still lives among us though we have no longer the
bonfires, but we are terribly afraid of 'what will be said.' A
stationary and narrow-minded society is our modern holy office. He
who raises his protest, rising above the general and common monotony,
draws upon himself the stupid anger of scandalised man, and suffers
punishment; if he is poor he is put to the proof of hunger, his means
of life being cut away from him, and if he is independent he is burned
in effigy, creating emptiness around him. Everyone must be correct and
agree to what is established, and hence it arises, that, bound to
one another by fear, never an original thought arises, there is no
independent thought, and even the learned keep to themselves the
conclusions they draw from their studies. As long as this goes on the
task of the revolutionary is useless in this country; they may change
the apparent nature of the soil, but when the pickaxe strikes they
come at once on the stones of ages, solid and compact. The national
character though it has lost its religious faith is unchanged. Faith
is dead, but the corpse still remains with the appearance of life,
occupying the same place and obstructing the pathway. The Church is
poor and driven into a corner compared to what it was formerly, Don
Antolin, but do not fear, its situation will not be aggravated, the
tide has risen to its full height and will not overflow; as long as
the people in this country are afraid to say what they think, as long
as they are scandalised by a new idea, and tremble at what their
neighbours will say, so long will they laugh at revolutions, for
however much they break out, none of these will bring the water to
your mouths."
Don Antolin laughed on hearing this.
"But Gabrielillo, man--you must be mad. All this reading and
travelling has turned your head. At first I was indignant, thinking
you were among those who wished for another revolution to take
away the little that is left to us, proclaiming the republic and
suppressing all ecclesiastical things, but I see that you go much
beyond this, that you conform to nothing, and that everything seems to
you the worst; and this rather pleases me, because I see you are not a
terrible enemy to be feared as you fire from too far. It seems to me
that your head is as much affected as your chest. But do all these
revolutions we have had seem as nothing to you? Do you think the
country is still as savage as you have described it in past years? But
I," continued the priest ironically, "hear a great deal said about the
progress of the country, and I know that we have railways, and that
the long chimneys are arising in all the town suburbs, and many of the
impious are delighted at this, comparing them to the church belfries."
"Bah!" exclaimed Gabriel indifferently. "There is a little of this
progress; the revolutions have placed Spain in touch with other
countries, the progressive current has caught this country and is
carrying it along as the Asiatics and others are carried; no one
can escape it nowadays. But we advance at very low water, inert and
without strength; if we advance it is with the current, and not by
our own energy, while other people stronger than we swim and swim,
advancing at every stroke. How have we contributed to this progress?
Where are our manifestations of modern life? The railways, few and
bad, are the work of foreigners, and are their property; the grass
grows between the rails, which shows that we still follow the holy
calm of carts and wagons. The most important industries, metallurgy
and mines, are all in the hands of foreigners or of Spaniards who are
subject to them, living under their bountiful protection. Commerce
languishes under an old-fashioned protection which enhances the price
of all commodities, and so there is no capital forthcoming; money
remains hidden in earthen jars in the fields as treasure, or in the
towns is devoted to usury as in past times; the most daring venture
to invest in public stock; Government continues the mismanagement,
certain of always finding someone to lend, and pointing to this credit
as a proof of the country's prosperity. There are in Spain two million
hectares of uncultivated land, twenty-six millions of unirrigated
arable land, and only one million irrigated. This cultivation of
unirrigated land, which has come to be almost our only agriculture
is a concession that Spanish indolence makes to hunger, a perpetual
demonstration of the fanaticism that trusts in prayer or in the rain
from heaven more than in human progress. The rivers rush to the sea
through scorched-up provinces overflowing in winter, not to fertilise,
but to carry away everything in the volume of the inundation; there is
plenty of stone for churches and new convents, but none for dykes and
reservoirs; they build belfries and cut down the trees that attract
the rain. And do not tell me again, Don Antolin, that the Church is
poor and in no ways in fault; the poor are yourselves, you of the old
and traditional Church, you of the religion 'à la Española,' for in
this as in everything else there are fashions, and the faithful
follow the most recent; for here are the Jesuits, the most modern
manifestation of Catholicism, the 'latest novelty,' with their Sacred
Heart of Jesus and other French idolatries, building palaces and
churches in all directions, diverting the money that formerly went to
the Cathedrals, the only evidence of wealth in the country. But let us
return to our progress. Worse even for agriculture than the drought
is the ignorance and routine of the labourers, every new invention or
scientific appliance repels them, thinking it evil. 'The old times
were the good ones, our ancestors cultivated in this way and so ought
we'; and so ignorance is turned into a sort of national glory, and
we cannot hope for any remedy at present. In other countries the
universities and high schools send out reformers, men fighting for
progress; here the centres of learning only send out a proletariat
of students who must live, besieging all the professions and public
appointments, with the sole desire to open themselves a way to
continuous employment. They study (if you can call it study) for a few
years, not to learn, but to gain a diploma, a scrap of paper which
authorises them to earn their bread. They learn anything that the
professor teaches, without the slightest desire to inquire any
further. The professors are for the greater part doctors or barristers
practising their profession, who come between whiles and sit for an
hour in their chairs, repeating like a phonograph what they have said
for many previous years, and then they return to their sick or their
lawsuits, without caring in the least what is being said or written in
the world since they got their appointments. All Spanish culture is at
second hand, purely on the surface, 'translated from the French,' and
even this is only for the scanty minority who read, for the rest of
those so-called intellectuals have no other library but the text-books
they studied as children, and all they learn of the progress of human
thought is from the newspapers. The parents who are desirous of
securing as soon as possible the future of their sons who are seeking
a career, send them to these centres of learning when they scarcely
know how to speak; the man-student of other countries, in the
full plenitude of his thinking powers, does not exist here. The
universities are full of children, and in the different institutes you
only see short trousers, and the Spaniard, before he shaves himself
for the first time, is a licentiate and on the high road to become
a doctor; the wet nurse will end by sitting by the professor. These
children who receive the baptism of science at an age when in other
countries they are playing with their toys, being confirmed in the
title that proclaims their scientific acquirements, study no more;
these are the intellectuals who are to direct and save us, and who
to-morrow may be legislators and ministers. Come, my good man, it is
enough to make one laugh!"
Gabriel did not laugh, but Silver Stick and the others applauded his
words. Any criticism against the present times delighted the priest.
"This country is drained, Don Antolin, nothing remains standing. The
number of towns which have vanished since our decadence commenced is
incalculable. In other countries ruins are carefully preserved, as
so many stone pages of their history; they are cleaned, preserved,
supported and strengthened, and paths opened round them so that all
can examine them. Here, where Roman, Byzantine and Arab art have
passed, and also the Mudejar, the Gothic and the Renaissance--in fact,
all the styles of Europe--the ruins in the country are hidden and
disfigured by herbage and creepers, and in the towns they are
mutilated and disfigured by the vandalism of the people. They are
constantly thinking of the past, and yet they despise its remains;
what a country of dreams and desolation! Spain is no longer a country,
it is an ill-arranged and dusty museum, full of old things that
attract all the curious of Europe, but in which even the ruins are
ruined."
The eyes of Don Martin, the young curate, fastened themselves on
Gabriel. They seemed to speak to him and express the pleasure with
which he heard his words. The other listeners, silent and with bowed
heads, did not feel less the enchantment of those propositions which
sounded so audaciously in the restful and rank atmosphere of the
cloister. Don Antolin was the only one who laughed, finding Gabriel's
ideas quite charming but absolutely crazy It was getting late and the
sun had sunk below the roofs of the Cathedral. Silver Stick's niece
called to them once again from the door of her house.
"We are coming, child," said the priest, "but I have one thing first
to say to this gentleman."
And addressing himself to Luna, he continued:
"But, Hombre de Dios![1]--but I ought not to call you that as you
are so turbulent--you think everything is out of joint. The Spanish
Church, worn out as you say, has become very poor, and still you say
this revolution is a very small affair. What do you wish for? What
is it that you desire so that things might be settled? Tell us your
secret quickly and let us go, for the cold is very sharp."
[Footnote 1: Man of God.]
And he laughed again, looking at Gabriel with paternal pity as though
he were a child.
"My remedy!" exclaimed Gabriel, taking no notice of the priest's
gesture. "I have no remedy whatever, it is the progress of humanity
that alone offers one. All the nations on earth have passed through
the same evolutions; first of all they were ruled by the sword, then
by faith, and now by science. We ourselves have been ruled by warriors
and priests, but now we tarry at the gate of modern life, without the
strength or wish to take science by the hand, who is the only guide
we could have, hence our sad situation. Science is nowadays in
everything--in agriculture, in all manufactures, in arts and crafts,
in the culture and well-being of the people; it is even in war. Spain
still lives far from the sun of science, at most she knows a pale
reflection, cold and feeble, that comes to us from foreign countries.
The failure of faith has left us without strength, like those
creatures who, having suffered from a severe illness in their youth,
remain anaemic for ever, without possible recuperation, condemned to
premature old age."
"Bah! Science!" said Silver Stick, turning towards his house; "that
is the eternal cry of all the enemies of religion. There is no better
science than to love God and His works. Good evening."
"Very good evening, Don Antolin; but remember this, we have not yet
done with faith and the sword; sometimes one directs us or the other
drives us; but of science, never a word, unless Spain has changed in
the last twenty-four hours."
CHAPTER VII
After this evening Gabriel avoided the meetings in the cloister, so
as to have no more discussions with Silver Stick. He repented of his
audacity, and when he was alone reflected on the danger to which
he had exposed himself in expressing his views so freely. He felt
terrified at the possibility of being expelled from the Cathedral to
roam the world afresh; he reproached himself, throwing in his own
teeth his folly in hurling himself against the prejudices of the past.
What could he hope to effect by changing the thoughts of these poor
people? What weight could the conversion of these few men, stuck
like limpets to the stones of the past, have in the emancipation of
humanity?
The Cathedral was to Gabriel like a gigantic tumour, which blistered
the Spanish epidermis, like scars of its ancient infirmities. It was
not a muscle capable of development, but an abscess which bided its
time either to be extirpated, or to disappear of itself through the
working of the germs it contained; he had chosen this ruin as
his refuge and he ought to be silent, to be prudent so that his
ingratitude should not be flung in his face.
Moreover, his brother Esteban, breaking the cold reserve into which he
had retired since the arrival of his daughter, counselled prudence.
"His mind seems possessed by the demon, Esteban," said the priest,
"and he explains his views with the most perfect calmness in this holy
house, as though he were in one of those infernal clubs which exist in
foreign countries. Where on earth has your brother been to learn such
things? Never have I heard such frightful heresies. Tell him that I
shall forget it all as I have known him since his childhood, and that
I remember he was the pride of our seminary, but more especially
because he is ill, and it would be inhuman to drive him out of the
Cathedral; but he must not repeat this scandal. Silence! Let him keep
all those atrocities in his own head, if it so pleases him to lose his
soul; but in this holy house, and especially before its staff, not a
word. Do you understand? not a word. The next thing will be that he
will hold meetings in the Holy Metropolitan Church. Besides, your
brother must remember that, after all, at this moment, he is eating
the bread of the Church, as he lives on you, and is supported by you,
and it is not right to speak in this way of the most excellent work of
God, and try to point out all its defects."
This last consideration weighed the most with Gabriel, and it wounded
his dignity. Don Antolin said rightly, he was no more than a parasite
of the Cathedral, and having taken refuge in her lap, he owed her
gratitude and silence. He would keep silence. Had he not decided
when he took refuge there to live as one dead? He would live like an
animated corpse, which in some religious orders is the supreme of
human perfection. He would think like everyone else, or rather, he
would try not to think at all, but would simply vegetate there till
his last hour came, like the plants in the garden or the fungus on the
buttresses of the cloister.
The Cathedral servants seated themselves round the sewing machine,
hoping in vain that their master would come down, but content on the
whole, though they did not see him, to be near him, to look at his
empty seat, and to talk to the girl who expressed such ingenuous
admiration for her uncle's conversation. The Chapel-master was
delighted that Luna, his sole admirer, had returned to visit him;
during his temporary eclipse the poor musician had suffered all the
bitterness of solitude, despairing with almost infantile rage, as
though an immense audience had turned its back on him. He caressed
Gabriel as though he was the woman he loved, listening to his
coughing, and recommending all sorts of fantastic remedies imagined
by himself, uneasy at the progress of his malady and trembling at the
idea that death might tear from him his only listener.
He told Gabriel of all the music he had studied during his absence.
When the sick man coughed much, he would cease playing his harmonium,
and begin long talks with his friend, always on the subject of his
constant preoccupation, musical art.
"Gabriel," said the musician one evening; "you who are so keen an
observer, and who knows so much, has it ever struck you that Spain is
sad, and has not the sweet sentimentality of true poetry? She is not
melancholy, she is sad, with a wild and savage silence. She either
laughs in wild peals, or weeps moaning. She has not the gentle smile,
the joyful brightness that distinguishes the man from the animal. If
she laughs it is showing all her teeth; her inner meaning is always
gloomy, with the obscurity of a cavern in which all passions rage like
wild beasts seeking for an outlet."
"You say truly, Spain is sad," replied Luna. "She does not now go
dressed in black, with the rosary hanging to the pommel of her sword
as in former years. Still in her heart she is always dressed in
mourning and her soul is gloomy and wild. For three hundred years the
poor thing has endured the inquisitorial anguish of burning or being
burnt, and she still feels the spasm of that life of terror. There is
no joy here."
"There certainly is not, and you find this more in music than in any
other phase of Spanish life. The Germans dance the gay and voluptuous
waltz with a 'bock' in their hand, singing the _Gaudeamus igitur_,
that students' hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The
French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and
elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause their fantastic and
monkey-like movements. The English have turned their dance into
gymnastics, with the energy of a healthy body delighting in its own
strength. But all these people, when they feel the sweet sadness of
poetry, sing Lieds, romances, ballads, something soft and flowing,
that rests the soul and speaks to the imagination. Here even the
popular dances have much that is priestly, recalling the priestly
stiffness of the sacred dances, and the circling frenzy of the
priestess, who ended by falling in front of the altar with foaming
mouth and bloodshot eyes. And our songs? They are most beautiful, the
products of many civilisations, but most sad, despairing, gloomy,
revealing the soul of a sick and tainted people, who find their
greatest pleasure in human bloodshed, or urging on dying horses in the
enclosure of a circus. Spanish joy! Andalusian merriment! I cannot
help laughing at it. One night in Madrid I assisted at an Andalusian
fête, all that was most typical, most Spanish. We went to enjoy
ourselves immensely. Wine and more wine! And accordingly the bottle
went round, with ever frowning brows, gloomy faces, abrupt gestures.
'Ole! come along here! This is the joy of the world!' but the joy did
not appear in any part. The men looked at one another with scowling
brows, the women stamped their feet and clapped their hands with a
stupid vacuity in their looks, as though the music had emptied their
brains. The dancers swayed like erect serpents, with their mouths
open, their looks hard, grave, proud, unapproachable, like dancers who
were performing a sacred rite. Now and then above the monotonous and
sleepy rhythm, a song, harsh and strident like a roar, like the scream
of one who falls with his body run through. And the poetry? As dreary
as a dungeon, sometimes very beautiful, but beautiful as might be the
song of a prisoner behind his bars, dagger thrusts to the faithless
wife, offences against the mother washed out in blood, complaints
against the judge who sends to prison the caballeros[1] of the
broad-brimmed sombreros and sashes. The adieus of the culprit who
watches in the chapel the light of his last morning dawn. A poetry
of death and the scaffold that wrings the heart and robs it of all
happiness; even the songs to the beauty of women contain blood and
threats. And this is the music that delights the people in their hours
of relaxation and that will go on 'enlivening' them probably for
centuries. We are a gloomy people, Gabriel, we have it in our very
marrow, we do not know how to sing unless we are threatening or
weeping, and that song is the most beautiful which contains most
sighs, most painful groans and gasps of agony."
[Footnote 1: Highwaymen.]
"It is true, the Spanish people must necessarily be so. It believes
with its eyes shut in its kings and priests as the representatives of
God, and it moulds itself in their image and likeness. Its merriment
is that of the friars--a coarse merriment of dirty jests, of greasy
words and hoarse laughs. Our spicy novels are stories of the refectory
composed in the hours of digestion, with the garments loosened, the
hands crossed on the paunch, and the triple chin resting on
the scapulary. Their laughter arises always from the same
sources--grotesque poverty, the troublesome hangers on, the tricks
of hunger to rob a companion of his provision of begged scraps. The
tricks to filch purses from the gaily-dressed ladies who flaunt in the
churches, who serve as models to our poets of the golden age to depict
a lying world devoid of honour. The woman enslaved behind iron bars
and shutters, more dishonest and vicious than the modern woman with
all her liberty. The Spanish sadness is the work of her kings, of
those gloomy invalids who dreamt of conquering the whole world while
their own people were dying of hunger. When they saw that their deeds
did not correspond to their hopes, they became hypochondriacs and
despairingly fanatical, believing their ruin to be a punishment from
God, giving themselves over to a cruel devotion in order to appease
the divinity. When Philip II. heard of the wreck of the _Invincible_,
the death of so many thousand men, and the sorrow of half Spain, he
never even winked an eyelid. 'I sent it to fight with men, not with
the elements,' and he went on with his prayers in the Escorial. The
imperturbable gloom and ferocity of the kings re-acted on the nation,
and this is why for many centuries black was the favourite colour at
the court of Spain. The sombre groves in the royal palaces, with their
gloomy winter foliage, were and still are their favourite resorts; the
roofs of their country palaces are black, with towers surmounted by
weather-cocks, and dark cloisters like monasteries."
Shut into that small room with no other listener than the
Chapel-master, Gabriel forgot the discretion he had imposed on
himself with a view to the continuance of his quiet existence in
the Cathedral. He could speak without fear in the presence of the
musician, and he spoke warmly about the Spanish kings and of the gloom
that from them had filtered through the country.
Melancholy was the punishment imposed by Nature on the despots of the
Western decadence. When a king had any artistic predispositions, like
Fernando VI., instead of tasting the joy of life he nearly died of
weariness listening to the airs on the guitar feebly tinkled by
Farinelli. As they were born with their minds closed to every
inspiration of beauty or poetry, they spent their lives gun in hand in
the woods near Madrid, shooting the deer and yawning with disgust at
the fatigues of the chase, while the queens amused themselves at a
distance hanging on to the arm of one of the bodyguard. They could
not live with impunity for three centuries in close contact with the
Inquisition, exercising power simply as papal delegates, under the
direction of bishops, Jesuits, confessors, and monastic orders, who
only left to the Spanish monarchy the appearance of power, turning
it, in fact, into an oppressed theocratic republic. The gloom of
Catholicism penetrated into their very bones, and while the fountains
of Versailles were playing among their marble nymphs, and the
courtiers of Louis XIV. were decked like butterflies in their
multi-coloured garments, as shameless as pagans among the beautiful
goddesses, the court of Spain, dressed in black, with a rosary hanging
at its girdle, assisted at the burnings and, girt with the green scarf
of the holy office, honoured itself by undertaking the duties of
alguacil at the bonfires of heretics. While humanity, warmed by the
soft breath of the Renaissance, was admiring the Apollos and adoring
the Venus' discovered by the plough amid the ruins of mediaeval
catastrophes, the type of supreme beauty for the Spanish monarchy
was the criminal of Judea. The black and dusty Christs in the old
cathedrals, with the livid mouth, the skeleton and distorted body, the
feet bony, and dripping with blood, much blood,--that liquid so loved
by the religious when doubt begins and faith weakens, and to impose
dogma they place their hand on the sword.
"For this reason the Spanish monarchy has been steeped in gloom,
transmitting its melancholy from one generation to another. If by any
chance there appeared among them anyone happy and pleased with life,
it was because in the blue blood of the maternal veins there was a
plebeian drop, which pierced like the rays of the sun into a sick
room."
Don Luis listened to Gabriel, receiving his words with affirmative
gestures.
"Yes, we are a people governed by gloom," said the musician. "The
sombre humour of those dark centuries lives in us still. I have often
thought how difficult life must have been to an awakened spirit. The
Inquisition listening to every word, and endeavouring to guess every
thought. The conquest of heaven the sole ideal of life! And that
conquest becoming daily more difficult! Money must be paid to the
Church to save one's self, and poverty was the most perfect state; and
again, besides the sacrifice of all comfort, prayers at all hours,
the daily visits to the church, the life of confraternities, the
disciplines in the vaults of the parish church, the voice of the
brother of Mortal Sin interrupting sleep to remind one of the approach
of Death; and added to this fanatical and weary life the uncertainty
of salvation, the threat of falling into hell for the slightest fault,
and the impossibility of ever thoroughly appeasing a sullen and
revengeful God. And then again, the more tangible menace, the terror
of the bonfire, engendering cowardice and debasing suspected men."
"In this way we can understand," said Gabriel, "the cynical confession
of the Canon Llorente explaining why he became secretary to the Holy
Office: 'They began to roast, and in order not to be roasted I took on
me the part of roaster.' For intelligent men there was nothing else
to be done. How could they resist and rebel? The king, master of all
lives and property, was only the servant of bishops, friars, and
familiars. The kings of Spain, except the first Bourbons, were nothing
but servants of the Church; in no country has been seen as palpably
as in this one the solidarity between Church and State. Religion
succeeded in living without the kings, but the kings could not exist
without religion. The fortunate warrior, the conqueror who founded
a throne, had no need of a priest. The fame of his exploits and his
sword were enough for him, but as death drew near he thought of his
heirs, who would be unable to dispose of glory and fear to make
themselves respected as he had done, and he drew near to the priest,
taking God as a mysterious ally who would watch over the preservation
of the throne. The founder of a dynasty reigned 'by the grace of
strength' but his descendants reigned 'by the grace of God.' The king
and the Church were everything for the Spanish people. Faith had made
them slaves by a moral chain that no revolutions could break; its
logic was indisputable--the belief in a personal God, who busied
Himself with the most minute concerns of the world, and granted His
grace to the king that he might reign, obliged them to obey under pain
of going to hell. Those who were rich and well placed in the world
grew fat, praising the Lord who created kings to save men the trouble
of governing themselves; those who suffered consoled themselves by
thinking that this life was but a passing trial, after which they
would be sure to gain a little niche in heaven. Religion is the best
of all auxiliaries to the kings; if it had not existed before the
monarchs these last would have invented it. The proof is that in these
times of doubt they are firmly anchored to Catholicism, which is the
strongest prop of the throne. Logically the kings ought to say, 'I am
king because I have the power, because I am supported by the army.'
But no, señor, they prefer to continue the old farce and say, 'I, the
king, by the grace of God.' The little tyrant cannot leave the lap of
the greater despot; it is impossible to them to maintain themselves by
themselves."
Gabriel was silent for some time; he was suffocating, his chest was
heaving with the spasms of his hollow cough. The Chapel-master drew
near alarmed.
"Do not be uneasy," said Luna, recovering himself; "it is so every
day. I am ill and I ought not to talk so much, but these things excite
me, and I feel irritated by the absurdities of the monarchy and
religion, not only in this country, but all over the world. But,
notwithstanding, I have felt real pity, profound commiseration for a
being with royal blood. Can you believe it? I saw him quite close in
one of my journeys through Europe. I do not know how the police
who guarded his carriage did not drive me away, fearing a possible
attempt, but what I felt was compassion for the kings who have come
so late into a world that no longer believes in the divine right; and
these last twigs, sprouting from the worm-eaten and rotten trunk of a
dynasty, carry in their poor sap the decay of the rotten branches. It
was a youth, as sick as I am, not by the chances of life, but weakly
from his cradle, condemned before his birth to suffer from the malady
that came to him with his life. Just imagine, Don Luis, if at this
time for the preservation of my own interests I begot a son, would it
not be a coldly premeditated attempt against the future?"
And the revolutionist described the young invalid: his thin body,
artificially strengthened by hygiene and gymnastics, his eyes heavy
and sunk deep in their sockets, the lower jaw hanging loose like that
of a corpse, wanting the strength that keeps it fixed to the skull.
"Poor youth! Why was he born? What would be accomplished in his
journey through the world? Why had Nature, who so often refuses
fecundity to the strong, shown herself prodigal to the loveless union
of a dying consumptive? What was the use to him of having carriages
and horses, liveried servants to salute him, and ninnies to give him
food; it would have been far better had he never appeared in the world
but had remained in the limbo of those who are never born. Like the
squire of Don Quixote, who finding himself at last in the plenty of
Barataria, had by his side a doctor Recio to restrain his appetite,
this poor creature could never enjoy with freedom the pleasures of the
remains of life left to him."
"They pay him thousands of duros," added Gabriel, "for every minute of
his life, but no amount of gold can procure him a drop of fresh blood
to cure the hereditary poison in his veins. He is surrounded by
beautiful women, but if he feels arising the happy tremors of youth,
the sap of the spring of life, the predisposition of a family who have
only been notable for the victories won in love's battles, he must
remain cold and austere, under his mother's vigilant eye, who knows
that carnal passion would rapidly end a life so weak and uncertain.
And the end of all these sad-and painful privations--inevitable death.
Why was this poor creature born? Often the greatness of the earth is
worse than a malediction, and reasons of State are the most cruel of
all torments for an invalid, obliging him to feign a health he does
not feel. To speak of the illness of the king is a crime, and the
courtiers living under the shadow of the throne consider the slightest
allusion to the king's health as a sacrilege, a crime worthy of
punishment, as though he were not a human being subject like others to
death."
"I do not care much for politics," said the Chapel-master; "kings and
republics are all the same to me, I am a votary of art. I do not know
what monarchy may be in the other countries that you have seen, but in
Spain it seems quite played out. It is tolerated like so many relics
of the past, but it inspires no enthusiasm and no one is inclined to
sacrifice themselves for it, and I believe that even the people who
live in its shadow, and whose interests are most bound up with those
of the crown, have more devotion on their tongues than in their
hearts."
"It is so, Don Luis," said Gabriel; "for nearly a century the monarchy
has been dead in Spain; the last loved and popular king was Fernando
VII. Since then the nation has asserted itself, becoming emancipated
from the old traditions, but the kings have not progressed; on the
contrary, they have gone back, withdrawing themselves daily more and
more from the anticlerical and reforming tendencies of the first
Bourbons. If in educating a prince nowadays his masters were to say,
'We will try and make a Carlos III. of him,' even the stones of the
palace would be scandalised. The Austrians have revived like those
parasitic plants which, having been torn up, reappear after a little
while. If in the life of the kings they seek for examples in the past,
they remember the Austrian Caesars, but it is complete oblivion of
those first Bourbons who morally killed the Inquisition, expelled
the Jesuits, and fostered the material progress of the country; they
renounce the memory of those foreign ministers who came to civilise
Spain. Jesuits, friars and clerics order and direct as in the best
times of Charles II. To have had as minister a Count of Aranda, the
friend of Voltaire, is a shame of the past and to be passed over in
silence. Yes, Don Luis, you say well, the monarchy is dead. Between it
and the country there is the same relation as between a corpse and a
living man. The secular laziness, the resistance to all change, and
the fear of the unknown that all stationary people feel, are the
causes of the continuance of this institution, that has not like other
countries the military outlet or the aggrandisement of its territory
as a justification of its existence."
With this the conversation ended that evening in the Chapel-master's
little room.
Gabriel found himself drawn afresh by the affection of his admirers
in the Claverias. They coaxed him and followed him, lamenting his
absence. They could not live without him, so declared the shoemaker.
They had become accustomed to listen to him, they felt the desire of
being enlightened, and they begged the master not to desert them.
"We meet in the tower now," said the bell-ringer; "Silver Stick
looks on our meetings with an evil eye, and he has gone so far as
to threaten the shoemaker to turn him out of the Claverias if the
meetings continue to be held in his house. He will not interfere with
me; he knows my character. Besides, if he rules in the upper cloister,
I rule in my tower. I am quite capable, if he comes to disturb us with
his spying, of throwing him down the stairs, the miserly devil!"
And he added with an affectionate expression, a great contrast to his
usual rough and taciturn character:
"Come, Gabriel, we expect you in my house. When you are tired of
keeping your niece and that crazy Don Luis company, come up for a
little while. We cannot get on without your words. Don Martin has been
quite enthusiastic since he heard you the other evening; he wants to
see you; he says he would go from one end of Toledo to the other to
hear you. He wishes me to let him know if you decide on rejoining your
friends, because Don Antolin in speaking to him sets you down as a
madman and a heretic who does not know what to be after. But he is an
ignoramus who, after studying for his profession, can do no better
than sell tickets and squeeze the poor."
Luna returned to the meetings in the bell-ringer's house. The greater
part of the morning he sat by his niece, soothed by the tic-tac of the
machine, which caused a gentle drowsiness, watching the cloth pass
under the presser with little jumps, spreading the peculiar chemical
scent of new stuffs.
He watched Sagrario always sad, devoting herself to her work with
taciturn tenacity; when now and then she raised her head to regulate
her cotton and met Gabriel's glance, a faint smile would pass over her
face.
In the isolation in which the anger of her father had left them they
felt obliged to draw together as though a common danger threatened
them, and their bodily infirmities were a further bond of union.
Gabriel pitied the fate of the poor young woman, seeing how hardly the
world had treated her after her flight from the family hearth. Her
long illness had changed her greatly and still caused her pain, her
once beautiful teeth were no longer white and regular, and the lips
were pallid and drawn; her hair had grown thin in places, but she
contrived to conceal this with locks of the auburn hair, remains of
her former beauty, which she dressed with great skill; but in spite
of this her youth was beginning to assert itself, giving light to her
eyes and charm to her smile.
Many nights Gabriel, tossing on his bed unable to sleep, coughing, and
with his head and chest bathed in cold sweat, would hear in the room
adjoining the suppressed moans of his niece, timid and smothered so
that the rest of the household should not be disturbed.
"What was the matter with you last night?" asked Gabriel the following
morning. "What were you moaning for?"
And Sagrario, after many denials, finally admitted her discomfort:
"My bones ache; directly I get to bed the pain begins and I feel as
though my limbs were being torn asunder. And you, how are you? All
night I heard you cough, and I thought you were suffocating."
And the two invalids stricken by life forgot their own aches and pains
to sympathise with those of the other, establishing between their
hearts a current of loving pity, attracted to each other not by the
difference of sex, but by the fraternal sympathy aroused by each
other's misfortunes.
Very often Sagrario would try to send her uncle away; it pained her
to see him sitting close by her, doing nothing, coughing painfully,
fixing his eyes upon her as though she were an object of adoration.
"Get up from here," the girl would say gaily--"it makes me nervous
seeing you so very quiet keeping me company when what you want is
life and movement. Go to your friends; they are expecting you in the
bell-ringer's tower. They have been talking about me, thinking it is
I who keep you in the house. Go out to walk, uncle! Go and speak of
those things that stir you so much, and that those poor people listen
to open-mouthed. Be careful as you go up the stairs; go slowly and
stop often, so that the demon of the cough, may not get hold of you."
Gabriel spent the later hours of the morning in the bell-ringer's
"habitacion." The walls of ancient whitewash were adorned by faded
and yellow engravings, representing episodes in the Carlist war,
remembrances of the mountain campaign which for long years had been
the pride of Mariano, but of which now he never spoke.
Here Gabriel met all his admirers. Even the shoemaker worked at night
in order not to deprive himself of this meeting. Don Martin, the
curate, also came up, concealing himself carefully so that Silver
Stick should not see him. It was a small community grouping itself
round the sick apostle, with all the zeal inspired by the unknown.
Gabriel answered all these men's questions, that so often betrayed the
simplicity of their minds. When a fit of coughing seized him, they all
surrounded him with concern written on their faces. They would have
wished even at the cost of their own lives to restore him to health.
Luna, carried away by his enthusiasm, ended by narrating to them the
story of his life and sufferings, and so the prestige of martyrdom
came to increase the ardour of these people. The narrowed minds of
these sedentary men, living tranquil and safe in the Cathedral, made
them admire the adventures and torments of this fighter; for them he
was a martyr to this new religion of the humble and oppressed, and
besides, their innocence converted him into a victim of that social
injustice which they daily hated more.
For them there was no other truth but Gabriel's words; the
bell-ringer, although the roughest and most silent among them, was
the most advanced in his conversion. His admiration for Gabriel which
dated from their childhood, his dog-like fidelity, carried him on with
leaps and bounds, making him accept at once even the most distant
ideals.
"I am whatever you are, Gabriel," he said firmly. "Are you not an
anarchist? I will be one also--indeed, I think I have always been one.
Do you not preach that the poor should live and the rich should work;
that everyone should possess what he earns, and that we should all
help one another? Well, this is just what I thought when we wandered
over the country with our guns and our scarf. And as far as religion
is concerned, which formerly nearly drove us mad, I feel perfectly
indifferent. I am convinced on hearing you that it is a sort of fable
invented by clever people in order that we, the poor and unfortunate,
should submit to the miseries of this world hoping for heaven; it
is not badly imagined, for in the end those who die and do not find
heaven will not return to complain."
One day Gabriel wished to go up where the bells were hung. It was now
well on in spring; it was warm, and the intense blue of the sky seemed
to attract him.
"I have not seen the 'big bell' since I was a child," he said. "Let us
go up; I should like to see Toledo for the last time."
And accompanied by his admirers, indeed, almost carried by them, he
went slowly up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the
soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of
the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an
immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the
clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved
and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity.
The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in
front on a hill rose the Alcazar, higher and larger than the church,
as though keeping up the spirit of the emperor who built it, Caesar
of Catholicism, champion of the faith, but who nevertheless strove to
keep the Church at his feet.
The city spread out around the Cathedral, the houses disappearing in
the crowd of towers, cupolas and absides. It was impossible to look on
any side without meeting with chapels, churches, convents and ancient
hospitals. Religion had absorbed the industrious Toledo of old, and
still guarded the dead city beneath its hood of stone. From some of
the belfries a red flag was floating, bearing a white chalice; this
meant that some newly-ordained priest was singing his first mass.
"I have never been up here," said Don Martin, sitting by Gabriel's
side on one of the rafters, "without seeing some of these flags;
ecclesiastical recruiting never ceases, there are always visionaries
to fill its ranks. Those who really have faith are the minority, the
greater part enter because they see the Church still triumphant and
seemingly commanding, and they think that in her ranks some tremendous
career is waiting for them. Unlucky wights! I also was led to the
altar with music and oratorical shouts, as though I were walking to a
triumph. Incense spread its clouds before my eyes, all my family wept
with emotion at seeing me nothing less than a minister of God. And
the day following all this theatrical pomp, when the lights and the
censers were extinguished and the church had recovered its ordinary
aspect, began this miserable life of poverty and intrigue to earn
one's bread--seven duros a month! To endure at all hours the
complaints of those poor women, with their tempers embittered by
seclusion, common as the lowest servants, who spend their lives
gossiping in the parlour of what is passing in the towns, inventing
scandals to please the canons, or the families who protect the house.
And there are priests who envy me! hungering against me for this
coveted chaplaincy of nuns! looking upon me as a flattering hanger-on
of the archiepiscopal palace, not understanding how otherwise, being
so young, I could have hooked out this preferment that allows me to
live in Toledo on seven duros a month!"
Gabriel nodded his head, sympathising with the young priest's
complaints.
"Yes, it is you who are deceived. The day for making great fortunes in
the Church is past, and the poor youths who now wear the cassock and
dream of a mitre make me think of those emigrants who go to distant
countries famous through long centuries of plunder, and find them even
more poverty-stricken than their own land."
"You are right, Gabriel. The day of the all-powerful Church is past;
she has still in her udders milk enough for all, but there are few who
can fasten on to them and fill themselves to repletion, while others
groan with hunger. One could die of laughing when one hears of the
equality and the democratic spirit of the Church. It is all a lie; in
no other institution does so cruel a despotism reign. In early days
Popes and bishops were elected by the faithful, and were deposed from
power if they used it badly. The aristocracy of the Church exists
still; it may be a canon upwards, or one who succeeds in crowning
himself with a mitre; from them no account is required. Among the
laity appointments are changed, ministers are turned out, soldiers are
degraded--even kings are dethroned; but who exacts responsibility from
Pope or bishops once they are anointed and in more or less frequent
intercourse with the Holy Spirit? If you want Justice you are sent
before tribunals equally formed by the aristocrats of the Church;
there is no power more absolute on earth, not even the Grand Turk, who
in a measure is responsible through fear of revolts in his seraglio.
Here, in the seraglio of the Church, we are all less than women. If it
happens that a priest, weary of persecution, feeling the man once more
rising beneath his cassock, deals a heavy blow at his tyrant, he is
declared mad; the climax of hypocrisy! They try to demonstrate that in
the Church one lives in the best of worlds, and it is only the lack of
reason that causes any rebellion against its authority."
Don Martin was silent for a long while as though he were searching in
his memory; at length he continued:
"You also laugh at the idea of the actual poverty of the Church in
Spain. She is like the great ruined noblemen, who still have enough
to live upon in idleness, but who think themselves miserably poor
compared to their former wealth; the Church has the nostalgia of those
former centuries when she possessed half the wealth of Spain. Poor
she is if she thinks of those times, but if you compare her with the
Catholicism of other modern nations you find that, as in former years,
she is by far the most favoured and best paid establishment in the
State. She absorbs forty-one millions of the revenue, which is
enormous in a country which only devotes nine millions to schools and
teaching, and one million to the relief of the poor. To maintain an
intercourse with God costs a Spaniard five times as much as to learn
to read. But this forty-one millions is a blind. My own poverty made
me inquisitive, and I wished to know what the clergy in Spain really
receive, and what comes to our hands, the rank and file. The demands
and pensions of the Church are an intricate tangle, apart from the
forty-one millions. There is not a single ministry in which the Church
has not struck her roots; she is paid by the Ministers of State for
foreign missions, which are no use to anyone, by the Ministers of
War and Marine for military clergy, and by the Ministers of Public
Instruction and Justice. She is paid to support the pomp of the Roman
Pontiff, as we maintain his ambassador in Spain, which is as though
I allowed myself the luxury of keeping servants, and laid on my
neighbour the obligation of paying them. She is paid for the repairs
to churches, for episcopal libraries, for the colonisation of
Fernando Po, for unforeseen occurrences, and I do not know how many
supplemental items besides! And you must take into account what the
Spanish people pay the Church voluntarily apart from what the State
gives. The Bull of the Holy Crusade produces two and a half million
pesetas annually; besides this you must consider what the parochial
clergy draw from their congregations, the annual gifts to the
religious orders for their ministry and offices (and this is
the fattest portion), and the ecclesiastical revenue from the
Ayuntamientos and deputations. In short, this Church, which is
continually speaking of its poverty, draws from the State and the
country more than three hundred million pesetas annually--nearly
double what the army costs; although they are always complaining
in the sacristies of these modern times, saying that everything is
devoured by the military, and that the fault of everything that has
happened is theirs, as they threw themselves on to the side of that
cursed liberty. Three hundred millions, Gabriel! I have calculated it
carefully! And I, who form part of this great establishment, receive
seven duros a month; the greater part of the vicars in Spain are paid
less than an excise officer, and thousands of clergy live from hand to
mouth, wandering from sacristy to sacristy trying to obtain a mass to
put the stew on the fire; and if bands of clergy do not go into the
highways to rob, it is only from fear of the civil guard, and because
after a couple of days of hunger a third may come in which they may
beg some scraps to eat; there is always a crumb to allay hunger, and
no cassock ever falls in the street dying of want, but there are a
great many clerics who spend their existence deceiving their stomachs,
trying to imagine they nourish themselves, till some sudden illness
comes which hurries them out of the world. Where, then, does all this
money go? To the aristocracy of the Church, to the true sacerdotal
caste; but we who are in religion are people of the backstairs. What a
terrible mistake, Gabriel! To renounce love and family affection, to
fly all worldly pleasures, the theatre, concerts, the cafe; to be
looked upon by people, even by those who think themselves religious,
as a strange being, a sort of intermediate, neither a man nor a woman;
to wear petticoats and to be dressed like a lugubrious doll; and in
exchange for all these sacrifices to earn less than a man who breaks
stones on the road. We live idly, certain that we shall never fall
from over-work, but our poverty is greater than that of many workmen;
we cannot acknowledge it, nor put ourselves in the way of begging
alms, for the honour of our cloth. And besides, why should they keep
us if we are of no practical use and cost the country so dear? When
the religious domination came to an end in Spain it was only we, the
lower ones, who suffered in consequence. The priest is poor, the
temple is poor also; but the prince of the Church retains his
thousands of duros yearly, and his great ecclesiastical state, and
he sings his psalms tranquilly, certain that his pittance is in no
danger. The revolution up to now has only prejudiced the lower clergy;
the power of the Church is ended, it is gone; what we see is only its
corpse, but an enormous corpse that will cost a great deal to remove,
and whose preservation will swallow up a great deal of money."
"It is true the Church is defunct; what we fight are only its remains.
The vulgar believe it still lives because they can see and touch it,
forgetting that a religion counts centuries in its life as minutes,
and that generation after generation pass between its death and
burial. Centuries before the birth of Jesus Paganism had fallen.
The Athenian poets mocked the gods of Olympus on the stage, and the
philosophers despised it. All the same Christianity required many
years of propaganda and the political support of the Caesars to bring
it to an end, and even then it was not done with, for dogmas are like
men who leave behind something of themselves in the family who succeed
them. Religions do not disappear suddenly through a trapdoor; they
are extinguished slowly, leaving some of their beliefs and their
ceremonies to the religions that follow them. We have been born in one
of those times of transition, we are present at the death of a whole
world of beliefs. How long will the agony last? Who knows? Two
centuries? Possibly less may be wanted to crystallise in humanity a
fresh proof of its uncertainty and of its fear of the great mystery of
nature, but death is certain, inevitable. But what religion has been
eternal? The symptoms of dissolution are visible everywhere. Where is
that faith that drove those warlike multitudes to the crusades? Where
is that fervour which continued building cathedrals for a couple of
hundred years with angelic patience to shelter a host under a mountain
of stone? Who scourges themselves to-day, or tortures their flesh,
or lives in the desert musing continually on death and hell? Three
centuries of intolerance and of excessive clerical severity have
made our nation the most indifferent to all religious matters. The
ceremonies of worship are followed by routine, because they appeal
to the imagination, but no one takes the trouble to understand the
foundations of the beliefs they profess; they live as they please,
certain that in their last hours it is sufficient to save their souls,
to die surrounded by priests with a crucifix in their hands. In former
days the pressure from clergy, friars, and inquisitors was so great
that the machine of faith burst into a thousand pieces, and there
is no one now who can fit the pieces together, which require the
co-operation of all. And that was a piece of good luck, friend Don
Martin; a century more of religious intolerance and we should have
been like those Mussulmen in Africa, who live in barbarism on account
of their excessive bigotry, after having been the civilising Arabs of
Cordoba and Granada."
"Do you know," said the young curate, "why Catholicism has held up its
appearances of power? It is because from ancient times, in all Latin
countries, it has possessed itself of every avenue through which human
life must pass."
"It is true, no religion has been so cautious as ours, or has ambushed
itself better to entrap men. None has chosen with such certainty in
the time of power the positions it can hold strongly in its decadence.
It is impossible to move without stumbling against her. She knows of
old that man as long as he is healthy, in the plenitude of his vital
strength, is by instinct irreligious. When he lives comfortable the
so-called eternal life concerns him very little. He only believes in
God and fears Him in the hour of supreme cowardice, when death opens
before him the bottomless pit of nothingness, and his pride as a
rational animal revolts against the complete extinction of his being.
He wishes his soul to be immortal, and so he accepts the religious
phantasies of heaven and hell. The Church, fearing the irreligiousness
of health, has occupied, as you say, all the avenues of life, so that
no man shall accustom himself to live without her, appealing solely to
her in the hour of death. The dead provide much money, they are her
best asset; but she wishes equally to reign over the living. Nothing
escapes her despotism and her spying. She insinuates herself into
all human concerns from the greatest to the most insignificant, she
interferes in both public and private life; she baptizes the child
when it comes into the world, accompanies the child to school,
monopolises love, declaring it shameful and abominable if it does
not submit to her benediction, and divides the earth into two
categories--the consecrated, for those who die in her bosom, and the
dunghill in the open air for the heretic. The Church interferes in
dress, laying down what is honest and Christian wear and what is
scandalous frivolity. She interferes in the most intimate relations
of domestic life, and even penetrates into the kitchen, turning
Catholicism into a culinary art, ruling what ought to be eaten, what
ought or ought not to be mixed, and anathematizing certain foods,
which, being good enough the rest of the year, become the most
horrible sacrilege if partaken on certain days. She accompanies a man
from his birth, and does not leave him even after he is laid in the
tomb; she keeps him chained by his soul, making it wander through
space, passing from one place to another, ascending the pathway to
heaven, according to the sacrifices imposed on themselves by his
successors for the benefit of the Church. A greater or more complete
despotism no tyrant could possibly imagine."
It was mid-day. The bell-ringer had disappeared; suddenly the rattle
of chains and pulleys was heard and a dull thunder made the tower
tremble; all the stones and metal and even the surrounding ether
vibrated. The big "Gorda" had just rung, deafening the bystanders. A
few moments afterwards, from the front of the Alcazar, came the sound
of martial music, trumpets, and drums.
"Let us go," said Gabriel. "Really, Mariano might have warned us and
spared us this surprise."
And he added, smiling ironically:
"It is always the same; it is the parasites who shine the most and
make the most noise; they make up in noise what they lack in utility."
The festival of Corpus drew near without anything occurring to ruffle
the quiet life of the Cathedral. Sometimes in the upper cloister they
spoke of His Eminence's health. His serious quarrels with the Chapter
had obliged him to keep his bed, and he had just had an attack which
made them fear for his life.
"It is his heart," said the Tato--who was usually very well informed
about things in the palace--"Doña Visita is weeping like a Magdalen
and cursing the canons, seeing Don Sebastian so ill."
As Wooden Staff sat down to table with his family he began to speak
of the decadence of the feast of Corpus, which had been so famous in
Toledo in former times. In his desire to complain he forgot the bitter
silence he had imposed on himself in his daughter's presence.
"You will hardly recognise our Corpus," he said to Gabriel. "Of all
that we remember nothing remains but the famous tapestries that are
hung outside the Cathedral. The giants are not drawn up before the
Puerta del Perdon, and the procession is shorn of its glory."
The Chapel-master also complained bitterly.
"And the mass, Señor Esteban? Just think what a mass for such a solemn
festivity! Four instruments from outside the house, and a Rossini mass
of the lightest description so as not to cost much. It would have been
far better for this to have played the organ alone."
According to an ancient custom, on the vesper before the feast, the
band of the Academy of Infantry played in the evening before the
Cathedral. All Toledo came to hear the serenade, which was an event in
the monotonous life of the town, and from the province of Madrid many
strangers came for the bull-fight on the following day.
Mariano, the bell-ringer, invited his friends to listen to the
serenade from the Greco-Roman gallery on the principal front. At the
hour when the lights were usually extinguished in the Claverias and
Don Antolin locked the street door, Gabriel and his friends glided
cautiously to the bell-ringer's "habitacion." Sagrario was also
persuaded to come by her uncle, who in this way managed to tear her
from her machine. She really must enjoy some little amusement; she
ought to appear in the world now and then; she was killing herself
with all that tiresome work.
They all sat in the gallery. The shoemaker had brought his wife,
always with a small baby at her flabby breast. The Tato was talking
delightedly to the organ-blower and the verger about the bull-fight on
the following day, and Mariano stood by his adored comrade, while his
wife, a woman as rough as himself, spoke with Sagrario.
The men were deploring the absence of Don Martin. Probably he had gone
down below among the people who filled the square, doubtless dreading
that he must be up before daybreak to say mass to the nuns.
The palace of the Ayuntamiento was decorated with strings of light,
which were reflected on to the façade of the Cathedral, giving the
stones a rosy flush as of fire.
Among the trees walked groups of girls with flowers and white blouses,
like the first appearances of spring. The cadets followed them,
their hands on the pommels of their swords, walking along with
their pinched-in waists and their full pantaloons _à la Turc_. The
archiepiscopal palace remained entirely closed. Above the rosy light
in the piazza, spread the beautiful summer sky, clear and deep,
spangled with innumerable brilliant stars.
When the music ceased, and the lights began to fade, the inhabitants
of the Cathedral felt unwilling to leave their seats. They were very
comfortable there, the night was warm, and they, accustomed to the
confinement and the silence of the Claverias, felt the joy of freedom,
sitting on that balcony with Toledo at their feet and the immensity of
space above them.
Sagrario, who had never been out of the upper cloister since her
return to the paternal roof, looked at the stars with delight.
"How many stars!" she murmured dreamily.
"There are more than usual to-night," said the bell-ringer. "The
summer sky seems a field of stars in which the harvest increases with
the fine weather."
Gabriel smiled at the simplicity of his companions. They all wondered
at God, so foreseeing and so thoughtful, who had made the moon to give
light to men by night, and the stars so that the darkness should not
be complete.
"Well, then," inquired Gabriel, "why is there not a moon always if it
was made to give us light?"
There was a long silence. They were all thinking over Gabriel's
question. The bell-ringer, being most intimate with the master,
ventured to put the question about which they were all thinking. "What
were the heavens, and what was there beyond the blue?"
The square was now deserted and in darkness, there was no light but
the gentle shimmering of the stars scattered in space like golden
dust. From the immense vault there seemed to fall a religious calm, an
overwhelming majesty that stirred the souls of those simple people.
The infinite seemed to bewilder them with its vast grandeur.
"You," said Gabriel, "have your eyes closed to immensity, you cannot
understand it. You have been taught a wretched and rudimentary origin
of the world, imagined by a few ragged and ignorant Jews in a corner
of Asia, which, having been written in a book, has been accepted down
to our days. This personal God, like to ourselves in His shape and
passions, is an artificer of gigantic capacity, who worked six days
and made everything existing. On the first day He created light, and
on the fourth the sun and stars; from whence then came that light if
the sun had not then been created? Is there any distinction between
one and the other? It seems impossible that such absurdities should
have been credited for centuries."
The listeners nodded their heads in assent; the absurdity appeared to
them palpable--as it always did when Gabriel spoke.
"If you wish to penetrate the heavens," continued Luna, "you must get
rid of the human conception of distance. Man measures everything by
his own stature, and he conceives dimensions by the distance his eyes
can reach. This Cathedral seems to us enormous because underneath its
naves we seem like ants; but, nevertheless, the Cathedral seen from
far is only an insignificant wart; compared with the piece of land we
call Spain it is less than a grain of sand, and on the face of the
earth it is a mere atom--nothing. Our sight makes us consider thirty
or forty yards a dizzy height. At this moment we think we are very
high because we are near the roof of the Cathedral, but compared to
the infinite this height is as small as when an ant balances on the
top of a pebble not knowing how to come down. Our sight is short, and
we who can only measure by yards, and apprehend short distances, must
make an immense effort of imagination to realise infinity. Even then
it escapes us and we speak of it very often as of a thing that has no
meaning. How shall I make you understand the immensity of the world?
You must not believe, as our ancestors did, that the earth is flat
and stationary and that the heaven is a crystal dome on which God has
fastened the stars like golden nails, and in which the sun and moon
move to give us light, you must understand that the earth is round,
and whirls round in space."
"Yes, we do know a little about that," said the bell-ringer
doubtfully, "for we were taught so at school. But, really, do you
think it moves?"
"Because in your littleness as human beings, because to our
microscopic mole-like sight the immense mechanism of the world is
lost, do not for a moment doubt it. The earth turns. Without moving
from where you are, in twenty-four hours you will have made the
complete circuit with the globe. Without moving our feet we rush along
at the rate of four hundred leagues an hour, a velocity that the
fastest trains cannot attain. You are astonished? We rush along
without knowing it. Our planet does not only turn on itself, but at
the same time it turns round the sun at the rate of nearly a hundred
thousand miles an hour. Every second we cover thirty thousand miles.
Men have never invented a cannon ball that could fly so quickly. You
move through space fixed to a projectile which whirls with dizzy
speed, and, deceived by your smallness, you think you are living
immovable in a dead cathedral. And this velocity is as nothing
compared with others. The sun round which we turn, flies and flies
through space, carrying on by its attraction the earth and the other
planets. It goes through immensity, dragging us along, travelling
towards the unknown, without ever striking other bodies, finding
always sufficient space to move in with a rapidity which makes one
giddy; and this has gone on for thousands and millions of centuries
without either it or the earth who follows it in its flight ever
passing twice over the same spot."
They all listened to Gabriel open-mouthed with astonishment, and their
bright eyes seemed dazed and bewildered.
"It is enough to drive one mad," murmured the bell-ringer. "What then
is man, Gabriel?"
"Nothing; even as this earth, which seems so large, and that we have
peopled with religions, kingdoms and revelations from God, is nothing.
Dreams of ants! even less! This same sun which seems so enormous
compared to our globe is nothing more than an atom in immensity. What
you call stars are other suns like ours, surrounded by planets like
our earth, but which are invisible on account of their small size. How
many are they? Man brings his optical instruments to perfection and
is able to pierce further into the fields of heaven, discovering ever
more and more. Those which are scarcely visible in the infinite appear
much nearer when a new telescope is invented, and beyond them in
the depths of space others and again others appear, and so on
everlastingly. They are unaccountable. Some are worlds inhabited like
ours; others were so, and revolve solitary in space, waiting for a
fresh evolution of life; many are still forming; and yet all these
worlds are no more than corpuscles of the luminous mist of the
infinite. Space is peopled by fires that have burnt for millions,
trillions and quadrillions of centuries, throwing out heat and light.
The milky way is nothing but a cloud of stars that seem to us as one
mass, but which in reality are so far apart that thousands of suns
like ours with all their planets could revolve among them without ever
coming into collision."
Gabriel remembered the travelling of sound and light. "Their velocity
is insignificant compared with the distances in space. The sun, which
is the nearest to us, is still so far that for a sound to go from us
to it would take three millions of years. Poor human beings will never
be able to travel with the rapidity of sound.
"These suns travel like ours towards the unknown with giddy flight,
but they are so distant that three or four thousand years may pass
without man being aware that they have moved more than a finger's
breadth. The distances of infinity are maddening. The sun is a nebula
of inflammatory gas, and the earth an imperceptible molecule of sand.
"The luminous ray of the Polar star requires half a century to reach
our eyes; it might have disappeared forty-nine years ago, and still we
should see it in space.
"And all these worlds are created, grow and die like human beings.
In space there is no more rest than on earth. Some stars are
extinguished, others vary, and others shine with all the power of
their young life. The dead planets dissolved by fires furnish
the material for new worlds; it is a perpetual renewal of forms,
throughout millions and millions of centuries, that represent in their
lives what the few dozen years to which we are limited, are in our
own. And beyond all those incalculable distances there is space, and
more space on every side, with fresh conglomerations of worlds without
limit or end."
Gabriel spoke in the midst of solemn silence. The listeners closed
their eyes as if such immensity stunned them. They followed in
imagination Gabriel's description, but their narrowed minds wished to
place a term to the infinite, and in their simplicity they imagined
beyond these incalculable distances a vault of firm matter millions of
leagues thick. Surely all that strange and fantastic work must have a
limit. What was at the back of it? And the barrier created by their
imagination fell suddenly; and again they flew through space, always
infinite, with ever new worlds.
Gabriel spoke of them and of their life with absolute certainty.
Spectral analysis showed the same composition in the stars as on the
earth, consequently if life had arisen in our atom, most certainly it
must exist in other celestial bodies, though probably in different
forms; in many planets it had already ended, in many it was still to
come; but surely all those millions of worlds had had, or would have,
life.
Religions, wishing to explain the origin of the world, paled and
trembled before the infinite. It was like the Cathedral tower, which
covered with its bulk a great part of the heavens, hiding millions of
worlds, but which was of insignificant size compared to the immensity
it hid, less than an infinitesimal part of a molecule--nothing. It
seemed very great because it was close to men, concealing immensity,
but when men looked above it, getting a full grasp of the infinite,
they laughed at its Lilliputian pride.
"Then," inquired timidly the old organ-blower, pointing to the
Cathedral, "what is it they teach us in there?"
"Nothing," replied Gabriel.
"And what are we--men?" asked the Perrero.
"Nothing."
"And the governments, the laws, and the customs of society?" inquired
the bell-ringer.
"Nothing. Nothing."
Sagrario fixed her eyes, grown larger by her earnest contemplation of
the heavens, on her uncle.
"And God," she asked in a soft voice; "where is God?"
Gabriel stood up, leaning on the balustrade of the gallery; his figure
stood out dark and clear against the starry space.
"We are God ourselves, and everything that surrounds us. It is life
with its astonishing transformations, always apparently dying, yet
always being infinitely renewed. It is this immensity that astounds us
with its greatness, and that cannot be realised in our minds. It is
matter that lives, animated by the force that dwells in it, with
absolute unity, without separation or duality. Man is God, and the
world is God also."
He was silent for a moment and then added with energy:
"But if you ask me for that personal God invented by religions, in the
likeness of a man, who brought the world out of nothing, who directs
our actions, who classifies souls according to their merits, and
commissions Sons to descend into the world to redeem it, I say seek
for Him in that immensity, see where He hides His littleness. But even
if you were immortal you might spend millions of years passing from
one star to another without ever finding the corner where He hides His
deposed despotic majesty. This vindictive and capricious God arose in
men's brains, and the brain is a human being's most recent organ, the
last to develop itself. When man invented God the world had existed
millions of years."
CHAPTER VIII
On the morning of Corpus the first person Gabriel saw on leaving the
cloister was Don Antolin, who was looking over his tickets, placing
them in line in front of him on the stone balustrade.
"This is a great day," said Luna, wishing to smooth down Silver Stick.
"You are preparing for a great crowd; no doubt many strangers will
come."
Don Antolin looked intently at Gabriel, evidently doubting his
sincerity; but seeing that he was not laughing, he answered with a
certain satisfaction.
"The feast is not beginning badly; there are a great many who wish to
see our treasures. Ay, son! indeed we want it badly. You who rejoice
in our troubles may be satisfied. We live in horrible straits. Our
feast of Corpus is worth very little compared with former times; but
all the same, what economies we have had to make in the Obreria, to
provide the four ochavos[1] that the extra festivity will cost!"
[Footnote 1: _Ochavo_--small Spanish brass coin, value two maravedis.]
Don Antolin remained silent for some time, still looking intently at
Luna, as though some extraordinary idea had just occurred to him. At
first he frowned as though he were rejecting it, but little by little
his face lit up with a malicious smile.
"By the way, Gabriel," he said in a honeyed tone which contained
something very aggressive, "I remember at the time of the monument in
Holy Week you spoke to me of your wish to earn some money for your
brother. Now you have an opportunity. It will not be much; still it
will be something. Would you care to be one of those who carry the
platform of the Sacrament?"
Guessing the wish of the malicious priest to annoy him, Gabriel was on
the point of answering haughtily, but suddenly he was tempted by the
wish to foil Silver Stick by accepting his proposal; he wished to
astound him by acceding to his absurd idea; besides, he thought that
this would be a sacrifice worthy of the generosity with which his
brother treated him. Even though he could not assist with much money,
he could show his wish to work, and the scruples of his self-love
vanished before the hope of carrying home a couple of pesetas.
"You do not care about it," said the priest in mocking accents, "you
are too 'green,' and your dignity would suffer too much by carrying
the Lord through the streets of Toledo."
"You are mistaken. As for wishing it, I do wish it, but you must
remember it is very heavy work for an invalid."
"Do not let that trouble you," said Don Antolin resolutely; "you will
be at least ten inside the car, and I have chosen all strong men; you
would go to complete the number, and I should recommend you to accept
in order to earn a little."
"Then we will clench the business, Don Antolin; you may reckon on me,
I am always ready to earn a day's wage whenever it turns up."
His great wish to get out of the Cathedral had finally decided him,
his wish once more to walk through the streets of Toledo, that he had
not seen during his seclusion in the cloister, and without anyone
being able to take notice of him. Besides, the ironical situation
tickled him extremely, that he of all men with his round religious
denials should be the one to pilot the God of Catholicism through the
devout crowd.
This spectacle made him smile, possibly it was a symbol; certainly
Wooden Staff would greatly rejoice, he would look upon it as a small
triumph for religion, that obliged His enemies to carry Him on their
shoulders. But he himself would look upon it in a different way;
inside the eucharistic car he would represent the doubt and denials
hidden in the heart of worship, splendid in its exterior pomp, but
void of faith and ideals.
"Then we are agreed, Don Antolin. I will come down shortly into the
Cathedral."
They parted, and Gabriel, after quietly digesting the milk his niece
brought him, went down into the Cathedral without saying a word to
anyone about the work he intended carrying out; he was afraid of his
brother's objections.
In the lower cloister he again met Silver Stick, who was talking to
the gardener's widow, showing her contemptuously a bunch of wheat ears
tied with a red ribbon. He had found it in the holy water stoup by the
Puerta del Alegria. Every year on the day of Corpus he had found the
same offering in the same place; an unknown had thus dedicated to the
Church the first wheat of the year.
"It must be a madman," said the priest. "What is the good of this?
What does this bunch mean? If at least it had been a cart of sheaves
as in the good old times of the tenths!"
And while he threw the ears with contempt into a flower border in the
garden, Gabriel thought with delight of the atavic force which had
resuscitated in a Catholic church, the pagan offering: the homage to
the divinity of the firstfruits of the earth fertilised by the spring.
The choir was ended and the mass beginning when Gabriel entered the
Cathedral, the lower servants were discussing at the door of the
sacristy the great event of the day. His Eminence had not come down to
the choir and would not assist at the procession. He said he was ill,
but those of the household laughed at this excuse, remembering that
the evening before he had walked as far as the Hermitage of the Virgin
de la Vega. The truth was he would not meet his Chapter; he was
furious with them, and showed his anger by refusing to preside over
them in the choir.
Gabriel strolled through the naves. The congregation of the faithful
was greater than on other days, but even so the Cathedral seemed
deserted. In the crossways, kneeling between the choir and the high
altar, were several nuns in starched linen bibs and pointed hoods, in
charge of sundry groups of children dressed in black, with red or
blue stripes according to the colleges to which they belonged; a
few officials from the academy, fat and bald, listened to the mass
standing, bending their heads over their cuirass. In this scattered
assemblage, listening to the music, stood out the pupils from the
school of noble ladies, some of them quite girls, others proud-looking
young women in all the pride of their budding beauty, looking on with
glowing eyes, all dressed in black silk, with mantillas of blonde
mounted over high combs with bunches of roses--aristocratic ladies
with "_manolesca_" grace, escaped from a picture by Goya.
Gabriel saw his nephew the Tato dressed in his scarlet robes like the
noble Florentine, striking the pavement with his staff to scare the
dogs. He was talking with a group of shepherds from the mountains,
swarthy men twisted and gnarled as vine shoots, in brown jackets,
leather sandals, and thonged leggings; women with red kerchiefs
and greasy and mended garments that had descended through several
generations. They had come down from their mountains to see the Corpus
of Toledo, and they walked through the naves with wonder in their
eyes, starting at the sound of their own footsteps, trembling each
time the organ rolled, as though fearing to be turned out of that
magic palace, which seemed to them like one in a fairy tale. The women
pointed out with their fingers the coloured glass windows, the great
rosettes on the porches, the gilded warriors on the clock of the
Puerta de la Feria, the tubes of the organs, and finally remained
open-mouthed in stupid wonder. The Perrero in his scarlet garments
seemed like a prince to them, and overwhelmed with the respect they
felt for him, they could not succeed in understanding what he said,
but when the Tato threatened with his staff a mastiff following
closely at his master's heels, those simple people decided to leave
the church sooner than abandon the faithful companion of their wild
mountain life.
Gabriel looked through the choir railings; both the upper and lower
stalls were full. It was a great festival, and not only were all the
canons and beneficiaries in their places, but all the priests of the
chapel of the kings,[1] and the prebends of the Muzarabé chapel--those
two small churches who live quite apart with traditional autonomy
inside the Cathedral of Toledo.
[Footnote 1: The kings of Spain are canons of Toledo Cathedral, and
are fined in case of absence on festival days.]
In the middle of the choir Luna saw his friend the Chapel-master in
his crimped and pleated surplice, waving a small bâton. Around him
were grouped about a dozen musicians and singers, whose voices and
instruments were completely smothered each time the organ sounded from
above, while the priest directed with a resigned look the music, which
lost itself feeble and swamped in the solitude of the immense naves.
At the High Altar, on its square car, stood the famous Custodia,
executed by the celebrated master Villalpando. A Gothic shrine,
exquisitely worked and chiselled, bright with the shimmering of its
gold in the light of the wax tapers, and of such delicate and airy
work that the slightest motion made it shiver, shaking its finials
like ears of corn.
Those invited to the procession were arriving in the Cathedral. The
town dignitaries in black robes, professors from the academy in full
dress with all their decorations, officers of the Civil Guard, whose
quaint uniform reminded one of that of the soldiers of the early part
of the century. Through the naves with affectedly skipping steps
came the children, dressed as angels--angels _à la Pompadour_, with
brocaded coat, red-heeled shoes, blonde lace frills, tin wings
fastened to their shoulders, and mitres with plumes on their white
wigs. The Primacy got out for this festivity all its traditional
vestments. The gala uniform of all the church attendants belonged to
the eighteenth century, the time of its greatest prosperity. The two
men who were to guide the car had powdered hair, black coats, and knee
breeches, like the priests of the last century. The vergers and Wooden
Staffs wore starched ruffs and perukes, and though they had scarcely
enough to eat, brocade and velvet covered all the people from the
Claverias; even the acolytes wore gold embroidered dalmatics.
The High Altar was decorated by the "Tanta Monta" tapestries--those
famous hangings of the Catholic kings, with emblems and shields, given
by Cisneros to the Cathedral. The auxiliary bishop said mass, and his
attendant deacons were perspiring under the traditional mantles
and chasubles covered with beautiful raised embroidery in high and
splendid relief, as stiff and uncomfortable as ancient armour.
The surroundings of the Cathedral were disturbed by the gathering for
the procession; the doors of the sacristies slammed, opened and shut
hurriedly by the various officials and people employed. In that quiet
and monotonous life the annual occurrence of a procession which had to
pass through many streets caused as much confusion and disturbance as
an adventurous expedition to a distant country.
When the mass ended the organ began to play a noisy and disorderly
march, rather like a savage dance, while the procession was being
marshalled in order. Outside the Cathedral the bells were ringing,
the band of the academy had ceased playing its quick march, and the
officers' words of command and the rattle of the muskets could be
heard as the cadets drew up in companies by the Puerta Llana.
Don Antolin, with his great silver staff and a pluvial of white
brocade, went from one place to another collecting the employees of
the Church; Gabriel saw him approaching, red-faced and perspiring.
"To your post; it is time."
And he led him to the High Altar by the Custodia. Gabriel and eight
other men crept inside the scaffolding, raising the cloth with which
its sides were covered. They were obliged to bend themselves inside
the erection, and their duty was to push it, so that it should move
along on its hidden wheels. Their only duty was to push it; outside,
the two servants in black clothes and white wigs were in charge of
the front and back shaft or tiller, which guided the eucharistic car
through the tortuous streets. Gabriel was placed by his companions in
the centre; he was to warn them when to stop and when to recommence
their march. The monumental Custodia was mounted on a platform with a
great counterpoise, and between it and the framework of the car was
about a hand's breadth of space, through which Gabriel looked, thus
transmitting the orders of the front pilot.
"Attention! March!" shouted Gabriel, obeying an outside signal.
And the sacred car began to move slowly down the inclined wooden plane
that covered the steps of the High Altar. It was obliged to stop on
passing the railings. All the people knelt, and Don Antolin and the
Wooden Staffs having opened a way between them, the canons advanced in
their ample red robes, the auxiliary bishop with his gilded mitre,
and the other dignitaries in white linen mitres without ornament
whatsoever. They all knelt around the Custodia. The organ was silent,
and, accompanied by the hoarse blare of a trombone, they intoned a
hymn in adoration of the Sacrament; the incense rose in blue clouds
around the Custodia, veiling the brilliancy of its gold. When the hymn
ceased the organ began to play again, and the car once more resumed
its march. The Custodia trembled from base to summit, and the motion
made a quantity of little bells hanging on to its Gothic adornments
tinkle like a cascade of silver. Gabriel walked along holding on to
one of the crossbeams, with his eyes fixed on the pilots, feeling
on his legs the movements of those who pushed this scaffolding, so
similar to the cars of Indian idols.
On coming out of the Cathedral by the Puerta Llana, the only door in
the church on a level with the street, Gabriel could take in the whole
procession at a glance. He could see the horses of the Civil Guards
breaking the regularity of the march, the players of the city
kettledrums dressed in red, and the crosses of the different parishes
grouped without order round the enormous and extremely heavy banner
of the Cathedral, like a huge sail covered with embroidered figures.
Beyond, all the centre of the street was clear, flanked on either side
by rows of clergy and soldiers carrying tapers, the deacons with their
censers, assisted by the roccoco angels carrying the vessels for the
Asiatic perfume, and the canons in their extremely valuable historical
capes. Behind the sacrament were grouped the authorities, and the
battalion of cadets brought up the rear, their muskets on their arms,
their shaven heads bare, keeping step to the time of the march.
Gabriel breathed with delight the air of the public streets. He who
had seen all the great capitals of Europe admired the streets of the
ancient city after his long seclusion in the Cathedral. They seemed
to him very populous, and he felt the surprise that great modern
improvements must cause to those used to a retired and sedentary life.
The balconies were hung with ancient tapestries and shawls from
Manilla; the streets were covered with awnings, and the pavement
spread thickly with sand, so that the eucharistic car should glide
easily over the pointed cobble stones.
Up the hills the Custodia advanced laboriously, the men inside the
car sweating and gasping. Gabriel coughed, his spine aching with the
enclosure in the movable prison, and the dignity of the march was
disturbed by the words of command from the Canon Obrero, who, in
scarlet robes with a staff in his hand, directed the procession,
reproving the pilots and those who pushed the car inside for their
jerky and irregular movements.
Apart from these discomforts, Gabriel was delighted with his
extraordinary escapade through the town; he laughed, thinking what the
crowd, kneeling in veneration, would have said had they known whose
eyes were looking out at them from underneath the car. No doubt many
of those officials escorting God, in their white trousers, red coats,
with swords by their sides and cocked hats would have news of his
existence; they would surely have heard some one speak of him, and
they probably kept his name in their memory as that of a social enemy.
And this reprobate, rejected by all, concealed in a hole in the
Cathedral like those adventurous birds who rested in its vaultings,
was the man who was guiding the footsteps of God through this most
religious city!
A little after mid-day the Custodia returned to the Cathedral, passing
in front of the Puerta del Mollete. Gabriel saw the exterior walls
hung with the famous tapestries. As soon as the farewell hymns were
ended the canons despoiled themselves quickly of their vestments,
rushing to the door on their dismissal without saluting. They were
going to their dinners much later than usual, as this extraordinary
day upset the even course of their lives. The church, so noisy and
illuminated in the morning, emptied itself rapidly, and silence and
twilight once more reigned in it.
Esteban was furious when he saw Gabriel emerging from the eucharistic
car.
"You will kill yourself, such work is not for you. What caprice could
have seized you?"
Gabriel laughed. Yes, it was a caprice, but he did not repent of it.
He had taken a turn through the town without being seen, and he could
give his brother sufficient for two days' maintenance; he wished to
work, not to be a heavy charge on him.
Wooden Staff was softened.
"You idiot, have I asked anything of you? Do I want anything else but
that you should live quietly and get better?"
But, as though he wished to acknowledge this exertion on his brother's
part by something which would please him, when he returned to the
Claverias he dropped his usual sullen face, and spoke to his daughter
during the meal.
Towards evening the Claverias were quite deserted. Don Antolin hurried
down with his tickets, rejoicing in the knowledge that many strangers
were waiting for him. The Tato and the bell-ringer had slipped
furtively down the tower stairs, dressed in their best clothes; they
were going to the bull-fight. Sagrario obliged to be idle in order to
keep the feast day holy, had gone to the shoemaker's house, and while
he was showing the giants to the servants and soldiers of the academy,
and the peasants from the country, Luna's niece helped to mend the
clothes for the poor woman crushed by poverty and the superabundance
of children.
When the Chapel-master and the Wooden Staff went down to the choir,
Gabriel went out into the cloister. He could only see there a cadet
who was walking up and down, with his hand on the pommel of his sword,
holding it horizontally like the fiery tizonas[1] of former days. Luna
recognised him by the full pantaloons and the wasplike waist, which
made the Tato declare that this particular cadet wore stays--it was
Juanito the cardinal's nephew. He often walked in the cloister, hoping
for an opportunity to talk with Leocadia, the beautiful daughter of
the Virgin's sacristan. From the parents he had nothing to fear, but
the future warrior had a certain dread of Tomasa, as the old lady
looked on these visits with an evil eye, and threatened to make them
known to his uncle the Cardinal.
[Footnote 1: _Tizona_--name of the Cid's sword.]
Gabriel had often spoken to the cadet, for when the youth met him
in the cloister he always stopped to speak, endeavouring by the
platitudes of his conversation to justify his presence in the
Claverias; but Luna was surprised to meet him there on a festival
afternoon.
"Are you not going to the bull-fight?" he inquired. "I thought
everyone from the academy would be in the Plaza."
Juanito smiled, caressing his moustache; it was his favourite gesture,
as it raised his arm, giving him the satisfaction of displaying the
sleeve adorned with sergeant's stripes. He was not a common cadet, he
had his stripes, and though this did not seem much to one who dreamed
of being a general, still it was a step in the right direction. No;
he did not go to bull-fights. In truth he was an _habitué_ but he had
sacrificed himself in order to talk for a whole afternoon with his
sweetheart at the door of her house in the silence of the Claverias.
The grandmother had gone down into the garden, and "Virgin's Blue"
would not be long in going out and leaving the coast clear, as if
the matter in no way concerned him. "The beautiful evening, friend
Gabriel!" He had far more serious and important affairs than the new
comers at the academy, who spent all their Sundays at the cafés, or
walking up and down like fools--everyone at the academy, even the
professors, envied him his sweetheart.
"And when is the wedding to be?" said Gabriel gaily.
Master Stripes looked most important as he replied: "There were many
things to be done before--first of all to bring his uncle to consent,
which might not be easy, and to follow the guiding of his good star to
attain a certain rank; but he was intended for great things, so it was
only a matter of a few years.
"I, friend Luna, am of the stuff of young generals; it is the good
luck of the family. My uncle, when he was only an acolyte, was certain
he would become a cardinal, and he succeeded. I shall rise much
faster. Besides, you know that to be an archbishop of Toledo is not a
small thing. My uncle has many friends in the palace, and commands in
the ministry of war just as though he were a general. In point of fact
he is far more a soldier than a cleric! And to prove it to you, there
is the only thing he has ever written, a prayer to the Virgin for the
soldiers to recite before they go into action."
"And you, Juanito, do you really feel any vocation for a military
life?"
"A great deal--ever since I knew how to open books and read them I
have wished to rival those great captains that I saw in the prints,
erect on their horses, with swords in their hands, proud and handsome.
Believe me, no one enters on this career without a vocation; many are
entered in the seminaries against their will, but no one can make a
soldier by force; anyone who comes to the academy has the longing in
himself."
"And are all of them as sure of the result as you are?"
"Oh, yes; all," said the cardinal's nephew smiling, "except that the
immense majority have not such probabilities of making a name.
But, such as we are, there is not one amongst us who dreams of the
possibility of vegetating as a captain in a reserve regiment, or of
dying of old age as a commandant. We all of us see first of all youth
glorified by the uniform, full of adventures (for you know all
the women fight for us), by the joy of life, loved and respected
everywhere, head and shoulders above our countrymen; and when old age
approaches, and we begin to get fat and bald, the gold braid of a
general, politics, and, who knows, possibly the portfolio of war! This
is in everyone's thoughts. No one believes but that the future holds a
bâton for him, and that he has only to unhook it and fasten it to his
belt. I know for certain what is awaiting me, the rest dream and hope
for it, and so we go on living."
Gabriel smiled as he listened to the cadet.
"You are all deceiving yourselves, like those poor youths who enter
the seminaries, believing that a mitre awaits them or a fat benefice
on the other side of the door. It is the influence and attraction
still exercised by the great things that have been. Let us see--apart
from the material result of the profession--why do you become
soldiers?"
"For the sake of glory!" said the cadet pompously, remembering the
harangues of the colonel director of the academy. "For our country,
whose defence is entrusted to us! and for the honour of our flag!"
"Glory!" said Gabriel, ironically. "I know all about that. Very often,
seeing you all so young and inexperienced, so full of vain hopes, I
have reconstructed in my own mind what might be called the psychology
of the cadet. I can guess all that you thought before entering the
academy, and I foresee the bitter and crushing disillusion that awaits
you on leaving it. The history of wars and the artistic trappings of
the uniform have seduced your youth. Afterwards, warlike tales of an
irresistible fascination--Bonaparte with his little band crossing the
bridge at Arcola amid showers of bullets. And then our own generals,
not to go further--Espartero at Luchana, O'Donnel in Africa, and,
above all, Prim, that almost legendary leader, directing the battalion
at Castillejos with his sword. 'I wish to be the same,' say these
youths; 'where one man has arrived another may also succeed';
enthusiasm is taken for predestination, and each one thinks himself
created by God on purpose to be a famous leader. In the meanwhile you
live in Toledo, dreaming of glory, of hairbreadth enterprises, of
gigantic battles and noisy triumphs. But when, with the two stars on
your arm you go to a regiment, the first thing that comes to meet you
at the barrack gate, even before you receive the salute of the sentry,
is the ugly and disagreeable reality. He who dreams of covering
himself with glory and becoming a great leader before he is thirty,
thinking of nothing but strategic combinations and original
fortifications, must occupy himself with the washing and decency of a
lot of wild lads, who come in from the fields reeking with excessive
health; try the rations, discuss drawers and shirts, calculate the
lasting of ankle boots and hempen shoes, and he who never went near
the kitchen at home, was most carefully looked after by his mother,
and thought that everything was women's work except giving words
of command and drawing soldiers up in line, now finds the first
requirement in a regiment is to be cook, tailor, shoemaker, etc., very
often receiving reprimands from his superiors if he prove lazy in
those duties."
"That is true," said Juanito laughing; "but without these things there
cannot be an army, and an army is necessary."
"We are not discussing if it is necessary or no. I only wish to point
out that you (or perhaps not you, as you enter on a good footing,
but certainly your companions) are self-deceivers, and are preparing
without knowing it the shipwreck of your lives, precisely like those
other youths who, poorer, or perhaps less energetic, crowd to enter
the Church. The Church has come to an end as there is no longer faith;
military glory has ended in Spain as there are no longer wars of
conquest, and our character as strong fighting men has been lost for
centuries. If we have a war, it is either civil or colonial--wars that
might be called disasters--without glory and without profit, but in
which men die as at Thermopyle or Austerlitz, as a man can only die
once; but without the consolation of fame, or of public applause,
without in fact that aureole that you call glory. You have all been
born too late; you are the warriors of a people who must perforce live
in peace; just as those seminarists will be the future priests in a
country where there are no longer miracles nor faith, only routine and
utter stagnation of thought."
"But if we have no foreign wars, if conquests have come to an end, we
serve at least to defend the integrity of Spanish soil, to guard our
own homes. Is it that you think," said the cadet nettled, "we are
incapable of dying for our country?"
"I do not doubt it; that is the only thing Spaniards are capable of
doing, to die most heroically, but in the end to die. Our history
for the last two centuries has been nothing but a tale of heroic
deaths--'Glorious defeat in such a place,' 'Heroic disaster in some
other.' By sea and by land we have astonished the world, throwing
ourselves blindly into danger, showing a good front, without
flinching, with the stoicism of a Chinaman. But nations do not grow
great from their contempt of death, but through their ability to
preserve life. The Poles were the terror of the Turks, and some of the
best soldiers in Europe, yet Poland has ceased to exist. If any great
European power _could_ invade us--you will remark I say _could_, for
in these things the wish is not the same as the power, I know exactly
what would happen; the Spaniards would know how to die, but you may be
perfectly certain the invaders would not require more than two battles
to sweep away entirely all our military preparations. And all this,
which could be scattered in a couple of days, what sacrifices it costs
the country!"
"Then," said the cadet ironically, "I presume we must suppress the
army, and leave the nation undefended."
"As things are to-day there is no hope of that happening. As long as
all Europe is armed and the smallest country has an army, Spain will
have one also. It is not for her to set an example; and besides, the
example would be of no use, it is as though one having a few thousand
pesetas should endeavour to initiate the remedy to social injustice by
sacrificing himself and giving them up."
After a long silence Gabriel spoke again very quietly, noticing the
ironical and even aggressive manner of the cadet.
"No doubt you are pained by what I say; believe me I feel it, as I
have no wish to wound the beliefs of anyone, least of all of those who
have formed to themselves an ideal of life. But truth is truth. The
social question does not trouble you. Is it not so? You know nothing
about it, you have never thought about it for an instant and it is the
same with all your, companions, but nevertheless, what you suffer in
your prestige, in your love of country and of your standard, has no
other cause but the social disorder at present rampant in the world.
Wealth is everything, capital is lord of the world. Science directs
humanity as the successor of faith, but the rich have possessed
themselves of its discoveries, and have monopolised them to continue
their tyranny. In the economic world they have made themselves masters
of machinery and of all progress, using them as chains to enslave the
workman, forcing an excess of production, but limiting his daily wage
to what is strictly necessary. In the life of nations the same thing
repeats itself--war to-day is nothing but an appliance of science, and
the richest countries have acquired the greatest improvements in the
art of extermination. They have crowds of recruits, thousands of
enormous cannon, they can keep millions of men under arms, with every
sort of modern improvement, without becoming bankrupt. But to poor
countries, their only remaining course is to hold their tongues, or to
rage uselessly, as the disinherited do against those in possession of
their property. The most cowardly and sedentary people on the face of
the globe may become invincible warriors if they have the money. The
bravery of chivalry came to an end with the invention of powder, and
the pride of race has faded for ever before the advent of trade. If
the Cid came to life again he would be in jail, he would have become a
highwayman, unable to adjust himself to the inequalities and injustice
of modern life. If the Gran Capitan were now minister of war, he would
probably be unable even with this military tax which oppresses the
country to put his regiments in condition to undertake a fresh war in
Italy. It is money, that cursed money! which has killed the finest
part of soldiering--personal bravery, initiative, originality--just as
it has crushed the workman, making his life a hell."
The cadet listened attentively to Gabriel, understanding for the first
time that in great nations there is something more than the warlike
sympathies of the monarch and the bravery of the army. He saw suddenly
that wealth was the basis and mainspring of all military enterprise.
"Then," he said thoughtfully, "if foreign nations do not attack us it
is not because they fear us."
"No; that we are permitted to live in peace is because these
omnipotent powers with all their ambitions and jealousies preserve a
certain equilibrium. They are like the great capitalists who, occupied
with vast projects of speculation, neglect either from carelessness or
contempt the small undertakings that lie at their door. Do you believe
that Switzerland or Belgium or other small countries live in peace
surrounded by great powers because they have an army? They would exist
just the same if they had not a single soldier, and the military power
of Spain is not greater than that of one of these small countries;
the poverty of the country and the scanty population oblige us to be
humble. In these days there are two kinds of armies those organised
for conquest and those whose only use is to keep order at home, that
are no more than police on a large scale, with guns and generals. That
of Spain, however much it costs, and however much they increase it,
comes under the latter classification."
"And if it is only this," said the cadet, "is it not something?
We keep peace at home, and we watch over the tranquillity of our
country."
"Yes, but that could be done by fewer people and for less money.
Besides, how about glory? Will you youths, full of illusions,
overflowing with aggressiveness and energy for new undertakings,
resign yourselves to this profession of watchmen and caretakers to a
country? Your future will be as monotonous as that of a priest in his
cathedral. Every day the same--to drill men to move this or that way,
to play at dominoes or billiards in a cafe, to walk about in uniform
or take a nap in the guard-room. There can be nothing for you beyond
a small disturbance at the tax on provisions, a strike, a closing of
shops to protest against the taxes, and then to fire on a mob armed
with sticks and stones. If at any time in your life you are ordered to
fire, you may be sure it will be on Spaniards. The Government do not
wish for an army as they know it is useless for the exterior defence
of the nation; besides, the national finances do not admit of its
maintenance, and they are consequently satisfied with an embryonic
organisation which is always insubordinate, distracted by incessant
and contradictory reforms, copying foreign improvements as a poor
girl copies the robes of a great lady. Believe me, there is nothing
pleasant in living such a narrowed and monotonous life, with no other
chance of glory but that of shooting a workman who protests or a
people who complain."
"But, how about liberty? How about political progress?" inquired the
cadet. "I have heard it said by a captain at the academy that if the
Liberal party exists in Spain it is through the army."
"There is a great deal in that," said Gabriel. "It is indubitably the
most important service the army has rendered to the State; without it,
who knows where the civil wars would have ended in this country, so
stationary and so timid about all reforms! I repeat it, I do not
ignore this service, but, believe me, that civil wars between liberty
and political absolutism will never be repeated, neither could the
guerilla warfare of the Independence with any definite issue. The
means of communication and military progress have put an end to
mountain warfare. The Mauser, which is the arm of the day, requires
well-provided parks of ammunition to follow it, cartridge magazines at
its back, and all this is incompatible with party fighting."
"But you will admit that we are of some use, and that we render the
nation good service."
"I admit it in the actual state of things, but I should admit it more
fully if you were fewer. The greater part of the grant is spent, but
all the same you live in poverty, decent and hidden, but poverty all
the same. A lieutenant earns less than many operatives, but he must
buy himself showy uniforms, be smart, and frequent when he wants
amusement the same places as the rich. He can only see before him long
years of waiting and of hidden poverty, borne with dignity, until some
promotion provides him with a few duros more monthly. You all suffer
dragging on this existence of slaves to the sword, the nation who
pays grumbles at seeing you inactive, and forgets other superfluous
expenses to fix its complaints solely on the military. Believe me, for
a modern army, you are too few and badly organised; to keep the peace
at home you are too many and too dear. The fault is not yours, your
vocation has come too late, when fate has rendered Spain powerless for
adventurous undertakings. If she revives she will have to follow a
direction which will certainly not be that of the sword. For this
reason I say that these youths stray from the right path when they
seek for glory where their ancestors thought to find it."
The appearance of Silver Stick cut short the dialogue. He ran in, pale
with excitement, gasping, rattling his bunch of keys.
"His Eminence is coming," he said, hurriedly. "He is already under the
arch; he wishes to spend the evening in the garden; it is a whim! They
say he is quite unmanageable to-day."
And he ran on to open the staircase del Tenorio, which put the
Claverias in communication with the lower cloister.
The cadet was alarmed at the unexpected proximity of his uncle. He did
not wish to meet him there, he feared the cardinal's temper, and fled
towards the tower staircase on his way to the bull-fight, sacrificing
his sweetheart sooner than meet with Don Sebastian.
Gabriel, who now found himself alone in the cloister, leant against a
column and watched the progress of this terrible prince of the Church.
He saw him come out of the doorway leading to the abode of the giants,
followed by two servants. Luna was able to examine him well for the
first time. He was enormous; but in spite of his age carried himself
erectly; over his black cassock with the red borders hung his gold
cross. He was leaning with a martial air on a staff of command, and
the gold tassels of his hat fell on the pink skin of his fat neck,
which was fringed with white hair. His small and penetrating eyes
looked on all sides in the hopes of discovering some delinquency,
something contravening the established rules, which would enable him
to break out into shouts and menaces and so give vent to his ill
humour and to the anger which furrowed his brows.
He disappeared by the staircase del Tenorio, preceded by Don Antolin,
who, after opening the iron gates, had placed himself at his orders,
shaking with fear. The silence and solitude of the Claverias were
undisturbed, it seemed as though the people hidden in their houses
remained absolutely still, guessing the danger that was passing.
Gabriel, leaning on the balustrade, watched the cardinal enter the
lower cloister, walking round two sides till he came to the garden
gate. A slight gesture from the prelate was sufficient to stop the two
servants, and he walked on alone through the central avenue towards
the summer-house where Tomasa was fast asleep between its leafy walls,
her knitting in her hands.
The old woman awoke at the sound of footsteps, and seeing the prelate,
gave a cry of surprise.
"Don Sebastian! You here!"
"I wished to visit you," said the cardinal with a benevolent smile,
seating himself on a bench. "It must not be always you who come to
seek me. I owe you many visits, and here I am."
Plunging one hand into the depths of his cassock, he drew forth a
small gold case and lighted a cigarette. He stretched out his legs
with the complacency of one who being always accustomed to wear
the frowning brow of authority, finds himself for a few moments at
liberty.
"But have you not been ill?" inquired the gardener's widow. "I had
thought of coming round to the palace this afternoon to inquire after
your health from Doña Visita."
"Hold your tongue, you fool; I have never felt better, especially
since this morning. The slap I have given to _those_ by not going into
the choir to pray with them has put me in a splendid humour, and in
order that they may thoroughly understand my meaning I have come to
see you. I wish them all to know that I am quite well, and that what
is said about my illness is untrue. I wish all in Toledo to understand
that the archbishop will not see his canons, and that he does so from
a sense of dignity, not from pride, as at the same time he can come
down to see his old friend the gardener's widow."
And the terrible old man laughed like a child to think of the
annoyance this visit would cause his Chapter.
"Do not believe, however, Tomasa," he continued, "that I have come to
see you solely for this reason. I felt sad and worried in the palace
this afternoon. Visitacion was busy with some friends from Madrid, and
I had that heartache I sometimes feel when I think of the past. I felt
that I must come and see you, more especially as it is always cool in
the Cathedral garden, whereas outside it is as hot as an oven. Ah!
Tomasa! how strong I see you! So slim and so active. You wear better
than I do; you are not wrapped in fat like this sinner, and you have
not the pains that disturb my nights. Your hair is still dark, your
teeth are well preserved, and you do not need like this old cardinal
to have a mechanism inside your mouth; but all the same, Tomasa, you
are just as old as I am. We have very few years of life left to us,
however much the Lord may wish to preserve us. What would I not give
to return to those days when I ran up to your house in my red gown in
search of your father, the sacristan, and stole your breakfast. Eh,
Tomasa?"
The two old people, forgetting social differences, recalled the past
with the friendly resignation of those advancing towards death.
Everything was the same as in their childhood--the garden, the
cloister; nothing about the Cathedral had changed.
His Eminence, closing his eyes, fancied himself once more the restless
acolyte of fifty years before; the blue spirals from his cigarette
seemed to carry his thoughts back through the interminable labyrinths
of the past.
"Do you remember how your poor father used to laugh at me? 'This boy,'
he would say in the sacristy, 'is a Sixtus V. What do you wish to be?'
he would ask me, and I always gave the same answer, 'Archbishop of
Toledo.' And the good sacristan would laugh again at the certainty
with which I spoke of my hopes. Believe me, Tomasa, I thought much of
him when I was consecrated bishop, regretting his death. I should have
been delighted with his tears of joy seeing me with the mitre on my
head. I have always loved you, you are an excellent family, and have
often satisfied my hunger."
"Silence, señor, silence, and do not recall those things. I am the one
who ought to be grateful for your kindness, so simple and genuine in
spite of your rank, which comes next after the Pope. And the truth
is," added the old woman with the pride of her frankness, "that no one
is the loser. Friends like I am you can never have; like all the great
ones of the earth, you are surrounded by flatterers and rascals. If
you had remained a simple mass priest no one would have sought you
out, but Tomasa would have always been your friend, always ready to do
you a service. If I love you so much it is because you are kind and
affable, but if you had put on pride like other archbishops, I should
have kissed your ring and--'Good-bye.' The cardinal to his palace, the
gardener's widow to her garden."
The prelate received the old woman's frankness smilingly.
"You will always be Don Sebastian to me," she continued. "When you
told me not to call you Eminence or to use the same ceremonies as
other people, I was as pleased as if I had been given the mantle of
the Virgin del Sagrario. Such ceremonies would have stuck in my throat
and made me ready to cry out, 'Let him have his fill of Eminence and
Illustrious, but we have scratched each other thousands of times when
we were little, and this big thief could never see a scrap of bread or
an apricot in my hand without trying to snatch and devour it!' You may
be thankful I spoke of you as 'usted'[1] when you became a beneficiary
of the Cathedral, for, after all, it would not do to 'thou' a priest
as if he were an acolyte."
[Footnote 1: Contraction of _vuestra merced_--your worship.]
Silence fell on the two old people, their eyes wandered tenderly over
the garden, as if each tree or arcade covered with foliage contained
some memory.
"Do you know what I have just remembered," said Tomasa. "I remember
that we saw each other just here many many years ago, at least
forty-eight or fifty. I was with my poor elder sister who had just
married Luna the gardener, and in the cloister wandering round me was
he who afterwards became my husband. We saw a handsome sergeant come
into the summer-house with a great jingle of spurs, a sword on his
arm, and a helmet with a tail just like the Jews on the Monument. It
was you, Don Sebastian, who had come to Toledo to visit your uncle
the beneficiary, and who would not leave without visiting your friend
Tomasita. How handsome and smart you were. I do not say it to flatter
you, it is truth. You looked like being a rogue with the girls! And I
still remember you said something to me about how pretty and fresh you
thought me after so many years absence. You don't mind my reminding
you of this? Really? It was only a soldier's gallant jests. How many
would say that now? When you left, I said to my brother-in-law, 'He
has put on the uniform for good and all; it is useless his uncle, the
beneficiary, thinking of making a priest of him.'"
"It was a youthful sally," said the cardinal smiling, remembering with
pride the dashing sergeant of dragoons. "In Spain, there are only
three professions worthy of a man--the sword, the Church and the toga.
My blood was hot and I wanted to be a soldier, but unluckily I fell on
times of peace, my promotion would have been very slow, and in order
not to embitter my uncle's last years, I renewed my studies and turned
to the Church. One can serve God or one's country as well in one place
as another, but, believe me, very often in spite of the pomp of my
cardinalate I think with envy of that soldier you saw. What happy
times they were! Even now the sword draws me. When I see the cadets I
would gladly exchange with some of them, giving them my crozier and
cross. And possibly I might have done better than any of them! Ah! if
only the great times of the reconquest could return when the prelates
went out to fight the Moors! What a great Archbishop of Toledo I
should have been!"
And Don Sebastian drew up his fat old body, and proudly stretched out
his arms with all the remains of his former strength.
"You have always been a strong man," said the gardener's widow. "I say
very often to some of the priests who speak of you and criticise you:
'You must not trifle with His Eminence, he is quite capable of going
one day into the choir--some he likes and some he does not--and
driving you all out at one fell swoop.'"
"I have more than once been tempted to do so," said the prelate
firmly, his eyes flashing with energy, "but I have been prevented by
the thought of my charge and my character as a peaceful priest. I am
the shepherd of a Catholic flock, not a wolf who tears the sheep in
his fierceness. But sometimes I can bear no more, and God forgive me!
I have often been tempted to raise the shepherd's crook and chastise
with blows that rebel flock who harbour in the Cathedral."
The prelate became excited, speaking of his quarrels with the Chapter;
the placidity of mind produced by the quiet of the garden disappeared
as he thought of his hostile subordinates. He felt obliged as at
other times to confide his troubles to the gardener's widow with that
instinctive kindly feeling which often causes highly-placed people to
confide in humble friends.
"You cannot imagine, Tomasa, what those men make me suffer. I will
subdue them because I am the master, because they owe me obedience by
the rule of discipline without which there can be neither Church nor
religion; but they oppose and disobey me. My orders are carried out
with grumbling, and when I assert myself even the last ordained priest
stands on what he calls his rights, lays complaints against me and
appeals either to the Rota[1] or to Rome. Let us see, am I the master
or am I not? Ought the shepherd to argue with his sheep and consult
how to guide them in the right way? They sicken and weary me with
their complaints and questions. There is not half a man amongst them,
they are all cowardly tale-bearers. In my presence they lower their
eyes, smile and praise His Eminence, and as soon as I turn my back
they are vipers trying to bite me, scorpion tongues which respect
nothing. Ay, Tomasa, my daughter! pity me! when I think of all this it
makes me quite ill."
[Footnote 1: Ecclesiastical court.]
The prelate turned pale, rising from his seat as though he felt a
sudden spasm of pain.
"Do not worry yourself so much," said the old woman, "you are above
them all, and you will overcome them."
"Clearly, I shall defeat them; if not, it would fill my cup, for it
would be the first time I had been vanquished. These squabbles among
comrades do not trouble me much after all, for I know in the end I
shall see my detested enemies at my feet. But it is their tongues,
Tomasa!--what they say about the beings I love most in the world, that
is what wounds me, and is killing me."
He sat down again, coming quite close to the gardener's widow, so as
to speak in a very low voice.
"You know my past better than anyone; I have such great confidence in
you that I have told you everything. Besides, you are very quick,
and if I had not told you, you would have guessed. You know what
Visitacion is to me, and most certainly you are aware of what those
wretches say about her. Do not play the fool; everyone inside and
outside the Cathedral listens to these calumnies and believes them.
You are the only one who does not credit them because you know the
truth. But ay! the truth cannot be told, I cannot proclaim it, these
robes forbid me."
And he seized a handful of his cassock with his clenched fingers as if
he would rend it.
A long silence followed. Don Sebastian looked fixedly at the ground,
clutching with his hands as though he were trying to grasp invisible
enemies; every now and then he felt a stab of pain and sighed
uneasily.
"Why do you think about these things?" said the gardener's widow;
"they only make you ill, and you ought not to have disturbed yourself
to come and see me, you would have done better to remain in the
palace."
"No, you distract my mind from them, it is a great comfort to tell you
of my troubles. Up there I feel in despair, and have to exert all
my self-command to suppress my anger. I do not wish my servants to
understand, for they are quite capable of laughing at me, neither do I
wish poor Visitacion to know anything. I cannot dissimulate. I cannot
feign happiness when I am so irritated! What a hell I suffer! I cannot
say that I have been a man, and that I have been weak as the flesh of
which I am made, that I have with me the fruit of my faults, and that
I will not separate myself from them, though persecuted by calumny.
Every man acts as he is able, and I wish to be good in spite of my
faults. I might have separated from my children, I might have deserted
them, as others have done to preserve their reputation as saints, but
I am a man, and I am proud of them; I am a man with all his defects
and all his virtues, neither greater nor less than the general run of
humanity. The feeling of paternity is so deeply rooted in me that I
would sooner lose my mitre than abandon my children. You remember when
Juanito's father, who passed as my nephew, died, how deeply I felt it,
I thought I should have died also. Such a fine, handsome man, and
with such a brilliant future before him! I would have made him a
magistrate, president of the supreme court, minister, anything I
wished! And in twenty-four hours he was dead as though Heaven wished
to punish me. It is true I have my grandson remaining, but this
Juanito in no way resembles his father, and I confess it to you, I
do not care much for him. I can only see in him the most distant
reflection of my poor son. Of my past, of that time which was the
happiest of my life, all I have left me is Visitacion. She is the
living image of the poor dead one. I worship her! and this feeble ray
of happiness these wretched people disturb with their calumnies. It is
enough to make one kill them!"
Overcome by the happy recollection of the spring-time which had
flowered during the first years of his episcopate, far away in an
Andalusian diocese, he repeated once again to Tomasa the tale of his
relations with a certain devout lady, who from her childhood had felt
a horror of the world. Devotion had drawn them together, but life
was not long in asserting her rights, opening herself a way by their
almost mystical relations, and finally uniting them in a carnal
embrace. They had lived faithful to each other in the secrecy of
ecclesiastical life, loving each other with scrupulous prudence, so
that no rumour of their relations had ever publicly transpired,
until she died, leaving two children. Don Sebastian, a man of strong
passions, was almost vehement in his paternal feelings--those two
beings were the image of the poor dead woman, the remembrance of the
only idyll which had softened a life wholly given over to ambition,
and the calumnies circulated by his enemies, founded on the presence
of his daughter in the archiepiscopal palace nearly drove him mad.
"They believe her to be my mistress!" he said angrily. "My poor
Visitacion, so good, so affectionate, so gentle to all, changed to a
courtesan by these wretches! A sweetheart that I have taken for my
amusement from the college of Noble Ladies! As if I, old and infirm,
were able to think of such things! Brutes! wretches! Crimes have been
committed for less!"
"Let them say on. God is in heaven and sees us all."
"I know it, but this is not enough to quiet me. You have children,
Tomasa, and you know what it is to love them. It is not only what
is done against them that wounds us, but what is said. What days of
suffering I endure! You know since my boyhood all my dreams have been
to rise to where I am. I used to look at the throne in the choir and
think how comfortable I should be in it--of the immense happiness of
being a prince of the Church. Well, now I am on the throne. I have
spent half a century removing the stones from my path, leaving my skin
and even my flesh on the brambles of the hillside. I only know how
I was able to rise from the black mass and obtain a bishopric!
Afterwards--now I am an archbishop! now I am a cardinal! At last I can
rise no higher! And what is it all? Happiness always floats before us
like the cloud of light which guided the Israelites. We see it, we
almost touch it, but it never lets itself be caught. I am more unhappy
now than in the days when I struggled to rise, and thought myself the
most unfortunate of men. I am no longer young; the height on which
I stand draws all eyes to me and prevents me defending myself. Ay,
Tomasa! pity me, for I am worthy of compassion! To be a father and
to be obliged to hide it as a crime! To love my daughter with an
affection which increases more and more as I draw nearer to death, and
have to endure that people should imagine this pure affection to be
something so repugnant!"
And the terrible glance of Don Sebastian, which terrified all the
diocese, was clouded with tears.
"Moreover, I have other troubles," he went on, "but they are those of
a far-seeing man who fears the future. When I die, all that I have
will be my daughter's. Juanito inherits what belonged to his mother,
who was rich; besides, he has his profession and the support of my
friends. Visitacion will be very rich. You know my adversaries throw
in my face what they call my avarice. Avaricious I am not, but
foreseeing, and anxious for the well-being of those belonging to me. I
have saved a great deal. I am not one of those who distribute bread at
the gate of his palace, nor who seek popularity through almsgiving.
I have pasture lands in Estremadura, many vineyards in La Mancha,
houses, and above all State stock--much stock. As a good Spaniard I
have wished to help the Government with my money, more especially
as it bears interest. I do not quite know how much I possess, but
certainly twenty millions of reals, and probably more, all saved by
myself and increased by fortunate speculations. I cannot complain
of fate, and the Lord has helped me. Everything is for my poor
Visitacion. I should delight in seeing her married to a good man; but
she will not leave me. She is drawn to the Church, and that is my
fear. Do not be surprised, Tomasa; I, a prince of the Church, fear to
see how she is attracted by devotion, and I do all I can to turn her
from it. I respect a religious woman, but not one who is only happy in
the Church. A woman ought to live; she ought to be happy as a mother.
I have always looked badly on nuns."
"Let her be, señor," said the gardener's widow; "there is nothing
strange in her love for the Church. Living as she does she could
scarcely do otherwise."
"For the present time, I have no fear. I am by her side, and her being
fond of the society of the nuns signifies very little to me. But I
may die to-morrow, and just imagine what a splendid mouthful
poor Visitacion and her millions would be, left alone, with this
predilection to religious life, of which those cunning people would
be sure to take advantage! I have seen a great deal. I belong to the
class, and I am in the secret. There is no lack of religious orders
who devote themselves to hunting heiresses for the greater glory of
God, as they say. Besides, there are many foreign nuns with great
flapping caps travelling about here, who are lynxes for that sort of
work, and I am terrified lest they should pounce on my daughter. I
belong to the ancient Catholicism, to that pure Spanish religion, free
from all modern extravagances. It would be sad to have spent my life
in saving, only to fatten the Jesuits or those sisters who cannot
speak Castilian. I do not wish my money to share the fate of that of
the sacristans in the proverb. For this reason, to the annoyance
I feel at my struggles with this inimical Chapter, I must add the
distress I feel at my daughter's feeble character. Probably she will
be hunted; some rake will laugh at me and possess himself of my
money."
Excited by his gloomy thoughts, he gave vent to an interjection both
caustic and obscene, a memory of his soldiering days; in the presence
of the gardener's widow there was no need to control himself, and the
old woman was accustomed to this relief of his temper.
"Let us see," he said imperiously after a long silence. "You, who know
me better than anyone, am I as bad as my enemies suppose? Do I deserve
that the Lord should punish me for my faults? You are one of God's
souls, simple and good, and you know more of all this by your instinct
than all the doctors of theology."
"You bad, Don Sebastian? Holy Jesus! You are a man like all others,
neither more nor less; but you are sincere, all of one piece, without
deceit or hypocrisy."
"A man--you have said it. I am a man like the rest. We who attain a
certain height are like the saints on the fronts of the churches: from
below we cause admiration for our beauty, but viewed closely we cause
horror from the ugliness of the stones corroded by time. However much
we wish to sanctify ourselves, keeping ourselves apart, we are still
nothing but men--creatures of flesh and blood like those who surround
us.
"In the Church those who free themselves from human passion are most
rare. And who knows if, even among those few privileged ones, some are
not driven by the demon of vanity to increase the asceticism of their
lives, thinking of the glory of being on an altar! The priest who
succeeds in subduing his flesh falls into avarice, which is the
ecclesiastical vice _par excellence_. I have never hoarded from vice;
I have saved for my own, but never for myself."
The prelate was silent for a long while; but in his irresistible
desire to confide in the simple old woman he went on.
"I am sure that God will not despise me when my hour comes. His
infinite mercy is above all the littleness of life. What has been my
fault? To have loved a woman, as my father loved my mother; to
have had children as the apostles and saints had. And why not?
Ecclesiastical celibacy is an invention of men, a detail of discipline
agreed upon at the councils; but the flesh and its exigencies are
anterior by many centuries; they date from Paradise. Whoever crosses
this barrier, not from vice, but from irresistible passion, because he
cannot conquer the impulse to create a family and to have a companion,
fails indubitably towards the laws of the Church, but he does not
disobey God. I fear the approach of death; many nights I doubt and
tremble like a child. But I have served God in my own way. In former
times I would have served Him with my sword, fighting against the
heretics. Now I am His priest and do battle for Him whenever I see the
impiety of the age curtailing anything of His glory. The Lord will
forgive me, receiving me into His bosom. You, who are so good, Tomasa,
and have the soul of an angel beneath your rough exterior, do you not
think so?"
The gardener's widow smiled, and her words fell slowly on the silence
of the dying evening.
"Tranquillise yourself, Don Sebastian. I have seen many saints in this
house, and they have been worth much less than you. To ensure their
salvation they would have abandoned their children. To maintain what
they call purity of soul they would have renounced their family.
Believe me, no saints enter here; they are men, nothing but men. You
have nothing to repent of in following the impulse of your heart. God
created us in His image and likeness, and also planted in us family
love. All the rest, chastity, celibacy and other trifles, you invented
for yourselves, to distinguish yourselves from the common herd of
people. Be a man, Don Sebastian, and the more you show yourself such
the better it will be for you, and the better the Lord will receive
you in His glory."
CHAPTER IX
A few days after Corpus Don Antolin went one morning in search of
Gabriel. Silver Stick smiled at Luna, speaking to him in a patronising
way.
He had thought of him all night; it pained him to see him idle,
walking about the cloister; it was the want of occupation that
inspired him with such perverse ideas.
"Let us see," he continued, "would it suit you to come down with me
every afternoon into the Cathedral, to show the Treasury and the
other curiosities? A great many foreigners come who can scarcely make
themselves understood when they question me; you will understand them,
as you know French and English, and, your brother says, many other
languages. The Cathedral would be a gainer, as it would show these
strangers that we have an interpreter at our disposal; you would
be doing us a favour and would lose nothing by it. It is always an
amusement to see new faces; and about the recompense ..."
Don Antolin stopped here, scratching his head beneath his skull cap.
He would see what he could screw out of the funds of the Obreria; if
just at first nothing could be managed, as the revenues of the Primacy
were meagre and at their lowest ebb, no doubt something could be given
later on.
He looked anxiously for Gabriel's answer, who, however, was quite
agreeable; when all was said and done he was a guest of the Cathedral
and owed it something. And from that afternoon he went down at the
hour of choir to show the foreigners all the treasures of the church.
There was no lack of travellers who showed Don Antolin's coloured
tickets waiting for the time to see the jewels. Silver Stick could
never see a stranger without imagining that he was a lord or a
duke, and often felt very much surprised at the shabbiness of their
clothing; according to his ideas only the great ones of the earth
could give themselves the pleasure of travelling, and he opened wide
his incredulous and scandalised eyes when Gabriel told him that many
were shoemakers from London or shopkeepers from Paris, who during
their holidays treated themselves to a trip through the ancient
country of the Moors.
Five canons in their choir surplices advanced up the nave, each one
holding a key in his hand; these were the guardians of the treasure.
Each one opened the lock confided to his custody, the door swung
heavily, and the chapel, with its antique treasures, was opened. In
large glass cases, like a museum, was displayed the ancient opulence
of the Cathedral: statues of chiselled silver, large globes crowned
by graceful little figures all of precious metal, ivory caskets of
complicated work, custodias and viriles[1] of gold, enormous gilt
dishes, embossed with mythological subjects reviving the joy of
paganism in that sordid and dusty corner of the Christian Church, and
precious stones spread their varied colours over pectorals, mitres and
mantles for the Virgin. There were diamonds so immense as to make one
doubt their being genuine, emeralds the size of pebbles, amethysts,
topaz, and pearls--very many pearls, strewn by the hundreds and
thousands on the Virgin's garments. The foreigners were amazed at all
this wealth and dazzled by the quantity, while Gabriel, who had become
accustomed to see it daily, looked at it carelessly. The Treasury
presented a deplorable spectacle of neglect: the riches had aged with
the Cathedral, the diamonds did not flash, the gold seemed tarnished
and dusty, the silver was blackened, the pearls were opaque and sick,
the smoke from the wax tapers and the damp atmosphere of the church
had sadly dulled everything.
[Footnote 1: _Virile_--small box with double glass in which the Host
is exhibited.]
"The Church," said Gabriel to himself, "ages everything she touches.
The treasures lose their brilliancy in her hands, like jewels that
fall into the power of usurers. The diamond becomes dulled in the
bosom of the great miser, and the most beautiful picture becomes
blackened on her altars."
After the visit to the Treasury came the exhibition of the Ochavo, the
octagonal chapel of dark marbles, that pantheon of relics where
the most repulsive human remains--skulls with their ghastly grin,
mummified arms and worn-eaten vertebras--were shown in gold or silver
shrines. The gross and credulous piety of former days displayed
itself in the full tide of unbelief, so that even Don Antolin, so
uncompromising when he spoke of the glories of his Cathedral, lowered
his voice and hurried over his explanations as he showed a piece
of the mantle worn by Santa Leocadia when she "appeared" to the
Archbishop of Toledo, quite understanding the difficulty of explaining
how an apparition could wear garments of stuff.
Gabriel translated faithfully Don Antolin's explanation, repeating
it again and again with imperturbable gravity, while the canons who
escorted the batch of strangers drew a few paces away with an absent
look, to avoid questions.
One day a phlegmatic Englishman interrupted the interpreter.
"And have you not amongst all these things a feather from the wings of
St. Michael?"
"No, señor, and it is a great pity," said Luna, equally seriously,
"but you will probably find it in some other Cathedral; we cannot have
everything here."
In the Chapter-house, a mixture of Arab and Gothic architecture, the
foreigners were much interested by the double row of portraits of the
Toledan archbishops hanging on the wall, with their mitres and golden
croziers. Gabriel called their attention to the picture of Don
Cerebruno, a mediaeval prelate, so called from his enormous head; but
it was the wardrobe which more especially surprised the foreigners.
It was a room surrounded by large cupboards and shelves of old wood;
above these the walls were covered with dusty and torn pictures,
copies of Flemish paintings that the canons had relegated to this
corner; round the room were placed in line the ancient armchairs of
the church, some of Spanish workmanship, austere, with straight lines
and ravelled coverings, others of Greek design with curved feet
inlaid with ivory. The capes and chasubles were piled on the shelves,
according to colours, with the collars outside the heap, so that
people could examine the wonderful embroidery. A whole world of
patterns appeared with every possible brilliancy of colour on a few
inches of stuff. The astonishing art of the ancient embroiderers made
the silk a series of vivid pictures; the collar and the narrow stripes
on the front of a cape were large enough to reproduce all the scenes
of the biblical creation and the passion of Jesus. Brocade and silk
unrolled the magnificence of their textures. One cape was a garden
of flame-coloured carnations, another was a bed of roses and other
fantastic flowers with twisted stamens and metallic petals. The
sacristans produced from the deep shelves, as though they were books,
the splendid and famous frontals of the high altar. There were special
ones for each festival; that for St. John's Day was brightly coloured
with verbenas, purple bunches of grapes, and golden lambs that fat
little angels were caressing with their chubby hands. The most
ancient, of soft and rather faded colours, showed Persian gardens with
blue waters in which fabulous reddish beasts were drinking.
The visitors were bewildered seeing all this vast collection of
stuffs and embroideries unrolled piece after piece--all the past of
a Cathedral which, having millions of revenue, employed for its
embellishment armies of embroiderers, acquiring the richest textures
of Valencia and Seville, reproducing in gold and colours all the
episodes from the Holy books, and the torments of the martyrs, all the
glorious legends of the Church, immortalised by the needle, before
printing had been able to do so.
Gabriel returned every evening to the upper cloister, wearied out with
walking the length and breadth of the Cathedral. During the first few
days he was delighted with the novelty of seeing fresh faces, to hear
the rustle of the visitors who, branching off from the great stream of
travellers who inundated Europe, came as far as Toledo. But after a
little while the people he saw every afternoon seemed to him just the
same. There were the same questions, the same stiff and hard-featured
Englishwomen, and the same o-o-o-h's of cold and conventional
admiration, and the same identical way of turning their backs with
rude pride when there was nothing else to be shown. Returning to
the quiet of the upper cloister after the daily exhibition of the
Treasury, Gabriel thought the poverty of the Claverias even more
revolting and intolerable. The shoemaker seemed sadder and yellower in
the rank atmosphere of his den, bending over his bench hammering the
soles, his wife more feeble and ill, the miserable slave of maternity,
weakened by hunger, and offering to her little son as his only hope of
food those flaccid breasts in which there was nothing left but a drop
of blood. The little child was dying! Sagrario, who had left her
machine to spend the greater part of the day in the shoemaker's room
said so in a low voice to her uncle. She did all the work of the
house, while the poor mother, motionless in a chair, with the little
one in her lap, looked at it with weeping eyes. When the baby woke
from its stupor it would wearily raise its head from its little neck,
which had become a mere thread; the mother to stifle its feeble moans
would press it to her breast, but the child would turn away its mouth
guessing the inutility of expending its strength on that rag of flesh
from which it could only succeed in extracting the last drop.
Gabriel examined the child, noting its extreme emaciation and the
spots that scrofula had spread over its straw-coloured skin. He shook
his head incredulously when the neighbours who had gathered round the
invalid each diagnosed some particular ailment, and recommended every
imaginable sort of household remedy, from decoctions of rare herbs and
stinking ointments to applications on the chest of miracle working
prints, and tracing seven crosses on the navel with as many
paternosters.
"It is hunger," said Luna to his niece, "nothing but hunger." And
depriving himself of part of his own food, he sent to the shoemaker's
house the milk that had been brought up for himself. But the child's
stomach could not retain the liquid too substantial for its weakness,
and threw it up as soon as swallowed. The Aunt Tomasa, with her
energetic and enterprising character, brought a woman from outside the
Cathedral to nourish the child, but after two days, and before the
effects became visible, she came no more, as if she had felt disgusted
at the miserable and corpse-like little body touching her. In vain the
gardener's widow searched; it was not easy to find generous breasts
who would give their milk for very little pay.
In the meanwhile the child was dying. All the women came in and out of
the shoemaker's house, and even Don Antolin would stand at the door in
the mornings.
"How is the little one? Just the same? It is all in God's hands."
And he would retire, doing the shoemaker the great charity of not
speaking to him about the pesetas he owed him, on account of the sick
child.
"Virgin's Blue" was annoyed by this incident, which upset the calm of
the cloister, and disturbed the bliss of his digestion as a happy and
well-fed servant of the Church. It was a shame that that shoemaker
should be allowed to live in the Claverias with all that flock of
wretched and scurvy children; one would die every month; all sorts
of illness would lay hold on them. By what right were they in the
Cathedral when they drew no wage from the Obreria? Such stinking
excrescences ought to remain outside the Lord's house.
His mother-in-law was furious.
"Silence, you thief of the saints!" she cried. "Silence, or I will
throw a dish at you! We are all sons of God, and if things were as
they should be, all the poor ought to live in the Cathedral. Instead
of saying such things it would be much better if you gave those
unhappy people part of what you have stolen from the Virgin."
The sacristan shrugged his shoulders with contempt. If they had not
enough to eat they should not have children. There he was himself with
only one daughter--he did not think he had any right to more--and so
thanks to Our Lady he was able to save a scrap for his old age.
Tomasa spoke of the shoemaker's child to the good gentlemen of the
Chapter when they came into the garden for a few minutes after choir.
They listened absently, putting their hands in their cassocks.
"It is all God's will! What poverty!"
And some gave her ten centimes, others a real, one or two even a
peseta. The old woman went one day to the Archbishop's palace. Don
Sebastian was engaged and unable to see her, but he sent her two
pesetas by one of the servants.
"They don't mean badly," said the gardener's widow, giving her
collection to the poor mother, "but each one lives for himself, and
his neighbour may manage as he can. No one divides his cloak with
another--take this, and see how you can get out of your trouble."
They fed a little better in the shoemaker's house; the miserable
scrofulous children collected in the cloister profited most by the
baby's illness; it was growing daily weaker, lying motionless for
hours, with almost imperceptible breathing, on its mother's lap.
When the unhappy child died, all the people of the Claverias rushed
to the home. Inside could be heard the mother's wailings, strident,
interminable, like the bellowing of a wounded beast; outside the
father wept silently, surrounded by his friends.
"It died just like a bird," he said with long pauses, his words broken
by sobs. "His mother held him on her knees--I was working--'Antonio,
Antonio!' she called, 'see, what is the matter with the child, it is
moving its mouth and making grimaces?' I ran up quickly, its face
was quite dusky--as if it had a veil over it. It opened its mouth, a
couple of twitches with its eyes staring, and its neck fell over--just
the same as a bird, just the same."
He wept, repeating constantly the resemblance between his son and
those birds who die in winter from the cold.
The bell-ringer looked gloomily at Gabriel.
"You who know everything, is it true that it died of hunger?"
And the Tato with his scandalous impetuosity shouted loudly--
"There is no justice in the world! All this must be altered! Fancy a
child dying of hunger in this house, where money runs like water, and
where all those creatures are dressed in gold!"
When the little corpse was carried to the cemetery, the cloister
seemed quite deserted; all its life was concentrated in the
shoemaker's house, all the women surrounded the mother. Despair had
rendered that sick and feeble woman furious. She no longer wept: her
child's death had made her ferocious--she wished to bite or to dash
her skull against the wall.
"Ay! my s-o-o-o-n! my Antonio!"
At night Sagrario and the other women remained in the house to look
after her. In her desperation she wished to make some one responsible
for her misfortune, and she fixed on those highest in the cloister.
Don Antolin had not helped her with the smallest alms; his affected
niece had scarcely been in to see the little one, nothing interested
her but men.
"It is all Silver Stick's fault," wailed the poor mother--"he is
a thief. He grinds our poverty with his usurer's snares. Never a
farthing did he give for my son. And that Mariquita is just the same.
Yes, señor, I do say so. She only thinks of decking herself out so
that the cadets may see her."
"For mercy's sake, woman, they will hear you," begged some of the
terrified women.
But others scouted this fear. "Let Don Antolin and his niece hear
them! What did it matter? The Claverias were tired of the rapacity
of the uncle, and the magnificent airs that ugly woman gave herself!
Because they were poor they were not going to spend their lives
trembling before that couple. God only knew what the uncle and niece
did when they were alone in the house together!"
A breath of rebellion had passed over that sleepy world. It was the
unconscious influence of Gabriel. What he had said to his friends had
been passed on to all the men in the Claverias, getting even to the
women. They were confused and garbled ideas, that very few could
understand, but they cherished them like fresh pure air reviving
their minds. They sounded in their ears like a pleasant echo from the
outside world. It was sufficient for them to know that this quiet life
of submission they had led up to now was not immutable--they had
a right to something better--and that human beings ought to rebel
against injustice and oppression.
Don Antolin, who knew well enough the crew confided to his care,
was not long in perceiving this moral upturn. He felt hostility and
rebellion on every side. The debtors answered him haughtily, alleging
their poverty as a reason for no longer enduring his avarice; his
imperious orders were tardily executed, and he had a clear perception
that they were laughing behind his back as he walked through the
cloister, and making threatening gestures. One day his legs trembled
beneath him and his eyes were dimmed, hearing how the Perrero replied
to one of his reprimands, having returned late to the Cathedral, and
obliging him to descend and open the door after he had gone to bed.
The Tato made him understand, with an insolent expression, that he had
bought a knife, and that he intended its first fleshing to be in the
bowels of some priest or other who ground down the poor.
His niece complained to Don Antolin, they paid no attention to her and
flouted her, no woman now ever came to help her gratuitously in her
household duties. They replied insolently that those who wanted
servants must pay for them. What was her uncle thinking about? It was
certainly time to assert his authority and to lay a heavy hand on
these people.
She herself, so lively and energetic in her own house, was now obliged
to retire snorting with rage or weeping, whenever she stationed
herself at her door. All the women of the Claverias wished to revenge
themselves for their former thraldom, standing already on the
declivity of disrespect.
"Look at her!" screamed the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours,
"always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood
that vampire of an uncle sucks from the poor."
And from the iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the
roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no
doubt inspired by the Cathedral garden--
"Las amas de los curas y los laureles
Como nunca dan fruto siempre estan verdes." [1]
[Footnote 1: Priest's housekeepers--like laurels--never have any
fruit, because they are evergreens.]
It was this that ended the patience of Don Antolin; this insulting
conjecture about himself and his niece that disturbed his miserly
chastity. He visited the cardinal to complain of the inhabitants of
the cloister, but His Eminence, who lived in a perpetual rage, grew
furious listening to him and very nearly thrashed him. Why did he
come to him with such tales? For what reason had he been given any
authority? Was there nothing left of a man beneath his cassock? He who
was wanting in the good discipline of the house--turn him out into the
street at once! More energy, and be careful never to trouble him again
with such insignificant tales, otherwise the person who would be
turned into the street would be Silver Stick himself.
Don Antolin felt a little braver after this interview, although he
swore mentally never again to visit that terrible prelate. He was
determined to reassert his authority, by punishing the weakest, whom
he considered as the origin of all these scandals. The shoemaker
should be expelled from the Claverias, as he was there through
no other right but that his wife had been born there. Mariquita,
bewildered by her uncle's energy, must needs speak to some one about
these intentions, and so the news circulated through the cloister.
Don Antolin did not dare to move a step further, terrified by the
silent unanimity with which the whole population rose against him.
The Tato looked at him with mocking and threatening eyes, in which
Silver Stick could plainly read "Remember the knife"; but what
terrified Don Antolin more than anything was the silence of the
bell-ringer, and the savage and hostile glance with which he responded
to his words.
Even the good Wooden Staff, Esteban, protested in his own way, saying
quietly to Don Antolin:
"Is it really true that you intend turning out the shoemaker? You will
do wrong, very wrong, for after all he is very poor, and his wife was
born in the cloister. These innovations always bring misfortune, Don
Antolin."
So the priest, finding he had no support, and seeing hostility on
every side, put off his energetic resolutions till the following day,
even reproving his niece when she threw his weakness in his face.
The Canon Obrero, from whom he had implored help, did not care to
disturb the blessed peace of his existence by mixing himself up in the
quarrels of the smaller people. It was Silver Stick's own affair; he
could punish or expel any one he thought fit without fear of anybody.
But Don Antolin, dreading the responsibility that might accrue from
energetic action, ended by delivering himself over to Gabriel and
begging for his assistance. That man was the one who wielded the real
authority in the upper cloister; all those who had listened to him
followed his advice blindly.
"Help me, Gabrielillo," said the priest with an agonised expression.
"If you cannot restore order, this will end badly; they even insult my
poor niece, and some day I shall turn half the people of the Claverias
out into the street, as I hold authority from His Eminence for
everything. Ay, señor! I do not know what has happened here; surely
the devil must have got loose in our upper cloister! How these people
have changed to me!"
Luna guessed Don Antolin's thoughts and his allusions to the devil who
had got loose in the cloister. That devil was himself. No doubt Silver
Stick was right. Without intending it he had introduced discord into
the Cathedral. He had sought calm and forgetfulness in that refuge,
and the spirit of rebellion had followed him even into this
concealment. He recalled his thoughts on the first day, when he was
alone in the silent cloister; he wished to be another stone in the
Cathedral, without thought, without feeling, to spend the rest of his
life fixed to that ruin, with the embryonic life of the fungus on the
buttress, but the spirit of the outside world had entered in with him.
Luna remembered how travellers in time of plague had crossed the
sanitary cordon--they were well and happy, nothing betrayed the
infection in their bodies; but the poisonous germs travelled in the
folds of their clothes and in their hair, carrying death without
knowing it, helping it to leap all barriers and obstacles, without
being in the least aware of it. He was the same, but instead of
spreading death, he spread tumultuous and rebellious life. The protest
of the lower orders that had been surging throughout the world, for
more than a century, had entered with him into this still remaining
fragment of the sixteenth century. He had awakened those men, who had
been like the sleepers in the legend, motionless in their cave for
ages, while the centuries rolled on and the world was transformed.
The awakening of these people was sudden and violent, like that of a
people in revolution. They were ashamed of the old errors that they
had worshipped, and this made them receive as gospel everything that
was new, without quailing before the consequences.
It was the faith of a people which, once it takes form, rushes
onwards, accepting everything, justifying everything, the only
requirement being its novelty, and casting aside contemptuously those
traditional principles which it had just abandoned.
The cowardly submission of Silver Stick was the first victory of those
more daring souls who formed Luna's surrounding. The avaricious and
despotic priest lowered his eyes before them, smilingly anxious to
make himself agreeable. This they owed to the master, for he was now
the true ruler of the upper cloister. Don Antolin consulted him before
making any arrangements, and his ugly niece smiled on Gabriel as the
daughters of the conquered might smile on a triumphant hero.
They now no longer hid themselves in the bell-ringer's house for their
meetings; they formed a circle in the cloister during the evenings,
discussing the audacious doctrines taught by Luna, without now being
intimidated by the religious atmosphere. They sat with the look of
lords, surrounding their master, while in the opposite gallery walked
Silver Stick like a black phantom, reading his book of hours, and
casting now and then an uneasy glance on the group. Even his ancient
vassal, the chaplain of the nuns, had dared to leave him to go and
listen to Gabriel.
Don Antolin with the keenness of his ecclesiastical training, guessed
the intensity of the evil produced by Luna. But for the moment his
egoism was stronger than his reflection. Let them talk--what did it
matter? It was only a little ebullition of pride in those people,
nothing more. All words and wind in the head. Meanwhile they had
better not ask for any more money! In exchange he had a very good
auxiliary in Luna, who, sharing his authority, spared him many
annoyances, and the Cathedral disposed of his services gratuitously as
interpreter to the foreigners.
These already began to talk of the great intelligence and education
of the Toledan sacristans, a praise Don Antolin received as though it
were entirely deserved by himself.
Gabriel was far more alarmed than Don Antolin at the effect of his
words; he bitterly repented having been led to speak of his past and
of his ideals. He had sought for peace and silence, but he was
still surrounded, though in a smaller degree, by the atmosphere of
proselytism and blind enthusiasm, as in the days of his martyrdom.
He had wished to efface himself and to disappear on entering the
Cathedral, but fate mocked him, reviving the agitation in the midst
of his concealment, to disturb the peace of that ruin. Society had
forgotten him, but he unconsciously was agitating, and drawing to
himself the attention of the outside world.
The enthusiasm of these neophytes was a danger, and his brother, the
Wooden Staff, without understanding the full extent of the evil,
warned him with his usual good sense.
"You are turning the heads of these poor men, with the things you
tell them. Be careful; they are very well meaning, but they are very
ignorant. And having been ignorant all their lives, it is dangerous to
turn such men into sages at one blow. It is as if I, being accustomed
to the homely stew, were taken to-day to His Eminence's table. I
should gorge myself and drink too much; at night I should have a
colic, and should probably hop the twig."
Gabriel acknowledged the truth of this prudent advice, but he could
not draw back--he was driven on by the affection of his disciples and
his own ardour as propagandist. It was a great delight to him to see
the wonder in those virgin minds, entering tumultuously into the
luminous palaces constructed by human thought during the last century.
The description of the future of humanity inflamed all Luna's ardour.
He spoke of the happiness of men, after a revolutionary crisis which
would change all the organisation of humanity with mystic rapture,
like a Christian preacher describing heaven.
"Man ought to seek happiness solely in this world, for after death
there only existed the infinite life of matter with its endless
combinations, but the human being was effaced as entirely as a plant
or an animal--he fell into oblivion when he sank into the tomb.
Immortality of the soul was one of the illusions of human pride worked
up by religions, who laid their foundations on this lie. It was
only in this life that man could find heaven. Everyone embarked on
immensity in the same ship, the earth. We were all comrades in our
dangers and our struggles, and we ought to look upon one another
as brothers seeking the common welfare. And what about the unequal
distribution of goods, the division of classes, the ability to work,
and, above all, the struggle for existence, that the philosophers and
poets of the oppressing classes paint as an indispensable condition of
progress? Communism is the holiest aspiration of humanity, the
divine dream of man since he began to think in the first dawn of
civilisation. Religions had endeavoured to establish it, but religion
had been shipwrecked and was moribund, and only science could enforce
it in the future. They must stop on the way they were going, as
humanity was marching on the road to perdition, therefore it was
necessary to return to the point of departure. The first man who had
cultivated a portion of the earth and garnered the fruits of his
toil, thought it was his for ever, and left it to his sons as their
property; they engaged other men to cultivate it for them--so these
men became robbers, appropriators of the universal heritage. It was
the same with those who possessed themselves of the invention of
human genius, machines, etc., for the benefit of a small majority,
subjecting the rest of mankind to the law of hunger. No, everything
was for everyone. The earth belonged to all human beings without
exception, like the sun and the air; its products ought to be divided
between everyone with due regard to their necessities. It was shameful
that man, who only appeared for an instant on this planet--a minute,
a second, for his life was no more than this in the life of
immensity--should spend this mere breath of existence fighting with
his kin, robbing them, excited by the fever of plunder, not even
enjoying the majestic calm of a wild beast, which when it has eaten,
rests, without ever thinking of doing harm from vanity or avarice.
There ought to be neither rich nor poor--nothing but men. The only
inevitable division must be that between brains more or less highly
organised. But the wise, from the fact of being so, ought to show
their greatness, sacrificing themselves for the more simple, without
seeking to assist the greatness of their minds by material advantages;
for in stomachs there were no categories or ranks. Everything that
exists, even the smallest production that man considers his exclusive
work, is the work of the past and present generations. By what right
can anyone say 'This is mine, mine only'? Man is not consulted before
he is formed if he wishes to burst forth into life. He is born--and
from the fact of being born he has a right to well-being." Gabriel
proclaimed his supreme formula, "Everything for everyone, and
well-being for all."
His friends listened in profound silence. The right to well-being
sank profoundly into their minds; it was the saying that most cruelly
touched their poverty, taunted by the contrast of the wealth of the
Church.
Don Martin, the young chaplain, was the only one who timidly raised
any objections to the master's sayings. He wished to know if, when
everything was for everyone, when man should have recognised his
right to happiness, without laws or compulsion to force him to
production--would he work? seeing that work was a necessity, and not a
virtue, as those who employ labour say, to glorify it.
Gabriel loudly affirmed the necessity of work in the future. The
man of the future would work without being forced to do so by his
necessities; he would not be ruled by the body and its imperious
requirements; his conscience would be inspired with the clear
understanding of solidarity with his fellows and the certainty that
if one abandoned social duties others would follow the example, thus
rendering life in common impossible and so returning to the actual
times of poverty and robbery.
"Why do not the few men of culture and sound conscience living at
present kill and rob?" exclaimed Gabriel. "It is not through fear of
the law and its representatives, for a clear intelligence, if it takes
the trouble, can easily find ways of evading both; neither can it be
through fear of eternal penalties and divine punishment, as such
men do not believe in these inventions of the past. It is from that
respect to his fellows which is felt by every elevated mind, from the
consideration that all violence should be avoided, for if everyone
gave themselves over to it, all social life must disappear. When this
understanding, which now only belongs to a few, embraces all humanity,
men will live ruled by their own consciences without laws or police,
working from social duty, without requiring man to be the only spring
of activity, and sweating without compassion to be the only way to
ease."
Throughout all his revolutionary raptures Luna had no illusions as to
the present. Humanity was at present an infected land, in which the
best seeds rotted, or which at best produced only poisonous fruits; we
must wait till the equalising revolution begun in the human conscience
a century ago should be completed, after that it would be possible
and easy to change the basis of society; he had a blind faith in
the future. Man must progress in the same way as communities; these
reckoned their evolutions by centuries, but man by millions of
years. How could a man of to-day be compared to the biped animal of
prehistoric times, though bearing visibly the traces of the animalism
from which he had lately emerged? Living in fellowship with his
ancestors the monkeys, the principal difference being the first
babblings of speech, and the first trembling spark that began to burn
in his brain.
From the ravenous beast of former days, suffering from all the cruel
forces of nature and living in fraternal misery with the lower
animals, the man of to-day was evolved, asserting his superiority to
his ancestors, dominating all nature. From the men of to-day, in whom
the passions of their former animalism are finding their equilibrium
with the gradual unfolding of the mind, will arise that superior and
perfect being indicated by philosophers, pure from all animal egoism,
and endeavouring to change the actual cruel, restless, and uncertain
life, into a period of happy and prosperous equality.
The animalism at present dominant in man exasperated Gabriel; it was
the great stumbling-block to all his generous views of the future,
and he explained to his astonished listeners the transformations of
natural creatures and of the origin of man, and the wondrous poem of
the evolution of nature from the original protoplasm to the infinite
varieties of life. We still carry in us the marks of our origin. One
could not help laughing at the God of the Jews, who had modelled a man
from clay, like a sculptor. Unlucky artist! Science pointed out much
carelessness and bungling in His work, without being able to justify
such mistakes. The skin of our bodies did not serve us as a covering
like the fur of an animal. How could we then believe it? Why were
nipples given to human males, if they were of no use for milk giving?
Why was the vertebral column at the back of the body as in quadrupeds,
when it would have been more logical, in creating a man who stands on
his feet, to place it in the centre of the body as a strong support,
thus avoiding the curvatures and weakness of the spine that are now
suffered by this disequilibrium in the support of its weight?
Gabriel enumerated the various inexplicable inconsistencies and
incongruities found in the human body, presuming it to be of divine
origin.
"I feel prouder," said he, "of my animal origin; to be a lineal
descendant of inferior beings than to have emerged imperfect from the
hand of a stupid God. I feel the same satisfaction that a nobleman
feels in speaking of his ancestors when I think of our remote
forefathers, those men-beasts, exposed like the animals to all the
cruel severity of nature, who, little by little, through hundreds of
centuries, have transformed themselves, triumphing in the unfolding of
their minds, their brains, and their social instincts. Making clothes,
edible foods, arms, tools and houses, neutralising the exterior
influences of nature. What hero or discoverer in the four thousand
years comprising our history can compare with those elementary men who
have slowly evolved and maintained on the earth the existence of our
species, exposed thousands of times to annihilation. The day on which
our ancestors cared for the sick and wounded, instead of abandoning
them as all animals had previously done; on which the first seed was
planted, the first arrow shot, brought nature face to face with the
greatest of her revolutions. Only one in the future will be able to
equal it; if man in remote times was able to free his body, now he
requires the great revolution to free his mind. The races who go
furthest in their intellectual development will be the ultimate
survivors; they will be masters of the earth, destroying all others.
The least wise in those days will probably be far superior to the most
cultivated intellects of the present times. Each individual will find
his happiness in the happiness of his fellows, and no one will try to
exercise compulsion on his neighbour. No laws or penalties will exist,
and voluntary associations will supply through the influence of reason
the present power of authority. This will be in the future--far, very
far off. But what do centuries matter in the life of humanity! They
are like seconds in our existence. On the day when man shall be
transformed into this superior being, with the full development of
all his intellectual faculties, now so embryonic, this earth will no
longer be the vale of tears spoken of by religion, but the paradise
dreamed of by the poets."
In spite of the enthusiasm with which Gabriel spoke, his hearers did
not appear to share these illusions. They were silent, and their
attitude was one of coldness before the immense distance of that
future to which their master confided all his hopes of universal
prosperity. They wished for it at once, with the eagerness of a child
who is shown a dainty which is afterwards put out of its reach. The
sacrifices, the slow work for the future, struck no chord in their
minds. From Gabriel's explanations they only drew the fact that they
were unhappy, but that they had the same right to happiness and
comfort as those privileged few whom they had formerly respected in
their ignorance. As a certain portion of human felicity belonged to
them they wished to possess it at once, without delay or resistance,
with all the fervour of one claiming what belongs to him. Luna
remarked in this silence a certain rebellion, like those ironical
gestures with which his companions in Barcelona had received his
illusions about the future and his anathemas against violence of
action.
These ardent neophytes outdistanced their teacher; they listened to
him with respect, but they were obliged to isolate themselves from him
in order to digest his teachings in their own fashion. Don Martin was
the only one who followed him in his visionary excursions into the
future. The bell-ringer, the organ-blower, the shoemaker and the Tato
now went up nightly to the bell-ringer's house, without summoning
the master, and there they gave vent to their hatred of everything
existing, under the forgotten old prints, yellow and wrinkled, which
pictured the inglorious episodes of the Carlist war.
This nocturnal reunion was a continual complaint against social
injustice. They thought themselves even more unfortunate when they
took an exact review of their situation. The shoemaker recalled with
tearful eyes the little child who had died of hunger, and spoke of the
misery of his offspring, so numerous as to render his work useless.
The organ-blower spoke of his miserable old age, the six reals daily
during his life, without any hope of earning more. The Tato, in the
fits of rage of a bullying coxcomb, proposed to behead all the canons
in the choir some evening and then to set fire to the Cathedral. And
the bell-ringer, gloomy and scowling, said aloud, following up the
course of his thoughts:
"And below so much wealth that is of no use to anybody--amassed from
pure pride--thieves! robbers!"
Gabriel returned to pass his days by Sagrario's side. His disciples
hid themselves daily more carefully in their isolation in the tower.
Don Martin had his mother ill, and could not leave the convent.
Silver Stick felt quite satisfied with Luna seeing him alone,
believing that it was he who had alienated his disciples, cutting
short in this way his dangerous conversations so as to restore order
in the cloister. One day he addressed him smilingly with a patronising
manner.
"You will be rewarded for your good conduct, Gabrielillo, much sooner
than you expect. Did I not say I would look out for something for you
in exchange for the help you gave me in showing the treasury? Well,
now you have it. From next week two pesetas daily will fall into
your purse like two suns. Are you equal to staying all night in the
Cathedral? The older watchman, the one who was a civil guard, is tired
of it, and is going home to his own village. It appears that since his
dog died he has taken a dislike to the duties. The other watchman is
very poorly and wants a companion. Will you undertake it? If it were
winter I should not say anything about it, as you cough too much to
spend the night down there; but in summer the Cathedral is the coolest
place in Toledo. What lovely nights! And by the time bad weather comes
on we will have found you some better place. You are trustworthy,
though your head is rather light; but you come of an honoured and
well-known family, which is what is wanted. Do you accept?"
Luna accepted, declaring his intention to Esteban, when the latter
objected on account of his weak health. He would only undertake the
watchman's duties during the summer; besides, two pesetas a day were
even more than Wooden Staff earned; the income of the family would be
doubled, and it would be a pity to lose such a good opportunity.
That evening Sagrario spoke to her uncle praising the energy which
prompted him to undertake any sort of work so as not to be a charge on
the family.
They were in the cloister leaning on the balustrade; below was the
dark garden with its waving branches, above a summer sky veiled by the
heat haze which dulled the brightness of the stars. They were alone
in the four-sided gallery. The lighted windows of the Chapel-master's
little room threw a square of red on the opposite roofs. They could
hear the harmonium playing slowly and sadly, and when it stopped the
shadow of the musician passed and repassed over the square of light
with his nervous gestures, which, enlarged by the reflection, appeared
the most grotesque contortions.
The nocturnal calm and darkness surrounded Gabriel and Sagrario with a
gentle caress; that mysterious freshness was falling from above which
seems to revive drooping spirits and magnify old remembrances. The
Church seemed to them as an immense sleeping beast, in whose lap they
had found peace and protection.
Gabriel spoke of his past, in order to convince the young woman that
his work in the Cathedral would not be very arduous. He had suffered
much; there was no bitterness that he had not tasted; he had endured
hunger, terrible hunger, in his peregrinations through the world.
He did not know which were the most painful, his martyrdom in the
dungeons of the gloomy castle, or his days of despair in the streets
of crowded cities, seeing food and gold through the glass windows of
the shops while his head was swimming with the dizziness of hunger.
He could endure his misery while he wandered alone through the cruel
selfishness of civilisation; but the most horrible days were those
in which he shared his vagabond poverty with Lucy, his gentle and
melancholy companion.
Gabriel spoke of the Englishwoman as of a dead sister.
"Had you known her, Sagrario, you would have loved her. She was a
strong woman, a brave companion, united to me more by the community of
thought than by carnal attraction. I loved her when I first saw her.
I hardly know if it was love that we felt; poets have written so many
lies about love, and have falsified it in such an exaggerated way,
that I do not for certain know what it is."
He spoke to the young woman of love, explaining it according to his
beliefs. Goethe had defined it as an "elective affinity," speaking
as a man of science and not as a poet, using the term that chemistry
gives to the tendency of two substances to unite and form a distinct
product. Two beings between whom no affinity existed could meet
through false laws of life in perpetual contact, but they could not
mix or merge into one another. This happened more often than not
between the individuals of different sexes who peopled the earth; a
passing sentimentality could exist, or carnal caprice, but seldom
love. The poor invalid Lucy was his affinity; they met and they loved.
In their pity for human miseries, their hatred of inequalities and
injustice, their self-abnegation in the cause of the humble and
unfortunate they were equal; they were not only united by their hearts
but by their brains.
She was plain, with a soft and sad plainness that seemed to Luna the
supreme ideal of beauty in the midst of that struggling world of
unfortunates and victims. She was the image of a woman of the people
reared in the workmen's slums of great cities, anaemic from the
mephitic air of the den in which she was born and from bad and
insufficient food, with a wretched body, all feminine graces paralysed
in their development by the rough work done in her childhood. Her
lips, that great ladies paint red, were violet; the only beauty of her
face lay in her eyes, those windows of sorrow, made larger by the cold
nights passed in the street from horror of the scenes she saw in her
childhood; her father, drunken, with the brutal wish of a workman to
forget, who, after imagining that his tavern was a paradise, would
become infuriated with the poverty of his home and beat the whole
family.
"She was like all you women of the lower orders, Sagrario. Your beauty
only lasts an instant; in fact, it can only exist in the first flush
of youth. A woman of the poor cannot be beautiful unless she gets
out of her class. Daily labour makes her lose all her freshness and
strength, and maternity in the midst of poverty absorbs even the
marrow in her bones. When her daily work is ended and she returns
home, she has to sweep and wash, and shrivel herself to a mummy before
the smoky kitchen stove. I loved Lucy for that reason, because she was
consumed and drained by sweating, because she was the girl worker
in all her melancholy decadence, born beautiful and made hideous by
social injustice."
He recalled the unbending and deadly hatred with which that little
woman spoke so quietly of the supreme vengeance of the fallen, of the
revenge for long years of oppression. She showed herself more firmly
rooted and fiercer in her illusions than Gabriel, and he would praise
her daring as a propagandist, her perilous expeditions into the great
towns, running the gauntlet of watchful police, carrying on her arm
that old bonnet-box full of pamphlets that might have sent her to
prison. She was the "miss" animated by evangelical propaganda, who
travels over the globe distributing Bibles with a cold smile, fearless
alike of the mockery of civilisation, or the brutality of savages; but
what Lucy distributed were incitements to revolution; she did not seek
out the happy but the despairing, in the factories and infected
slums. The two endured hunger, finding themselves often separated by
persecution and prison, but they met again, continuing their romantic
career, till poverty and consumption ended her life.
Gabriel wept, remembering their last interview in an Italian hospital,
clean and sweet, but with the frozen atmosphere of charity. As he was
not her husband he could only visit her twice a week. He presented,
himself ragged and downcast, seeing her in an armchair daily paler
and weaker, her skin of a waxen transparency and her eyes immensely
enlarged. He knew a little about everything, and he could not conceal
from himself the gravity of her illness. She waited quietly for death.
"Bring me some roses," she said, smiling to Gabriel, as if in the last
moment of her life she wished to acknowledge the natural beauty of the
world made hideous and darkened by man. The "companion" lived on dry
bread, refusing the help of his comrades only a little less poor than
himself, sleeping on the ground, in order to take her on his next
visit a bunch of flowers.
"She died, Sagrario," groaned Luna, "and I know not where they buried
her; possibly she may have served for a lecture at the school of
anatomy; she fell into the common grave like those soldiers whose
heroism remains in obscurity. But I still see her; she has followed me
in all my misfortunes, and I think she lives again in you."
"But uncle," said Sagrario, gently, touched by his recital, "I cannot
do what she did. I am an unhappy woman, without strength or will."
"Call me Gabriel," said Luna, vehemently. "You are my Lucy, who again
crosses my path; I knew it from the first, and for a long while I have
been searching my feelings, analysing my will, and I have arrived at
one certainty--that I love you, Sagrario."
The young woman made a gesture of surprise, drawing further from him.
"Do not draw away, do not fear me. I am a feeble man, you are a weak
woman; you have suffered much, and have bid good-bye to the joys of
the earth, but you are strong through misfortune and can look the
truth in the face. We are both wrecks of life, and the only hope
left us is to wait and die quietly in the desert island which is our
refuge. We are undone, rent and swept away; Death has laid his hand
upon us; we are fallen and shapeless rags after having passed through
the mills of an absurd society. For this reason I love you, because
you are my equal in misfortune; elective affinity unites us. Poor Lucy
was the work-girl enfeebled by sweating, weakened from her birth by
poverty. You were the girl of the people drawn from her home by the
attraction of the well-being of the privileged; seduced, not by love,
but by the caprices of the happy; the girl offered as a sacrifice to
the Minotaur whose remains were afterwards thrown on to the dunghill.
I love you, Sagrario; we are two fugitives from society, whose paths
must join; I am hated as dangerous, you are despised as an outcast;
misfortune has laid hold on us. Our bodies are weakened and we bear
the wounds of the conquered, but before death claims us, let us make
our lives sweet by love. Let us seek for roses as did poor Lucy."
He pressed the young woman's hands, who, bewildered by Gabriel's
words, knew not what to say, and wept softly. Upstairs, in the upper
storey of the Claverias, the Chapel-master played his harmonium.
Gabriel knew the music: it was Beethoven's last lament, the "Must it
be," that the great genius sang before his death with a melancholy
that made one shiver.
"I love you, Sagrario," continued Gabriel, "ever since I saw you
return to this house, bravely facing the odious curiosity of the
people around. I have spent weeks and months by the side of your
machine, seeing how industriously you worked. I have studied you and
read you. You are a sincere and simple creature; your mind has none
of the doublings and hidden corners of those complicated and tortuous
souls used to the artifices of civilisation. I guessed day by day, by
your gentle glance and the attention with which you listened to me,
your gratitude for the little I was able to do for you. I remembered
the dark period of your life, your slavery to the flesh; and finding
me always gentle with you, protecting you from your father's anger,
your gratitude has grown and grown, till to-day you love me, Sagrario.
You yourself have not realised it, you know not how to explain it, but
your being responds to mine like those chemical substances I spoke of.
That single and eternal love is a lying invention of the poets, of
which facts often make a mockery. One can love several people with
equal warmth: the indispensable thing is the affinity. You who
formerly loved a man to madness, what do you feel for me? Have I
deceived myself? You really love me?"
Sagrario continued weeping, with her head bent, as though she did
not dare to look at Luna. He reassured her gently: she must call
him Gabriel, speak to him as "thou." Were they not companions in
misfortune?
"I am ashamed," murmured the young woman. "So much happiness disturbs
me. Yes, I like you. No, I love you, Gabriel. I would never have
confessed it; I would have died sooner than reveal my secret. What am
I that anyone should love me? For many days I have not looked in the
glass, for I should weep at the remembrance of my lost youth. And
then my story--my terrible story. How could I imagine that you--or, I
should say, that thou, wouldst read my thoughts so clearly? See how
I tremble; the shock has not yet ceased, the surprise of finding my
secret discovered. A man like you to descend to me, ugly and sick for
ever. No, do not speak of the other man; I forgot him long ago. And am
I going to remember him now that you give me the charity of your love?
No, Gabriel, you are the greatest and best of men; you are like a god
to me."
They remained silent a long while with their hands clasped, looking
into the darkness of the murmuring garden. From above still sounded
the lament of the genius at his fading life.
Sagrario leant on Gabriel as though her strength were failing, and as
if terrified at so much happiness, she wished to take refuge in his
arms.
"Why have I known you so late!" she said in a low voice. "I should
have wished to love you in my youth, to be beautiful and healthy only
for you, to have the beauty and charm of a great lady to soften the
rest of your life. But my gratitude can offer you little, nothing but
ill-health; the seeds of death are in me, and slowly I shall fade
away. Gabriel, why did you set your heart on me?"
"Because you are an invalid, and unfortunate as I am. Our misery is
the loving affinity. Besides, I have never loved like most men. In my
travels I have seen the most beautiful women in the world without the
slightest glow of desire. I am not of an amorous temperament. From my
adventures in Paris when I was young I always returned with a feeling
of disgust. My love for the unfortunate has mastered me to the point
of blunting my feelings. I am like a drunkard or a gambler, who,
obsessed by their passion, feel nothing before a woman. A studious
man, buried in his books, feels very little the calls of sex. My
passion is pity for the disinherited, and hatred of injustice
and inequality. It has so entirely absorbed me, enslaving all my
faculties, that I have never had time to think of love. The female
does not attract me, but I worship a woman when I see her sad and
unfortunate. Ugliness makes more impression on me than beauty, because
it speaks to me of social infamies, it shows me the bitterness of
injustice, it is the only wine which revives my strength. I loved Lucy
because she was unfortunate and dying. I love you, Sagrario, because
in your early youth you were a wanderer in life, one whom no one would
love. My love is for you, to brighten what remains to you of life."
Sagrario leant on Gabriel's breast.
"How good you are!" she sighed; "what a beautiful soul!"
"Yours is the same, poor Sagrario. Your life has been a snare. You
sold yourself through hunger and despair as do thousands of others;
you thought to find bread in the false pretences of love. Everything
is for the privileged of this world: the arms of the father, the sex
of the daughter, and when those arms are weakened, or the youthful
body loses its charms, they are thrown on one side and replaced. The
market is abundant; I love you for your misfortunes. Had I seen you
young and beautiful as in former times, I should not have felt the
slightest attraction. Beauty is a bar to sentiment. The Sagrario of
former times, with her dreams of being a great lady flattered by the
words of youthful lovers, brightly dressed like brilliant birds, would
never have thought of a vagabond aged by misery, ugly and sick. We
understand each other because we are unfortunate; misery allows us to
see into each other's souls; in full happiness we should never have
met."
"It is true," she murmured, leaning her head on Gabriel's shoulder. "I
love that misery which has allowed us to know, each other."
"You will be my companion," continued Luna, in a soft tone. "We will
pass our lives together till death breaks the chain. I will protect
you, although the protection of a sick and persecuted man is not worth
much."
He passed his arm round the woman, raising her head with his other
hand, fixing his eyes on those of Sagrario, which were shining in the
starlight bright with tears.
"We shall be two souls, two minds who cherish one another without
giving rein to passion, and with a purity such as no poets have
imagined. This night in which we have mutually confessed one to
another, in which our souls have been laid open to one another is our
wedding night; kiss me, companion of my life!"
And in the silence of the cloister they kissed each other noiselessly,
slowly, as though with their lips joined they were weeping over the
misery of their past, and the brevity of a love around which death was
circling. Above, the lament of Beethoven went on unfolding its sad
modulations, which floated through the cloister and round the sleeping
Cathedral.
Gabriel stood erect sustaining Sagrario, who seemed almost fainting
from the strength of her feelings; he looked up at the luminous space
with almost priestly gravity, and said, whispering close to the young
woman's ear:
"Our life will be like a deserted garden, where amid fallen trunks and
dead branches fresh foliage springs up. Companion, let us love one
another. Above our misery as pariahs let spring arise. It will be a
sad spring, without fruit, but it will have flowers. The sun shines
for those who are in the open, but for us, dear companion, it is very
far. But from the black depths of our well we will clasp each other,
raising our heads, and though his heat will not revive us, we will
adore him like a distant star."
CHAPTER X
In the beginning of July Gabriel began his nocturnal watch in the
Cathedral.
At nightfall he went down into the cloister, and at the Puerta del
Mollete, joined the other watchman, a sickly-looking man who coughed
as badly as Luna, and who never left off his cloak even in the height
of summer.
"Come along, we are going to lock up!" said the bell-ringer, rattling
his bunch of keys.
After the two men had entered the church, he locked the doors from
outside and walked away.
As the days were long, there still remained two hours of daylight
after the watchmen entered the Cathedral.
"All the church is ours, companion," said the other watchman.
And like a man used to the imposing appearance of the deserted church,
he settled himself comfortably in the sacristy as in his own house,
opening his supper basket on the chests, and spreading out his
eatables between candelabras and crucifixes.
Gabriel wandered about the fane. After many nights of watching, the
impression produced when he first saw the immense church deserted and
locked up had not yet faded. His footsteps resounded on the pavement,
his strides shortened by the tombs of prelates and great men of former
days. The silence of the church was disturbed by the strange echoes
and mysterious rustlings; the first day Gabriel had often turned his
head in alarm, thinking he heard footsteps following him.
Outside the church the sun was still shining, the coloured wheel
of the rose window above the great doorway glowed like a luminous
flower-bed; below, among the pillars, the light seemed overcome by the
darkness; the bats began to descend, and with their wings made the
dust fall from the shafts in the vaulting. They fluttered round about
the pillars, circling as in a forest of stone; in their blind flight
they often struck the cords of the hanging lamps, or shook the old red
hats with dusty and ragged tassels that hung high above the cardinals'
tombs.
Gabriel made his rounds throughout the church. He shook the iron
railings in front of the altars to make sure they were securely
locked, pushed the doors of the Muzarabe Chapel, and that of the
Kings, threw a glance into the Chapter-house, and finally stopped
before the Virgin del Sagrario; through the grating he could see the
lamps burning, and above, the image covered with jewels. After this
examination he went in search of his comrade, and they both sat down
in the crossways, either on the steps of the choir or of the high
altar; from there you could take in the whole of the church at one
glance.
The two watchmen began by carefully putting on their caps.
"They will probably have ordered you," said Gabriel's companion, "to
respect the Church, and that if you want to smoke a cigar you must go
up to the gallery of the Locum; and that if you wish to sup you must
go into the sacristy. They said the same to me when I first entered
into the service of the Church. But these are only the words of people
who sleep comfortably and quietly in their own houses. Here the
principal thing is to keep good watch, and beyond that, each one may
do as seems best to him to pass the night. God and the saints sleep
during these hours; they really must want some rest after spending the
whole day listening to prayers and hymns, receiving incense, and being
scorched by wax tapers close to their faces. We watch their sleep,
and, the devil! we are surely not wanting in respect if we allow
ourselves a little liberty. Come along, companion, it is getting dark;
let us club our suppers."
So the two watchmen supped in the crossways, spreading the contents of
their baskets on the marble steps.
Gabriel's comrade carried at his belt, as his only arm, an ancient
pistol, a present to the Obreria which had never been fired; to Luna,
Silver Stick pointed out a carbine, a legacy to the sacristy from the
ex-civil guard, in memory of his years of service. Gabriel made a
gesture of repulsion. It was all right standing there, he would get it
if it were wanted; so he left it in the corner with some packets of
cartridges, mouldy from the damp and covered with cobwebs.
As the night fell the colours from the windows above became obscured,
and in the darkness of the naves all the lights from the various lamps
began to shine like wavering stars; all the outlines of the church
were lost, and Gabriel fancied himself once more sleeping at night on
the open ground. It was only when he went the rounds with his lantern
in his hand that the outlines of the Cathedral rose out of the shadow
ever vaster and more mysterious. The pillars seemed to start out to
meet him, rising suddenly up to the roof with the flashes of light
from the lantern, the squares in the tiled floor seemed to dance with
every swing of the light, and every now and then Gabriel could feel on
his head the flutter of passing wings. To the screams of the bats
were added the hooting of other frightened birds, who in their flight
knocked against the pilasters; they were the owls who came down
attracted by the oil in the lamps, and who nearly extinguished them
with the sweep of their wings.
Every half-hour the silence was disturbed by the sound of rusty wheels
and springs, and then a bell with a silvery tone struck; these were
the gilded giants of the Puerta del Reloj, marking the passing of time
with their hammers.
Gabriel's companion complained greatly of the innovations introduced
by the cardinal for the annoyance of poor folks. In former times he
and his old comrade, once they were locked up, could sleep as they
pleased without fear of being reproved by the Chapter. But His
Eminence, who was always endeavouring to find some means of annoying
his neighbour, had placed in different parts of the Cathedral certain
little clocks brought from abroad, and now they had to go every
half-hour, open them and record their visit. The following day they
were examined by Silver Stick, and if any carelessness was discovered
he imposed a fine.
"An invention of the demon not to allow us to sleep, comrade. But
all the same we might manage a nap if we help one another. While one
sleeps a bit the other must undertake to check these cursed machines.
No carelessness, eh, fresh man? The pay is short and hunger great, and
we cannot afford fines."
Gabriel, always good-natured, was the one who made most rounds,
looking scrupulously after the markers, while his companion, the Señor
Fidel, rested quietly, praising his generosity. They had given him a
good companion; he liked him much better than the old one, with his
imperious manners of an old guard, always squabbling as to whose turn
it was to get up and make the round.
The poor man coughed as much as Gabriel; his catarrhs disturbed
the silence, echoing through the naves till it seemed like several
monstrous dogs barking.
"I do not know how many years I have had this hoarseness," said the
old man; "it is a present from the Cathedral. The doctors say I ought
to give up this employment; but what I say is--who is to support me?
You, companion, have begun at the best time. There is a coolness here
that all those would envy who are generally perspiring about this time
in the cafes of the Zocodover. We are still in summer, but you can
imagine the damp which penetrates everything; and you should see what
it is in winter! we must really dress up as maskers, covered with
caps, shawls and cloaks. They have the charity to leave us a little
fire in the sacristy, but many mornings they find us almost frozen.
Those of the Chapter call the choir 'kill canon,' and if those
gentlemen complain of one hour's stay in this ice-house, having eaten
well and drunk better, you may just fancy what it is for us. You have
had the good luck to begin in summer, but when the winter comes on you
will just have a good time of it!"
But even though it was the best part of the year, Gabriel coughed
much, his illness increasing from the dampness of the Cathedral.
On moonlight nights the church was strangely transfigured, and Gabriel
remembered sundry operatic effects he had seen during his travels.
The white tracery of the windows stood out against the blackness with
milky whiteness, splashes of light glided down the pilasters, some
even from the vaulting. These mocking spectres moved slowly along the
pavement, mounting the opposite pillars and losing themselves in the
darkness; those rays of cold and diffused light made the shadows seem
even darker as they brought out of the darkness here a chapel, beyond,
a sepulchral stone or the outline of some pilaster; and the great
Christ, who crowned the railings of the high altar, glowed against its
background of shadow with the brilliancy of its old gilding, like some
miraculous apparition floating in space in a halo of light.
When the cough would not allow the old watchman to sleep, he told
Gabriel of the many years he had carried on this nocturnal life in the
Primacy. The office had some resemblance to that of a sexton, for he
spent most of it among the dead in the silence of desertion, never
seeing anyone till his watch was finished. He had ended by becoming
used to it, and it had cured him of many fears he had in his youth.
Before, he had believed in the resurrection of the dead, in souls, and
the apparitions of saints. But now he laughed at all that. Whole years
he had carried on this night work in the Cathedral, and if he heard
anything it was only the scampering of rats, who respected neither
saints nor altars, for after all they were only wood!
He only feared men of flesh and blood, those robbers who in former
times had more than once entered the Cathedral, obliging the Chapter
to establish this night vigilance.
He entertained Gabriel with the account of all the attempts at robbery
which had happened during the century. In the Cathedral was enough
wealth to tempt a saint, Madrid was near, and he much feared the
"swell" thieves. But thieves would have to be clever and fortunate
to get the better of them. Silver Stick, the bell-ringer, and the
sacristan made their nightly inspection before locking up, Mariano
then taking the keys away with him to the belfry. No one could
think of breaking the locks and bolts, for they were of antique and
extremely strong work; besides, they two were there inside to give the
alarm on hearing the slightest noise. Formerly, by the help of the
dog, the watching had been more complete, for the animal was so alert
that no passer-by could approach the doors for an instant without his
barking. After its death the Señor Obrero spoke month after month of
getting another, but he had never fulfilled his promise. But all the
same, without the dog, they two were there and that meant something,
eh! He with his old pistol which had never been fired, and Gabriel
with his carbine, which was still standing in the corner where his
predecessor had left it. He plumed himself upon the fear he and his
companion would excite, but, called back to reality by Luna's smile,
he added:
"At any rate, in case of emergency we can reckon on the bell that
summons the canons; the rope hangs down in the choir, and we have
only to ring it. And just imagine what would happen if it rang in
the silence of the night! All Toledo would be on foot, knowing that
something serious was taking place in the Cathedral. With this and
those cursed markers that will not let one sleep, one might say that
even the king was not so well guarded at night as this church."
In the morning when the watch was ended, Gabriel would return to his
house, perished with cold, longing to stretch himself in bed. He would
find Sagrario in the kitchen, warming the milk he was to drink before
turning in. His gentle companion still called him "uncle" in the
presence of the household, and only used the loving "thou" when they
were alone. When he was in bed she would bring the steaming milk,
making him drink it with maternal caresses, smoothing the pillows;
after which she would carefully close the windows and doors so that no
ray of light should disturb him.
"Those nights in the Cathedral!" said she complainingly. "You are
killing yourself, Gabriel. It is not fit for you. My father says the
same. As it is certain there is nothing beyond death, and that we
shall not see one another, do try and prolong your life by being
careful. Now that we know each other, and are so happy, it would be so
sad to lose you!"
Gabriel reassured her. This would not go on beyond the summer; after
that they would give him something better. She must not be so sad;
such a little thing did not kill one. He would cough just as much
living in the Claverias as passing the night in the Cathedral.
After dinner he would go into the cloister, completely rested by his
morning's sleep. It was the only time of the day in which he could see
his friends; they either came to find him, or he went in search of
them, going to the shoemaker's house or up into the tower.
They greeted him respectfully, listening to his words with the same
attention as before; but he noted in them a certain air of proud
independence, and at the same time of pity, as if, although grateful
to him for having transmitted his ideas to them, they pitied him for
his gentle character, so inimical to all violence.
"Those birds," said Gabriel to his brother, "are flying on their own
account. They do not want me, and wish to be alone."
Wooden Staff shook his head sadly.
"God grant, Gabriel, that some day you may not repent of having spoken
to them of things they cannot understand! They have greatly changed,
and no one can endure our nephew, the Perrero. He says that if he is
not allowed to kill bulls in order to get rich, he will kill men to
get out of his poverty; that he has as much right to enjoyment as any
gentleman, and that all the rich are robbers. Really, brother, by the
Holy Virgin! have you taught them such horrible things?"
"Let them alone," said Gabriel, laughing; "they have not yet digested
their new ideas, and are vomiting follies. All this will pass, for
they are good souls."
The only thing that vexed him was that Mariano withdrew from him. He
fled his company as if he were afraid. He seemed to fear that Gabriel
would read his thoughts, with that irresistible power that from
boyhood he had held over him.
"Mariano, what is the matter with you?" said he, seeing him pass
through the cloisters.
"Much that is out of gear," answered his surly friend.
"I know it, man--I know it; but you seem to avoid me. Why is this?"
"Avoid you--I?--never. You know I always love you. When you come to
my house you see how we all welcome you. We owe you a great deal; you
have opened our eyes and we are no longer brute beasts. But I am tired
of knowing so much and being so poor, and my companions are thinking
the same. We do not care to have our heads full and our bellies
empty."
"Well, then, what remedy have we? We have all been born too-soon.
Others will come after us, finding things better arranged. What can
you do to right the present, when there are millions of workers in
the world more wretched than yourselves, who have not succeeded in
finding a better way out even at the cost of their blood, fighting
against authority?"
"What shall we do?" grumbled his companion. "That is what we shall
see, and you will see also. We are not such fools as you think. You
are very clever, Gabriel, and we respect you as our master, for
everything you say is true. But it seems to us that when you have to
do with things--practical things: you understand me? when one must
call bread, bread, and wine, wine: am I explaining myself?--you are,
begging your pardon, rather soft, like all those who live much in
books. We are ignorant, but we see more clearly."
He walked away from Gabriel, who-was quite unable to understand the
true bearing of this aberration among his disciples. Several times
when he went up to the tower to spend a few moments with his friends,
they would suddenly cease their conversation, looking anxiously at him
as though they feared he might have overheard their words.
It was several days since Don Martin had been in the cloister. Gabriel
knew through Silver Stick that the chaplain's mother had died, and a
week afterwards he saw him one evening in the Claverias. His eyes were
bloodshot, his cheeks thin, and his skin drawn as though he had wept
much.
"I come to take farewell, Gabriel. I have spent a month of sorrow and
sleeplessness nursing my mother. The poor thing is dead; she was
far from young, and I expected this ending, but however strong and
resigned one may be, these blows must be felt. Now the poor old woman
is gone I am free; she was the only tie that bound me to this Church,
in which I no longer believe. Its dogma is absurd and puerile, its
history a tissue of crimes and violence. Why should I lie like others,
feigning a faith I do not feel? To-day I have been to the palace to
tell them they may dispose of my seven duros monthly and my chaplaincy
of nuns. I am going away. I wish not only to fly the Church, I wish
to get out of her atmosphere; and a renegade priest could not live in
Toledo. You see this masquerade? I wear it to-day for the last time;
to-morrow I shall taste the first joy of my life, tearing this shroud
into shreds, such small shreds that no one will be able to use them.
I shall be a man. I will go far away, as far as I can. I wish to know
what the world is like as I have to live in it. I know no one, I shall
have no assistance. You are the most extraordinary man I have ever
known, and here you are hidden in this dungeon by your own free will,
concealed in a Church which to your views must be empty. I am not
afraid of poverty. When one has been God's representative on six reals
a day one can look hunger in the face. I will be a workman; I will dig
the earth, if necessary. I will get employment on something--but I
shall be a free man."
As the two friends walked up and down the cloister Gabriel counselled
Don Martin in determining the place to which he should direct his
steps, as his thoughts wavered between Paris and the American
republics, where emigration was most needed.
As the evening fell, Gabriel took leave of his disciple; his
fellow-watchman was waiting for him in the cloister ready for
locking-up time.
"Probably we shall never meet again," said the chaplain sadly. "You
will end your days here, in the house of a God in whom you do not
believe."
"Yes, I shall die here," said Gabriel, smiling. "He and I hate one
another, but all the same it seems as if He could not do without me.
If He goes out into the streets it is I who guide His steps, and again
at night, it is I who guard His wealth. Good-bye, and good-luck,
Martin. Be a man without weakness. Truth is well worth poverty."
The disappearance of the chaplain of nuns was effected without
scandal. Don Antolin and the other priests thought the young man
had moved to Madrid through ambition, to help swell the number of
place-hunting clerics. Gabriel was the only one who knew Don Martin's
real intentions. Besides, an astonishing piece of news, that fell on
the Cathedral like a thunderbolt, soon caused the young priest to be
forgotten, throwing all the gentlemen of the choir, all the smaller
folk in the sacristies, and the whole population of the upper cloister
into the greatest commotion.
The quarrels between the Archbishop and his Chapter had ended,
everything that had been done by the cardinal was approved of in Rome,
and His Eminence fairly roared with joy in his palace, with the fiery
impetuosity of his usual feelings.
As the canons entered the choir they walked with bent heads, looking
ashamed and frightened.
"Well, have you heard?" they said to one another as they disrobed in
the sacristy.
In a great hurry, with flying cloaks they all left the church, every
man his own way, without forming groups or circles, each one anxious
to free himself from all responsibility, and to appear free from all
complicity with the prelate's enemies.
The Tato laughed with joy seeing the sudden dispersion, and the
agitation of the gentlemen of the choir.
"Run! run I The old gossip will give you something to think about!"
The same preparations were made every year in the middle of August for
the festival of the Virgin del Sagrario. In the Cathedral they spoke
of this year's festival with mystery and anxiety, as though they were
expecting great events. His Eminence, who had not been into the church
for many months, in order not to meet his Chapter, would preside in
the choir on the feast day. He wished to see his enemies face to
face, crushed by his triumph, and to enjoy their looks of confused
submission. And accordingly, as the festival drew near many of the
canons trembled, thinking of the harsh and proud look the angry
prelate would fix on them.
Gabriel paid very little attention to these anxieties of the clerical
world; he led a strange life, sleeping the greater part of the
day, preparing himself for the fatiguing night watch, which he now
undertook alone. The Señor Fidel had fallen ill, and the Obreria to
avoid expense, and not to deprive the old man of his wretched pay, had
not engaged a new companion for him. He spent the nights alone in the
Cathedral as calmly as if he had been in the upper cloister, quite
accustomed to the grave-like silence. In order not to sleep, he read
by the light of his lantern any books he could get in the Claverias,
uninteresting treatises on history in which Providence played the
principal _rôle_; lives of the saints, amusing from their simple
credulity, bordering on the grotesque; and that family Quixote of the
Lunas', that he had so often spelt out when little, and in which he
still found some of the freshness of his childhood.
The Virgin's feast day arrived; the festival was the same as in
other years. The famous image had been brought out of its chapel and
occupied on its foot-board a place on the high altar. They brought out
her mantle kept in the Treasury and all her jewels, that scintillated
kissed by the innumerable lights, glittering and flashing with endless
brilliancy.
Before the commencement of the festival, the inquisitive of the
Cathedral, pretending absent-mindedness, strolled between the choir
and the Puerta del Perdon. The canons in their red robes assembled
near the staircase lighted by the famous "stone of light." His
Eminence would come down this way, and the canons grouped themselves,
timidly whispering, asking each other what was going to happen.
The cross-bearer appeared on the first step of the staircase, holding
his emblem horizontally with both hands so that it should pass under
the arch of the doorway. After, between servitors, and followed by the
mulberry-coloured robe of the auxiliary bishop, advanced the cardinal,
dressed in his purple, which quenched the reddish-violet of the
canons.
The Chapter were drawn up in two rows with bowed heads, offering
homage to their prince. What a glance was Don Sebastian's! The canons,
bending, thought they felt it on the nape of their necks with the
coldness of steel. He held his enormous body erect in its flowing
purple with a gallant pride, as if at the moment he felt himself
entirely cured of the malady which was tearing his entrails, and of
the weak heart which oppressed his lungs. His fat face quivered with
delight, and the folds of his double chin spread out over his lace
rochet. His cardinal's biretta seemed to swell with pride on his
little, white and shining head. Never was a crown worn with such pride
as that red cap.
He stretched out his hand, gloved in purple, on which shone the
episcopal emerald ring, with such an imperious gesture that one after
another of the canons found themselves forced to kiss it. It was the
submission of churchmen, accustomed from their seminary to an apparent
humility which covered rancours and hatreds of an intensity unknown in
ordinary life. The Cardinal guessed their disinclination, and gloated
over his triumph.
"You have no idea what our hatreds are," he had often said, to his
friend, the gardener's widow. "In ordinary life few men die of
ill-humour; he who is annoyed gives vent to it, and recovers his
equanimity. But in the Church you may count by the hundred men who
die in a fit of rage, because they are unable to revenge themselves;
because discipline closes their mouths and bows their heads. Having no
families, and no anxieties about earning their bread, most of us only
live for self-love and pride."
The Chapter formed their procession accompanied by His Eminence. The
scarlet Perrero headed the march, then came the black vergers and
Silver Stick, making the tiles of the pavement ring with the blows of
their staffs. Behind came the archiepiscopal cross and the canons in
pairs, and finally the prelate with his scarlet train spread out at
full length, held up by two pages. Don Sebastian blessed to the right
and to the left, looking with his penetrating eyes at the faithful who
bowed their heads.
His imperious character and the joy of his triumph made his glance
flash. What a splendid victory! The Church was his home, and he
returned to it after a long absence with all the majesty of an
absolute master, who could crush the evil-speaking slaves who dared to
attack him.
The greatness of the Church seemed to him at that moment more glorious
than ever. What an admirable institution! The strong man who arrived
at the top was an omnipotent god to be feared. Nothing of pernicious
and revolutionary equality. Dogma exalted the humility of all before
God; but when you came to examples, flocks were always spoken of, and
shepherds to direct them. He was that shepherd because the Omnipotent
has so ordered it. Woe to whoever attempted to dethrone him!
In the choir his delighted pride tasted an even greater satisfaction.
He was seated on the throne of the archbishops of Toledo, that seat
which had been the star of his youth, the remembrance of which had
disturbed him in his Episcopacy, when the mitre had travelled through
the provinces, waiting for the hour to rise to the Primacy. He stood
erect under the artistic canopy of the Mount Tabor, at the top of four
steps, so that all in the choir could see him and recognise that he
was their prince. The heads of the dignitaries seated at his side were
thus on a level with his feet. He could trample on them like vipers
should they dare to rise again, striking at his most intimate
affections.
Fired by the appreciation of his own grandeur and triumph, he was the
first to rise, or to sit down; as is directed in the rubric of the
services, he joined his voice to those in the choir, astonishing them
all by the harsh energy of his singing; the Latin words rolled from
his mouth like blows upon those hated people, and his eyes passed with
a threatening expression over the double row of bent heads.
He was a fortunate man, who had risen from place to place, but he
never felt a satisfaction so deep, so complete as at that moment. He
himself was startled at his own delight, at that orgy of pride that
had extinguished his chronic ailments; it seemed to him as though he
were spending in a few hours the stores of enjoyment of his whole
life.
As the mass was ending, the singers and lower people in the choir, who
were the only ones who dared to look at him, were alarmed, seeing him
suddenly grow pale, rise with his face discomposed, pressing his hands
to his breast. The canons noticing it, rushed towards him, forming a
crowded mass of red vestments in front of his throne. His Eminence was
suffocating, fighting against that circle of hands who instinctively
clutched at him.
"Air!" he moaned, "air! Get out from before me with a thousand curses!
Take me home!"
Even in the midst of his agony, he recovered his majestic gesture
and his old soldiering oaths to drive away his enemies. He was
suffocating, but he would not allow the canons to see it: he guessed
the delight many of them must feel beneath their compassionate manner.
Let no one touch him! He could manage for himself! So leaning on two
faithful servants, he began his march, gasping, towards the episcopal
staircase, followed by great part of the Chapter.
The religious function ended hurriedly. The Virgin Would forgive it,
she should have a better solemnity next year; and all the authorities
and invited guests left their seats to run in search of news to the
archiepiscopal palace.
When Gabriel woke, past mid-day, every one in the upper cloister was
talking of His Eminence's health. His brother inquired of the Aunt
Tomasa who had just come from the palace.
"He is dying, my sons," said the gardener's widow; "he cannot escape
from it. Doña Visitacion signalled it to me from afar, weeping, poor
thing! He cannot be put to bed, for his chest is heaving like a
broken bellows. The doctors say he will not last till night. What a
misfortune! And on a day like this!"
The agony of the ecclesiastical prince was received in funereal
silence. The women of the Claverias went backwards and forwards with
news from the palace to the upper cloister; the children were shut up
in the houses, frightened by their mothers' threats if they attempted
to play in the galleries.
The Chapel-master, who was generally indifferent to events in the
Cathedral, went nevertheless to inquire of His Eminence's condition.
He had a plan which he quickly explained to the family during dinner.
The funeral of a cardinal deserved the execution of a celebrated mass,
with a full orchestra recruited in Madrid. He had already cast his
eyes on the famous Requiem of Mozart; that was the only reason for
which he was interested in the prelate's fate.
Gabriel, looking at his companion, felt the gentle selfishness that a
living man feels when a great man dies.
"So the great fall, Sagrario, and we, the sickly and wretched, have
still some life before us."
At the hour of locking up the church he went down to begin his watch.
The bell-ringer was waiting for him with the keys.
"How about the Cardinal?" inquired Gabriel.
"He will certainly die to-day, if he is not already dead."
And afterwards he added:
"You will have a great illumination to-night, Gabriel. The Virgin is
on the high altar till to-morrow morning, surrounded by wax tapers."
He was silent for a moment, as if undecided about Something.
"Possibly," he added, "I may come down and keep you company a little.
You must be dull alone; expect me."
When Gabriel was locked into the church, he caught sight of the high
altar, resplendent with lights. He made his usual trial of doors and
railings; visited the Locum and the large lavoratories, where once
some thieves had concealed themselves, and after he was quite certain
that there was no human being in the church except himself, he seated
himself in the crossways with his cloak round him, and his basket of
supper.
He sat there a long while, looking through the railings at the Virgin
del Sagrario. Born in the Cathedral and brought up as a child by his
mother, who knelt with him before the image, he had always admired it
as the most perfect type of beauty. Now he criticised it coldly with
his artistic eye. She was ugly and grotesque like all the very rich
images; sumptuous and wealthy piety had decked her out with their
treasures. There was nothing about her of the idealism of the Virgin
painted by Christian artists; she was much more like an Indian idol
covered with jewels. The embroidered dress and mantle stood out with
the stiffness of stone folds, and over the head-dress sparkled a crown
as large as a helmet, diminishing the face. Gold, pearls and diamonds
shone on every part of her vestments, and she wore pendants and
bracelets of immense value.
Gabriel smiled at the religious simplicity which dressed heavenly
heroes according to the fashions of the earth.
The faint twilight glimmering through the windows and the wavering
flame of the tapers animated the face of the image as if she were
speaking.
"Even as I am!" said Gabriel to himself. "If a holy person were in my
place he would think the Virgin was laughing one moment and crying the
next; with a little imagination and faith, behold here is a miracle!
These flickerings of light have been an inexhaustible mine for the
priests, even the Venus' of former times changed the expression of
their faces at the pleasure of the faithful, just like a Christian
image."
He thought a long time about miracles, the invention of all religions,
and as old as human ignorance and credulity.
It was now quite dark. After supping frugally, Gabriel opened a book
that he carried in his basket and began to read by the light of his
lantern. Now and then he raised his head, disturbed by the fluttering
and screams of the night birds, attracted by the extraordinary
brilliancy of the countless wax tapers. The time passed slowly in the
darkness; the silvery sound of the warriors' hammers re-echoed through
the vaulting. Luna got up and visited the markers to record his visit.
Ten o'clock had struck when Gabriel heard the wicket of the Puerta de
Santa Catalina open quickly but without violence, as though a key had
been used. Luna remembered the bell-ringer's offer, but soon he heard
the sound of many steps magnified by the echo as if a whole host were
advancing.
"Who goes there?" shouted Gabriel, rather alarmed.
"It is us, man," answered from the darkness the husky voice of
Mariano. "Did I not tell you we should come down?"
As they came into the crossways, the light from the high altar fell
full upon them, and Gabriel saw the Tato and the shoemaker with the
bell-ringer. They wished to keep Luna company part of the night, so
that his watch should not be so wearisome, and they produced a bottle
of brandy, of which they offered him some.
"You know I do not drink," said Gabriel. "I have never cared for
alcohol; wine sometimes, and very little of that. But where are you
all going to, dressed out as for a feast day?"
The Tato answered hurriedly. Silver Stick locked up the Claverias at
nine, and they wished to spend the night out of bounds. They had been
some time at a cafe in the Zocodover, feasting like lords. They
had had all sorts of adventures, that was a night quite out of the
ordinary way, more especially as all the town was in commotion about
the Archbishop.
"How is he going on?" inquired Gabriel.
"I believe he died half-an-hour ago," said the bell-ringer. "When
I went up to my house for the keys, a doctor was coming out of the
palace and he told one of the canons. But let us sit down."
They all sat down, in their embroidered caps, on the steps of the high
altar railing. Mariano put his bunch of keys on the ground, a mass of
iron as big as a club. There were keys of every age, some of iron,
very large, rough and rusty, showing the old hammer marks and with
coats of arms near the bows; others, more modern were clean and bright
as silver, but they were all very large and heavy, with powerful
indented teeth, proportionate to the size of the edifice.
The three friends seemed extraordinarily happy, with a nervous gaiety
which made them catch hold of each other and laugh. They cast sidelong
looks at the Virgin and then looked at each other, with a mysterious
gesture that Gabriel was quite unable to understand.
"You have all drunk a good deal, is it not so?" said Luna. "You do
wrong, for you know that drink is the degradation of the poor."
"A day is a day, uncle," said the Perrero; "it delights us that the
great ones are dying. You see, I esteem His Eminence highly, but let
him go to the devil! The only satisfaction a poor man has is to see
that the end comes also to the rich."
"Drink," said the bell-ringer, offering him the bottle. "It is a
pleasure to find ourselves here, well and happy, while to-morrow His
Eminence will find himself between four boards; we shall have to ring
the little bell all day!"
The Tato drank, passing the bottle to the shoemaker, who held it a
long time glued to his gullet. Of the three he seemed the most tipsy;
his eyes were bloodshot, he stared stonily on every side and remained
silent, he only gave a forced laugh when anyone spoke to him, as if
his thoughts were very, very far off.
On the other hand, the bell-ringer was far more loquacious than usual.
He spoke of the cardinal's fortune, at the wealth that would fall to
Doña Visitacion, of the joy many of the Chapter must feel that night.
He interrupted himself to take a pull at the brandy bottle, passing it
afterwards to his companions. The smell of the alcohol spread through
that atmosphere impregnated with incense and the smoke of wax tapers.
More than an hour passed in this way. Mariano had stopped the
conversation several times as if he had something serious to say and
was vacillating, wanting courage.
"Gabriel, time is passing and we have much to do and to talk about.
It is a little past eleven, but we have still several hours to do the
thing well."
"What do you mean to say?" asked Luna, surprised.
"Few words--in a nut-shell. It concerns your becoming rich and us
also; we intend to get out of this poverty. You have noticed for
some time that we have avoided you, that we preferred talking among
ourselves to the pleasure of listening to you. We all know that you
are very learned, but as far as things of this life go you are not
worth a farthing. We have learnt a great deal from you, but that does
not get us out of our poverty. We have spent months thinking how to
make a lucky stroke. These revolutions of which you speak seem to us
very far off; our grandchildren may see them, but we never shall. It
is all right for clever people to look to the future, but ignorant
people like us look to the present. We have employed our time
discussing all sorts of schemes, to kidnap Don Sebastian and require
a million of ransom, to break into the palace one night, and I don't
know what besides! All wild ideas started by your nephew. But this
morning in my house, while we were lamenting our poverty, we suddenly
saw our salvation close at hand. You as the sole guardian of the
Cathedral. The Virgin on the high altar, with the jewels that are
locked up in the Treasury all the rest of the year, and I with the
keys in my power. The easiest thing in the world. Let us clean out the
Virgin and take the road to Madrid, where we shall arrive at dawn; the
Tato knows a lot of people there among cloak stealers. We will hide
ourselves there for a little while, and then you, who know the world,
will guide us. We will go to America, sell the stones, and we shall be
rich. Get up, Gabriel! We are going to strip the idol, as you say."
"But this is a robbery that you are proposing!" exclaimed Luna,
alarmed.
"A robbery?" said the bell-ringer. "Call it so, if you like--and, what
then? Are you afraid of it? More has been robbed from us, who were
born with the right to a share of the world, but however much we look
round we cannot find a vacant place. Besides, what harm do we do to
anybody? These jewels are of no use to the bit of wood they cover, it
does not eat, it does not feel the cold in winter, and we are poor
miserable creatures. You yourself have said it, Gabriel, seeing our
poverty. Our children die of hunger on their mother's knees, while
these idols are covered with wealth, come along, Gabriel, do not let
us lose any more time."
"Come along, uncle," said the Tato, "have a little courage. You must
admit we ignorant people know how to manage things when it comes to
the point."
Gabriel was not listening to them; surprise had made him fall into a
reverie of self-examination. He thought--terrified of the great error
he had committed--he saw an immense gulf opening between himself and
those he had believed to be his disciples. He remembered his brother's
words. Ah, the good sense of the simpleminded! He, with all his
reading, had never foreseen the danger of teaching these ignorant
people in a few months what required a whole life of thought and
study. What happened to people stirred up by revolution was happening
here on a small scale. The most noble thoughts become corrupted
passing through the sieve of vulgarity; the most generous aspirations
are poisoned by the dregs of poverty.
He had sown the revolutionary seed in these outcasts of the Church,
drowsing in the atmosphere of two centuries ago. He had thought to
help on the revolution of the future by forming men, but on awaking
from his dreams he found only common criminals. What a terrible
mistake! His ideas had only tended to destruction. In removing from
the dulled brains the prejudices of ignorance, and the superstitions
of the slave, he had only succeeded in making them daring for evil.
Selfishness was the only passion vibrating in them. They had only
learnt that they were wretched and ought not to be so. The fate of
their companions in misfortune, of the greater part of humanity,
wretched and sad, had no interest for them. If they could get out of
their present state, bettering themselves in whatever way they could,
they cared very little if the world went on just as it did before;
that tears, and pain and hunger should reign below, in order to ensure
the comfort of those above. He had sown his thoughts in them hoping
to accelerate the harvest, but like all those forced and artificial
cultivations, that grow with astonishing rapidity only to give rotten
fruit, the result of his propaganda was moral corruption. Men in the
end, like all of them! The human wild beast, seeking his own welfare
at the cost of his fellow, perpetuating the disorders of pain for the
majority, as long as he can enjoy plenty during the few years of his
life. Ah! Where could he meet with that superior being, ennobled by
the worship of reason, doing good without hope of reward, sacrificing
everything for human solidarity, that man-God who would glorify the
future!
"Come along, Gabriel," continued the bell-ringer. "Do not let us lose
time it is only a few minutes' work; and then--flight!"
"No," said Luna firmly, coming out of his reverie, "you shall not do
this; you ought not to do it. It is a robbery you suggest to me, and
my pain is great, seeing that you reckoned on me; others rob from
fatal instinct or from corruption of soul, you have come to it because
I tried to enlighten you, because I tried to open your minds to the
truth. Oh! it is horrible, most horrible!"
"What is the use of all these objections, Gabriel? Is it not a bit of
wood? Whom do we harm by taking its jewels? Do not the rich rob, and
everyone who possesses anything? Why should we not imitate them?"
"For this very reason, because what you propose doing is a suggestion
of evil, because it perpetuates once more that system of violence and
disorder which is the root of all misery. Why do you hate the rich,
if what they do in sweating the poor is just the same as what you are
doing in taking possession of a thing for yourselves--understand me
well--for yourselves--and not for all. The robbery does not scare me,
for I do not believe in ownership nor in the sanctity of things, but
for this very reason I detest this appropriation to yourselves and
I oppose it. Why do you wish to possess all this? You say it is to
remedy your poverty. That is not true. It is to be rich, to enter into
the privileged group, to be three individual men of that detested
minority which desires to enjoy prosperity by enslaving humanity. If
all the poor of Toledo were now shouting outside the doors of the
Cathedral, rebellious and emboldened, I would open the way for them, I
would point out those jewels that you covet, and I would say, 'Possess
yourselves of those, they are so many drops of sweat and blood wrung
from your ancestors; they represent the servile work on the land of
the lords, the brutal plundering of the king's cavaliers, so that
magnates and kings may cover with jewels those idols which can open to
them the gates of heaven. These things do not belong to you because
you happen to be the most daring; they belong to all, as do all the
riches of the earth. For men to lay their hands on everything existing
in the world would be a holy work, the redeeming revolution of the
future. To possess yourselves of some portion of what by moral right
is not yours, would only be for you a crime against the laws of the
land, for me it would be a crime against the disinherited, the only
masters of the existing----"
"Silence, Gabriel," said the bell-ringer harshly; "if I let you, you
would go on talking till dawn. I do not understand you, nor do I wish
to. We came to do you a good turn, and you treat us to a sermon. We
wish to see you as rich as ourselves, and you answer us by talking of
others, of a lot of people that you don't know, of that humanity who
never gave you a scrap of bread when you wandered like a dog. I must
treat you as I did in our youth when we were campaigning. I have
always loved you and I admire your talents, but we must really treat
you like a child. Come along, Gabriel! Hold your tongue, and follow
us! We will lead you to happiness! Forward, companions!" The Tato
and the shoemaker stood up, walking towards the railings of the high
altar, the Tato seized one of its gates, and half opened it.
"No!" shouted Gabriel with energy. "Stop! Mariano, you do not know
what you are doing. You believe your happiness will be accomplished
when you have possessed yourselves of those jewels. But afterwards?
Your families remain here. Tato, think of your mother. Mariano, you
and the shoemaker have wives--you have children."
"Bah!" said the bell-ringer. "They will come and join us when we are
in safety far away. Money can do everything--the thing is to get it."
"And your children? Shall they be told their fathers were thieves!"
"Bah! they will be rich in other countries. Their history will not be
worse than that of other rich men's sons."
Gabriel understood the fierce determination that animated those men.
His endeavours to restrain them were useless. Mariano seized him,
seeing he was trying to push between them and the altar.
"Stand aside, little one," he said. "You are no use for anything. Let
us alone. Are you afraid of the Virgin? Undeceive yourself, even if we
carry off all she has, she will work no miracle."
Gabriel attempted one final effort.
"You shall do nothing. If you pass the railings, if you approach the
high altar, I will ring the call bell, and before ten minutes all
Toledo will be at the gates."
And opening the iron gate of the choir, he entered with a decision
that surprised the bell-ringer.
The shoemaker in tipsy silence was the only one who followed him.
"My children's bread!" he murmured in thickened speech. "They wish to
rob them! They wish to keep them poor!"
Mariano heard a metallic clatter, and saw the shoemaker raise his hand
armed with the bunch of keys which had fallen on the marble steps of
the railing, then he heard a strangely sonorous sound, as if something
hollow was being struck.
Gabriel gave one scream, and fell forwards on the ground; the
shoemaker continued striking his head.
"Do not give him any more--stop!"
These were the last words Gabriel heard confusedly, as he lay
stretched at the entrance of the choir; a warm and sticky liquid ran
over his eyes; afterwards--silence, darkness and--nothing!
His last thought was to tell himself he was dying--that probably he
was already dead, and that only the last vital struggle remained to
him, the last struggle of a life vanishing for ever.
Still he came back to life. He opened his eyes with difficulty and saw
the sun coming through a barred window, white walls, and a dirty and
darned cotton counterpane. After great wandering and stumbling, he
could collect his thoughts sufficiently to' form one idea: they had
placed the Cathedral on his temples--the huge church was hanging over
his head crushing him. What terrible pain! He could not move; he
seemed fastened by his head. His ears were buzzing, his tongue seemed
paralysed. His eyes could see feebly, as though the light were muddy
and a reddish haze enveloped all things.
He thought that a face with whiskers, surmounted by the hat of a civil
guard, bent over him, looking into his eyes. He moved his lips, but
no one heard a sound. No doubt it was the nightmare of his old
persecutions returning again.
They looked at him, seeing that he opened his eyes. A gentleman
dressed in black advanced towards his bed, followed by others who
carried papers under their arms. He guessed they were speaking to him
by the movement of their lips, but he could hear nothing. Was he in
another world? Were all his beliefs false, and after death did another
life exist the same as the one he had left?
He fell again into darkness and unconsciousness. A long time passed--a
very long time. Again he opened his eyes, but now the haze was denser,
it was not red but black.
Through this veil he thought he saw his brother's face, horrified
and drawn with fear; and the cocked hats of the civil guards, those
nightmares, surrounding poor Wooden Staff. Afterwards, more misty,
more uncertain, the face of his gentle companion, Sagrario, looking
at him with weeping eyes in terrible grief, caressing him with her
glance, fearless of the black, armed men who surrounded her.
This was his last look, uncertain and clouded, as though seen by
the light of a flying spark. Afterwards, eternal darkness and
annihilation.
As his eyes were closing for ever, a voice close to him said:
"We have followed your scent, rascal; you were well hidden, but we
have discovered you through one of your own. Now we shall see what
account you can give of the Virgin's jewels, thief!"
But the terrible enemy of God and social order could give no account
to man.
The following day he was carried out of the prison infirmary on men's
shoulders to disappear in the common grave.
The earth kept the secret of his death, that frowning Mother who
watches men's struggles impassively, knowing that all grandeur and
ambitions, all miseries and follies must rot in her breast, with no
other object than the fertilisation and renovation of life.
* * * * *
N.B.--The jewels were stolen from the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral in
1868.
[Illustration]
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