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!"