The Shadow of the Cathedral

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 caballeros29 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."

"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.