The Shadow of the Cathedral

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."