“You are mad, youngster!  Those travels have corrupted you, till I believe you are hardly a Spaniard!  Look you, that he denies what everybody knows, what is taught in all the schools!  And the Catholic kings; were they nothing?  You need no books to know that.  Go into the choir, and you will see on the lower stalls all the battles that those religious kings gained over the Moors with the help of God.  They conquered Granada and drove out the infidels who had held it seven centuries in barbarism.  Afterwards came the discovery of America.  Who could accomplish that?  No one but ourselves; and that good queen who pawned her jewels so that Columbus should accomplish his voyage.  You cannot deny all this, it seems to me.  And the Emperor Charles V.!  What have you to say about him?  Do you know any more extraordinary man!  He fought all the kings of Europe, and half the world was his, ’the sun never set on his dominions,’ we Spaniards were masters of the world; you cannot either deny this.  And still we have said nothing of Don Philip II., a king so wise and so astute that he made all the monarchs of Europe dance at his pleasure, as though he were pulling them with a string.  Everything was for the greater glory of Spain and the splendour of religion.  Of his victories and greatness we have said nothing; if his father was victorious at Pavia, he overturned his enemies at St. Quintin.  And what do you say about Lepanto?  Down in the sacristy we preserve the banners of the ship that Don Juan of Austria commanded.  You have seen them; one of them represents Jesus crucified, and they are so long, so very long, that when they were fastened to the triforium, the ends had to be turned up so that they should not trail on the ground.  So, was Lepanto nothing?  Come, Gabriel, you really must be mad to deny certain things.  If someone had to conquer the Moors lest they should possess themselves of all Europe and endanger the Christian faith, who did it?  The Spaniards.  When the Turks threatened to become masters of the seas, who went out to meet them?  Spain and her Don Juan.  And who went to discover a new world but the ships of Spain; and who sailed round the world but another Spaniard, Magallanes; and for everything great it has always been us, always us, in those days of religion and prosperity.  And what can we say about learning?  Those centuries produced Spain’s most famous men—­great poets and most eminent theologians; no one has equalled them since.  And to show that religion is the source of all greatness, the most illustrious writers have worn the religious habit.  I guess what will be your argument, that after such glorious kings came others less distinguished, and so the decadence commenced.  I know something about that also.  I have heard the librarian of the Cathedral and other people of great learning say this.  But this really means nothing.  These are the designs of God, by which He puts His people to the proof, just as He does with individuals, bringing them down to low estate, to raise them again to great honour, so that they may continue in the right way.  But we will not speak of this; if there has been a decadence we do not want to know anything about it.  We want the glorious past, the brilliant times of the Catholic kings, of Don Carlos and the two Philips, and it is on them that we fix our eyes when we talk of Spain returning to her good old times.”