“But those centuries, Don Antolin,” said Gabriel calmly, “were those of Spanish decadence; in them was begun our ruin.  I am not surprised at your anger; you repeat what you have been taught.  There are people here of the highest education who are not less irritated if you touch what they call their golden age.  The fault is in the education that is given in this country.  All history is a lie, and to know it so misrepresented it would be far better not to know it at all.  In the schools the past of the country is taught from the point of view of a savage, who appreciates a thing because it shines and not because of its worth or utility.  Spain was great, and was on the high road to become the first nation in the world, by solid and positive merits that the hazards of war or policy could not have destroyed; but that was before the centuries that you praise, before the times of the foreign kings:  in the Middle Ages which held great hopes, which have vanished since the consolidation of national unity.  Our Middle Ages produced a cultivated, industrious and civilised people like none other in the world; they had in them the materials for the building of a great nation; but foreign architects came in who hastily ran up this edifice; those first few years of existence that astound you with the splendour of novelty, and among whose ruins we are still groping.”

Gabriel forgot all his prudence in the ardour of discussion.  He felt no fear of Silver Stick, with his manner of an inquisitor incapable of reasoning.  He wished to convince him; he felt all the fervour, all the irresistible impulse of his proselytising days, without trying in any way to disguise his feelings from consideration of the atmosphere surrounding him.  Don Antolin listened to him in astonishment, fixing on him his cold glance.  The others listened, feeling confusedly the marvel that such ideas should be enunciated in the cloister of a cathedral.  Don Martin, the chaplain of the nuns, who stood behind his miserly protector, showed in his eyes the eager sympathy with which he heard Luna’s words.

He described the Hispano-Roman people over whom the Gothic invasion swept, without, however, causing a gap, because before long the conquerors had succumbed to the lower Latin degeneration, remaining without strength, spending themselves in theological struggles and dynastic intrigues like those of Byzantium.  The regeneration of Spain did not come from the north with the hordes of barbarians, but from the south with the invading Arabs.  At first they were few, but they were sufficient to conquer Roderick and his corrupt courtiers.  The instinct of the Christian nationality revolting against the invaders, and the gathering together of the whole soul of Spain on the rocky heights of Covadonga to fall once more upon their conquerors, was all a lie.  The Spain of those days gratefully welcomed the people from Africa and submitted without resistance.  A squadron of Arab horsemen was sufficient to make a town open its