Gabriel felt annoyed by the curious glances of the clergy, and of the devout entering the church.  They were people accustomed to seeing each other daily at the same hour, and they felt their curiosity excited by seeing a stranger breaking in on the monotony of their lives.

He drew back to the further end of the cloister, then some words from the beggars made him retrace his steps.

“Ah! here comes old ‘Vara de palo.’"[1]

[Footnote 1:  Wooden staff.]

“Good-day, Senor Esteban!”

A small man dressed in black, and shaved like a cleric, came down the steps.

“Esteban!  Esteban!” cried Luna, placing himself between him and the door of the Presentacion.

“Wooden Staff” looked at him with his clear eyes like amber, the quiet eyes of a man used to spending long hours in the Cathedral, with never a rebellious thought arising to disturb his immovable beatitude.  He stood doubting for some time, as though he could scarcely credit the remote resemblance in this thin, pale face, to another that lived in his memory, but at last, with a pained surprise, he became convinced of its identity.

“Gabriel! my brother! is it really you?”

And the rigidly set face of the Cathedral servant, which seemed to have acquired the immobility of its pillars and statues, relaxed with an affectionate smile.

“When did you come?  Where have you been?  What is your life?  Why have you come?”

“Wooden Staff” expressed his surprise by incessant questions, never giving his brother time to answer.

Gabriel at length explained, that he had arrived the previous night, and that he had waited outside the church since early dawn in the hopes of seeing his brother.

“I have now come from Madrid, but before that I was in many places:  in England, in France, in Belgium, who knows where besides.  I have wandered from one town to another, always struggling against hunger and the cruelty of men.  My footsteps have been dogged by poverty and the police.  When I rest a little, worn out by this Wandering Jew’s existence, Justice, inspired by fear, orders me to move on, and so once again I begin my march.  I am a man to be feared, Esteban, even as you now see me, with my body ruined before old age, and the certainty before me of a speedy death.  Again, yesterday in Madrid, they told me I should be sent once more to prison if I stayed there any longer, and so in the evening I took the train.  Where shall I go?  The world is wide; but for me and other rebels it is very small, and narrows till it does not leave a hand’s breadth of ground for our feet.  In all the world nothing was left me but you, and this peaceful silent corner where you live so happily, and so, I came to seek you.  If you turn me out, nothing will be left me but to die in prison, or in a hospital, if indeed they would take me in when they know my name.”

And Gabriel, spent with his words, coughed painfully, a hollow cavernous cough that seemed to tear his chest.  He expressed himself vehemently, moving his arms freely, with the gestures of a man used to speaking in public, burning with the zeal of his cause.