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