And accompanied by his admirers, indeed, almost carried by them, he went slowly up the narrow spiral staircase.  Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells.  From the centre of the vault hung the famous “Gorda,” an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity.  The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, higher and larger than the church, as though keeping up the spirit of the emperor who built it, Caesar of Catholicism, champion of the faith, but who nevertheless strove to keep the Church at his feet.

The city spread out around the Cathedral, the houses disappearing in the crowd of towers, cupolas and absides.  It was impossible to look on any side without meeting with chapels, churches, convents and ancient hospitals.  Religion had absorbed the industrious Toledo of old, and still guarded the dead city beneath its hood of stone.  From some of the belfries a red flag was floating, bearing a white chalice; this meant that some newly-ordained priest was singing his first mass.

“I have never been up here,” said Don Martin, sitting by Gabriel’s side on one of the rafters, “without seeing some of these flags; ecclesiastical recruiting never ceases, there are always visionaries to fill its ranks.  Those who really have faith are the minority, the greater part enter because they see the Church still triumphant and seemingly commanding, and they think that in her ranks some tremendous career is waiting for them.  Unlucky wights!  I also was led to the altar with music and oratorical shouts, as though I were walking to a triumph.  Incense spread its clouds before my eyes, all my family wept with emotion at seeing me nothing less than a minister of God.  And the day following all this theatrical pomp, when the lights and the censers were extinguished and the church had recovered its ordinary aspect, began this miserable life of poverty and intrigue to earn one’s bread—­seven duros a month!  To endure at all hours the complaints of those poor women, with their tempers embittered by seclusion, common as the lowest servants, who spend their lives gossiping in the parlour of what is passing in the towns, inventing scandals to please the canons, or the families who protect the house.  And there are priests who envy me! hungering against me for this coveted chaplaincy of nuns! looking upon me as a flattering hanger-on of the archiepiscopal palace, not understanding how otherwise, being so young, I could have hooked out this preferment that allows me to live in Toledo on seven duros a month!”

Gabriel nodded his head, sympathising with the young priest’s complaints.

“Yes, it is you who are deceived.  The day for making great fortunes in the Church is past, and the poor youths who now wear the cassock and dream of a mitre make me think of those emigrants who go to distant countries famous through long centuries of plunder, and find them even more poverty-stricken than their own land.”