by the Ministers of War and Marine for military clergy, and by the Ministers of Public Instruction and Justice.  She is paid to support the pomp of the Roman Pontiff, as we maintain his ambassador in Spain, which is as though I allowed myself the luxury of keeping servants, and laid on my neighbour the obligation of paying them.  She is paid for the repairs to churches, for episcopal libraries, for the colonisation of Fernando Po, for unforeseen occurrences, and I do not know how many supplemental items besides!  And you must take into account what the Spanish people pay the Church voluntarily apart from what the State gives.  The Bull of the Holy Crusade produces two and a half million pesetas annually; besides this you must consider what the parochial clergy draw from their congregations, the annual gifts to the religious orders for their ministry and offices (and this is the fattest portion), and the ecclesiastical revenue from the Ayuntamientos and deputations.  In short, this Church, which is continually speaking of its poverty, draws from the State and the country more than three hundred million pesetas annually—­nearly double what the army costs; although they are always complaining in the sacristies of these modern times, saying that everything is devoured by the military, and that the fault of everything that has happened is theirs, as they threw themselves on to the side of that cursed liberty.  Three hundred millions, Gabriel!  I have calculated it carefully!  And I, who form part of this great establishment, receive seven duros a month; the greater part of the vicars in Spain are paid less than an excise officer, and thousands of clergy live from hand to mouth, wandering from sacristy to sacristy trying to obtain a mass to put the stew on the fire; and if bands of clergy do not go into the highways to rob, it is only from fear of the civil guard, and because after a couple of days of hunger a third may come in which they may beg some scraps to eat; there is always a crumb to allay hunger, and no cassock ever falls in the street dying of want, but there are a great many clerics who spend their existence deceiving their stomachs, trying to imagine they nourish themselves, till some sudden illness comes which hurries them out of the world.  Where, then, does all this money go?  To the aristocracy of the Church, to the true sacerdotal caste; but we who are in religion are people of the backstairs.  What a terrible mistake, Gabriel!  To renounce love and family affection, to fly all worldly pleasures, the theatre, concerts, the cafe; to be looked upon by people, even by those who think themselves religious, as a strange being, a sort of intermediate, neither a man nor a woman; to wear petticoats and to be dressed like a lugubrious doll; and in exchange for all these sacrifices to earn less than a man who breaks stones on the road.  We live idly, certain that we shall never fall from over-work, but our poverty is greater than that of many workmen; we cannot acknowledge it,