The palace of the Ayuntamiento was decorated with strings of light, which were reflected on to the facade of the Cathedral, giving the stones a rosy flush as of fire.

Among the trees walked groups of girls with flowers and white blouses, like the first appearances of spring.  The cadets followed them, their hands on the pommels of their swords, walking along with their pinched-in waists and their full pantaloons a la Turc.  The archiepiscopal palace remained entirely closed.  Above the rosy light in the piazza, spread the beautiful summer sky, clear and deep, spangled with innumerable brilliant stars.

When the music ceased, and the lights began to fade, the inhabitants of the Cathedral felt unwilling to leave their seats.  They were very comfortable there, the night was warm, and they, accustomed to the confinement and the silence of the Claverias, felt the joy of freedom, sitting on that balcony with Toledo at their feet and the immensity of space above them.

Sagrario, who had never been out of the upper cloister since her return to the paternal roof, looked at the stars with delight.

“How many stars!” she murmured dreamily.

“There are more than usual to-night,” said the bell-ringer.  “The summer sky seems a field of stars in which the harvest increases with the fine weather.”

Gabriel smiled at the simplicity of his companions.  They all wondered at God, so foreseeing and so thoughtful, who had made the moon to give light to men by night, and the stars so that the darkness should not be complete.

“Well, then,” inquired Gabriel, “why is there not a moon always if it was made to give us light?”

There was a long silence.  They were all thinking over Gabriel’s question.  The bell-ringer, being most intimate with the master, ventured to put the question about which they were all thinking.  “What were the heavens, and what was there beyond the blue?”

The square was now deserted and in darkness, there was no light but the gentle shimmering of the stars scattered in space like golden dust.  From the immense vault there seemed to fall a religious calm, an overwhelming majesty that stirred the souls of those simple people.  The infinite seemed to bewilder them with its vast grandeur.

“You,” said Gabriel, “have your eyes closed to immensity, you cannot understand it.  You have been taught a wretched and rudimentary origin of the world, imagined by a few ragged and ignorant Jews in a corner of Asia, which, having been written in a book, has been accepted down to our days.  This personal God, like to ourselves in His shape and passions, is an artificer of gigantic capacity, who worked six days and made everything existing.  On the first day He created light, and on the fourth the sun and stars; from whence then came that light if the sun had not then been created?  Is there any distinction between one and the other?  It seems impossible that such absurdities should have been credited for centuries.”