“You do not care about it,” said the priest in mocking accents, “you are too ‘green,’ and your dignity would suffer too much by carrying the Lord through the streets of Toledo.”

“You are mistaken.  As for wishing it, I do wish it, but you must remember it is very heavy work for an invalid.”

“Do not let that trouble you,” said Don Antolin resolutely; “you will be at least ten inside the car, and I have chosen all strong men; you would go to complete the number, and I should recommend you to accept in order to earn a little.”

“Then we will clench the business, Don Antolin; you may reckon on me, I am always ready to earn a day’s wage whenever it turns up.”

His great wish to get out of the Cathedral had finally decided him, his wish once more to walk through the streets of Toledo, that he had not seen during his seclusion in the cloister, and without anyone being able to take notice of him.  Besides, the ironical situation tickled him extremely, that he of all men with his round religious denials should be the one to pilot the God of Catholicism through the devout crowd.

This spectacle made him smile, possibly it was a symbol; certainly Wooden Staff would greatly rejoice, he would look upon it as a small triumph for religion, that obliged His enemies to carry Him on their shoulders.  But he himself would look upon it in a different way; inside the eucharistic car he would represent the doubt and denials hidden in the heart of worship, splendid in its exterior pomp, but void of faith and ideals.

“Then we are agreed, Don Antolin.  I will come down shortly into the Cathedral.”

They parted, and Gabriel, after quietly digesting the milk his niece brought him, went down into the Cathedral without saying a word to anyone about the work he intended carrying out; he was afraid of his brother’s objections.

In the lower cloister he again met Silver Stick, who was talking to the gardener’s widow, showing her contemptuously a bunch of wheat ears tied with a red ribbon.  He had found it in the holy water stoup by the Puerta del Alegria.  Every year on the day of Corpus he had found the same offering in the same place; an unknown had thus dedicated to the Church the first wheat of the year.

“It must be a madman,” said the priest.  “What is the good of this?  What does this bunch mean?  If at least it had been a cart of sheaves as in the good old times of the tenths!”

And while he threw the ears with contempt into a flower border in the garden, Gabriel thought with delight of the atavic force which had resuscitated in a Catholic church, the pagan offering:  the homage to the divinity of the firstfruits of the earth fertilised by the spring.

The choir was ended and the mass beginning when Gabriel entered the Cathedral, the lower servants were discussing at the door of the sacristy the great event of the day.  His Eminence had not come down to the choir and would not assist at the procession.  He said he was ill, but those of the household laughed at this excuse, remembering that the evening before he had walked as far as the Hermitage of the Virgin de la Vega.  The truth was he would not meet his Chapter; he was furious with them, and showed his anger by refusing to preside over them in the choir.