and who would not leave without visiting your friend Tomasita.  How handsome and smart you were.  I do not say it to flatter you, it is truth.  You looked like being a rogue with the girls!  And I still remember you said something to me about how pretty and fresh you thought me after so many years absence.  You don’t mind my reminding you of this?  Really?  It was only a soldier’s gallant jests.  How many would say that now?  When you left, I said to my brother-in-law, ’He has put on the uniform for good and all; it is useless his uncle, the beneficiary, thinking of making a priest of him.’”

“It was a youthful sally,” said the cardinal smiling, remembering with pride the dashing sergeant of dragoons.  “In Spain, there are only three professions worthy of a man—­the sword, the Church and the toga.  My blood was hot and I wanted to be a soldier, but unluckily I fell on times of peace, my promotion would have been very slow, and in order not to embitter my uncle’s last years, I renewed my studies and turned to the Church.  One can serve God or one’s country as well in one place as another, but, believe me, very often in spite of the pomp of my cardinalate I think with envy of that soldier you saw.  What happy times they were!  Even now the sword draws me.  When I see the cadets I would gladly exchange with some of them, giving them my crozier and cross.  And possibly I might have done better than any of them!  Ah! if only the great times of the reconquest could return when the prelates went out to fight the Moors!  What a great Archbishop of Toledo I should have been!”

And Don Sebastian drew up his fat old body, and proudly stretched out his arms with all the remains of his former strength.

“You have always been a strong man,” said the gardener’s widow.  “I say very often to some of the priests who speak of you and criticise you:  ’You must not trifle with His Eminence, he is quite capable of going one day into the choir—­some he likes and some he does not—­and driving you all out at one fell swoop.’”

“I have more than once been tempted to do so,” said the prelate firmly, his eyes flashing with energy, “but I have been prevented by the thought of my charge and my character as a peaceful priest.  I am the shepherd of a Catholic flock, not a wolf who tears the sheep in his fierceness.  But sometimes I can bear no more, and God forgive me!  I have often been tempted to raise the shepherd’s crook and chastise with blows that rebel flock who harbour in the Cathedral.”

The prelate became excited, speaking of his quarrels with the Chapter; the placidity of mind produced by the quiet of the garden disappeared as he thought of his hostile subordinates.  He felt obliged as at other times to confide his troubles to the gardener’s widow with that instinctive kindly feeling which often causes highly-placed people to confide in humble friends.