“I live in our same old house.  They left it to me out of respect to the memory of my father.  I am grateful to the clergy of the Chapter, taking into consideration that I am nothing but a sad old ’Wooden Staff.’  Since my misfortune happened I have had an old woman to keep house, and Don Luis, the Chapel-master, lives with me.  You will come to know him, a young priest of great talent, but quite hidden here:  one of God’s souls, whom they think crazy in the Cathedral, but who lives like an angel.”

They entered into the house of the Lunas, which was one of the best in the Claverias.  By the door two rows of flower vases in the shape of a clock-case fastened to the walls were filled with hanging plants; inside, in the sitting room, Gabriel found everything the same as during his father’s lifetime.  The white walls that with years had become like ivory, were still decorated with the old engravings of saints, the chairs of mahogany, bright with constant rubbing, looked like new, in spite of their curves, which showed them to belong to a previous century, and their seats almost ready to drop through.  Through a half-open door he could see into the kitchen, where his brother had gone to give some orders to a timid-looking old woman.  In one corner of the room, half hidden, was a sewing machine.  Luna had seen his niece working at it the last time he came to the Cathedral.  It was the permanent remembrance the “little one” had left behind her after that catastrophe which had filled her father with such gloomy sadness.  Through a back window of the room Gabriel could see the inner court, which made this “habitacion” one of the most charming in the Claverias, the open expanse of sky, and the upper rooms on all four sides, supported by rows of slender pillars, that made the courtyard look like a little cloister.

Esteban came back and rejoined his brother.

“You must say what you would like for breakfast.  It would soon be ready; ask, man, ask for what you want, for though I am poor I shall take little credit to myself unless I can make you pick up a little and lose that look of a resuscitated corpse.”

Gabriel smiled sadly.

“It is useless your troubling; my stomach is quite gone; a little milk is enough for it, and I am thankful if it retains it.”

Esteban ordered the old woman to go into the town in search of the milk, and he had hardly seated himself by his brother’s side when the door giving into the cloister opened, and the head of a young man appeared.

“Good-day, uncle!” he exclaimed.

His face was unhealthy and currish, the eyes were malicious, and above his ears were combed two large tufts of glossy hair.

“Come in, vagabond, come in,” said the “Wooden Staff.”

And he added, turning to his brother: 

“Do you know who this is?  No?  It is the son of our poor brother, whom God has taken to his glory.  He lives in the upper dwellings of the cloister with his mother, who washes the linen of the choir, and of the senores canons; and it is a delight to see how she crimps the surplices.  Thomas, lad, bow to the gentleman; it is your uncle Gabriel, who has just arrived from America, and from Paris, and I don’t know from where else besides!  From very far off countries, very far off.”