“I do not know how many years I have had this hoarseness,” said the old man; “it is a present from the Cathedral.  The doctors say I ought to give up this employment; but what I say is—­who is to support me?  You, companion, have begun at the best time.  There is a coolness here that all those would envy who are generally perspiring about this time in the cafes of the Zocodover.  We are still in summer, but you can imagine the damp which penetrates everything; and you should see what it is in winter! we must really dress up as maskers, covered with caps, shawls and cloaks.  They have the charity to leave us a little fire in the sacristy, but many mornings they find us almost frozen.  Those of the Chapter call the choir ‘kill canon,’ and if those gentlemen complain of one hour’s stay in this ice-house, having eaten well and drunk better, you may just fancy what it is for us.  You have had the good luck to begin in summer, but when the winter comes on you will just have a good time of it!”

But even though it was the best part of the year, Gabriel coughed much, his illness increasing from the dampness of the Cathedral.

On moonlight nights the church was strangely transfigured, and Gabriel remembered sundry operatic effects he had seen during his travels.  The white tracery of the windows stood out against the blackness with milky whiteness, splashes of light glided down the pilasters, some even from the vaulting.  These mocking spectres moved slowly along the pavement, mounting the opposite pillars and losing themselves in the darkness; those rays of cold and diffused light made the shadows seem even darker as they brought out of the darkness here a chapel, beyond, a sepulchral stone or the outline of some pilaster; and the great Christ, who crowned the railings of the high altar, glowed against its background of shadow with the brilliancy of its old gilding, like some miraculous apparition floating in space in a halo of light.

When the cough would not allow the old watchman to sleep, he told Gabriel of the many years he had carried on this nocturnal life in the Primacy.  The office had some resemblance to that of a sexton, for he spent most of it among the dead in the silence of desertion, never seeing anyone till his watch was finished.  He had ended by becoming used to it, and it had cured him of many fears he had in his youth.  Before, he had believed in the resurrection of the dead, in souls, and the apparitions of saints.  But now he laughed at all that.  Whole years he had carried on this night work in the Cathedral, and if he heard anything it was only the scampering of rats, who respected neither saints nor altars, for after all they were only wood!

He only feared men of flesh and blood, those robbers who in former times had more than once entered the Cathedral, obliging the Chapter to establish this night vigilance.