When Gabriel went to school all were astonished at his progress.  The youngsters of the upper cloister who were such a trial to “Silver Stick,” the priest charged with maintaining good order among the tribe established in the roofs of the Cathedral, looked upon the little Gabriel as a prodigy.  When he could scarcely walk he could read easily, and at seven he began to recite his Latin, mastering it quickly, as though he had never spoken anything else in his life, and at ten he could argue with the clergy who frequented the gardens, and who delighted in putting before him questions and difficulties.

The Senor Esteban, growing daily more bent and feeble, smiled delightedly before his last work; he was going to be the glory of his house!  His name was Luna, and therefore he could aspire to anything without fear, because even Popes had come from that family.

The canons would take the boy into the sacristy after choir, and question him as to his studies.  One of the clergy belonging to the archbishop’s household presented him to the cardinal, who, after hearing him, gave him a handful of sugared almonds and the promise of a scholarship, so that he could continue his studies at the seminary gratuitously.

The Lunas and all their relations more or less distant, who were really nearly the whole population of the upper cloister, were rejoiced at this promise; what else could Gabriel be but a priest?  For these people, attached to the church from the day of their birth, like excrescences of its stones, who considered the archbishops of Toledo as the most powerful beings in the world after the Pope, the only profession worthy of a man of talent was the Church.

Gabriel went to the Seminary, and to all the family the Claverias seemed quite deserted.  The long, pleasant evenings in the house of the Lunas came to an end, at which the bell-ringer, the vergers, the sacristans and other church servants had been used to assemble, and listen to the clear and well modulated voice of Gabriel, who read like an angel—­sometimes the lives of the saints, at other times Catholic newspapers that came from Madrid, or chapters from a Don Quixote with pages of vellum and antiquated writing—­a venerable copy which had been handed down in the family for generations.

Gabriel’s life in the Seminary was the ordinary and monotonous life of a hard-working student:  triumphs in theological controversies, prizes in heaps, and the satisfaction of being held up to his companions as a model.

Sometimes one of the canons who lectured in the seminary would come into the garden:—­

“The lad is getting on very well, Esteban; he is first in everything, and besides, is as steady and pious as a saint.  He will be the comfort of your old age.”

The gardener, always growing older and thinner, shook his head.  He should only be able to see the end of his son’s career from the heavens, should it please God to call him there.  He would die before his son’s triumph; but this did not sadden him, for the family would remain to enjoy the victory and to give thanks to God for His goodness.