had always had its treasures open to all for centuries, and so it ought to go on.  All the gentlemen were quite right, but you cannot do anything with a stupid canon, and at last the defunct cardinal, who is now in the enjoyment of God (another tug at his cap) interfered, and the Chapter were obliged, though with much grumbling, to accept the reform, and they ended by praising it.  In all bitter there is a sweet!  Do you know how much money I handed to the Lord Cardinal last year?  More than three thousand duros, nearly as much as this sinful State allows us, and this without prejudice to anybody.  The public pays, they admire and they go; in any case they are only birds of passage who come once, and when they go they do not return.  And what are four wretched pesetas, when for that money you can see one of the most glorious churches in Christendom, the cradle of Spanish Catholicism, the Cathedral of Toledo!”

The two men were walking in the cloister on the side warmed by the sun at that early hour, the cleric had put away his ticket books, and his eyes were fixed on Gabriel, who thought that to smile in his enigmatic way, which Don Antolin accepted as assent, quite met the situation, and it encouraged him to continue his confidences.

“Ay, Gabriel!  You cannot think that my heavy duties can be fulfilled without hard work; the Cardinal trusts me, the Chapter distinguish me with their regard, and the Obrero has no other hope but in my assistance.  Thanks to these tickets we can carry the Cathedral along, and keep up its ancient appearance of grandeur, so that the public will come and admire.  But we are poorer than rats, and we must be thankful that even some crumbs are left us from the past.  If the wind or the hail break some of our glass in the naves, we can still lay our hands on some of the stores left by the Obreros of former days.  Ay, senor!  And to think there was a time when the Chapter maintained at its own expense inside the church, cutters and painters of glass, plumbers, and I know not what beside, so that any great works could be undertaken without seeking any help outside the house!  If one of the tombs gets broken, even now we have quantities of borderings carved with saints and flowers that are wonderful to see.  But what will happen when all these are finished?  When the last pane of glass in the stores has been broken, and the last fragments of carving in the Obreria used up?  We shall have to put cheap white panes in the windows to prevent the rain and wind coming in.  The Cathedral will look like an inn—­may God forgive me the comparison—­and the priests of the Primacy will praise God dressed like the chaplain of a hermitage.”

And Don Antolin laughed sarcastically, as though this future that he was anticipating was an absurd contradiction of the eternal laws.