and at the head is written, ‘The privileges of this Holy Church.’  The good king gave to the Cathedral nine towns—­if I wished I could tell you their names—­several mills, and vineyards innumerable, houses and shops in the town, and he ends by saying with all the munificence of a Christian cavalier, ’This, therefore, in such a way I give, and I grant to this church and to you, Bernard, Archbishop, in free and perfect gift, that neither by homicide, nor any other calumny, shall it ever be forfeited.  Amen.’  Afterwards, Don Alfonso VII. gave us eight towns on the other side of the Guadalquiver, several ovens, two castles, the salt works of Belinchon, and a tenth of all the money coined in Toledo, for the vestments of the prebendaries.  The VIII. of the name showered on the Cathedral a perfect rain of gifts, towns, villages, and mills.  Illescas is ours, and a great part of Esquivias, as also the mortgage on Talavera.  Afterwards came the fighting prelate, Don Rodrigo, who took much land from the Moors, and the Cathedral possesses one principality, the Adelantamiento de Cazorla, with towns like Baza, Niebla, and Alcaraz.  And besides the kings there is a great deal to be said about the nobles, great princes who showed their generosity to the Holy Metropolitan Church.  Don Lope de Haro, Lord of Vizcaya, not content with paying the cost of the building from the Puerta de los Escribanos as far as the choir, gave us the town of Alcubilete, with its mills and fisheries, and he also left a legacy so that in the choir when complines are sung, that lamp called the Preciosa should be lighted, which is placed by the great bronze eagle belonging to the big missal.  Don Alfonso Tello de Meneses gave us four towns on the banks of the Guadiana, granted us tithes and bridge tolls, and I know not what riches besides.  We have been very powerful, Gabriel; the territory of this diocese is larger than a principality.  The Cathedral had property on the earth, in the air, and in the sea!  Our dominions extended throughout the whole nation from end to end; there was not a single province in which we did not hold possessions.  Everything contributed to the glory of the Lord, and to the comfort and welfare of His ministers; everything paid to the Cathedral:  bread when it was baked in the ovens, the casting of the net, wheat as it passed through the mill, money as it came from the Mint, the traveller as he went on his way; the country people who then paid no taxes or contributions served their king and saved their own souls, giving the best sheaf in every ten, so that the granaries of the Holy Metropolitan Church were quite insufficient to contain such abundance.  What times were those, Gabriel!  There was faith, Gabriel, and faith is the chief thing in life—­without faith there is no virtue nor decency—­nor nothing.”

He stopped for a moment, quite out of breath with talking.  The priest was so saturated with the atmosphere of the Cathedral, that in himself he seemed to unite all the various scents of the church; his cassock had collected the mouldy smell of the old stones and the rusty iron railings, and his mouth seemed to breathe of the gutters and the gargoyles, and the rank damp of the garrets.