With the rapid enumeration of all the past wealth Don Antolin warmed, even to indignation.

“And having been so rich, now we find ourselves in extreme poverty.  And I, my son, a priest of the Lord, am obliged to go hither and thither with those tickets so that we may all live, just as though I were a seller of entrance tickets to a bull-fight, and the Lord’s house were a theatre, having to endure all those foreign heretics, who come in without blessing themselves, and who look at everything through opera-glasses.  And I have to smile at them because they pay us and provide us with some dessert for our poor stew!  Carape!  Jesus have mercy on me!  I was going to say a sacrilege.”

Don Antolin continued his angry complaints till, in passing the front of his house, Mariquita of the scowling and ugly countenance appeared at the door.

“Uncle, enough of walking.  Your chocolate is getting cold.”

But before the priest disappeared into his house, she went on, smiling amiably at Luna: 

“Will you have some, Don Gabriel?”

And with her bold eyes, like a hungry wolf, she invited Luna to enter.  She liked the masterful ways of the man, she said, and the ease which his former intercourse with the world had given him, and, moreover, for her woman’s imagination Gabriel’s mysterious past possessed a great attraction; his proud silence, the vague reports of his adventures, and the smile, as much compassionate as disdainful, with which he listened to the people of the upper cloister.

The insinuating Mariquita withdrew, and Gabriel continued his walk through the cloister, after finishing the little jar of milk that his brother brought him up every morning.

At eight o’clock, Don Luis, the Chapel-master, came out, his cloak wrapped as usual theatrically round him, and his big hat well tilted back, like a glory, round his enormous head; he was humming absently, restless with perpetual nervous movements; he inquired anxiously if the bell had yet rung for the choir, frightened by the threats of a fine in case he were late.  Gabriel felt himself very much attracted by this poor priestly musician, who lived so despised in the furthest corner of the church, thinking far more of music than of dogma.

In the evenings Gabriel would often go up to the little room inhabited by the Chapel-master, on the tipper floor of the Lunas’ house; the room contained all the priest’s fortune—­a little iron bed, which had belonged formerly to the seminarist, two plaster busts of Beethoven and Mozart, and an enormous pile of bundles of music, bound scores, loose sheets of ruled paper, so big and so piled up and disorderly that every now and then a pile would slip down, covering the floor of the little room with white sheets to its furthest corner.

“That is how all his money goes,” said the Wooden Staff with an air of good-natured reproof, “he will never have a farthing.  As soon as he gets his pay he orders more music from Madrid.  It would be far better for Don Luis if he were to buy himself a new hat, even if it were a cheap one, so that the gentlemen of the choir should not laugh at the covering he has on his head.”