have gone the round of all the theatres in Italy.  And about the plain song, you will ask?  The plain song had its nest in this Primacy.  It was preserved here for centuries and purified; all the best was collected in Toledo, and from the books in this Cathedral have gone forth the chorales of all the churches in Spain and America.  Poor plain song! it has long been dead.  You see for yourself, Gabriel, who comes to the Cathedral at the hour of the choir?  No one, absolutely no one.  The matins are recited, and all the offices are intoned in the midst of perfect solitude.  The people who still believe know nothing of the liturgy; they do not prize it and have forgotten all about it; they are only attracted by the novenas, the triduos and retreats, all that is termed tolerated and extra-liturgic worship.  The Jesuits, with their cunning, guessed that they must give their services a theatrical attraction, and for this reason their churches—­gilt, carpeted, and decked with flowers like dressing-rooms—­are always full, whereas the old cathedrals are as empty as tombs.  They have not proclaimed the necessity for this reform aloud, but they have put it into practice by abolishing the singing in Latin, and substituting all sorts of romances and songs.  In the churches, with the exception of the Tantum-ergo, nothing is sung in Latin, sermons and hymns are in the language of the country, just as in a Protestant church.  For the mass of devout people, who believe without thinking, religions only differ in their exterior forms.  It would be impossible to consign such a multitude to the bonfires, or that half Europe should again be in the clutches of the thirty years’ war, or that the Popes should launch excommunication after excommunication, only to find in the end that the only difference between a Catholic or an evangelical church is a few images and a few wax tapers, but that the worship in both is the same.  But we must go, Gabriel; they are going to lock up.”

The bell-ringer was hurrying through the naves, shaking his bunch of keys and startling the bats which were becoming more and more numerous.  The two devout women had disappeared; no one remained in the Cathedral save Gabriel and the Chapel-master.  From the farther end of the nave were coming the night watchmen, to take up their charge till the following morning, preceded by the dog.

The two friends went out into the cloister, guided through the dusk by the rich glow from the stained glass windows; outside, the last rays of the sun were touching both the garden and the cloister of the Claverias with crimson.

“I repeat,” continued the musical priest, looking back at the door from which they had come out, “that in there they do not love music and they do not understand it.  The Church has only rendered one service to music, and that without wishing it:  they have been obliged to have instrumentalists and vocalists for the services, and that made them support the chapels and choir-schools that have served