Gabriel felt himself deeply moved; the sweet silence,
the absolute calm, the feeling almost of non-existence
overpowered him; and beyond those walls was the world,
but here it could not be seen, it could not be felt;
it remained respectful but indifferent before that
monument of the past, that splendid sepulchre, in
whose interior nothing excited its curiosity.
Who would ever imagine he was there? That growth
of seven centuries, built by vanished greatness for
a dying faith, should be his last refuge. In
the full tide of unbelief the church should be his
sanctuary, as it had been in former days to those
great criminals of the Middle Ages, who, from the height
of the cloister mocked at justice, detained at the
doors like the beggars. Here should be consummated
in silence and calm the slow decay of his body, here
he would die with the serene satisfaction of having
died to the world long before. At last he realised
his hope of ending his days in a corner of the sleepy
Spanish Cathedral, the only hope that had sustained
him as he wandered on foot along the highways of Europe,
hiding himself from the civil guards and the police,
spending his nights in ditches, huddled up, his head
on his knees, fearing every moment to die of cold.
He clung to the Cathedral as a shipwrecked and drowning
man clings to the spar of a sinking ship; this had
been his hope, and he was beginning to realise it.
The church would receive him, like an old and infirm
mother, unable to smile, but who could still stretch
out her arms.
“At last! At last!” murmured Luna.
And he smiled, thinking of the world of sorrows and
persecutions that he was leaving behind him, as though
he were going to some remote place, situated in another
planet, from which he would never return; the Cathedral
would shelter him for ever.
In the profound stillness of the cloister, that the
sound of the street could not reach, the “companion”
Luna thought he heard far off, very far off, the shrill
sound of a trumpet and the muffled roll of drums,
then he remembered the Alcazar of Toledo, dominating
the Cathedral from its height, intimidating it with
the enormous mass of its towers; they were the drums
and trumpets of the Military Academy.
These sounds were painful to Gabriel; the world had
faded from his sight, and when he thought himself
so very far from it, he could still feel its presence
only a little way beyond the roof of the temple.
CHAPTER II
Since the times of the second Cardinal de Bourbon
Senior Esteban Luna had been gardener of the Cathedral,
by the right that seemed firmly established in his
family. Who was the first Luna that entered the
service of the Holy Metropolitan Church? As the
gardener asked himself this question he smiled complacently,
raising his eyes to heaven, as though he would inquire
of the immensity of space. The Lunas were as
ancient as the foundations of the church; a great many
