Sick and without any work by which he could earn his
living, precluded from seeking work among the printers,
as his name was encircled by a halo which terrified
the masters, Gabriel fell into such extreme poverty
that the little help and succour his companions could
afford were unable to relieve it, and he travelled
from end to end of the Peninsula begging from his
fellows and hiding from the police.
His spirit was broken, he was conquered, and he had
no longer strength to continue the struggle.
Nothing remained for him but to die, but merciful
death came slowly to his call. He thought of his
brother, the only affection remaining to him in the
world; he remembered the quiet family in the Claverias,
of which he had caught a glimpse on his last visit
to the Cathedral, and he turned to seek them as his
last hope.
On his return to Toledo, he found the happy family
dissolved; misfortune had come even to that silent
and stagnant corner.
But the Cathedral, insensible to all human vicissitudes
was there, the same as ever, and to it he clung, hiding
himself in its recesses, hoping to die there in peace,
with no other hope but to be forgotten; dying before
his proper time, tasting the bitter happiness of annihilation,
leaving behind him at the door, like an animal who
sheds its skin, all that rebellion which had drawn
upon him the hatred of society.
His happiness was not to think, not to speak, to mould
himself to that dead world; he would be among the
living statues peopling the upper cloister, one more
automaton; he would imitate those beings who seemed
to have absorbed into themselves something of the austerity
of the granite buttresses, he would inhale like a
healing balsam the scent of the rusty iron railings
and the incense that spread through the church, the
ancient perfume of the past centuries.
On leaving the cloister in the mornings soon after
daybreak, the first person Gabriel would see was Don
Antolin, the “Silver Stick.” This
priest exercised an authority like that of Governor
of the Cathedral, for all the lay servants were under
his orders, and all the repairs of little importance
were done under his supervision.
Down below, in the church, he watched the sacristans
and the acolytes, careful that the canons and beneficiaries
should have no cause of complaint in the services.
Upstairs, in the cloister, he watched over the good
behaviour and cleanliness of the families, being by
the grace of the cardinal archbishop a sort of magistrate
over that little town.
