The Shadow of the Cathedral

"How is he going on?" inquired Gabriel.

"I believe he died half-an-hour ago," said the bell-ringer. "When I went up to my house for the keys, a doctor was coming out of the palace and he told one of the canons. But let us sit down."

They all sat down, in their embroidered caps, on the steps of the high altar railing. Mariano put his bunch of keys on the ground, a mass of iron as big as a club. There were keys of every age, some of iron, very large, rough and rusty, showing the old hammer marks and with coats of arms near the bows; others, more modern were clean and bright as silver, but they were all very large and heavy, with powerful indented teeth, proportionate to the size of the edifice.

The three friends seemed extraordinarily happy, with a nervous gaiety which made them catch hold of each other and laugh. They cast sidelong looks at the Virgin and then looked at each other, with a mysterious gesture that Gabriel was quite unable to understand.

"You have all drunk a good deal, is it not so?" said Luna. "You do wrong, for you know that drink is the degradation of the poor."

"A day is a day, uncle," said the Perrero; "it delights us that the great ones are dying. You see, I esteem His Eminence highly, but let him go to the devil! The only satisfaction a poor man has is to see that the end comes also to the rich."

"Drink," said the bell-ringer, offering him the bottle. "It is a pleasure to find ourselves here, well and happy, while to-morrow His Eminence will find himself between four boards; we shall have to ring the little bell all day!"

The Tato drank, passing the bottle to the shoemaker, who held it a long time glued to his gullet. Of the three he seemed the most tipsy; his eyes were bloodshot, he stared stonily on every side and remained silent, he only gave a forced laugh when anyone spoke to him, as if his thoughts were very, very far off.

On the other hand, the bell-ringer was far more loquacious than usual. He spoke of the cardinal's fortune, at the wealth that would fall to Doña Visitacion, of the joy many of the Chapter must feel that night. He interrupted himself to take a pull at the brandy bottle, passing it afterwards to his companions. The smell of the alcohol spread through that atmosphere impregnated with incense and the smoke of wax tapers.

More than an hour passed in this way. Mariano had stopped the conversation several times as if he had something serious to say and was vacillating, wanting courage.

"Gabriel, time is passing and we have much to do and to talk about. It is a little past eleven, but we have still several hours to do the thing well."

"What do you mean to say?" asked Luna, surprised.

"Few words—in a nut-shell. It concerns your becoming rich and us also; we intend to get out of this poverty. You have noticed for some time that we have avoided you, that we preferred talking among ourselves to the pleasure of listening to you. We all know that you are very learned, but as far as things of this life go you are not worth a farthing. We have learnt a great deal from you, but that does not get us out of our poverty. We have spent months thinking how to make a lucky stroke. These revolutions of which you speak seem to us very far off; our grandchildren may see them, but we never shall. It is all right for clever people to look to the future, but ignorant people like us look to the present. We have employed our time discussing all sorts of schemes, to kidnap Don Sebastian and require a million of ransom, to break into the palace one night, and I don't know what besides! All wild ideas started by your nephew. But this morning in my house, while we were lamenting our poverty, we suddenly saw our salvation close at hand. You as the sole guardian of the Cathedral. The Virgin on the high altar, with the jewels that are locked up in the Treasury all the rest of the year, and I with the keys in my power. The easiest thing in the world. Let us clean out the Virgin and take the road to Madrid, where we shall arrive at dawn; the Tato knows a lot of people there among cloak stealers. We will hide ourselves there for a little while, and then you, who know the world, will guide us. We will go to America, sell the stones, and we shall be rich. Get up, Gabriel! We are going to strip the idol, as you say."

"But this is a robbery that you are proposing!" exclaimed Luna, alarmed.

"A robbery?" said the bell-ringer. "Call it so, if you like—and, what then? Are you afraid of it? More has been robbed from us, who were born with the right to a share of the world, but however much we look round we cannot find a vacant place. Besides, what harm do we do to anybody? These jewels are of no use to the bit of wood they cover, it does not eat, it does not feel the cold in winter, and we are poor miserable creatures. You yourself have said it, Gabriel, seeing our poverty. Our children die of hunger on their mother's knees, while these idols are covered with wealth, come along, Gabriel, do not let us lose any more time."

"Come along, uncle," said the Tato, "have a little courage. You must admit we ignorant people know how to manage things when it comes to the point."

Gabriel was not listening to them; surprise had made him fall into a reverie of self-examination. He thought—terrified of the great error he had committed—he saw an immense gulf opening between himself and those he had believed to be his disciples. He remembered his brother's words. Ah, the good sense of the simpleminded! He, with all his reading, had never foreseen the danger of teaching these ignorant people in a few months what required a whole life of thought and study. What happened to people stirred up by revolution was happening here on a small scale. The most noble thoughts become corrupted passing through the sieve of vulgarity; the most generous aspirations are poisoned by the dregs of poverty.

He had sown the revolutionary seed in these outcasts of the Church, drowsing in the atmosphere of two centuries ago. He had thought to help on the revolution of the future by forming men, but on awaking from his dreams he found only common criminals. What a terrible mistake! His ideas had only tended to destruction. In removing from the dulled brains the prejudices of ignorance, and the superstitions of the slave, he had only succeeded in making them daring for evil. Selfishness was the only passion vibrating in them. They had only learnt that they were wretched and ought not to be so. The fate of their companions in misfortune, of the greater part of humanity, wretched and sad, had no interest for them. If they could get out of their present state, bettering themselves in whatever way they could, they cared very little if the world went on just as it did before; that tears, and pain and hunger should reign below, in order to ensure the comfort of those above. He had sown his thoughts in them hoping to accelerate the harvest, but like all those forced and artificial cultivations, that grow with astonishing rapidity only to give rotten fruit, the result of his propaganda was moral corruption. Men in the end, like all of them! The human wild beast, seeking his own welfare at the cost of his fellow, perpetuating the disorders of pain for the majority, as long as he can enjoy plenty during the few years of his life. Ah! Where could he meet with that superior being, ennobled by the worship of reason, doing good without hope of reward, sacrificing everything for human solidarity, that man-God who would glorify the future!

"Come along, Gabriel," continued the bell-ringer. "Do not let us lose time it is only a few minutes' work; and then—flight!"

"No," said Luna firmly, coming out of his reverie, "you shall not do this; you ought not to do it. It is a robbery you suggest to me, and my pain is great, seeing that you reckoned on me; others rob from fatal instinct or from corruption of soul, you have come to it because I tried to enlighten you, because I tried to open your minds to the truth. Oh! it is horrible, most horrible!"

"What is the use of all these objections, Gabriel? Is it not a bit of wood? Whom do we harm by taking its jewels? Do not the rich rob, and everyone who possesses anything? Why should we not imitate them?"

"For this very reason, because what you propose doing is a suggestion of evil, because it perpetuates once more that system of violence and disorder which is the root of all misery. Why do you hate the rich, if what they do in sweating the poor is just the same as what you are doing in taking possession of a thing for yourselves—understand me well—for yourselves—and not for all. The robbery does not scare me, for I do not believe in ownership nor in the sanctity of things, but for this very reason I detest this appropriation to yourselves and I oppose it. Why do you wish to possess all this? You say it is to remedy your poverty. That is not true. It is to be rich, to enter into the privileged group, to be three individual men of that detested minority which desires to enjoy prosperity by enslaving humanity. If all the poor of Toledo were now shouting outside the doors of the Cathedral, rebellious and emboldened, I would open the way for them, I would point out those jewels that you covet, and I would say, 'Possess yourselves of those, they are so many drops of sweat and blood wrung from your ancestors; they represent the servile work on the land of the lords, the brutal plundering of the king's cavaliers, so that magnates and kings may cover with jewels those idols which can open to them the gates of heaven. These things do not belong to you because you happen to be the most daring; they belong to all, as do all the riches of the earth. For men to lay their hands on everything existing in the world would be a holy work, the redeeming revolution of the future. To possess yourselves of some portion of what by moral right is not yours, would only be for you a crime against the laws of the land, for me it would be a crime against the disinherited, the only masters of the existing–"

"Silence, Gabriel," said the bell-ringer harshly; "if I let you, you would go on talking till dawn. I do not understand you, nor do I wish to. We came to do you a good turn, and you treat us to a sermon. We wish to see you as rich as ourselves, and you answer us by talking of others, of a lot of people that you don't know, of that humanity who never gave you a scrap of bread when you wandered like a dog. I must treat you as I did in our youth when we were campaigning. I have always loved you and I admire your talents, but we must really treat you like a child. Come along, Gabriel! Hold your tongue, and follow us! We will lead you to happiness! Forward, companions!" The Tato and the shoemaker stood up, walking towards the railings of the high altar, the Tato seized one of its gates, and half opened it.

"No!" shouted Gabriel with energy. "Stop! Mariano, you do not know what you are doing. You believe your happiness will be accomplished when you have possessed yourselves of those jewels. But afterwards? Your families remain here. Tato, think of your mother. Mariano, you and the shoemaker have wives—you have children."

"Bah!" said the bell-ringer. "They will come and join us when we are in safety far away. Money can do everything—the thing is to get it."

"And your children? Shall they be told their fathers were thieves!"

"Bah! they will be rich in other countries. Their history will not be worse than that of other rich men's sons."

Gabriel understood the fierce determination that animated those men. His endeavours to restrain them were useless. Mariano seized him, seeing he was trying to push between them and the altar.

"Stand aside, little one," he said. "You are no use for anything. Let us alone. Are you afraid of the Virgin? Undeceive yourself, even if we carry off all she has, she will work no miracle."

Gabriel attempted one final effort.

"You shall do nothing. If you pass the railings, if you approach the high altar, I will ring the call bell, and before ten minutes all Toledo will be at the gates."

And opening the iron gate of the choir, he entered with a decision that surprised the bell-ringer.

The shoemaker in tipsy silence was the only one who followed him.

"My children's bread!" he murmured in thickened speech. "They wish to rob them! They wish to keep them poor!"

Mariano heard a metallic clatter, and saw the shoemaker raise his hand armed with the bunch of keys which had fallen on the marble steps of the railing, then he heard a strangely sonorous sound, as if something hollow was being struck.

Gabriel gave one scream, and fell forwards on the ground; the shoemaker continued striking his head.

"Do not give him any more—stop!"

These were the last words Gabriel heard confusedly, as he lay stretched at the entrance of the choir; a warm and sticky liquid ran over his eyes; afterwards—silence, darkness and—nothing!

His last thought was to tell himself he was dying—that probably he was already dead, and that only the last vital struggle remained to him, the last struggle of a life vanishing for ever.

Still he came back to life. He opened his eyes with difficulty and saw the sun coming through a barred window, white walls, and a dirty and darned cotton counterpane. After great wandering and stumbling, he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to' form one idea: they had placed the Cathedral on his temples—the huge church was hanging over his head crushing him. What terrible pain! He could not move; he seemed fastened by his head. His ears were buzzing, his tongue seemed paralysed. His eyes could see feebly, as though the light were muddy and a reddish haze enveloped all things.

He thought that a face with whiskers, surmounted by the hat of a civil guard, bent over him, looking into his eyes. He moved his lips, but no one heard a sound. No doubt it was the nightmare of his old persecutions returning again.

They looked at him, seeing that he opened his eyes. A gentleman dressed in black advanced towards his bed, followed by others who carried papers under their arms. He guessed they were speaking to him by the movement of their lips, but he could hear nothing. Was he in another world? Were all his beliefs false, and after death did another life exist the same as the one he had left?

He fell again into darkness and unconsciousness. A long time passed—a very long time. Again he opened his eyes, but now the haze was denser, it was not red but black.

Through this veil he thought he saw his brother's face, horrified and drawn with fear; and the cocked hats of the civil guards, those nightmares, surrounding poor Wooden Staff. Afterwards, more misty, more uncertain, the face of his gentle companion, Sagrario, looking at him with weeping eyes in terrible grief, caressing him with her glance, fearless of the black, armed men who surrounded her.

This was his last look, uncertain and clouded, as though seen by the light of a flying spark. Afterwards, eternal darkness and annihilation.

As his eyes were closing for ever, a voice close to him said:

"We have followed your scent, rascal; you were well hidden, but we have discovered you through one of your own. Now we shall see what account you can give of the Virgin's jewels, thief!"

But the terrible enemy of God and social order could give no account to man.

The following day he was carried out of the prison infirmary on men's shoulders to disappear in the common grave.

The earth kept the secret of his death, that frowning Mother who watches men's struggles impassively, knowing that all grandeur and ambitions, all miseries and follies must rot in her breast, with no other object than the fertilisation and renovation of life.