The Shadow of the Cathedral

"It will be most difficult to find her. For a long time we have heard nothing. Doubtless those who do see her are careful to say nothing for fear of paining us. But I will try and find out—we will see, Gabriel—we will think about her."

"And the canons? and the cardinal? Will they not oppose the return of the poor girl to the Claverias?"

"Bah! The thing happened some time ago, and few of them will remember it; besides, we might place the girl in a convent, where she would be looked after and quiet, and cause scandal to no one."

"No, not that, aunt. It is a cruel remedy. We have no right to try and save this poor girl at the cost of her liberty."

"You are right," said the old woman, after a few moments' reflection. "I don't care much for these nuns myself. Where would she be more likely to follow a good example than in the heart of her own family? We will bring her back to this house if she repents and wishes for peace. And I will scratch out the eyes of the first woman in the Claverias who dares to say anything against her. My son-in-law will probably pretend to be scandalised, but I will settle him. It would be much better if he did not wink at the walks that Juanito, that cadet nephew of Don Sebastian's, takes in the cloister whenever my granddaughter stands at the door. The crackbrained fellow dreams of nothing less than becoming related to the cardinal, and seeing his daughter a general's wife; he might remember poor Sagrario. And as far as regards Don Sebastian, you may be quite easy, Gabriel. He will say nothing but that we ought to bring the child back—and what should he say? People ought to be charitable one to another, and none more than they; for after all, Gabriel, believe me—they are only men, nothing but men!"

CHAPTER V

The people of the Primacy always received with obstinate silence the slightest allusion to the reigning prelate. It was a traditional custom in the Claverias, and Gabriel remembered to have noticed the same in his childhood.

If they spoke of the preceding archbishop, these people, so used to grumbling, like all those who live in solitude, would loose their tongues and comment on his history and his defects. There was nothing to fear from a dead prelate, and besides, it was an indirect praise to the living archbishop and his favourites to speak ill of the defunct. But if during the conversation the name of His reigning Eminence arose, they were all silent, raising their hands to their caps to salute, as though the prince of the church were able to see them from the neighbouring palace.

Gabriel, listening to his companions of the upper cloister, remembered the funeral judgment of the Egyptians. In the Primacy no one dared to speak the truth about the prelates, or to discuss their faults till death had taken possession of them.

The most that they dared to do was to comment on the disagreements among the canons, to compare their lists of those who saluted one another in the choir, or who glared at one another between versicle and antiphon like mad dogs ready to fly at one another, or to speak with wonder about a certain polemic discussed by the Doctoral and the Obrero in the Catholic papers in Madrid, which had lasted for three years, as to whether the deluge was partial or universal; answering each other's articles with an interval of four months.

A group of friends had collected round Gabriel. They sought him, feeling the necessity of his presence, experiencing that attraction exercised by those who are born to be leaders of men even though they remain silent. In the evenings they would meet in the dwelling of the bell-ringer, or when it was fine weather they would go out into the gallery above the Puerta del Perdon. In the mornings the assembly would be in the house of the shoemaker who mended the giants, a yellow little man, who suffered from continual pains in his head, which obliged him to wear sundry coloured handkerchiefs tied round his head in the fashion of a turban.

He was the poorest in all the Claverias; he had no appointment, and mended the giants without any remuneration in the hopes of succeeding to the first vacant place, feeling very grateful to those gentlemen of the Chapter who gave him his house rent free, on account of his wife being the daughter of a former old servant of the church. The smell of the paste and of the damp floor infected his house with the rank atmosphere of poverty. A hopeless fecundity aggravated this poverty; his sad, placid wife with her big yellow eyes appeared every year with a new baby tugging at her flabby breast, and several children crept along the cloister walls, dull and inert with hunger, with enormous heads and thin necks, always sickly, though none of them managed to die; afflicted by all the pains of anaemia, by boils that arose and vanished on their faces, and watery eruptions covering their hands. The shoemaker worked for the shops in the town, without, however, earning much money. From the rising of the sun one could hear the sound of his hammer in the cloister. This sole evidence of profane work attracted all the unoccupied to the miserable and evil-smelling dwelling. Mariano, the Tato, and a verger who also lived in the cloister, were those who most frequently met Gabriel, seated on the shoemaker's ragged and broken chairs, so low that one could touch the floor of red and dusty bricks with one's hands.

Often the bell-ringer would run to his tower to ring the usual bells, but his vacant place would be immediately occupied by an old organ-blower, or some of the servants from the sacristy, all attracted by what they heard of these meetings of the lower servants of the Primacy. The object of the assembly was to listen to Gabriel. The revolutionary wished to keep silence, and listened absently to their grumblings at the daily round of worship; but his friends longed to hear about those countries in which he had travelled, with all the curiosity of people who lived confined and isolated; listening to his descriptions of the beauties of Paris and the grandeur of London they would open their eyes like children listening to a fairy tale.

The shoemaker with his head bent, never ceasing his work, listened attentively to the recital of such marvels; when Gabriel was silent they all agreed on one point, those cities must be far more beautiful than Madrid; and just think how beautiful Madrid was! Even the shoemaker's wife, standing in the corner forgetful of her sickly children, would listen to Luna with wonder, her face enlivened by a feeble smile, which showed the woman through the animal resigned to misery, when Luna described the luxury of the women in foreign parts.

All these servants of the church felt their narrowed and dulled minds stirred by these descriptions of a distant world that they were never likely to see; the splendours of modern civilisation touched them much more nearly than the beauties of heaven as described in the sermons, and in the pungent and dusty atmosphere of the dirty little house they would see unrolled before their mind's eye beautiful and fantastic cities, and they would ask questions in all innocence as to the food and habits of those distant people, as though they believed them beings of a different species.

Towards evening, at the hour of the choir, when the shoemaker was working alone, Gabriel, tired of the monotonous silence of the cloister, would go down into the church.

His brother, in a woollen cloak with a white neck band, and a staff as long as an ancient alguacil's, stood as sentry in the crossways, to prevent the inquisitive passing between the choir and the high altar.

Two tablets of old gold with Gothic letters, hung on to one of the pilasters, set forth that anyone talking in a loud voice or making signs in the church would be excommunicated; but this menace of former centuries failed to impress the few people who came to vespers and gossiped behind one of the pillars with some of the church servants. The evening light, filtering through the stained glass, threw on the pavement great patches of colour, and the priests as they walked over this carpet of light would appear green or red according to the colours flashed from the windows.

In the choir the canons sang for themselves only in the emptiness of the church; the shutting of the iron gates of the screen, opened to admit some late-coming priest, echoed like explosions throughout the building, and above the choir the organ joined in at times between the plain song, but it sounded lazily, timidly, as though from necessity, and seemed to lament its feebleness in the gathering twilight.

Gabriel had not completed the round of the Cathedral before he was joined by his nephew, the Perrero, who left his conversation with the servers and acolytes, and with the errand boy belonging to the Secretary of the Chapter, whose fixed seat was at the door of the Chapter-house. Luna was always very much diverted by the pranks of the Tato, and the confidence and carelessness with which he moved about the temple, as though having been born in it deprived him of all feeling of respect The entry of a dog into the nave caused great excitement.

"Uncle," said he to Luna, "you shall see how I can open my cloak."

Seizing the two ends of his garment he advanced towards the dog with the contortions and bounds of a wrestler; the animal, knowing this of old, endeavoured to escape through the nearest door, but the Tato, cutting off his retreat, drove him into the nave, and, pretending to pursue him, drove him from chapel to chapel, finally rounding him up where he could give him some good sound whacks. The dismal howlings disturbed the singing of the canons, and the Tato laughed more than ever to see behind the iron railing of the choir, the angry gesture of the good Esteban threatening him with his wooden staff.

"Uncle," said the depraved Perrero one evening, "you, who think you know the Cathedral so well, have you ever seen the lively things in it?"

The wink of his eye, and the gesture accompanying the words showed that the things might very well be more than lively.

"I am always very much interested," he went on, "with the jokes the ancients allowed themselves. Come along, uncle, it will amuse you for a little; you, like all those who think they know the Cathedral, will have passed many times by these things without noticing them."

Going along the outside of the choir, the Tato led Gabriel to the front opposite the door del Perdon. Under the great medallion, which serves as a back to the Mount Tabor, the work of Berruguete, opens the little chapel of the Virgin of the Star. "Look well at that image, uncle. Is there another like it in all the world? She is a courtezan, a siren who would drive men mad if she only fluttered her eyelids."

For Gabriel this was no new discovery; from his childhood he had known that beautiful and sensual figure, with its worldly smile, its rounded outlines, and its eyes with their expression of wanton gaiety as though she were just going to dance.

The child in her arms was also laughing and placing his hand on the bosom of the beautiful woman, as though he intended to tear the covering from her breast. The image of painted stone, stuffed and gilt, wore a blue mantle strewn with stars, from whence its name.

"Even you, who have read so much, uncle, may possibly not know the history of this chapel, which is far more ancient than the Cathedral. The woolstaplers, carders, and weavers of Toledo had their patroness here long before the church was built, and they only gave up their right to the ground on the condition that they should be entire masters of the chapel, and do in it whatever they pleased and in all this piece of the Cathedral as far as those nearest pillars. Oh! the trouble this wrought! On the days they held their feasts to the Virgin they never paid any heed to the canons in the choir, and they greatly disturbed all the offices with 'rabeles,'[22 - An ancient instrument with three strings, played with a bow.] lutes and disorderly songs. If the canons begged them to be silent, they replied that it was they in the choir who ought to keep silence, considering that they were in their own chapel, which was far more ancient than the Cathedral. Did you know this, uncle?"

"Yes, I remember it now. The Archbishop Valero Loza brought a suit against them at the beginning of the eighteenth century; you can see his tomb at the foot of the altar. He lost his suit, and died from disappointment. He desired to be buried in that place, so that the insolent wool merchants should trample on him in death, even as they had vanquished him in his lifetime. The haughtiness of these ecclesiastical princes drove them to the proudest humility. But is this all you wished to show me?"

"You shall see better things than this. Let us say good-bye to the Virgin. But do look at her! What a face! What alluring eyes! The beautiful woman! I spend hours looking at her; she is my sweetheart.

Oh! the many nights I have dreamt of her."

They walked on a little towards the great doorway of the Cathedral, so as to obtain a better view of the exterior face of the choir. Above the three hollows or chapels that pierce it runs a frieze of ancient relievos, the work of some obscure mediaeval artist. Gabriel recognised these coarse sculptures as being contemporaneous with the Puerta del Reloj, and by far the most ancient work in the Cathedral.

"Look you, in the first medallion Adam and Eve are as naked as worms; but the Lord drives them out of Paradise, and they are obliged to dress themselves to appear in the world; and see what they do directly they get their clothes. But look at the fifth medallion on our right hand; the old gossip who cut that had a lively turn of mind."

Gabriel looked for the first time attentively at these forgotten sculptures. They were carved with all the naturalistic simplicity of the Middle Ages, with all the directness with which the artists represented their profane conceptions, with the desire to perpetuate the triumph of the flesh in some ignored corner of the mystical buildings, in order to testify that human life was not dead.

The Tato was delighted at the surprise on his uncle's face.

"Eh! what do you think of that? I discovered it wandering about the church. The canons sing every day on the other side of this wall without ever suspecting what gay doings they have over their heads. And the stained glass, uncle, look at it well. At first so many colours blind one and the forms are indistinct; besides, the lead cuts the figures and it is difficult to make out anything, but I know them to my fingers' ends. They are stories, things of their own times, that these glass-workers painted; the intrigues have been forgotten, and no one has disentangled them."

He pointed to the windows of the second nave, through which the evening light was shining with a ruddy glow.

"Look up there," went on the Perrero. "A gallant in a red cape and sword mounts by a rope ladder; at the window a nun is waiting for him. It seems something like the Don Juan Tenorio that they represent at All Saints'. Further on, you see those two in bed, and people knocking at the door. They must be the same pair of birds with the family surprising them. Then in the next window—look well at it—lovers, with scarcely any clothes beyond bare skin. These things belong to the days when people had no shame, when they went with their heads covered and the rest of their flesh bare."

Gabriel smiled at the whimsical ideas with which ancient art inspired the Perrero.

"But in the choir, uncle, there is also something to see. Let us go there; the service is over and the canons are coming out."

Luna felt overpowered by admiration as he always did on entering the choir. Those magnificent stalls, the work on one side of Philip of Burgundy, and on the other side of Berruguete, bewildered him with their profusion of marbles, jaspers, gildings, statues and medallions. It was the genius of Michael Angelo reviving in the Toledan Cathedral.

The Perrero examined the lower stalls, ferreting out among the Gothic relievos the discoveries enjoyed by his unwholesome curiosity. This first row of stalls, almost on a level with the ground, were occupied by the inferior clergy, and were anterior by half a century to the upper stalls; but in those fifty years art had made a great stride, from the hard and rigid Gothic to the flowing lines and good taste of the Renaissance. They had been carved by Maestre Rodrigo at the time when Christian Spain, roused to enthusiasm, was helping the Catholic kings with all its strength to complete the reconquest. On the backs of the stalls, and on the entablature of the frieze fifty-four carved pictures represented the principal incidents of the conquest of Granada.

The Tato did not look at these carvings of walnut or oak, with troops of horsemen and companies of soldiers scaling the walls of Moorish towns. What interested him most were the arms of the stalls, the handrails of the steps leading to the upper seats, and the salients dividing the stalls which served to rest the head, all covered with animals, grotesque beings, dogs, monkeys, big birds, friars, and little birds, all in difficult postures, some beautiful, some obscene. Hogs and frogs wound themselves up together in inextricable tangles, monkeys with ignoble gestures were mixed up with interlaced birds in never ending variety—it was a world of caricatures of voluptuousness, of monkey-like actions and satirical suggestions, in which appeared carnal passion with the most grotesque animal grimaces.

"Look here, uncle. Is not this capital—it is far the best."

And the Tato showed Gabriel the little chubby figure of a preaching friar with enormous donkey's ears.

When they came out of the choir Gabriel spied the Chapel-master close to the fresco of Saint Christopher. He had just emerged from a little door close to the giant, which led by a circular staircase to the musical archives. He was carrying under his arm a big book with dusty pages which he showed to Gabriel.

"I am taking it upstairs. You shall hear something out of it; it is worth the trouble."

And turning his eyes from the book to the little door close by he exclaimed:

"Ay! these archives, Gabriel, how it pains one! Each time I visit them I come out sadder. The vandals have been at work there; nearly all the music books have pages torn out, pieces cut out wherever there was an illuminated letter, a vignette or anything pretty. The señor canons do not care for music, neither do they understand it, and they are incapable of devoting a few pesetas so that it might be heard on festival days. It is quite enough for them to walk in procession to some piece of Rossini's; and as far as regards the organ, all they care about is that it must play slowly, very slowly. The slower it plays, the more religious they think it, even though the organist may be playing a Habanera."