The Shadow of the Cathedral

Curiosity only disturbed the calm of the Claverias for about a week. Little by little the women ceased to stand about the Luna's door to watch Sagrario bending over her machine, and the girl quietly continued her sad and hard-working life. Gabriel seldom left the "habitacion." He spent whole days by the young woman's side, endeavouring by his presence to atone for the hostile aloofness of her father. It pained him that she should find herself so despised and solitary in her own house. Every now and then the Aunt Tomasa came to see them, enlivening them with the optimism of her happy old age. She was pleased with her niece's conduct; to work hard so as not to be a drag on her obstinate old father, and to help towards the maintenance of the house, was clearly what was required; but all the same there was no reason she should kill herself with work—calm and good humour, this bad time would lead to a better; she was there to get things straight with that fiend-possessed Gabriel, and she made the gloomy "habitacion" ring with her healthy laugh and lively words.

At other times Gabriel's friends would invade the house, abandoning the assemblies at the shoemaker's. They could not bear Luna's absence, they wanted to hear him, to consult him, and even the shoemaker when his work was not urgent would leave his bench and, smelling of paste, with his apron tucked into his belt and his head rolled up in striped handkerchiefs, would come and sit by Sagrario's machine.

The young woman fixed her sad eyes with admiration on her uncle. She had always from her childhood heard her parents speak with respect of that extraordinary relative who was travelling in foreign countries; she vaguely remembered him as a shadow crossing her love dream when he had spent a few days in the Cathedral before establishing himself in Barcelona, astonishing them all by the accounts of his travels and his foreign customs. Now she returned to find him aged, as sickly as herself, but influencing all who surrounded him by the mysterious power of his words, that were like heavenly music to those poor narrow-minded souls.

In the midst of her sadness Sagrario had no other pleasure but to listen to her uncle; she felt the same as did those simple men who left their work to seek Luna in their anxiety to hear fresh things from his lips. Gabriel was the modern world that for so many years had rolled on far from the Cathedral, never touching it, but which had at last entered in to stir and awaken a handful of men who were still living in the sixteenth century.

The appearance of Sagrario had brought about a change in Luna's life; he became more communicative, and he lost a great deal of the reserve he had imposed upon himself when he took refuge in the stony lap of the church. He no longer forced himself to keep silence and to hide his thoughts; the presence of a woman seemed to enliven him and wake once more his propagandist fervour. His companions saw a new Gabriel—more loquacious and more disposed to communicate to them the "new things," that were already upheaving the traditional course of their thoughts, and that even now had on many nights disturbed their sleep.

They talked, discussed and consulted Luna, so that he could clear their confused ideas, and above the voices of the men sounded the continual click, click of the sewing machine, always busy, like an echo of the universal work surging in the world, while the calm of the Infinite spread itself through the precincts of the church.

All those men, accustomed to the slow, regular, quiet duties of the church, with long periods of rest, admired the nervous activity of Sagrario.

"You will kill yourself, child," said the old organ-blower. "I know very well what it is like, I have done something of the same sort; I blow and blow at those bellows, and when it is a mass with much music, such as Don Luis loves, I end by cursing the organ and him who invented it, for indeed it nearly breaks my arms."

"Work!" said the bell-ringer with emphasis. "Work is a punishment from God! You all know its origin. It was the eternal penalty imposed on our first parents by the Lord when He drove them out of Paradise. It is a chain that we must drag on for ever."

"No, señor," replied the shoemaker. "As I have read in the newspapers, work is the greatest of all the virtues, not a punishment; laziness is the mother of vice, and work is a virtue. Is it not so, Don Gabriel?"

The shoemaker looked at the master, watching for his words as a thirsty man looks for water.

"Work," said Gabriel, "is neither a punishment nor a virtue; it is a hard law to which we have to submit for self-preservation and for the welfare of the species. Without work life could not exist."

And with the same fervid enunciation with which he had in former times swayed the multitude at those meetings of protest against society, he explained to this half-dozen men and the quiet sewer, who stopped her machine to listen, the greatness of universal work, which every day laboured on the earth, to subdue it and force it to yield sustenance for man.

It was a struggle the whole twenty-four hours against the blind forces of Nature. The army of work extended over the whole globe, exploring the continents, leaping to the islands, sailing the seas, and descending to the bowels of the earth. How many were its soldiers? No one could count them—millions and millions. At daybreak no one was absent from the roll-call; the casualties were replaced, the gaps that poverty and misfortune opened in the ranks were filled up immediately. As soon as the sun rose the factory chimney began to smoke, the hammer broke the stone, the file bit the metal, the plough furrowed the earth, the ovens were lighted, the pump worked its piston, the hatchet sounded in the wood, the locomotive moved amidst clouds of vapour, the cranes groaned on the wharves, the steamers cut the waters, and the little barks danced on the waves dragging their nets. None were absent from work's review. All hurried on, driven by the fear of hunger, defying danger, not knowing if they would live till night, or if the sun rising over their heads would be the last in their lives. And that daily concentration of human energies began with the first light of day in all parts of the world, wherever men had assembled and built towns and constituted societies, or even in the deserts to be reclaimed by their energies.

The stonemason breaks the stone with his hammer, and at every breath is poisoned by inhaling the invisible particles. The miner descends to the hell of modern times with no other guide than the glimmer from his lamp, to wrest from the strata of the earliest ages relics of the earth's infancy, those carbonised trees that gave shade to prehistoric animals. Far from the sun and far from life, he defies death, just as the mason, poised on a slight scaffolding despises giddiness, watched only by the birds, surprised to see a creature without wings perched on such a dizzy height.

The workman in the factory, changed by a fatal and mistaken progress into a slave of machinery, lives fastened to it like another wheel, a spring of human flesh, struggling with his physical weariness against the iron muscles that never tire; brutalised daily by the deafening cadence of pistons and wheels to give us the innumerable products of industry rendered necessary by the life of civilisation.

And these millions and millions of men who support the existence of society, who fight for it against the blind and cruel forces of Nature, who every morning return to the struggle, seeing in this monotonous and continual sacrifice the sole aim of their existence, form the immense family of wage-earners, living on the surplus of a privileged minority, contenting themselves to subsist on the smallest part of what these reject, submitting to a wretched remuneration, always the lowest, without hope of saving or of emancipation.

"It is this egotistical minority," said Gabriel, having arrived at this point, "who have falsified truth, endeavouring to persuade the majority of workers that work is a virtue, and that the only mission of man on earth is to work till he perishes. This code, invented, by the great capitalists, misquotes science, declaring that people can only live healthily who devote themselves to work, and that all inaction is fatal, but is silent as to what science adds—that excessive work destroys men with far greater rapidity than if they were living in idleness. They say that work is a painful necessity for the preservation of life, but they do not say it is a virtue, because repose and sweet inaction are far more grateful to men and to all animals than exertion and fatigue. The fable of Paradise, the story of the Biblical God imposing the sweat of labour as a punishment in order to earn subsistence, shows that in all times the natural temperament of man considered rest as the pleasantest condition, and that work must be considered as an evil indispensable to life, but all the same an evil. Ruled by the instinct of preservation, man ought only to work just as much as is necessary for food. But as the immense majority do not work for themselves alone, but for the profits of a minority of employers, these require that a man should work as much as he is able, even if he dies from his over-exertion, and in this way they become rich, hoarding the surplus from production. Their contention is that a man should work more than is required for himself, that he should produce more than is required for his own necessities. In this surplus lies their wealth, and to obtain it they have invented a monstrous and inhuman morality, that by means of religion and even of philosophy, glorifies work, saying that work is the greatest of all virtues and idleness the source of all vices. And this makes me ask, if idleness is a vice in the poor, how is it that among the rich it is counted as a sign of distinction and even of elevation of mind? And if work is the greatest of all virtues, how is it that capitalists endeavour to amass wealth in order to free themselves and their descendants from the practice of so great a virtue? Why is it that this society which exalts work with every sort of poetical conception relegates the worker to the lowest rank? Why do they receive with greater enthusiasm a soldier who has fought, more or less, than an aged workman who has spent seventy years working without any one praising him or being grateful to him for so much virtue?"

The servants of the Cathedral nodded their heads, assenting to what fell from the master; they looked up to him as simple people always look up to those who come down to them as apostles of a new idea.

The continual friction with Gabriel had caused to germinate in their minds, stunted by the traditional atmosphere, a growth of ideas, like the microscopic mosses the winter rains had formed on the granite buttresses of the church. Hitherto they had lived resigned to the life that surrounded them, moving like somnambulists on the undecided boundary which separates soul from instinct, but the unexpected presence of that fugitive from social battles was the impulse that launched them into full thought, walking tentatively and with no other light than that of their master.

"You," went on Gabriel, "do not suffer from the slavery of work like those who live among modern factories. The Church does not require great exertions from you, and the service of God does not destroy you from over-fatigue, though it kills you with hunger. There exists a monstrous inequality between the salaries of those down below who sit in the choir and sing and what you earn, who lend to worship all the strength of your arms. You will not die of fatigue, it is true; many a workman in the towns would laugh at the lightness of your duties; but you languish from poverty. I see in this cloister the same anaemic children that I saw in workmen's slums, I see what you eat and what you are paid. The Church pays its servants as in the days of faith; she believes that we still live in the times when whole towns would throw themselves into the work with the hope of gaining heaven, and would help to raise cathedrals without any more positive recompense than the workman's stew and the blessing of the bishop; and all this while, you, beings of flesh who require nourishment, deceive your stomachs and those of your wives and children with potatoes and bread, while down below those wooden images are covered with pearls and gold in senseless profusion, and without its ever occurring to you to ask yourselves why the idols who have no wants should be so rich, while you are unable to satisfy your own and live in misery."

The listeners looked at each other in astonishment, as though these words were an illuminating flash. They were doubtful for a moment as though frightened, and then the faith of conviction illuminated their faces.

"It is true," said the bell-ringer in a gloomy tone.

"It is true," repeated the shoemaker, throwing into his words all the bitterness of his grinding life of poverty, with a constantly increasing family, and with no other help but his inadequate work.

Sagrario remained silent. She did not understand many of her uncle's sayings, but she received them all as gospel coming from him, and they sounded in her ears like delicious music.

Gabriel's reputation spread among the humble inhabitants of the church, and all the servants of the Primacy gossiped about his wisdom. The clergy took notice of him, and more than once on rainy evenings the canon librarian, taking his walk in the cloisters, tried to make Gabriel talk; but the fugitive, with a remnant of prudence, showed himself towards the cassocks, as they themselves said, coldly courteous and reserved, fearing that they would expel him if they became acquainted with his views.

Only one priest of all those he saw in the upper cloister had inspired him with any confidence. This was a young man of wretched appearance, with worn-out clothes, a chaplain of one of the innumerable convents of nuns in Toledo. He received seven duros a month, which were all his means of supporting himself and his old mother, a common peasant woman, who had denied herself bread in order to give an education to her son.

"You see, Gabriel," said the priest. "You see how it is—such a great sacrifice to earn less than a common labourer earns in my village. Why did they ordain me with so much ceremony? Was it for this I sang mass in the midst of so much pomp, as though in wedding the Church I were uniting myself to wealth?"

His poverty made him the slave of Don Antolin, and in the last third of the month he came almost every day to the cloister, trying to soften Silver Stick with his prayers and induce him to lend a few pesetas. He even flattered Mariquita, who could not show herself shy with him, in spite of his cassock.

"He has a very good appearance," she said to the women of the Claverias with the enthusiasm inspired by every man. "I like to see him by the side of Don Gabriel and to hear them talk as they walk in the cloister. They look like two great noblemen. His mother called him Martin, no doubt because he resembled the Saint Martin by that painter they call El Greco, that hangs in some parish church, but I forget which."

To cajole Don Antolin was a far more arduous task, and the poor little curate suffered much in his endeavours to propitiate the miser, who was irritated if his miserable loans were not repaid at the proper time. Silver Stick with his love of authority was delighted to hold a priest and an equal under his thumb, so that those in the Claverias should see that he did not order about the small fry only. Don Martin was for him only a servant in a cassock, and he made him come up to the cloister nearly every evening on various pretexts. His delight Was to keep him whole hours standing in front of his door, obliged to listen and to pay attention to all his words.

Gabriel felt pity for the moral dependency in which the poor young man lived, and he would often leave his niece, going out into the cloister to join them. His other friends were not long in discovering him; first of all the bell-ringer, then the organ-blower, and presently the verger, the Perrero, and the shoemaker would join the group, of which Silver Stick was the nucleus. Don Antolin was delighted to see himself surrounded by so many people, never imagining that Gabriel was the attraction, thinking always it was his authority that inspired fear and respect.

Recognising equality with no one but Luna, to him only he addressed his conversation, as though the others had no other duty but to listen to him in silence; if anyone spoke to him he pretended not to hear, but continued addressing Gabriel. Mariquita, huddled up in a shawl, followed them with her eyes from the door, sharing her uncle's pride in seeing himself surrounded by such a group, who accompanied him in his stroll up and down the cloister; the proximity of so many men seemed to turn her head.

"Uncle! Don Gabriel!" she called in a coaxing voice. "Won't you come in; you will be more comfortable inside the house, because, even though it is sunny, it is very cold."

But the uncle paid no attention to her words, and continued his walk on the side of the cloister bathed by the sun, talking pompously on his favourite theme, the present poverty of the Cathedral and its greatness In former times.

"These cloisters in which we are," he said; "do you believe that they were built to serve as a refuge to the humble secular people who now live in them? No, señor, although the Church was generous, she would not have built these 'habitaciones,' with their inner courtyards and their colonnades for Wooden Staffs and vergers, etc. This cloister, which was to have been as large and beautiful as the one below, was begun by the great Cardinal Cisneros" (Don Antolin raised his hand to his cap) "so that the canons should live in them subject to conventual regulations; but the canons in those days were very rich, and, being great lords, would not consent to live shut up here; they all protested, and the cardinal, who was very quick-tempered, wished to keep them in leading strings, but one of them started to Rome with their complaints, sent by his comrades. Cisneros, being governor of the kingdom, placed guards at all the ports, and the emissary was arrested as he was going to embark at Valencia. The end of it all was that after a long suit the gentlemen of the Chapter came off victorious, and lived out of the Primacy, and the Claverias remained unfinished with this low roof and this balustrade, both provisional. But even as it is kings have lived in this cloister; that great monarch, Philip II., spent several days here. What glorious times! when the kings, who had palaces at their command, preferred living in these rooms, so as to be inside the Cathedral and nearer to God. Such kings, such people. For this reason Spain was greater then than ever. We were masters of the world. We had power and money, and we lived happily on earth in the certainty of reaching heaven after death."

"That is true," said the bell-ringer; "those were the good times, and for their return we fought in the mountains. Ay! if only Don Carlos had been victorious! if only there had not been traitors amongst us! Is it not true, Gabriel? You who fought in the war as I did, you can say if I am not right."

"Hold your tongue, Mariano," said Gabriel, smiling sadly. "You do not know what you are saying. You fought and shed your blood for a cause that even now you do not understand. You went to the war as blindly as I did. Do not look so sullen; it is no use contradicting. Well then, let us see, what did you wish for when you went out to fight for Don Carlos?"

"I? First of all that every man should come by his own. Did not the crown belong to his family? Well, let it be given to him."

"And is this all?" asked Luna with displeasure.

"That was the least of it. What I wanted, and do want, is that the nation should have a good master, an upright lord, and a good Catholic, who without restraints of laws or Cortes, should govern us all with bread in one hand and a stick in the other. For the robber, garrote him! for the honoured, 'you are my friend!' A king who will not allow the rich to crush the poor, and who will not allow any one to die of hunger who wishes to work. Come, I think I am explaining myself clearly."

"And all this, do you believe that it existed at any time, or that your king would be able to restore it? Those centuries that you describe as those of greatness and well-being were really the worst in our history; they were the cause of Spanish decadence, and the beginning of all our ills."

"Stop there, Gabrielillo," said Silver Stick. "You know a great deal, and have travelled and read much more than I have, but we cannot swallow that. I am very much interested in the question, and I will not allow you to take advantage of the ignorance of Mariano and these others. How can you say that those times were evil, and that the fault is theirs of what is happening to us now? The true culprit is liberalism, the unbelief of the age, which has let the devil loose in our house. Spain, when it does not trust its kings and has no faith in Catholicism, is like a lame man who drops his crutches and falls to the ground. We are nothing without the throne and the altar, and the proof of this is everything that has happened to us since we had revolutions. We have lost our islands, we count for nothing among the other countries. The Spaniards who are the bravest men in the world, have been defeated, there is not a peseta anywhere, and all those gentlemen who harangue in Madrid vote fresh taxes and we are always involved in difficulties. When was this ever seen in former times? When?"

"Worse and more shameful things were seen," said Luna.

"You are mad, youngster! Those travels have corrupted you, till I believe you are hardly a Spaniard! Look you, that he denies what everybody knows, what is taught in all the schools! And the Catholic kings; were they nothing? You need no books to know that. Go into the choir, and you will see on the lower stalls all the battles that those religious kings gained over the Moors with the help of God. They conquered Granada and drove out the infidels who had held it seven centuries in barbarism. Afterwards came the discovery of America. Who could accomplish that? No one but ourselves; and that good queen who pawned her jewels so that Columbus should accomplish his voyage. You cannot deny all this, it seems to me. And the Emperor Charles V.! What have you to say about him? Do you know any more extraordinary man! He fought all the kings of Europe, and half the world was his, 'the sun never set on his dominions,' we Spaniards were masters of the world; you cannot either deny this. And still we have said nothing of Don Philip II., a king so wise and so astute that he made all the monarchs of Europe dance at his pleasure, as though he were pulling them with a string. Everything was for the greater glory of Spain and the splendour of religion. Of his victories and greatness we have said nothing; if his father was victorious at Pavia, he overturned his enemies at St. Quintin. And what do you say about Lepanto? Down in the sacristy we preserve the banners of the ship that Don Juan of Austria commanded. You have seen them; one of them represents Jesus crucified, and they are so long, so very long, that when they were fastened to the triforium, the ends had to be turned up so that they should not trail on the ground. So, was Lepanto nothing? Come, Gabriel, you really must be mad to deny certain things. If someone had to conquer the Moors lest they should possess themselves of all Europe and endanger the Christian faith, who did it? The Spaniards. When the Turks threatened to become masters of the seas, who went out to meet them? Spain and her Don Juan. And who went to discover a new world but the ships of Spain; and who sailed round the world but another Spaniard, Magallanes; and for everything great it has always been us, always us, in those days of religion and prosperity. And what can we say about learning? Those centuries produced Spain's most famous men—great poets and most eminent theologians; no one has equalled them since. And to show that religion is the source of all greatness, the most illustrious writers have worn the religious habit. I guess what will be your argument, that after such glorious kings came others less distinguished, and so the decadence commenced. I know something about that also. I have heard the librarian of the Cathedral and other people of great learning say this. But this really means nothing. These are the designs of God, by which He puts His people to the proof, just as He does with individuals, bringing them down to low estate, to raise them again to great honour, so that they may continue in the right way. But we will not speak of this; if there has been a decadence we do not want to know anything about it. We want the glorious past, the brilliant times of the Catholic kings, of Don Carlos and the two Philips, and it is on them that we fix our eyes when we talk of Spain returning to her good old times."