The Shadow of the Cathedral

The visitors were bewildered seeing all this vast collection of stuffs and embroideries unrolled piece after piece—all the past of a Cathedral which, having millions of revenue, employed for its embellishment armies of embroiderers, acquiring the richest textures of Valencia and Seville, reproducing in gold and colours all the episodes from the Holy books, and the torments of the martyrs, all the glorious legends of the Church, immortalised by the needle, before printing had been able to do so.

Gabriel returned every evening to the upper cloister, wearied out with walking the length and breadth of the Cathedral. During the first few days he was delighted with the novelty of seeing fresh faces, to hear the rustle of the visitors who, branching off from the great stream of travellers who inundated Europe, came as far as Toledo. But after a little while the people he saw every afternoon seemed to him just the same. There were the same questions, the same stiff and hard-featured Englishwomen, and the same o-o-o-h's of cold and conventional admiration, and the same identical way of turning their backs with rude pride when there was nothing else to be shown. Returning to the quiet of the upper cloister after the daily exhibition of the Treasury, Gabriel thought the poverty of the Claverias even more revolting and intolerable. The shoemaker seemed sadder and yellower in the rank atmosphere of his den, bending over his bench hammering the soles, his wife more feeble and ill, the miserable slave of maternity, weakened by hunger, and offering to her little son as his only hope of food those flaccid breasts in which there was nothing left but a drop of blood. The little child was dying! Sagrario, who had left her machine to spend the greater part of the day in the shoemaker's room said so in a low voice to her uncle. She did all the work of the house, while the poor mother, motionless in a chair, with the little one in her lap, looked at it with weeping eyes. When the baby woke from its stupor it would wearily raise its head from its little neck, which had become a mere thread; the mother to stifle its feeble moans would press it to her breast, but the child would turn away its mouth guessing the inutility of expending its strength on that rag of flesh from which it could only succeed in extracting the last drop.

Gabriel examined the child, noting its extreme emaciation and the spots that scrofula had spread over its straw-coloured skin. He shook his head incredulously when the neighbours who had gathered round the invalid each diagnosed some particular ailment, and recommended every imaginable sort of household remedy, from decoctions of rare herbs and stinking ointments to applications on the chest of miracle working prints, and tracing seven crosses on the navel with as many paternosters.

"It is hunger," said Luna to his niece, "nothing but hunger." And depriving himself of part of his own food, he sent to the shoemaker's house the milk that had been brought up for himself. But the child's stomach could not retain the liquid too substantial for its weakness, and threw it up as soon as swallowed. The Aunt Tomasa, with her energetic and enterprising character, brought a woman from outside the Cathedral to nourish the child, but after two days, and before the effects became visible, she came no more, as if she had felt disgusted at the miserable and corpse-like little body touching her. In vain the gardener's widow searched; it was not easy to find generous breasts who would give their milk for very little pay.

In the meanwhile the child was dying. All the women came in and out of the shoemaker's house, and even Don Antolin would stand at the door in the mornings.

"How is the little one? Just the same? It is all in God's hands."

And he would retire, doing the shoemaker the great charity of not speaking to him about the pesetas he owed him, on account of the sick child.

"Virgin's Blue" was annoyed by this incident, which upset the calm of the cloister, and disturbed the bliss of his digestion as a happy and well-fed servant of the Church. It was a shame that that shoemaker should be allowed to live in the Claverias with all that flock of wretched and scurvy children; one would die every month; all sorts of illness would lay hold on them. By what right were they in the Cathedral when they drew no wage from the Obreria? Such stinking excrescences ought to remain outside the Lord's house.

His mother-in-law was furious.

"Silence, you thief of the saints!" she cried. "Silence, or I will throw a dish at you! We are all sons of God, and if things were as they should be, all the poor ought to live in the Cathedral. Instead of saying such things it would be much better if you gave those unhappy people part of what you have stolen from the Virgin."

The sacristan shrugged his shoulders with contempt. If they had not enough to eat they should not have children. There he was himself with only one daughter—he did not think he had any right to more—and so thanks to Our Lady he was able to save a scrap for his old age.

Tomasa spoke of the shoemaker's child to the good gentlemen of the Chapter when they came into the garden for a few minutes after choir.

They listened absently, putting their hands in their cassocks.

"It is all God's will! What poverty!"

And some gave her ten centimes, others a real, one or two even a peseta. The old woman went one day to the Archbishop's palace. Don Sebastian was engaged and unable to see her, but he sent her two pesetas by one of the servants.

"They don't mean badly," said the gardener's widow, giving her collection to the poor mother, "but each one lives for himself, and his neighbour may manage as he can. No one divides his cloak with another—take this, and see how you can get out of your trouble."

They fed a little better in the shoemaker's house; the miserable scrofulous children collected in the cloister profited most by the baby's illness; it was growing daily weaker, lying motionless for hours, with almost imperceptible breathing, on its mother's lap.

When the unhappy child died, all the people of the Claverias rushed to the home. Inside could be heard the mother's wailings, strident, interminable, like the bellowing of a wounded beast; outside the father wept silently, surrounded by his friends.

"It died just like a bird," he said with long pauses, his words broken by sobs. "His mother held him on her knees—I was working—'Antonio, Antonio!' she called, 'see, what is the matter with the child, it is moving its mouth and making grimaces?' I ran up quickly, its face was quite dusky—as if it had a veil over it. It opened its mouth, a couple of twitches with its eyes staring, and its neck fell over—just the same as a bird, just the same."

He wept, repeating constantly the resemblance between his son and those birds who die in winter from the cold.

The bell-ringer looked gloomily at Gabriel.

"You who know everything, is it true that it died of hunger?"

And the Tato with his scandalous impetuosity shouted loudly—

"There is no justice in the world! All this must be altered! Fancy a child dying of hunger in this house, where money runs like water, and where all those creatures are dressed in gold!"

When the little corpse was carried to the cemetery, the cloister seemed quite deserted; all its life was concentrated in the shoemaker's house, all the women surrounded the mother. Despair had rendered that sick and feeble woman furious. She no longer wept: her child's death had made her ferocious—she wished to bite or to dash her skull against the wall.

"Ay! my s-o-o-o-n! my Antonio!"

At night Sagrario and the other women remained in the house to look after her. In her desperation she wished to make some one responsible for her misfortune, and she fixed on those highest in the cloister. Don Antolin had not helped her with the smallest alms; his affected niece had scarcely been in to see the little one, nothing interested her but men.

"It is all Silver Stick's fault," wailed the poor mother—"he is a thief. He grinds our poverty with his usurer's snares. Never a farthing did he give for my son. And that Mariquita is just the same. Yes, señor, I do say so. She only thinks of decking herself out so that the cadets may see her."

"For mercy's sake, woman, they will hear you," begged some of the terrified women.

But others scouted this fear. "Let Don Antolin and his niece hear them! What did it matter? The Claverias were tired of the rapacity of the uncle, and the magnificent airs that ugly woman gave herself! Because they were poor they were not going to spend their lives trembling before that couple. God only knew what the uncle and niece did when they were alone in the house together!"

A breath of rebellion had passed over that sleepy world. It was the unconscious influence of Gabriel. What he had said to his friends had been passed on to all the men in the Claverias, getting even to the women. They were confused and garbled ideas, that very few could understand, but they cherished them like fresh pure air reviving their minds. They sounded in their ears like a pleasant echo from the outside world. It was sufficient for them to know that this quiet life of submission they had led up to now was not immutable—they had a right to something better—and that human beings ought to rebel against injustice and oppression.

Don Antolin, who knew well enough the crew confided to his care, was not long in perceiving this moral upturn. He felt hostility and rebellion on every side. The debtors answered him haughtily, alleging their poverty as a reason for no longer enduring his avarice; his imperious orders were tardily executed, and he had a clear perception that they were laughing behind his back as he walked through the cloister, and making threatening gestures. One day his legs trembled beneath him and his eyes were dimmed, hearing how the Perrero replied to one of his reprimands, having returned late to the Cathedral, and obliging him to descend and open the door after he had gone to bed. The Tato made him understand, with an insolent expression, that he had bought a knife, and that he intended its first fleshing to be in the bowels of some priest or other who ground down the poor.

His niece complained to Don Antolin, they paid no attention to her and flouted her, no woman now ever came to help her gratuitously in her household duties. They replied insolently that those who wanted servants must pay for them. What was her uncle thinking about? It was certainly time to assert his authority and to lay a heavy hand on these people.

She herself, so lively and energetic in her own house, was now obliged to retire snorting with rage or weeping, whenever she stationed herself at her door. All the women of the Claverias wished to revenge themselves for their former thraldom, standing already on the declivity of disrespect.

"Look at her!" screamed the shoemaker's wife to her neighbours, "always so dressed up, the ugly jade. She decks herself with the blood that vampire of an uncle sucks from the poor."

And from the iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no doubt inspired by the Cathedral garden—

"Las amas de los curas y los laureles Como nunca dan fruto siempre estan verdes."36

It was this that ended the patience of Don Antolin; this insulting conjecture about himself and his niece that disturbed his miserly chastity. He visited the cardinal to complain of the inhabitants of the cloister, but His Eminence, who lived in a perpetual rage, grew furious listening to him and very nearly thrashed him. Why did he come to him with such tales? For what reason had he been given any authority? Was there nothing left of a man beneath his cassock? He who was wanting in the good discipline of the house—turn him out into the street at once! More energy, and be careful never to trouble him again with such insignificant tales, otherwise the person who would be turned into the street would be Silver Stick himself.

Don Antolin felt a little braver after this interview, although he swore mentally never again to visit that terrible prelate. He was determined to reassert his authority, by punishing the weakest, whom he considered as the origin of all these scandals. The shoemaker should be expelled from the Claverias, as he was there through no other right but that his wife had been born there. Mariquita, bewildered by her uncle's energy, must needs speak to some one about these intentions, and so the news circulated through the cloister.

Don Antolin did not dare to move a step further, terrified by the silent unanimity with which the whole population rose against him.

The Tato looked at him with mocking and threatening eyes, in which Silver Stick could plainly read "Remember the knife"; but what terrified Don Antolin more than anything was the silence of the bell-ringer, and the savage and hostile glance with which he responded to his words.

Even the good Wooden Staff, Esteban, protested in his own way, saying quietly to Don Antolin:

"Is it really true that you intend turning out the shoemaker? You will do wrong, very wrong, for after all he is very poor, and his wife was born in the cloister. These innovations always bring misfortune, Don Antolin."

So the priest, finding he had no support, and seeing hostility on every side, put off his energetic resolutions till the following day, even reproving his niece when she threw his weakness in his face.

The Canon Obrero, from whom he had implored help, did not care to disturb the blessed peace of his existence by mixing himself up in the quarrels of the smaller people. It was Silver Stick's own affair; he could punish or expel any one he thought fit without fear of anybody. But Don Antolin, dreading the responsibility that might accrue from energetic action, ended by delivering himself over to Gabriel and begging for his assistance. That man was the one who wielded the real authority in the upper cloister; all those who had listened to him followed his advice blindly.

"Help me, Gabrielillo," said the priest with an agonised expression. "If you cannot restore order, this will end badly; they even insult my poor niece, and some day I shall turn half the people of the Claverias out into the street, as I hold authority from His Eminence for everything. Ay, señor! I do not know what has happened here; surely the devil must have got loose in our upper cloister! How these people have changed to me!"

Luna guessed Don Antolin's thoughts and his allusions to the devil who had got loose in the cloister. That devil was himself. No doubt Silver Stick was right. Without intending it he had introduced discord into the Cathedral. He had sought calm and forgetfulness in that refuge, and the spirit of rebellion had followed him even into this concealment. He recalled his thoughts on the first day, when he was alone in the silent cloister; he wished to be another stone in the Cathedral, without thought, without feeling, to spend the rest of his life fixed to that ruin, with the embryonic life of the fungus on the buttress, but the spirit of the outside world had entered in with him.

Luna remembered how travellers in time of plague had crossed the sanitary cordon—they were well and happy, nothing betrayed the infection in their bodies; but the poisonous germs travelled in the folds of their clothes and in their hair, carrying death without knowing it, helping it to leap all barriers and obstacles, without being in the least aware of it. He was the same, but instead of spreading death, he spread tumultuous and rebellious life. The protest of the lower orders that had been surging throughout the world, for more than a century, had entered with him into this still remaining fragment of the sixteenth century. He had awakened those men, who had been like the sleepers in the legend, motionless in their cave for ages, while the centuries rolled on and the world was transformed.

The awakening of these people was sudden and violent, like that of a people in revolution. They were ashamed of the old errors that they had worshipped, and this made them receive as gospel everything that was new, without quailing before the consequences.

It was the faith of a people which, once it takes form, rushes onwards, accepting everything, justifying everything, the only requirement being its novelty, and casting aside contemptuously those traditional principles which it had just abandoned.

The cowardly submission of Silver Stick was the first victory of those more daring souls who formed Luna's surrounding. The avaricious and despotic priest lowered his eyes before them, smilingly anxious to make himself agreeable. This they owed to the master, for he was now the true ruler of the upper cloister. Don Antolin consulted him before making any arrangements, and his ugly niece smiled on Gabriel as the daughters of the conquered might smile on a triumphant hero.

They now no longer hid themselves in the bell-ringer's house for their meetings; they formed a circle in the cloister during the evenings, discussing the audacious doctrines taught by Luna, without now being intimidated by the religious atmosphere. They sat with the look of lords, surrounding their master, while in the opposite gallery walked Silver Stick like a black phantom, reading his book of hours, and casting now and then an uneasy glance on the group. Even his ancient vassal, the chaplain of the nuns, had dared to leave him to go and listen to Gabriel.

Don Antolin with the keenness of his ecclesiastical training, guessed the intensity of the evil produced by Luna. But for the moment his egoism was stronger than his reflection. Let them talk—what did it matter? It was only a little ebullition of pride in those people, nothing more. All words and wind in the head. Meanwhile they had better not ask for any more money! In exchange he had a very good auxiliary in Luna, who, sharing his authority, spared him many annoyances, and the Cathedral disposed of his services gratuitously as interpreter to the foreigners.

These already began to talk of the great intelligence and education of the Toledan sacristans, a praise Don Antolin received as though it were entirely deserved by himself.

Gabriel was far more alarmed than Don Antolin at the effect of his words; he bitterly repented having been led to speak of his past and of his ideals. He had sought for peace and silence, but he was still surrounded, though in a smaller degree, by the atmosphere of proselytism and blind enthusiasm, as in the days of his martyrdom. He had wished to efface himself and to disappear on entering the Cathedral, but fate mocked him, reviving the agitation in the midst of his concealment, to disturb the peace of that ruin. Society had forgotten him, but he unconsciously was agitating, and drawing to himself the attention of the outside world.

The enthusiasm of these neophytes was a danger, and his brother, the Wooden Staff, without understanding the full extent of the evil, warned him with his usual good sense.

"You are turning the heads of these poor men, with the things you tell them. Be careful; they are very well meaning, but they are very ignorant. And having been ignorant all their lives, it is dangerous to turn such men into sages at one blow. It is as if I, being accustomed to the homely stew, were taken to-day to His Eminence's table. I should gorge myself and drink too much; at night I should have a colic, and should probably hop the twig."

Gabriel acknowledged the truth of this prudent advice, but he could not draw back—he was driven on by the affection of his disciples and his own ardour as propagandist. It was a great delight to him to see the wonder in those virgin minds, entering tumultuously into the luminous palaces constructed by human thought during the last century.

The description of the future of humanity inflamed all Luna's ardour. He spoke of the happiness of men, after a revolutionary crisis which would change all the organisation of humanity with mystic rapture, like a Christian preacher describing heaven.

"Man ought to seek happiness solely in this world, for after death there only existed the infinite life of matter with its endless combinations, but the human being was effaced as entirely as a plant or an animal—he fell into oblivion when he sank into the tomb. Immortality of the soul was one of the illusions of human pride worked up by religions, who laid their foundations on this lie. It was only in this life that man could find heaven. Everyone embarked on immensity in the same ship, the earth. We were all comrades in our dangers and our struggles, and we ought to look upon one another as brothers seeking the common welfare. And what about the unequal distribution of goods, the division of classes, the ability to work, and, above all, the struggle for existence, that the philosophers and poets of the oppressing classes paint as an indispensable condition of progress? Communism is the holiest aspiration of humanity, the divine dream of man since he began to think in the first dawn of civilisation. Religions had endeavoured to establish it, but religion had been shipwrecked and was moribund, and only science could enforce it in the future. They must stop on the way they were going, as humanity was marching on the road to perdition, therefore it was necessary to return to the point of departure. The first man who had cultivated a portion of the earth and garnered the fruits of his toil, thought it was his for ever, and left it to his sons as their property; they engaged other men to cultivate it for them—so these men became robbers, appropriators of the universal heritage. It was the same with those who possessed themselves of the invention of human genius, machines, etc., for the benefit of a small majority, subjecting the rest of mankind to the law of hunger. No, everything was for everyone. The earth belonged to all human beings without exception, like the sun and the air; its products ought to be divided between everyone with due regard to their necessities. It was shameful that man, who only appeared for an instant on this planet—a minute, a second, for his life was no more than this in the life of immensity—should spend this mere breath of existence fighting with his kin, robbing them, excited by the fever of plunder, not even enjoying the majestic calm of a wild beast, which when it has eaten, rests, without ever thinking of doing harm from vanity or avarice. There ought to be neither rich nor poor—nothing but men. The only inevitable division must be that between brains more or less highly organised. But the wise, from the fact of being so, ought to show their greatness, sacrificing themselves for the more simple, without seeking to assist the greatness of their minds by material advantages; for in stomachs there were no categories or ranks. Everything that exists, even the smallest production that man considers his exclusive work, is the work of the past and present generations. By what right can anyone say 'This is mine, mine only'? Man is not consulted before he is formed if he wishes to burst forth into life. He is born—and from the fact of being born he has a right to well-being." Gabriel proclaimed his supreme formula, "Everything for everyone, and well-being for all."

His friends listened in profound silence. The right to well-being sank profoundly into their minds; it was the saying that most cruelly touched their poverty, taunted by the contrast of the wealth of the Church.

Don Martin, the young chaplain, was the only one who timidly raised any objections to the master's sayings. He wished to know if, when everything was for everyone, when man should have recognised his right to happiness, without laws or compulsion to force him to production—would he work? seeing that work was a necessity, and not a virtue, as those who employ labour say, to glorify it.

Gabriel loudly affirmed the necessity of work in the future. The man of the future would work without being forced to do so by his necessities; he would not be ruled by the body and its imperious requirements; his conscience would be inspired with the clear understanding of solidarity with his fellows and the certainty that if one abandoned social duties others would follow the example, thus rendering life in common impossible and so returning to the actual times of poverty and robbery.

"Why do not the few men of culture and sound conscience living at present kill and rob?" exclaimed Gabriel. "It is not through fear of the law and its representatives, for a clear intelligence, if it takes the trouble, can easily find ways of evading both; neither can it be through fear of eternal penalties and divine punishment, as such men do not believe in these inventions of the past. It is from that respect to his fellows which is felt by every elevated mind, from the consideration that all violence should be avoided, for if everyone gave themselves over to it, all social life must disappear. When this understanding, which now only belongs to a few, embraces all humanity, men will live ruled by their own consciences without laws or police, working from social duty, without requiring man to be the only spring of activity, and sweating without compassion to be the only way to ease."