ave and aisles as far as the crossing, were
virtually completed by 1558. Aside from the manual labor, "it had taken
more than forty-eight collections of maravedis" to bring it to this
point. The magnificent old cloisters erected by Bishop Davila beside the
old Cathedral in 1470, had been spared the fury of the mob, and in 1524
they were moved stone by stone to the southern flank of the new
Cathedral. This would have been a remarkable feat of masonry in our
age, and, for the sixteenth century, it was astonishing. Not a stone was
chipped nor a piece of carving broken. Juan de Compero took the whole
fabric apart and put it together again, as a child does a box of wooden
blocks.

The 15th of August, 1558, when the first services were held in the
Cathedral, was the greatest day in Segovia's history. Quadrado, probably
quoting from old accounts, tells us, "The divine services were then held
in the new Temple. People came to the festival from all over Spain, and
music, from all Castile. At twilight on August 14th, 1558, the tower was
illuminated with fire-works, the great aqueduct, with two thousand
colored lights, and the reflection of the city's lights alarmed the
country-side for forty leagues round. The following day, the Assumption
of Our Lady, there was an astonishing procession, in which all the
parishes took part and the community offered prizes for the best
display. The procession went out by the gate of Saint Juan, and, after
going all around the city, returned to the plaza, where the sacrament
was being borne out of Santa Clara. There was a bull-fight,
pole-climbing, a poetical competition and comedies. The generosity of
the donations corresponded to the pomp of the occasion. Ten days
afterwards the bones were taken from the old church and reinterred in
the new one, among which were those of the Infante Don Pedro, Maria del
Salto, and different prelates."

The bones of the two former were laid to rest under the arches of the
cloister. Don Pedro was a little son of King Henry II who had been
playing on one of the iron balconies in front of the Alcazar windows,
and, while his nurse's back was turned, pitched headlong over the
precipice into eternity and the poplar trees three hundred feet below.
The nurse, who knew full well it would be a question of only a few hours
before she followed her princely charge, anticipated her fate and jumped
after him. Maria del Salto ("of the leap") was a beautiful Jewess who,
having