ding with music, lend to the relations between man and
God. Let the arts live; let the utmost pomp be displayed in religious
ceremonies. I am a partisan of pomp."

"An artist, an artist, and nothing more than an artist!" exclaimed
the canon, shaking his head with a sorrowful air. "Fine pictures, fine
statues, beautiful music; pleasure for the senses, and let the devil
take the soul!"

"Apropos of music," said Pepe Rey, without observing the deplorable
effect which his words produced on both mother and daughter, "imagine
how disposed my mind would be to religious contemplation on entering the
cathedral, when just at that moment, and precisely at the offertory at
high mass, the organist played a passage from 'Traviata.'"

"Senor de Rey is right in that," said the little lawyer emphatically.
"The organist played the other day the whole of the drinking song and
the waltz from the same opera, and afterward a rondeau from the 'Grande
Duchesse.'"

"But when I felt my heart sink," continued the engineer implacably,
"was when I saw an image of the Virgin, which seems to be held in great
veneration, judging from the crowd before it and the multitude of tapers
which lighted it. They have dressed her in a puffed-out garment of
velvet, embroidered with gold, of a shape so extraordinary that it
surpasses the most extravagant of the fashions of the day. Her face
is almost hidden under a voluminous frill, made of innumerable rows
of lace, crimped with a crimping-iron, and her crown, half a yard in
height, surrounded by golden rays, looks like a hideous catafalque
erected over her head. Of the same material, and embroidered in the same
manner, are the trousers of the Infant Jesus. I will not go on, for to
describe the Mother and the Child might perhaps lead me to commit some
irreverence. I will only say that it was impossible for me to keep from
smiling, and for a short time I contemplated the profaned image, saying
to myself: 'Mother and Lady mine, what a sight they have made of you!'"

As he ended Pepe looked at his hearers, and although, owing to the
gathering darkness, he could not see their countenances distinctly, he
fancied that in some of them he perceived signs of angry consternation.

"Well, Senor Don Jose!" exclaimed the canon quickly, smiling with
a triumphant expression, "that image, which to your philosophy and
pantheism appears so ridiculous, is Our Lady of Help, patroness
and advocate of Orbajosa, whose inhabitants