we can still lay our
hands on some of the stores left by the Obreros of former days. Ay,
senor! And to think there was a time when the Chapter maintained at
its own expense inside the church, cutters and painters of glass,
plumbers, and I know not what beside, so that any great works could be
undertaken without seeking any help outside the house! If one of the
tombs gets broken, even now we have quantities of borderings carved
with saints and flowers that are wonderful to see. But what will
happen when all these are finished? When the last pane of glass in
the stores has been broken, and the last fragments of carving in the
Obreria used up? We shall have to put cheap white panes in the windows
to prevent the rain and wind coming in. The Cathedral will look like
an inn--may God forgive me the comparison--and the priests of the
Primacy will praise God dressed like the chaplain of a hermitage."

And Don Antolin laughed sarcastically, as though this future that he
was anticipating was an absurd contradiction of the eternal laws.

"You will easily believe," he went on, "that they do not waste
anything, and that they make money out of every possible thing. The
garden that was for so many years in your family is now leased out by
the Chapter, since your brother's death; twenty duros a year your Aunt
Tomasa pays for her son to cultivate it, and this only because, as you
know, the old woman is such a great friend of His Eminence, as they
have known each other since they were children. I go about like a
water carrier, all round the church and the cloisters, watching that
no one plays tricks, for there are a lot of young light-hearted
people, whom you cannot trust. One minute I am in the Ochavo, watching
that your nephew the 'Tato' has sold the tickets to the foreigners
(for he is quite capable of letting them in gratis if they tip him
on leaving), and the next I am up in the cloister looking after that
shoemaker who repairs the giants; they cannot deceive me, no one
escapes me without paying; but, ay! it is a long while since I have
sung mass. You can see me at mid-day when the Cathedral is closed
reading my hours hurriedly in the cloisters, watching the clock in
order to go down the moment the church is opened, when the strangers
begin to come to see the treasury. This is not the life of a good
Catholic, and if God does not lay it to my account that I am doing it
all for the glory of His house, I fear that I shall lose my soul.