vera. Afterwards came the fighting
prelate, Don Rodrigo, who took much land from the Moors, and the
Cathedral possesses one principality, the Adelantamiento de Cazorla,
with towns like Baza, Niebla, and Alcaraz. And besides the kings there
is a great deal to be said about the nobles, great princes who showed
their generosity to the Holy Metropolitan Church. Don Lope de Haro,
Lord of Vizcaya, not content with paying the cost of the building from
the Puerta de los Escribanos as far as the choir, gave us the town of
Alcubilete, with its mills and fisheries, and he also left a legacy
so that in the choir when complines are sung, that lamp called the
Preciosa should be lighted, which is placed by the great bronze eagle
belonging to the big missal. Don Alfonso Tello de Meneses gave us
four towns on the banks of the Guadiana, granted us tithes and bridge
tolls, and I know not what riches besides. We have been very powerful,
Gabriel; the territory of this diocese is larger than a principality.
The Cathedral had property on the earth, in the air, and in the sea!
Our dominions extended throughout the whole nation from end to end;
there was not a single province in which we did not hold possessions.
Everything contributed to the glory of the Lord, and to the comfort
and welfare of His ministers; everything paid to the Cathedral: bread
when it was baked in the ovens, the casting of the net, wheat as it
passed through the mill, money as it came from the Mint, the traveller
as he went on his way; the country people who then paid no taxes or
contributions served their king and saved their own souls, giving
the best sheaf in every ten, so that the granaries of the Holy
Metropolitan Church were quite insufficient to contain such abundance.
What times were those, Gabriel! There was faith, Gabriel, and faith
is the chief thing in life--without faith there is no virtue nor
decency--nor nothing."

He stopped for a moment, quite out of breath with talking. The priest
was so saturated with the atmosphere of the Cathedral, that in himself
he seemed to unite all the various scents of the church; his cassock
had collected the mouldy smell of the old stones and the rusty iron
railings, and his mouth seemed to breathe of the gutters and the
gargoyles, and the rank damp of the garrets.

With the rapid enumeration of all the past wealth Don Antolin warmed,
even to indignation.

"And having been so rich, now we find ourselves in extreme poverty.