And I, my son, a priest of the Lord, am obliged to go hither and
thither with those tickets so that we may all live, just as though
I were a seller of entrance tickets to a bull-fight, and the Lord's
house were a theatre, having to endure all those foreign heretics,
who come in without blessing themselves, and who look at everything
through opera-glasses. And I have to smile at them because they pay us
and provide us with some dessert for our poor stew! Carape! Jesus have
mercy on me! I was going to say a sacrilege."

Don Antolin continued his angry complaints till, in passing the front
of his house, Mariquita of the scowling and ugly countenance appeared
at the door.

"Uncle, enough of walking. Your chocolate is getting cold."

But before the priest disappeared into his house, she went on, smiling
amiably at Luna:

"Will you have some, Don Gabriel?"

And with her bold eyes, like a hungry wolf, she invited Luna to enter.
She liked the masterful ways of the man, she said, and the ease which
his former intercourse with the world had given him, and, moreover,
for her woman's imagination Gabriel's mysterious past possessed
a great attraction; his proud silence, the vague reports of his
adventures, and the smile, as much compassionate as disdainful, with
which he listened to the people of the upper cloister.

The insinuating Mariquita withdrew, and Gabriel continued his walk
through the cloister, after finishing the little jar of milk that his
brother brought him up every morning.

At eight o'clock, Don Luis, the Chapel-master, came out, his cloak
wrapped as usual theatrically round him, and his big hat well tilted
back, like a glory, round his enormous head; he was humming absently,
restless with perpetual nervous movements; he inquired anxiously if
the bell had yet rung for the choir, frightened by the threats of a
fine in case he were late. Gabriel felt himself very much attracted
by this poor priestly musician, who lived so despised in the furthest
corner of the church, thinking far more of music than of dogma.

In the evenings Gabriel would often go up to the little room inhabited
by the Chapel-master, on the tipper floor of the Lunas' house; the
room contained all the priest's fortune--a little iron bed, which had
belonged formerly to the seminarist, two plaster busts of Beethoven
and Mozart, and an enormous pile of bundles of music, bound scores,
loose sheets of ruled paper, so big and so piled up and disorde