e oriental houses, outwardly squalid and
miserable, but inwardly rich in alabasters and traceries. Jews and
Moors had not lived in Toledo for centuries in vain, their aversion to
outward show seemed to have influenced the building of the Cathedral,
now suffocated by the miserable hovels, pushed and piled up against
it, as though seeking its protection.

The little Piazza del Ayuntamiento was the only open space that
allowed the Christian monument to display any of its grandeur; under
this little patch of open sky the early morning light showed the three
immense Gothic arches of its principal front, the hugely massive bell
tower, with its salient angles, ornamented by the cap of the Alcuzon,
a sort of black tiara, with three crowns, almost lost in the grey mist
of the wintry dawn.

Gabriel looked affectionately at the closed and silent fane, where his
family lived, and where he himself had spent the happiest days of his
life. How many years had passed since he had last seen it! And now he
waited anxiously for the opening of its doorways.

He had arrived in Toledo by train the previous night from Madrid.
Before shutting himself up in his miserable little room in the Posada
del Sangre (the ancient Messon del Sevillano, inhabited by Cervantes)
he had felt a feverish desire to revisit the Cathedral, and had spent
nearly an hour walking round it, listening to the barking of the
Cathedral watch-dog, who growled suspiciously, hearing the sound of
footsteps in the surrounding streets. He had been unable to sleep; the
fact of returning to his native town after so many years of misery and
adventures had taken from him all desire to rest, and, while it was
still night, he again stole out to await near the Cathedral the moment
that it should be opened.

To while away the time he paced up and down the front, admiring again
the beauties of the porch, and noting its defects aloud, as though he
wished to call the stone benches of the Piazza and its wretched little
trees as witnesses to his criticisms.

An iron grating surmounted by urns of the seventeenth century ran in
front of the porch, enclosing a wide, flagged space, where in former
times the sumptuous processions of the Chapter had assembled, and
where the multitude could admire the grotesque giants on high days and
festivals.

The first storey of the facade was broken in the centre by the great
Puerta del Perdon, an enormous and very deeply-recessed Gothic arch,
which nar