d woman would kiss his ring with
great reverence, but very soon she would lapse into talking to him as
one of her own family, often very nearly speaking to him in the second
person. The cardinal, always surrounded by fear and adulation, often
felt the necessity of the old woman's careless and frank conversation.
The people belonging to the Cathedral declared that the Senora Tomasa
was the only person who dared to tell the cardinal home-truths face to
face, and the neighbours in the Claverias felt their pride flattered
when they saw the prince of the church sweeping down the stone steps
in his brilliant scarlet robes to sit in the arbour and gossip for
a good hour with the old woman, while his attendants remained
respectfully standing at the gate of the iron railings.

Tomasa was not puffed up with this honour; to her this ecclesiastical
prince was only the friend of her childhood, who had had a certain
amount of good luck; and in the end, he was only Don Sebastian,
without going any further into ceremonies and formulas of respect. But
her family knew how to take advantage of this friendship, especially
her son-in-law, "Virgin's Blue," a hypocrite, as the old woman
declared, who would make money out of the very cobwebs of the
Cathedral; an insatiable locust who, profiting by the friendship of
the cardinal and his mother-in-law, went on continually obtaining
fresh privileges, without the priests and sacristans daring to make
the slightest protest, seeing him so well protected.

Gabriel much enjoyed his aunt's talk. She was the only person born
in the cloister who seemed to have freed herself from the soporific
influence of the church. She loved the Cathedral, as being her ancient
roof-tree, but she did not retain much respect for the saints in the
chapels, nor for the human dignitaries who sat in the choir. She
laughed with the happiness of a healthy and placid old woman, her
seventy years being, as she said, quite free from any evil done to her
neighbour. Her language was free and easy, like that of a woman who
has seen much, and does not believe in human majesty or irreproachable
virtues; but the bed-rock of her character was its tolerance, her
compassion for all faults, but she Was indignant with those who
attempted to hide them.

"They are all men, Gabriel," she would say to her nephew, speaking of
the clergy of the Cathedral. "Don Sebastian is only a man; all sinners
who have much to answer for before God. They ca