was being opened from inside. It was the bell-ringer going
his rounds and opening all the doors; first of all a dog came out,
stretching his neck as though he was going to bark with hunger, then
two men with their caps over their eyes, wrapped in brown cloaks; the
bell-ringer held up the curtain to let them pass out.

"Well, good-day, Mariano," said one of them by way of farewell.

"Good-night to the caretakers of God.... May you sleep well."

Gabriel recognised the nocturnal guardians of the Cathedral; locked
into the church since the previous night, they were now going to their
homes to sleep.

The dog trotted off in the direction of the seminary to get his
breakfast off the scraps left by the students, free till such time as
the guardians came to look for him, to lock themselves in the church
once more.

Luna walked down the steps of the doorway into the Cathedral. His feet
had scarcely touched the pavement before he felt on his face the cold
touch of the clammy air, like an underground vault. In the church
it was still dark, but above the stained glass of the hundreds of
different-sized windows glowed in the early dawn, looking like magic
flowers opening with the first splendours of day. Below, among the
enormous pillars that looked like a forest of stone, all was darkness,
broken here and there by the uncertain red spots of the lamps burning
in the different chapels, wavering in the shadows. The bats flew in
and out round the columns, wishing to prolong their possession of the
fane, till the first rays of the sun shone through the windows; they
fluttered over the heads of the devotees, who, kneeling before the
altars, were praying loudly, as pleased to be in the Cathedral at that
early hour as though it were their own house. Others chattered with
the acolytes and other servants of the church, who were coming in by
the different doors, sleepy and stretching themselves like workmen
coming to their work. In the twilight, figures in black cloaks glided
by on their way to the sacristy, stopping to make genuflections before
each image; and in the distance, invisible in the darkness, you
could still divine the presence of the bell-ringer, like a restless
hobgoblin, by the rattle of his bunch of keys and the creaking of the
doors he opened on his round.

The Cathedral was awake. Echo repeated the banging of the doors from
nave to nave; a large broom, making a saw-like noise, began to sweep
in front of the sacristy;