y well informed
about things in the palace--"Dona Visita is weeping like a Magdalen
and cursing the canons, seeing Don Sebastian so ill."

As Wooden Staff sat down to table with his family he began to speak
of the decadence of the feast of Corpus, which had been so famous in
Toledo in former times. In his desire to complain he forgot the bitter
silence he had imposed on himself in his daughter's presence.

"You will hardly recognise our Corpus," he said to Gabriel. "Of all
that we remember nothing remains but the famous tapestries that are
hung outside the Cathedral. The giants are not drawn up before the
Puerta del Perdon, and the procession is shorn of its glory."

The Chapel-master also complained bitterly.

"And the mass, Senor Esteban? Just think what a mass for such a solemn
festivity! Four instruments from outside the house, and a Rossini mass
of the lightest description so as not to cost much. It would have been
far better for this to have played the organ alone."

According to an ancient custom, on the vesper before the feast, the
band of the Academy of Infantry played in the evening before the
Cathedral. All Toledo came to hear the serenade, which was an event in
the monotonous life of the town, and from the province of Madrid many
strangers came for the bull-fight on the following day.

Mariano, the bell-ringer, invited his friends to listen to the
serenade from the Greco-Roman gallery on the principal front. At the
hour when the lights were usually extinguished in the Claverias and
Don Antolin locked the street door, Gabriel and his friends glided
cautiously to the bell-ringer's "habitacion." Sagrario was also
persuaded to come by her uncle, who in this way managed to tear her
from her machine. She really must enjoy some little amusement; she
ought to appear in the world now and then; she was killing herself
with all that tiresome work.

They all sat in the gallery. The shoemaker had brought his wife,
always with a small baby at her flabby breast. The Tato was talking
delightedly to the organ-blower and the verger about the bull-fight on
the following day, and Mariano stood by his adored comrade, while his
wife, a woman as rough as himself, spoke with Sagrario.

The men were deploring the absence of Don Martin. Probably he had gone
down below among the people who filled the square, doubtless dreading
that he must be up before daybreak to say mass to the nuns.

The palace of the Ayuntamiento was dec