en he began to recite his Latin, mastering it
quickly, as though he had never spoken anything else in his life, and
at ten he could argue with the clergy who frequented the gardens, and
who delighted in putting before him questions and difficulties.

The Senor Esteban, growing daily more bent and feeble, smiled
delightedly before his last work; he was going to be the glory of his
house! His name was Luna, and therefore he could aspire to anything
without fear, because even Popes had come from that family.

The canons would take the boy into the sacristy after choir, and
question him as to his studies. One of the clergy belonging to the
archbishop's household presented him to the cardinal, who, after
hearing him, gave him a handful of sugared almonds and the promise of
a scholarship, so that he could continue his studies at the seminary
gratuitously.

The Lunas and all their relations more or less distant, who were
really nearly the whole population of the upper cloister, were
rejoiced at this promise; what else could Gabriel be but a priest? For
these people, attached to the church from the day of their birth, like
excrescences of its stones, who considered the archbishops of Toledo
as the most powerful beings in the world after the Pope, the only
profession worthy of a man of talent was the Church.

Gabriel went to the Seminary, and to all the family the Claverias
seemed quite deserted. The long, pleasant evenings in the house of
the Lunas came to an end, at which the bell-ringer, the vergers, the
sacristans and other church servants had been used to assemble, and
listen to the clear and well modulated voice of Gabriel, who read like
an angel--sometimes the lives of the saints, at other times Catholic
newspapers that came from Madrid, or chapters from a Don Quixote with
pages of vellum and antiquated writing--a venerable copy which had
been handed down in the family for generations.

Gabriel's life in the Seminary was the ordinary and monotonous life of
a hard-working student: triumphs in theological controversies, prizes
in heaps, and the satisfaction of being held up to his companions as a
model.

Sometimes one of the canons who lectured in the seminary would come
into the garden:--

"The lad is getting on very well, Esteban; he is first in everything,
and besides, is as steady and pious as a saint. He will be the comfort
of your old age."

The gardener, always growing older and thinner, shook his head. He