ut now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a
burning sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers and
foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its white fringes
of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then turn to the city, with
its galleries and terraces whither the townsfolk come to take the air
among their flowers of an evening, above the houses and the tops of the
trees in their little gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and
lastly, in the stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music,
the chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing out
over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere; oftener still
there is silence over all.

The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and narrow
aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are so high, the
architect was unable to build the flying buttresses and intervening
chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor are there openings of any
kind in the walls which support the weight of the roof. Outside there
is simply the heavy wall structure, a solid mass of grey stone further
strengthened by huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its
little side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre doorway; for
upon that side the exposure permits of the display of lacework in stone
and of other beauties peculiar to the style improperly called Gothic.

The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the townsfolk, who
came and went and heard mass there. The choir was shut off from the
rest of the church by a grating and thick folds of brown curtain, left
slightly apart in the middle in such a way that nothing of the choir
could be seen from the church except the high altar and the officiating
priest. The grating itself was divided up by the pillars which supported
the organ loft; and this part of the structure, with its carved wooden
columns, completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by
the shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had been
bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the gallery to look
down into the choir, he could have seen nothing but the tall eight-sided
windows of stained glass beyond the high altar.

At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establi