the minister, Rafael's friend, the only auditor left on the Blue
Bench, pressing his huge paunch against the desk, turned his head--an
owlish, hairy head with a sharp beak--to smile indulgently on the young
man.

The orator continued, his confidence increasing as he went on, fortified
by these signs of approval. He spoke of the patient, deliberate study
the committee had made of this matter of the ecclesiastical bud-gets. He
was the most modest, the least among them, but there were his
comrades--they were there, in truth, solemn gentlemen in English
frock-coats, with their hair parted in the middle, from their foreheads
to the napes of their necks--studious young men--who had flattered him
with the honor of speaking for them--and if they had not been more
economical, it was because greater economy had been impossible.

And the heads of the committee-men nodded as they murmured gratefully:

"Say, this fellow Brull can make quite a speech!"

The government was ready to exercise any economy that should prove
prudent and feasible, without prejudice to the dignity of the nation;
but Spain was an eminently religious country, favored by God in all her
crises; and no government loyal to the national genius could ever touch
a _centimo_ of the ecclesiastical appropriation. Never! Never!...

On the word _never_ his voice resounded with the melancholy echo that
rings in empty houses. Rafael looked in anguish at the clock. Half an
hour. Half an hour gained, and still he had not really damaged his
outline. His talk was going so well that he was sorry the Chamber was
far from crowded!... Before him, in the shadows of the diplomatic
gallery, that fan kept fluttering. Pesky woman! Why couldn't she keep
quiet and not spoil his speech!

The president, so restless and vigilant, so ever-ready with watch and
bell in hand when any of the Opposition had the floor, was now sitting
back in his chair with his eyes shut, dozing away with the confidence of
a stage director who is sure the show will go off without a hitch. The
panes of the glass dome were glowing under the rays of the sun, but they
allowed only a diffuse, green light, a discreet, soft, crypt-like
clarity to seep through into the Chamber that lay below in monastic
calm. Through the windows over the president's chair, Rafael glimpsed
patches of the blue sky, drenched in the gentle light of an afternoon of
Springtime. A white dove was hovering in the perspective of those blue
sq