ly bishops
were interspersed with those of historical and legendary personages.

On one side the good Alfaqui Abu-Walid, immortalised in a Christian
church for his tolerant spirit, on the opposite side the mysterious
leader of Las Navas who, after showing the Christians the way to
victory, suddenly disappeared like a divine envoy--a statue of
exceeding ugliness with a haggard face covered by a rough hood. At
either end of the screen stood as evidences of the past opulence of
the church two beautiful pulpits of rich marbles and chiselled bronze.

Gabriel cast a glance at the choir, admiring the beautiful stalls
belonging to the canons, and he thought enthusiastically that perhaps
some day he might succeed in gaining one to the great pride of his
family. In his wanderings about the church he would often stop before
the immense fresco of Saint Christopher, a picture as bad as it
was huge--a figure occupying all one division of the wall from the
pavement to the cornice, and which by its size seemed to be the
only fitting inhabitant of the church. The cadets would come in the
evenings to look at it; that colossus of pink flesh, bearing the child
on its shoulders, advancing its angular legs carefully through the
waters, leaning on a palm tree that looked like a broom, was for them
by far the most noticeable thing in the church. The light-hearted
young men delighted in measuring its ankles with their swords and
afterwards calculating how many swords high the blessed giant could
be. It was the readiest application that they could make of those
mathematical calculations with which they were so much worried in the
academy. The apprentice of the church was irritated at the impudence
with which these dressed up popinjays, the apprentices of war,
sauntered about the church.

Many mornings he would go to the Muzarabe Chapel, following
attentively the ancient ritual,[1] intoned by the priests especially
devoted to it. On the walls were represented in brilliant colours
scenes from the conquest of Oran by the great Cisneros. As Gabriel
listened to the monotonous singing of the Muzarabe priests he
remembered the quarrels during the time of Alfonso VI. between the
Roman liturgy and that of Toledo--the foreign worship and the national
one. The believers, to end the eternal disputes, appealed to the
"Judgment of God." The king named the Roman champion, and the Toledans
confided the defence of their Gothic rite to the sword of Juan Ruiz,