a nobleman from the borders of Pisuerga. The champion of the Gothic
breviary remained triumphant in the fight, demonstrating its
superiority with magnificent sword thrusts, but, in spite of the will
of God having been manifested in this warlike way, the Roman rite by
slow degrees became master of the situation, till at last the Muzarabe
ritual was relegated to this small chapel as a curious relic of the
past.

[Footnote 1: The Muzarabe ritual is still sung in Arabic both in
Toledo and Salamanca.]

Sometimes in the evenings, when the services were ended and the
Cathedral was locked up, Gabriel would go up to the abode of the
bell-ringer, stopping on the gallery above the door del Perdon.
Mariano, the bell-ringer's son, a youth of the same age as the
seminarist, and attached to him by the respect and admiration his
talents inspired, would act as guide in their excursions to the upper
regions of the church; they would possess themselves of the key of the
vaultings and explore that mysterious locality to which only a few
workmen ascended from time to time.

The Cathedral was ugly and commonplace seen from above. In the very
early days the stone vaultings had remained uncovered, with no other
concealment beyond the light-looking carved balustrade, but the rain
had begun to damage them, threatening their destruction, and so the
Chapter had covered the Cathedral with a roof of brown tiles, which
gave the Church the appearance of a huge warehouse or a great barn.
The pinnacles of the buttresses seemed ashamed to appear above this
ugly covering, the flying buttresses became lost and disappeared among
the bare-looking buildings, built on to the Cathedral, and the little
staircase turrets became hidden behind this clumsy mass of roofing.

The two youths climbing along the cornices, green and slippery from
the rain, would mount to quite the upper parts of the building. Their
feet would become entangled in the plants that a luxuriant nature
allowed to grow amid the joints of the stones, flocks of birds would
fly away at their approach; all the sculptures seemed to serve as
resting-places for their nests, and every hollow in the stone where
the rain-water collected was a miniature lake where the birds came
to drink; sometimes a large black bird would settle on one of the
pinnacles like an unexpected finial; it was a raven who settled there
to plume his wings, and it would remain there sunning itself for
hours; to the people who