declaration he made with all the pride learnt in this caricature of an
army, which emphasised all the ceremonies of ancient warfare, and who,
ragged and shoeless as they were, with their swords by their sides,
never failed to transmit orders to each other as "high-born officer."
But the real reason which prevented Luna from returning to Toledo was
that he wished to follow the course of events, to see new countries
and different customs. To return to the Cathedral would mean to remain
there for ever, to renounce everything in life, and he, who during the
war had tasted of worldly delights, had no desire to turn his back on
them quite so soon; also he was not yet of age, so he had plenty of
time before him in which to finish his studies; the priesthood was a
sure retreat, but one to which he was in no hurry to return just at
present; besides, his mother was dead, and his brother's letters told
him of no alteration in the sleepy life of the upper cloister, beyond
that the gardener was married and that the "Wooden Staff" was courting
a girl in the Claverias, it being against all the good traditions of
these people to ally themselves with anyone outside the Cathedral.

Luna lived for more than a year in the emigrants' cantonments; his
classical education and the sympathy aroused by his youth smoothed his
path to a certain extent; he talked Latin with the French abbes, who
were delighted to hear about the war from the young theologian, and
at the same time they taught him the language of the country. These
friends procured for him Spanish lessons among the upper middle
classes who were friendly to the Church. In these days of penury he
was saved by his friendship with an old legitimist Countess, who
invited him to spend several days in her country house, introducing
the warlike seminarist to all the grave and pious friends at her
assemblies as though he had been a crusader newly returned from
Palestine.

Gabriel's great desire was to go to Paris; his life in France had
radically changed his ideas, he really felt as though he had fallen
into a new planet. Accustomed to the monotonous life in the seminary,
and to the nomadic existence during that mountainous and inglorious
war, he was astonished at the material progress, the refinement of
civilisation, the culture and the well-being of the people in France.
He remembered now with shame his Spanish ignorance, all that Castilian
phantasmagoria, fed by lying literature, that ha