e
of the police, thrown into prison, or expelled on the slightest
suspicion. It was a return to the ancient persecution of the gipsies,
the constant hunting of independent people, leading vagabond lives, of
the Middle Ages. His illness and his desire for rest and peace made
him return to Spain. Time had produced a certain amount of tolerance
towards the exiles, and in Spain everything is soon forgotten, and
though the authorities are harder and less scrupulous than in other
countries, still they interfere less on account of their improvidence
and the carelessness natural to the race.

Sick and without any work by which he could earn his living, precluded
from seeking work among the printers, as his name was encircled by
a halo which terrified the masters, Gabriel fell into such extreme
poverty that the little help and succour his companions could afford
were unable to relieve it, and he travelled from end to end of the
Peninsula begging from his fellows and hiding from the police.

His spirit was broken, he was conquered, and he had no longer strength
to continue the struggle. Nothing remained for him but to die, but
merciful death came slowly to his call. He thought of his brother, the
only affection remaining to him in the world; he remembered the quiet
family in the Claverias, of which he had caught a glimpse on his last
visit to the Cathedral, and he turned to seek them as his last hope.

On his return to Toledo, he found the happy family dissolved;
misfortune had come even to that silent and stagnant corner.

But the Cathedral, insensible to all human vicissitudes was there,
the same as ever, and to it he clung, hiding himself in its recesses,
hoping to die there in peace, with no other hope but to be forgotten;
dying before his proper time, tasting the bitter happiness of
annihilation, leaving behind him at the door, like an animal who sheds
its skin, all that rebellion which had drawn upon him the hatred of
society.

His happiness was not to think, not to speak, to mould himself to that
dead world; he would be among the living statues peopling the upper
cloister, one more automaton; he would imitate those beings who seemed
to have absorbed into themselves something of the austerity of the
granite buttresses, he would inhale like a healing balsam the scent
of the rusty iron railings and the incense that spread through the
church, the ancient perfume of the past centuries.

CHAPTER IV

On leaving t