"

The two men walked up and down some time in silence, but Don Antolin
could not hold his tongue for long when the subject was the economic
life of the Primacy.

"And to think, Gabriel," he continued, "that having been what we were
in former times, we should have come to this! You and most of those
alive have no idea how rich this house used to be--as rich as a king,
and often far richer. From a child no one has known as you have the
history of our glorious archbishops, but of the fortune they amassed
for God, you know nothing. Of course these temporalities do not
interest learned people like you. Have you any idea what donations the
kings and great lords gave in their lifetime to our Cathedral, or the
legacies they left her on their deathbeds? You have a great deal to
learn! I know all about it, I have searched in the Obreria, in the
archives, in the library; everyone does what interests them, and I and
the Senor Obrero have often raged at the indigence of the house, but I
console myself by thinking of what we had, long before any of us were
born. We were very rich, Gabriel--very, very rich. The archbishops of
Toledo could have placed one or two crowns on their mitre, I dare not
say three, for I think of the Supreme Pontiff. First of all, there is
the Deed of Gift to the Cathedral, made by the King Alfonso VI., by
reason of his having conquered Toledo. It was made a hermitage, after
the election of the Bishop Don Bernardo, and I have seen it in the
archives with my own sinful eyes, a parchment with Gothic letters, and
at the head is written, 'The privileges of this Holy Church.' The good
king gave to the Cathedral nine towns--if I wished I could tell you
their names--several mills, and vineyards innumerable, houses and
shops in the town, and he ends by saying with all the munificence of
a Christian cavalier, 'This, therefore, in such a way I give, and I
grant to this church and to you, Bernard, Archbishop, in free and
perfect gift, that neither by homicide, nor any other calumny, shall
it ever be forfeited. Amen.' Afterwards, Don Alfonso VII. gave us
eight towns on the other side of the Guadalquiver, several ovens, two
castles, the salt works of Belinchon, and a tenth of all the money
coined in Toledo, for the vestments of the prebendaries. The VIII. of
the name showered on the Cathedral a perfect rain of gifts, towns,
villages, and mills. Illescas is ours, and a great part of Esquivias,
as also the mortgage on Tala