rly
that every now and then a pile would slip down, covering the floor of
the little room with white sheets to its furthest corner.

"That is how all his money goes," said the Wooden Staff with an air of
good-natured reproof, "he will never have a farthing. As soon as he
gets his pay he orders more music from Madrid. It would be far better
for Don Luis if he were to buy himself a new hat, even if it were a
cheap one, so that the gentlemen of the choir should not laugh at the
covering he has on his head."

In the winter evenings, after the choir, the musician and Gabriel took
refuge in this little room. The canons, wishing to avoid the cold
winds and the rain, took their daily walk in the galleries of the
upper cloister, not wishing to forego this exercise to which their
methodical existence had accustomed them. The rain would beat on the
window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician
would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the
harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who was seated on the
bed.

The musician would grow excited, speaking of his love of art. In the
midst of some peroration he would become suddenly silent, and bending
over the instrument its melodies would fill the room, and floating
down the staircase would reach the ears of the walkers in the cloister
like a distant echo. Suddenly he would cease playing and resume his
chattering, as though afraid that with his absent-mindedness his ideas
would evaporate.

The silent Luna was the only listener he had met with in the
Cathedral; the first who would listen to him for long hours without
ridiculing him or thinking him crazy, and who often showed by his
short interruptions and questions the pleasure with which he listened.

The end of the evening's conversation was always the same--the
greatness of Beethoven, the idol of the poor musician.

"I have loved him all my life," said the Chapel-master, "I was
educated by a Jeronomite friar, an old man driven from his convent
who, after leaving it, had wandered over the world as a professor
of the violoncello. The Jeronomites were the great musicians of the
Church. You did not know this, neither should I have known it if this
holy man had not taken me under his protection soon after I was born,
and been to me a real father. It appears that in olden days each order
devoted itself to some special thing. One, I think the Benedictines,
copied and annotated old