gues and comment on his history and his defects. There was nothing
to fear from a dead prelate, and besides, it was an indirect praise to
the living archbishop and his favourites to speak ill of the defunct.
But if during the conversation the name of His reigning Eminence
arose, they were all silent, raising their hands to their caps to
salute, as though the prince of the church were able to see them from
the neighbouring palace.

Gabriel, listening to his companions of the upper cloister, remembered
the funeral judgment of the Egyptians. In the Primacy no one dared to
speak the truth about the prelates, or to discuss their faults till
death had taken possession of them.

The most that they dared to do was to comment on the disagreements
among the canons, to compare their lists of those who saluted one
another in the choir, or who glared at one another between versicle
and antiphon like mad dogs ready to fly at one another, or to speak
with wonder about a certain polemic discussed by the Doctoral and the
Obrero in the Catholic papers in Madrid, which had lasted for three
years, as to whether the deluge was partial or universal; answering
each other's articles with an interval of four months.

A group of friends had collected round Gabriel. They sought him,
feeling the necessity of his presence, experiencing that attraction
exercised by those who are born to be leaders of men even though they
remain silent. In the evenings they would meet in the dwelling of the
bell-ringer, or when it was fine weather they would go out into the
gallery above the Puerta del Perdon. In the mornings the assembly
would be in the house of the shoemaker who mended the giants, a yellow
little man, who suffered from continual pains in his head, which
obliged him to wear sundry coloured handkerchiefs tied round his head
in the fashion of a turban.

He was the poorest in all the Claverias; he had no appointment, and
mended the giants without any remuneration in the hopes of succeeding
to the first vacant place, feeling very grateful to those gentlemen of
the Chapter who gave him his house rent free, on account of his wife
being the daughter of a former old servant of the church. The smell
of the paste and of the damp floor infected his house with the rank
atmosphere of poverty. A hopeless fecundity aggravated this poverty;
his sad, placid wife with her big yellow eyes appeared every year with
a new baby tugging at her flabby breast, and severa