re the minority, the
greater part enter because they see the Church still triumphant and
seemingly commanding, and they think that in her ranks some tremendous
career is waiting for them. Unlucky wights! I also was led to the
altar with music and oratorical shouts, as though I were walking to a
triumph. Incense spread its clouds before my eyes, all my family wept
with emotion at seeing me nothing less than a minister of God. And
the day following all this theatrical pomp, when the lights and the
censers were extinguished and the church had recovered its ordinary
aspect, began this miserable life of poverty and intrigue to earn
one's bread--seven duros a month! To endure at all hours the
complaints of those poor women, with their tempers embittered by
seclusion, common as the lowest servants, who spend their lives
gossiping in the parlour of what is passing in the towns, inventing
scandals to please the canons, or the families who protect the house.
And there are priests who envy me! hungering against me for this
coveted chaplaincy of nuns! looking upon me as a flattering hanger-on
of the archiepiscopal palace, not understanding how otherwise, being
so young, I could have hooked out this preferment that allows me to
live in Toledo on seven duros a month!"

Gabriel nodded his head, sympathising with the young priest's
complaints.

"Yes, it is you who are deceived. The day for making great fortunes in
the Church is past, and the poor youths who now wear the cassock and
dream of a mitre make me think of those emigrants who go to distant
countries famous through long centuries of plunder, and find them even
more poverty-stricken than their own land."

"You are right, Gabriel. The day of the all-powerful Church is past;
she has still in her udders milk enough for all, but there are few who
can fasten on to them and fill themselves to repletion, while others
groan with hunger. One could die of laughing when one hears of the
equality and the democratic spirit of the Church. It is all a lie; in
no other institution does so cruel a despotism reign. In early days
Popes and bishops were elected by the faithful, and were deposed from
power if they used it badly. The aristocracy of the Church exists
still; it may be a canon upwards, or one who succeeds in crowning
himself with a mitre; from them no account is required. Among the
laity appointments are changed, ministers are turned out, soldiers are
degraded--even kings are dethro