e glories of his Cathedral, lowered
his voice and hurried over his explanations as he showed a piece
of the mantle worn by Santa Leocadia when she "appeared" to the
Archbishop of Toledo, quite understanding the difficulty of explaining
how an apparition could wear garments of stuff.

Gabriel translated faithfully Don Antolin's explanation, repeating
it again and again with imperturbable gravity, while the canons who
escorted the batch of strangers drew a few paces away with an absent
look, to avoid questions.

One day a phlegmatic Englishman interrupted the interpreter.

"And have you not amongst all these things a feather from the wings of
St. Michael?"

"No, senor, and it is a great pity," said Luna, equally seriously,
"but you will probably find it in some other Cathedral; we cannot have
everything here."

In the Chapter-house, a mixture of Arab and Gothic architecture, the
foreigners were much interested by the double row of portraits of the
Toledan archbishops hanging on the wall, with their mitres and golden
croziers. Gabriel called their attention to the picture of Don
Cerebruno, a mediaeval prelate, so called from his enormous head; but
it was the wardrobe which more especially surprised the foreigners.

It was a room surrounded by large cupboards and shelves of old wood;
above these the walls were covered with dusty and torn pictures,
copies of Flemish paintings that the canons had relegated to this
corner; round the room were placed in line the ancient armchairs of
the church, some of Spanish workmanship, austere, with straight lines
and ravelled coverings, others of Greek design with curved feet
inlaid with ivory. The capes and chasubles were piled on the shelves,
according to colours, with the collars outside the heap, so that
people could examine the wonderful embroidery. A whole world of
patterns appeared with every possible brilliancy of colour on a few
inches of stuff. The astonishing art of the ancient embroiderers made
the silk a series of vivid pictures; the collar and the narrow stripes
on the front of a cape were large enough to reproduce all the scenes
of the biblical creation and the passion of Jesus. Brocade and silk
unrolled the magnificence of their textures. One cape was a garden
of flame-coloured carnations, another was a bed of roses and other
fantastic flowers with twisted stamens and metallic petals. The
sacristans produced from the deep shelves, as though they were books,
the sple