and the poor cardinal returned to his seat, the
Senor Esteban was moved to pity to see his sad and childlike face,
with the small round head, and insignificant appearance; he returned
discouraged and disheartened, after receiving his nephew Ferdinand
VII. in Madrid. All his colleagues in the regency were either in
prison or in exile, and that he did not suffer a like fate was solely
due to his mitre and to his name. The unfortunate prelate thought
he had done good service in maintaining the interests of his family
during the war, and now he found himself accused of being Liberal, an
enemy to religion and the throne, without being able to imagine how he
had conspired against them. The poor Cardinal de Bourbon languished
sadly in his palace, devoting his revenues to works in the Cathedral,
till he died in 1823 at the beginning of the reaction, leaving his
place to Inguanzo, the tribune of absolutism, a prelate with iron-grey
whiskers, who had made his career as deputy in the Cortes at Cadiz,
attacking as deputy every sort of reform, and advocating a return to
the times of the Austrians as the surest means of saving his country.

The good gardener saluted with equal cordiality the Bourbon Cardinal,
hated by the kings, as the prelate with the whiskers, who made all
the diocese tremble with his bitter and harassing temper, and his
arrogance as a revolutionary Absolutist. For him, whoever occupied the
throne of Toledo was a perfect man, whose acts no one should dare to
discuss, and he turned a deaf ear to the murmurs of the canons and
beneficiaries, who, smoking their cigarettes in the arbour of his
garden, spoke of the genialities of this Senor de Inguanzo, and were
indignant at the Government of Ferdinand VII. not being sufficiently
firm, through fear of the foreigners, to re-establish the wholesome
tribunal of the Inquisition.

The only thing that troubled the gardener was to watch the decadence
of his beloved Cathedral. The revenues of the archbishop and of the
Chapter had been greatly wasted during the war. What had occurred was
what happens after a great flood, when the waters begin to subside
and carry everything away with them, leaving the land bare and
uninhabited. The Primacy lost many of its rights, the tenants made
themselves masters, taking advantage of the disorders of the State;
the towns refused to pay their feudal services, as though the
necessity of defending themselves and helping in the war had freed
the