m for ever from vassalage; further, the turbulent Cortes had
decreed the abolition of all lordships, and had very much curtailed
the enormous revenues of the Cathedral, acquired in the centuries when
the archbishops of Toledo put on their casques, and went out to fight
the Moors with double-handed swords.

Even so, a considerable fortune remained to the church of the Primacy,
and it maintained its splendour as if nothing had happened, but the
Senor Esteban scented danger from the depths of his garden, hearing
from the canons of the Liberal conspiracies, the executions by
shooting and hanging, and the exiling, to which the king Senor Don
Fernando appealed, in order to repress the audacity of the "Negros,"
the enemies of the Monarchy and of religion.

"They have tasted the sweets," said he, "and they will return--see if
they do not return, and take what is left! During the war they took
the first bite, taking from the Cathedral more than half that was
hers, and now they will come and take the rest; they will try and
catch hold of the handle of the fryingpan."

The gardener was angry at the possibility of such a thing happening.
Ay! and was it for this that so many lord archbishops of Toledo fought
against the Moors? Conquering towns, assaulting castles and annexing
pasture lands, which all came to be the property of the Cathedral,
contributing to the great splendour of God's worship! And was
everything to fall into the dirty hands of the enemies of anything
that was holy? Everything that so many faithful souls had willed to
them on their deathbeds, queens and magnates, and simple country
gentlemen, who left the best part of their fortunes to the Holy
Metropolitan Church, in the hope of saving their souls! What would
happen to the six hundred souls, big and little, clerics and seculars,
dignitaries and simple servants who lived from the revenues of the
Cathedral?.... And was this called liberty? To rob what did not
belong to them, leaving in poverty innumerable families who were now
supported by the "great pot" of the Chapter?

When the sad forebodings of the gardener began to be realised, and
Mendizabal decreed the dismemberment, the Senor Esteban thought he
would have died of rage. But the Cardinal Inguanzo did better. Placed
in his seat by the Liberals as his predecessor had been by the
Absolutists, he thought it best to die in order to take no part in
these attempts against the sacred revenues of the Church.

The