Valladolid to Toledo and then to Madrid. Here also came one of the
greatest characters in fiction, for it was in Valladolid that Gil Blas
learned to practise the art of medicine tinder the instruction of the
famous Dr. Sangrado.

IV

[Illustration: 08 A STREET LEADING TO THE CATHEDRAL]

I put these facts at the service of the reader for what use he will
while he goes with us to visit the cathedral in Valladolid, a cathedral
as unlike that of Burgos as the severest mood of Spanish renaissance can
render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made
the Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his
austere mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite
as dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the
four ponderous towers it was meant to have, it is not without its
alleviations, especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall
of the original seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in
the crevices of the flagging from which the broken steps falter to the
portal, but within all is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and
nowhere softened by decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge
bulk of the choir in the center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted
to the cathedral roof from the chanting and intoning within. When
the service ended a tall figure in scarlet crossed rapidly toward the
sacristy. It was of such imposing presence that we resolved at once it
must be the figure of a cardinal, or of an archbishop at the least. But
it proved to be one of the sacristans, and when we followed him to
the sacristy with half a dozen other sightseers, he showed us a silver
monstrance weighing a hundred and fifty pounds and decked with statites
of our first parents as they appeared before the Fall. Besides this we
saw, much against our will, a great many ecclesiastical vestments
of silk and damask richly wrought in gold and silver. But if we were
reluctant there was a little fat priest there who must have seen them
hundreds of times and had still a childish delight in seeing them again
because he had seen them so often; he dimpled and smiled, and for his
sake we pretended a joy in them which it would have been cruel to deny
him. I suppose we were then led to the sacrifice at the several side
altars, but I have no specific recollection of them; I know there was a
pale, sick-looking young girl in white who went about with her father,
and