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THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL


CHAPTER I


The dawn was just rising when Gabriel Luna arrived in front of the
Cathedral, but in the narrow street of Toledo it was still night. The
silvery morning light that had scarcely begun to touch the eaves and
roofs, spread out more freely in the little Piazza del Ayuntamiento,
bringing out of the shadows the ugly front of the Archbishop's Palace,
and the towers of the municipal buildings capped with black slate, a
sombre erection of the time of Charles V.

Gabriel walked for some time up and down the deserted square, wrapping
himself up to his eyes in the muffler of his cloak, while at intervals
his hollow cough shook him painfully. Without daring to stop walking
on account of the bitter cold, he looked at the great doorway called
"del Perdon," the only part of the church able to present a really
imposing aspect. He recalled other famous cathedrals, isolated,
occupying commanding situations, showing themselves freely in the full
pride of their beauty, and he compared them with this Cathedral
of Toledo, the mother-church of Spain, smothered by the swarm of
poverty-stricken buildings that surrounded it, clinging closely to its
walls, permitting it to display none of its exterior beauties, beyond