adventures had taken from him all desire to rest, and, while it was
still night, he again stole out to await near the Cathedral the moment
that it should be opened.

To while away the time he paced up and down the front, admiring again
the beauties of the porch, and noting its defects aloud, as though he
wished to call the stone benches of the Piazza and its wretched little
trees as witnesses to his criticisms.

An iron grating surmounted by urns of the seventeenth century ran in
front of the porch, enclosing a wide, flagged space, where in former
times the sumptuous processions of the Chapter had assembled, and
where the multitude could admire the grotesque giants on high days and
festivals.

The first storey of the façade was broken in the centre by the great
Puerta del Perdon, an enormous and very deeply-recessed Gothic arch,
which narrowed as it receded by the gradations of its mouldings,
adorned by statues of apostles, under open-worked canopies, and by
shields emblazoned with lions and castles. On the pillar dividing the
doorway stood Jesus in kingly crown and mantle, thin and drawn out,
with the look of emaciation and misery that the imagination of
the Middle Ages conceived necessary for the expression of Divine
sublimity. In the tympanum a relievo represented the Virgin surrounded
by angels, robed in the habit of St. Ildefonso, a pious legend
repeated in various parts of the building as though it were one of its
chief glories.

On one side was the doorway called "de la Torre,"[1] on the other side
that called "de los Escribanos,"[2] for by it entered in former days