now and again the heavy door-curtains of the church were lifted, and
a breath of air charged with incense floated over the garden of the
Claverias, together with the deep notes of the organ, and the sound of
voices chanting Latin words and solemnly prolonging the cadences.

Gabriel looked at the garden surrounded by its arcades of white stone,
with its rough buttresses of dark granite, in the chinks of which the
rain had left an efflorescence of fungus, like little tufts of black
velvet. The sun struck on one angle of the garden, leaving the rest
in cool green shade, a conventual twilight. The bell-tower hid one
portion of the sky, displaying on its reddish sides, ornamented with
Gothic tracery and salient buttresses, the fillets of black marble
with heads of mysterious personages, and the shields with the arms of
the different archbishops who had assisted at its building; above,
near the pinnacles of white stone, were seen the bells behind enormous
gratings; from below they looked like three bronze birds in a cage of
iron.

Three deep strokes from a bell, echoing round the Cathedral, announced
that the High Mass had arrived at its most solemn moment, the mountain
of stone seemed to tremble with the vibration, which was transmitted
through the naves and galleries, to the arcades and down to the lowest
foundations.

Again there was silence, which seemed even deeper after the bronze
thunders; the cooing of the pigeons could again be heard, and, down in
the garden, the twittering of the birds, warmed by the sun's rays that
began to gild its cool twilight.

Gabriel felt himself deeply moved; the sweet silence, the absolute