prices, many of the Moderates, who still came to High Mass, were
stealthily acquiring to-day a house, to-morrow a farm, another day
pasture lands, properties all belonging to the Primacy, but which had
lately been put on the list of what was called national property.

Robbers! this slow subversion and sale, that rent in pieces the
revenues of the Cathedral, caused the Señor Esteban as much
indignation as though the bailiffs had entered his house in the
Claverias to remove the family furniture, each piece of which embalmed
the memory of some ancestor.

There were times in which he thought of abandoning his garden, and
going to Maestrazgo, or to the northern provinces, in search of some
of the loyal defenders of the rights of Charles V. and of the return
to the old times. He was then forty years of age, strong and active,
and though his temperament was pacific and he had never touched a
musket, he felt himself fired by the example of certain timid and
pious students, who had fled from the seminary, and were now, so it
was said, fighting in Catalonia behind the red cloak of Don Ramon
Cabrera.

But the gardener, in order not to be alone in his big "habitacion" in
the Claverias, had married three years previously the daughter of the
sacristan, and he had now one son; besides, he could not tear himself
away from the church, he was another square block in the mountain of
stone, he moved and spoke as a man, but he felt a certainty that he
should perish at once if he left his garden. Besides, the Cathedral
would lose one of the most important props if a Luna were wanting in
its service, and he felt terrified at the bare thought of living out
of it. How could he wander over the mountains fighting, and firing