shots, when years had passed without his treading any other profane
soil beyond the little bit of street between the staircase of the
Claverias and the Puerta del Mollete?

And so he went on cultivating his garden, feeling the melancholy
satisfaction that he was at least sheltered from all the wicked
revolutionaries under the shadow of that colossus of stone, which
inspired awe and respect from its majestic age. They might curtail
the revenues of the temple, but they would be powerless against the
Christian faith of those who lived under its protection.

The garden, deaf and insensible to the revolutionary tempests that
broke over the church, continued to unfold its sombre beauty between
the arcades, the laurels grew till they reached the balustrade of the
upper cloister, and the cypresses seemed as though they aspired
to touch the roofs; the creepers twined themselves among the iron
railings, making thick lattices of verdure, and the ivy mantled the
wall of the central arbour, which was surmounted by a cap of black
slate with a rusty iron cross. After the evening choir the clergy
would come and sit in here and read, by the soft green light that
filtered through the foliage, the news from the Carlist Camp, and
discuss enthusiastically the great exploits of Cabrera, while above,
the swallows quite indifferent to human presence, circled and screamed
in the clear blue sky. The Señor Esteban would watch, standing
silently, this bat-like evening club, which was kept quietly hidden
from those belonging to the National Militia of Toledo.

When the war terminated, the last illusions of the gardener vanished,
he fell into the silence of despair and wished to know of nothing
outside the Cathedral. God had abandoned the good and faithful, and