reign of mercy and justice which he could not reasonably promise the
over-worked and underfed multitude to-morrow or the day after. His
brother, who could not accept his teachings, warns him that the
people of the Cathedral will not understand him and cannot accept
his scientific gospel, and for a while he desists. In fact he takes
service in the ceremonial of the Cathedral; he even plays a mechanical
part in the procession of Corpus Christi, and finally he becomes one
of the night-watchmen who guard the temple from the burglaries always
threatening its treasures.

The story is quite without the love-interest which is the prime
attraction of our mostly silly fiction. Gabriel's association with the
English girl who wanders over Europe with him is scarcely passionate
if it is not altogether platonic; his affection for the poor girl for
whom he has won her father's tolerance if not forgiveness becomes
a tender affection, but not possibly more; and there is as little
dramatic incident as love interest in the book. The extraordinary
power of it lies in its fealty to the truth and its insight into
human nature. The reader of course perceives that it is intensely
anti-ecclesiastical, but he could make no greater mistake than to
imagine it in any wise Protestant. The author shares this hate or
slight of ecclesiasticism with all the Spanish novelists, so far as I
know them; most notably with Perez Galdós in _Doña Perfecta_ and _Lean
Rich_, with Pardo-Bazan in several of her stories, with Palacio
Valdés in the less measure of _Marta y Maria_, and _La Hermana de San
Sulpicio_ and even with the romanticist Valera in _Pepita Jimenez_.
But it may be said that while Ibañez does not go any farther than
Galdós, for instance, he is yet more intensively agnostic. He is the
standard bearer of the scientific revolt in the terms of fiction which
spares us no hope of relief in the religious notion of human life here