There--there! The blows are beginning. Neighbor, neighbor, this way before
they close the doors!

"But what's that? They've left off. What's that light? Torches! a litter!
It's the bishop himself! God preserve him in his office as many centuries
as I desire to live myself! If it were not for him, half Seville would
have been burned up by this time with these quarrels of the dukes. Look at
them, look at them, the hypocrites, how they both press forward to kiss
the bishop's ring!

"But come, neighbor--come into the church before it is packed full. Some
nights like this it is so crowded that you could not get in if you were no
larger than a grain of wheat. The nuns have a prize in their organist.
Other sisterhoods have made Maese Perez magnificent offers; nothing
strange about that, though, for the very archbishop has offered him
mountains of gold if he would go to the cathedral. But he would not listen
to them. He would sooner die than give up his beloved organ. You don't
know Maese Perez? Oh, I forgot you had just come to the neighborhood.
Well, he is a holy man; poor, to be sure, but as charitable as any man
that ever lived. With no relative but a daughter, and no friend but his
organ, he spends all his time in caring for the one and repairing the
other. The organ is an old affair, you must know; but that makes no
difference to him. He handles it so that its tone is a wonder. How he does
know it! and all by touch, too, for did I tell you that the poor man was
born blind?

"Humble, too, as the very stones. He always says that he is only a poor
convent organist, when the fact is he could give lessons in sol fa to the
very chapel master of the primate. You see, he began before he had teeth.
His father had the same position before him, and as the boy showed such