The Shadow of the Cathedral | Page 5

the
event is awful, but it is not cruel, rather it is the supreme touch of that
pathos which seems the crowning motive of the book.
W.D. HOWELLS.

* * * * *

THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER I
The dawn was just rising when Gabriel Luna arrived in front of the
Cathedral, but in the narrow street of Toledo it was still night. The
silvery morning light that had scarcely begun to touch the eaves and
roofs, spread out more freely in the little Piazza del Ayuntamiento,
bringing out of the shadows the ugly front of the Archbishop's Palace,
and the towers of the municipal buildings capped with black slate, a
sombre erection of the time of Charles V.
Gabriel walked for some time up and down the deserted square,
wrapping himself up to his eyes in the muffler of his cloak, while at
intervals his hollow cough shook him painfully. Without daring to stop
walking on account of the bitter cold, he looked at the great doorway
called "del Perdon," the only part of the church able to present a really
imposing aspect. He recalled other famous cathedrals, isolated,

occupying commanding situations, showing themselves freely in the
full pride of their beauty, and he compared them with this Cathedral of
Toledo, the mother-church of Spain, smothered by the swarm of
poverty-stricken buildings that surrounded it, clinging closely to its
walls, permitting it to display none of its exterior beauties, beyond what
could be seen from the narrow streets that closed it in on every side.
Gabriel, who was acquainted with its interior magnificence, thought of
the deceptive oriental houses, outwardly squalid and miserable, but
inwardly rich in alabasters and traceries. Jews and Moors had not lived
in Toledo for centuries in vain, their aversion to outward show seemed
to have influenced the building of the Cathedral, now suffocated by the
miserable hovels, pushed and piled up against it, as though seeking its
protection.
The little Piazza del Ayuntamiento was the only open space that
allowed the Christian monument to display any of its grandeur; under
this little patch of open sky the early morning light showed the three
immense Gothic arches of its principal front, the hugely massive bell
tower, with its salient angles, ornamented by the cap of the Alcuzon, a
sort of black tiara, with three crowns, almost lost in the grey mist of the
wintry dawn.
Gabriel looked affectionately at the closed and silent fane, where his
family lived, and where he himself had spent the happiest days of his
life. How many years had passed since he had last seen it! And now he
waited anxiously for the opening of its doorways.
He had arrived in Toledo by train the previous night from Madrid.
Before shutting himself up in his miserable little room in the Posada del
Sangre (the ancient Messon del Sevillano, inhabited by Cervantes) he
had felt a feverish desire to revisit the Cathedral, and had spent nearly
an hour walking round it, listening to the barking of the Cathedral
watch-dog, who growled suspiciously, hearing the sound of footsteps in
the surrounding streets. He had been unable to sleep; the fact of
returning to his native town after so many years of misery and
adventures had taken from him all desire to rest, and, while it was still
night, he again stole out to await near the Cathedral the moment that it

should be opened.
To while away the time he paced up and down the front, admiring
again the beauties of the porch, and noting its defects aloud, as though
he wished to call the stone benches of the Piazza and its wretched little
trees as witnesses to his criticisms.
An iron grating surmounted by urns of the seventeenth century ran in
front of the porch, enclosing a wide, flagged space, where in former
times the sumptuous processions of the Chapter had assembled, and
where the multitude could admire the grotesque giants on high days
and festivals.
The first storey of the façade was broken in the centre by the great
Puerta del Perdon, an enormous and very deeply-recessed Gothic arch,
which narrowed as it receded by the gradations of its mouldings,
adorned by statues of apostles, under open-worked canopies, and by
shields emblazoned with lions and castles. On the pillar dividing the
doorway stood Jesus in kingly crown and mantle, thin and drawn out,
with the look of emaciation and misery that the imagination of the
Middle Ages conceived necessary for the expression of Divine
sublimity. In the tympanum a relievo represented the Virgin surrounded
by angels, robed in the habit of St. Ildefonso, a pious legend repeated in
various parts of the building as though it were one of its chief glories.
On one side was the doorway