The Shadow of the Cathedral | Page 9

the church. They were people accustomed to seeing
each other daily at the same hour, and they felt their curiosity excited
by seeing a stranger breaking in on the monotony of their lives.
He drew back to the further end of the cloister, then some words from
the beggars made him retrace his steps.
"Ah! here comes old 'Vara de palo.'"[1]
[Footnote 1: Wooden staff.]
"Good-day, Señor Esteban!"
A small man dressed in black, and shaved like a cleric, came down the
steps.
"Esteban! Esteban!" cried Luna, placing himself between him and the
door of the Presentacion.
"Wooden Staff" looked at him with his clear eyes like amber, the quiet
eyes of a man used to spending long hours in the Cathedral, with never
a rebellious thought arising to disturb his immovable beatitude. He
stood doubting for some time, as though he could scarcely credit the
remote resemblance in this thin, pale face, to another that lived in his
memory, but at last, with a pained surprise, he became convinced of its

identity.
"Gabriel! my brother! is it really you?"
And the rigidly set face of the Cathedral servant, which seemed to have
acquired the immobility of its pillars and statues, relaxed with an
affectionate smile.
"When did you come? Where have you been? What is your life? Why
have you come?"
"Wooden Staff" expressed his surprise by incessant questions, never
giving his brother time to answer.
Gabriel at length explained, that he had arrived the previous night, and
that he had waited outside the church since early dawn in the hopes of
seeing his brother.
"I have now come from Madrid, but before that I was in many places:
in England, in France, in Belgium, who knows where besides. I have
wandered from one town to another, always struggling against hunger
and the cruelty of men. My footsteps have been dogged by poverty and
the police. When I rest a little, worn out by this Wandering Jew's
existence, Justice, inspired by fear, orders me to move on, and so once
again I begin my march. I am a man to be feared, Esteban, even as you
now see me, with my body ruined before old age, and the certainty
before me of a speedy death. Again, yesterday in Madrid, they told me
I should be sent once more to prison if I stayed there any longer, and so
in the evening I took the train. Where shall I go? The world is wide; but
for me and other rebels it is very small, and narrows till it does not
leave a hand's breadth of ground for our feet. In all the world nothing
was left me but you, and this peaceful silent corner where you live so
happily, and so, I came to seek you. If you turn me out, nothing will be
left me but to die in prison, or in a hospital, if indeed they would take
me in when they know my name."
And Gabriel, spent with his words, coughed painfully, a hollow
cavernous cough that seemed to tear his chest. He expressed himself

vehemently, moving his arms freely, with the gestures of a man used to
speaking in public, burning with the zeal of his cause.
"Ah! brother, brother!" said Esteban, with an accent of mild reproof,
"what has it profited you reading so many books and newspapers?
What is the use of trying to disturb and upset things that are all right;
and if they are all wrong, is there no other means of righting them
possible? If you had followed your own path quietly, you would have
been a beneficiary of the Cathedral, and, who knows, you might have
had a seat in the choir among the canons, for the honour and profit of
the family! But you were always wrong-headed, although you were the
cleverest of us all. Cursed talent that leads to such misery! What I have
suffered, brother, trying to hear about your affairs! What bitterness
have I not gone through since you last came here! I thought you were
contented and happy in the printing office in Barcelona, receiving a
salary that was a fortune compared to what we earn here. I was
disturbed at reading your name so often in the papers, at those meetings,
where the division of everything is advocated, the death of religion and
of the family, and I do not know what follies besides. The 'companion'
Luna said this, or the 'companion' Luna has done the other, and I tried
to hide from the people of the 'household' that this 'companion' could be
you, guessing that such madness must turn out ill--furiously ill--and
after--after came the affairs of the bombs."
"I had nothing to do with that," said Gabriel sadly. "I am only a theorist;
I