Then With A Minute's Walk Up A
Stony Sloping Little Street We Were In The Beautiful And Reverend
Presence Of One Of The Most August Temples Of The Christian Faith.
The
avenue where the old Castilian nobles once dwelt in their now empty
palaces climbs along the hillside above the cathedral, which on its
lower side seems to elbow off the homes of meaner men, and in front to
push them away beyond a plaza not large enough for it.
Even this the
cathedral had not cleared of the horde of small boys who followed us
unbidden to its doors and almost expropriated those authorized blind
beggars who own the church doors in Spain. When we declined the further
company of these boys they left us with expressions which I am afraid
accused our judgment and our personal appearance; but in another moment
we were safe from their censure, and hidden as it were in the thick
smell of immemorial incense.
It was not the moment for doing the cathedral in the wonted tiresome and
vulgar way; that was reserved for the next day; now we simply wandered
in the vast twilight spaces; and craned our necks to breaking in trying
to pierce the gathered gloom in the vaulting overhead. It was a precious
moment, but perhaps too weird, and we were glad to find a sacristan with
businesslike activity setting red candlesticks about a bier in the area
before the choir, which here, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, is
planted frankly in the middle of the edifice, a church by itself, as if
to emphasize the incomparable grandeur of the cathedral.
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