‘But it is of small matters that life is made up,’ put in the General in his deferential way. ‘Our friend,’ he went on after a pause, ‘is unfortunate in misrepresenting himself. We also have a little grudge against him—a little matter of a letter which has not been explained. I admit that I should like to see that letter.’
‘Ah!’ replied Vincente, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gay little laugh, ‘who can tell? Perhaps in Toledo, my dear sir—perhaps in Toledo.’
‘It is as difficult to be entirely bad as it is to be entirely good.’
TO those who say that there is no Faith, Spain is in itself a palpable answer. No country in the world can show such cathedrals as those of Granada, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Burgos. In any other land any one of these great structures would suffice. But in Spain these huge monuments to that Faith which has held serenely through war and fashion, through thought and thoughtlessness, are to be found in all the great cities. And the queen of them all is Toledo.
Father Concha, that sour-visaged philosopher, had a queer pride in his profession and in the history of that Church which is to-day seen in its purest form in the Peninsula, while it is so entangled with the national story of Spain that the two are but one tale told from a different point of view. As a private soldier may take pleasure in standing on a great battlefield noting each spot of interest—here a valley of death, there the scene of a cavalry charge of which the thunder will echo down through all the ages—so Concha, a mere country priest, liked to pace the aisles of a great cathedral, indulging the while in a half-cynical pride. He was no great general, no leader, of no importance in the ranks. But he was of the army, and partook in a minute degree in those victories that belonged to the past. It was his habit thus to pay a visit to Toledo Cathedral whensoever his journeys led him to Castile. It was, moreover, his simple custom to attend the early mass which is here historical; and, indeed, to walk through the church, grey and cool, with the hush that seems to belong only to buildings of stupendous age, is in itself a religious service.
Concha was passing across the nave, hat in hand, a gaunt, ill-clad, and somewhat pathetic figure, when he caught sight of Sir John Pleydell. The Englishman paused involuntarily and looked at the Spaniard. Concha bowed.