The Senor Fidel had fallen ill, and the Obreria to avoid expense, and not to deprive the old man of his wretched pay, had not engaged a new companion for him.

He spent the nights alone in the Cathedral as calmly as if he had been in the upper cloister, quite accustomed to the grave-like silence.

In order not to sleep, he read by the light of his lantern any books he could get in the Claverias, uninteresting treatises on history in which Providence played the principal _role_; lives of the saints, amusing from their simple credulity, bordering on the grotesque; and that family Quixote of the Lunas', that he had so often spelt out when little, and in which he still found some of the freshness of his childhood.
The Virgin's feast day arrived; the festival was the same as in other years.

The famous image had been brought out of its chapel and occupied on its foot-board a place on the high altar.

They brought out her mantle kept in the Treasury and all her jewels, that scintillated kissed by the innumerable lights, glittering and flashing with endless brilliancy.
Before the commencement of the festival, the inquisitive of the Cathedral, pretending absent-mindedness, strolled between the choir and the Puerta del Perdon.