Brother, by all you love best in the world, do not speak to me of her." Gabriel understood that he had opened some deep wound by his inquiries, and so said no more, beginning once more his ascent.

During his absence a terrible event had happened in his brother's life--one of those events that break up a family and separate for ever those that survive.
They crossed the gallery covered by the archbishop's archway and entered the upper cloister called "the Claverias": four arcades of equal length to those of the lower cloister, but quite bare of decoration, and with a poverty-stricken aspect.

The pavement was chipped and broken, the four sides had a balustrade running round between the flat pillars that supported the old beams of the roof.

It had been a provisional work three hundred years ago, and had always remained in the same state.

All along the whitewashed walls, the doors and windows belonging to the "habitacions" of the Cathedral servants opened without order or symmetry.