Luna had seen his niece working at it the last time he came to the Cathedral.
It was the permanent remembrance the "little one" had left behind her after that catastrophe which had filled her father with such gloomy sadness.

Through a back window of the room Gabriel could see the inner court, which made this "habitacion" one of the most charming in the Claverias, the open expanse of sky, and the upper rooms on all four sides, supported by rows of slender pillars, that made the courtyard look like a little cloister.
Esteban came back and rejoined his brother.
"You must say what you would like for breakfast.

It would soon be ready; ask, man, ask for what you want, for though I am poor I shall take little credit to myself unless I can make you pick up a little and lose that look of a resuscitated corpse." Gabriel smiled sadly.
"It is useless your troubling; my stomach is quite gone; a little milk is enough for it, and I am thankful if it retains it." Esteban ordered the old woman to go into the town in search of the milk, and he had hardly seated himself by his brother's side when the door giving into the cloister opened, and the head of a young man appeared.
"Good-day, uncle!" he exclaimed.
His face was unhealthy and currish, the eyes were malicious, and above his ears were combed two large tufts of glossy hair.
"Come in, vagabond, come in," said the "Wooden Staff." And he added, turning to his brother: "Do you know who this is?
No?
It is the son of our poor brother, whom God has taken to his glory.

He lives in the upper dwellings of the cloister with his mother, who washes the linen of the choir, and of the senores canons; and it is a delight to see how she crimps the surplices.

Thomas, lad, bow to the gentleman; it is your uncle Gabriel, who has just arrived from America, and from Paris, and I don't know from where else besides! From very far off countries, very far off." The young man saluted Gabriel, though he seemed rather scared by the sad and suffering face of their relative, whom he had heard his mother speak of as a mysterious and romantic being.
"Here, as you see him," proceeded Esteban, speaking to his brother, and pointing to his nephew, "he is the worst lot in the Cathedral.
The Senor Obrero[1] would more than once have turned him out into the street, were it not for respect to the memory of his father and grandfather, and also to the name he bears, for everybody knows the Lunas are as ancient in the Cathedral as the stones in its walls.