We have very few years of life left to us, however much the Lord may wish to preserve us.

What would I not give to return to those days when I ran up to your house in my red gown in search of your father, the sacristan, and stole your breakfast.

Eh, Tomasa ?" The two old people, forgetting social differences, recalled the past with the friendly resignation of those advancing towards death.
Everything was the same as in their childhood--the garden, the cloister; nothing about the Cathedral had changed.
His Eminence, closing his eyes, fancied himself once more the restless acolyte of fifty years before; the blue spirals from his cigarette seemed to carry his thoughts back through the interminable labyrinths of the past.
"Do you remember how your poor father used to laugh at me?
'This boy,' he would say in the sacristy, 'is a Sixtus V.What do you wish to be ?' he would ask me, and I always gave the same answer, 'Archbishop of Toledo.' And the good sacristan would laugh again at the certainty with which I spoke of my hopes.

Believe me, Tomasa, I thought much of him when I was consecrated bishop, regretting his death.

I should have been delighted with his tears of joy seeing me with the mitre on my head.