"Few words—in a nut-shell. It concerns your becoming rich and us also; we intend to get out of this poverty. You have noticed for some time that we have avoided you, that we preferred talking among ourselves to the pleasure of listening to you. We all know that you are very learned, but as far as things of this life go you are not worth a farthing. We have learnt a great deal from you, but that does not get us out of our poverty. We have spent months thinking how to make a lucky stroke. These revolutions of which you speak seem to us very far off; our grandchildren may see them, but we never shall. It is all right for clever people to look to the future, but ignorant people like us look to the present. We have employed our time discussing all sorts of schemes, to kidnap Don Sebastian and require a million of ransom, to break into the palace one night, and I don't know what besides! All wild ideas started by your nephew. But this morning in my house, while we were lamenting our poverty, we suddenly saw our salvation close at hand. You as the sole guardian of the Cathedral. The Virgin on the high altar, with the jewels that are locked up in the Treasury all the rest of the year, and I with the keys in my power. The easiest thing in the world. Let us clean out the Virgin and take the road to Madrid, where we shall arrive at dawn; the Tato knows a lot of people there among cloak stealers. We will hide ourselves there for a little while, and then you, who know the world, will guide us. We will go to America, sell the stones, and we shall be rich. Get up, Gabriel! We are going to strip the idol, as you say."

"But this is a robbery that you are proposing!" exclaimed Luna, alarmed.

"A robbery?" said the bell-ringer. "Call it so, if you like—and, what then? Are you afraid of it? More has been robbed from us, who were born with the right to a share of the world, but however much we look round we cannot find a vacant place. Besides, what harm do we do to anybody? These jewels are of no use to the bit of wood they cover, it does not eat, it does not feel the cold in winter, and we are poor miserable creatures. You yourself have said it, Gabriel, seeing our poverty. Our children die of hunger on their mother's knees, while these idols are covered with wealth, come along, Gabriel, do not let us lose any more time."

"Come along, uncle," said the Tato, "have a little courage. You must admit we ignorant people know how to manage things when it comes to the point."

Gabriel was not listening to them; surprise had made him fall into a reverie of self-examination. He thought—terrified of the great error he had committed—he saw an immense gulf opening between himself and those he had believed to be his disciples. He remembered his brother's words. Ah, the good sense of the simpleminded! He, with all his reading, had never foreseen the danger of teaching these ignorant people in a few months what required a whole life of thought and study. What happened to people stirred up by revolution was happening here on a small scale. The most noble thoughts become corrupted passing through the sieve of vulgarity; the most generous aspirations are poisoned by the dregs of poverty.

He had sown the revolutionary seed in these outcasts of the Church, drowsing in the atmosphere of two centuries ago. He had thought to help on the revolution of the future by forming men, but on awaking from his dreams he found only common criminals. What a terrible mistake! His ideas had only tended to destruction. In removing from the dulled brains the prejudices of ignorance, and the superstitions of the slave, he had only succeeded in making them daring for evil. Selfishness was the only passion vibrating in them. They had only learnt that they were wretched and ought not to be so. The fate of their companions in misfortune, of the greater part of humanity, wretched and sad, had no interest for them. If they could get out of their present state, bettering themselves in whatever way they could, they cared very little if the world went on just as it did before; that tears, and pain and hunger should reign below, in order to ensure the comfort of those above. He had sown his thoughts in them hoping to accelerate the harvest, but like all those forced and artificial cultivations, that grow with astonishing rapidity only to give rotten fruit, the result of his propaganda was moral corruption. Men in the end, like all of them! The human wild beast, seeking his own welfare at the cost of his fellow, perpetuating the disorders of pain for the majority, as long as he can enjoy plenty during the few years of his life. Ah! Where could he meet with that superior being, ennobled by the worship of reason, doing good without hope of reward, sacrificing everything for human solidarity, that man-God who would glorify the future!

"Come along, Gabriel," continued the bell-ringer. "Do not let us lose time it is only a few minutes' work; and then—flight!"

"No," said Luna firmly, coming out of his reverie, "you shall not do this; you ought not to do it. It is a robbery you suggest to me, and my pain is great, seeing that you reckoned on me; others rob from fatal instinct or from corruption of soul, you have come to it because I tried to enlighten you, because I tried to open your minds to the truth. Oh! it is horrible, most horrible!"

"What is the use of all these objections, Gabriel? Is it not a bit of wood? Whom do we harm by taking its jewels? Do not the rich rob, and everyone who possesses anything? Why should we not imitate them?"

"For this very reason, because what you propose doing is a suggestion of evil, because it perpetuates once more that system of violence and disorder which is the root of all misery. Why do you hate the rich, if what they do in sweating the poor is just the same as what you are doing in taking possession of a thing for yourselves—understand me well—for yourselves—and not for all. The robbery does not scare me, for I do not believe in ownership nor in the sanctity of things, but for this very reason I detest this appropriation to yourselves and I oppose it. Why do you wish to possess all this? You say it is to remedy your poverty. That is not true. It is to be rich, to enter into the privileged group, to be three individual men of that detested minority which desires to enjoy prosperity by enslaving humanity. If all the poor of Toledo were now shouting outside the doors of the Cathedral, rebellious and emboldened, I would open the way for them, I would point out those jewels that you covet, and I would say, 'Possess yourselves of those, they are so many drops of sweat and blood wrung from your ancestors; they represent the servile work on the land of the lords, the brutal plundering of the king's cavaliers, so that magnates and kings may cover with jewels those idols which can open to them the gates of heaven. These things do not belong to you because you happen to be the most daring; they belong to all, as do all the riches of the earth. For men to lay their hands on everything existing in the world would be a holy work, the redeeming revolution of the future. To possess yourselves of some portion of what by moral right is not yours, would only be for you a crime against the laws of the land, for me it would be a crime against the disinherited, the only masters of the existing–"

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