"This is my living room," he said, "and here I am happy. I live in the past; the fine old fifteenth-century days when men knew how to produce the beautiful and were great in all their ideas. Here I live, and here I hope to die."
He went to the door.
"Juanita!" he called. A distant voice answered, and in a moment a quaint old woman dressed in black appeared upon the scene.
"Juanita, is my breakfast ready?" asked the old priest.
"Si, el canon."
"What have you prepared?"
"Two fried eggs, canonigo, flavoured with sweet herbs; bread, butter and coffee at discretion—as usual."
"You see," laughed the priest. "There is no collusion here! Would that I could ask you to share my frugal meal; but it is emphatically only enough for one—and that an abstemious old canon. Now if you will come and see me this evening or to-morrow, I shall be delighted to receive you. I would even ask you to come and dine with me, but my dinner is as frugal as my déjeuner. Well, for the moment we part; but you will come again."
As we said good-bye, Juanita appeared with her fried eggs, and steaming coffee served in a chaste silver pot that must have been at least a hundred and fifty years old; and the old priest accompanying us to the door, speeded us on our way with true courtesy and an old-fashioned blessing.
