While the trade was making, I studied the tradesman. He might have been descended from one of the Toledan hidalgos, immortalized by El Greco’s portraits. He had a thin nervous face, with great hollow eyes and a large sharp-cut nose. We got to know the type well before we left Toledo, for the citizens are of a distinct type. Just as in Seville we were always meeting Murillo Madonnas walking about the streets, and in Madrid Velasquez portraits, in Toledo we were continually meeting the hidalgos of El Greco.
From the shop where weapons are sold, we went to the Military Academy where soldiers are made. The cadets were just coming out from recitation as we looked into the courtyard to see the fountain cast from captured guns. They were gallant looking lads, full of pranks and tricks, as they streamed down the long staircase into the patio and out into the calle, past the wonderful carved stone doorway of the Hospital Santa Cruz. Don Luis sent in a message begging that a certain young cadet, Candalaria’s son, might have leave of absence to lunch with us. Leave was granted, and the cadet, his name was Pepé, as smart a young blade as you could see, escorted us through the confusing labyrinth of narrow calles that lay between the Military Academy and our hotel. Pepé was well known at the hotel; after his visit we were even better treated than before.
“What is best worth seeing in Toledo, after the Academy?” Patsy asked.
“The Fabrica de Espadas, where your dagger was made,” said Pepé promptly. So after lunch J. and Patsy, escorted by Pepé, went off to the Weapon Factory, leaving Don Luis and me to run lightly over “the chief attractions.”
“Look up my brother, Gregorio,” Pepé flung back over his shoulder, as they swung off together. “He is free this afternoon; he knows all about churches and museums, if you care for such dull things.”
“Yes,” said Don Luis, “we will look up Gregorio. He knows a good deal about Toledo.”
Gregorio, Candalaria’s eldest son, was unlike any other member of that interesting family. He was small and fragile, with piercing brown eyes. He came, rather unwillingly, to show us the cathedral.
“Gregorio wished to go into the Church,” Don Luis told us. “His father and Candalaria did not like the idea. They never opposed the boy, but sent him to Toledo to spend a year with a priest cousin, who is the greatest bore in the family; the plan was that old fox Jaime’s, it’s working out well. From what Pepé says, Gregorio is not so bent on taking orders now as he once was.”
Gregorio took us to the cathedral, a fine building, so hemmed about by smaller ones that we could get no view of the whole. The exterior of a stone originally white, is now tanned by sun and weather to a delicious mellow tone. The ruddy tower faintly recalls that greater glory, the Giralda. Some parts of the cathedral are in severe Gothic style, some very florid; this shows that it was a long time in building. The main entrance is perfectly gorgeous, the stone fretted and carved like so much petrified lace; the outer gate is only opened to admit the reigning sovereign. The interior is marred, like Seville and Cordova, by the coro. The stained glass is sumptuous. Over the main door is a thirty-foot rose window, in each transept a smaller rose. The afternoon sun, pouring through these and the graceful pointed windows in the different parts of the church, did much to counteract the cold, whitewashed walls. The vast white stone columns, with their prodigal carving, were stained ruby, amber, emerald, the seven colors of the rainbow, by the sunlight falling through those jewel windows. The cathedral is a museum in itself. One of the treasures is a small carved wooden statuette of St. Francis, by Alonzo Cano. The saint stands with his arms folded; the marvellous face of carven ivory, the agate eyes, look at you from the dark shadow of his cowl. Eyes and face reminded us of a pair of Egyptian statues at Cairo, whose discovery Marriatt Bey described: the workman who first entered the tomb where they were found came hurrying out in terror, crying, “There are live people in there; I saw the shining of their eyes!”
Our first visit to the cathedral, with Gregorio to protect us, was the best. When we went back without him, we were harried by the silencieros, vulgarly called dog-beaters, fierce beadles with long staves who pursued us, would not let us look at what we wanted to see, and tried to make us look at things we did not care for.