Gabriel looked for the first time attentively at these forgotten sculptures. They were carved with all the naturalistic simplicity of the Middle Ages, with all the directness with which the artists represented their profane conceptions, with the desire to perpetuate the triumph of the flesh in some ignored corner of the mystical buildings, in order to testify that human life was not dead.
The Tato was delighted at the surprise on his uncle's face.
"Eh! what do you think of that? I discovered it wandering about the church. The canons sing every day on the other side of this wall without ever suspecting what gay doings they have over their heads. And the stained glass, uncle, look at it well. At first so many colours blind one and the forms are indistinct; besides, the lead cuts the figures and it is difficult to make out anything, but I know them to my fingers' ends. They are stories, things of their own times, that these glass-workers painted; the intrigues have been forgotten, and no one has disentangled them."
He pointed to the windows of the second nave, through which the evening light was shining with a ruddy glow.
"Look up there," went on the Perrero. "A gallant in a red cape and sword mounts by a rope ladder; at the window a nun is waiting for him. It seems something like the Don Juan Tenorio that they represent at All Saints'. Further on, you see those two in bed, and people knocking at the door. They must be the same pair of birds with the family surprising them. Then in the next window—look well at it—lovers, with scarcely any clothes beyond bare skin. These things belong to the days when people had no shame, when they went with their heads covered and the rest of their flesh bare."
Gabriel smiled at the whimsical ideas with which ancient art inspired the Perrero.
"But in the choir, uncle, there is also something to see. Let us go there; the service is over and the canons are coming out."
Luna felt overpowered by admiration as he always did on entering the choir. Those magnificent stalls, the work on one side of Philip of Burgundy, and on the other side of Berruguete, bewildered him with their profusion of marbles, jaspers, gildings, statues and medallions. It was the genius of Michael Angelo reviving in the Toledan Cathedral.
The Perrero examined the lower stalls, ferreting out among the Gothic relievos the discoveries enjoyed by his unwholesome curiosity. This first row of stalls, almost on a level with the ground, were occupied by the inferior clergy, and were anterior by half a century to the upper stalls; but in those fifty years art had made a great stride, from the hard and rigid Gothic to the flowing lines and good taste of the Renaissance. They had been carved by Maestre Rodrigo at the time when Christian Spain, roused to enthusiasm, was helping the Catholic kings with all its strength to complete the reconquest. On the backs of the stalls, and on the entablature of the frieze fifty-four carved pictures represented the principal incidents of the conquest of Granada.
The Tato did not look at these carvings of walnut or oak, with troops of horsemen and companies of soldiers scaling the walls of Moorish towns. What interested him most were the arms of the stalls, the handrails of the steps leading to the upper seats, and the salients dividing the stalls which served to rest the head, all covered with animals, grotesque beings, dogs, monkeys, big birds, friars, and little birds, all in difficult postures, some beautiful, some obscene. Hogs and frogs wound themselves up together in inextricable tangles, monkeys with ignoble gestures were mixed up with interlaced birds in never ending variety—it was a world of caricatures of voluptuousness, of monkey-like actions and satirical suggestions, in which appeared carnal passion with the most grotesque animal grimaces.