The old bishop’s palace is sombre and gothic, nitre drips from the walls and during the winter nights it is an ordeal to stay there. And the adjacent cathedral is immense, a lifetime is not enough to walk around it all and there is such a maze of chapels and vestries that, after centuries of abandonment, some have remained practically unexplored. What – people ask – will the emaciated archbishop do there all alone on Christmas Eve, while the city is celebrating? How can he overcome melancholy? Everyone has their source of comfort: the boy has the train and pine nuts, the younger sister the doll, the mother has her children around her, the sick have a new hope, the old bachelor his companion in dissipations, the prisoner the voice of another in the neighbouring cell. How will the archbishop cope? The zealous Don Valentino, secretary to his Excellency, smiled when he heard people talk like this. On Christmas Eve, the archbishop has God. Kneeling all alone in the middle of the freezing and deserted cathedral, at first sight one could almost pity him, but if they only knew! He is not all alone, he is not even cold, nor does he feel abandoned.