The _coro_, as in most Spanish cathedrals, is in the body of the church, and connected with the _Capilla Mayor_ by a railed passage. The stalls are beautifully carved. Old choral books stand on the lecterns ready for service. The outer wall of the choir is covered with sculptures of the Renaissance representing the great mysteries of religion, of which we never tire. Though told in every church in Christendom, they always seem told in a new light, and strike us with new force, as something too deep for mortal ever to fathom fully. They are the alphabet of the faith, which we repeat and combine in a thousand different ways in order to obtain some faint idea of God’s manifestations to us who see here but darkly. These mysteries are continued in the magnificent retable of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella in the _Capilla Mayor_, where they are richly painted on a gold ground by Berruguete and other famous artists of the day, and now glorious under the descending morning light. It is the same sweet Rosary of Love that seems to have caught new lights, more heavenly hues. The interesting chapels around the apsis are lighted by small windows like mere loop-holes cut through walls of enormous thickness. In the ambulatory we come to the beautiful alabaster tomb of Alfonso de Madrigal, surnamed _El Tostado_, the tawny, from his complexion, and _El Abulense_, Abula being the Latin for Avila. He was a writer of such astonishing productiveness that he left behind him forty-eight volumes in folio, amounting to sixty thousand pages. It is to be feared we shall never get time to read them, at least in _this_ world. He became so proverbial that Don Quixote mentions some book as large as all the works of _El Tostado_ combined, as if human imagination could go no farther. Leigh Hunt speaks of some Spanish bishop as probably writing his homilies in a room ninety feet long! He must have referred to _El Tostado_. He is represented on his tomb sitting in a chair, pen in hand, and eyes half closed, as if collecting his thoughts or listening to the divine inspiration. His jewelled cope, embroidered with scenes of the Passion, is beautifully carved. Below him are the Virtues in attendance, as in life, and above are scenes of Our Lord’s infancy, which he loved. This tomb is one of the finest works of Berruguete. Further along we opened a door at a venture, and found ourselves in the chapel of San Segundo, the first apostle of Avila, covered with frescoes of his life. His crystal-covered shrine is in the centre, with an altar on each of the four sides, behind open-work doors of wrought brass. The chapel was quiet and dim and solemn, with burning lamps and people at prayer. Then, by another happy turn, we came into a large cloister with chapels and tombs, where the altar-boys were at play in their red cassocks and short white tunics. The church bells now began to ring, and they hurried away, leaving us alone to enjoy the cloistral shades.