In Father Fernando Ramos’s office, the priest recalls that Julián Carax entered San Gabriel’s in 1914 as part of the poorer “Starving Gang,” accepted through Don Ricardo Aldaya’s influence. Fernando describes Julián’s closest early friend as the wealthy, eccentric Miquel Moliner, and admits he drifted from both boys after entering the seminary.

Fernando then recounts how Aldaya first encountered Julián at the Fortuny hat shop, where Julián’s bold humor amused the tycoon and won his patronage. Aldaya decided Julián’s talent needed cultivating, arranged for him to attend San Gabriel’s alongside Aldaya’s son Jorge, and brought Julián to the Aldaya mansion, dazzling him with its immense library. There Julián met Jorge and briefly saw Penélope Aldaya on the staircase; the glimpse becomes an instant, defining obsession for Julián.

At San Gabriel’s, Fernando says Julián faced a snobbish elite and formed friendships with Fernando himself, with Miquel Moliner (brilliant, caustic, fascinated by death and dreams), and with the caretaker’s withdrawn son Javier. Fernando describes Javier’s harsh home life and Miquel’s suspicions about Javier’s cruelty and fixation on Julián, then reveals Javier’s earlier secret fascination with Penélope. Fernando jumps ahead to Javier’s later life: he killed his mother in what was covered up as an “accident,” wanted to be a soldier, and eventually became Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero.

Back in the present, Fermín reacts badly to the name Fumero, and Father Fernando concludes Daniel is not Carax’s son. Daniel admits the truth: he found The Shadow of the Wind and has been investigating Carax’s life and death. Fernando confirms he once owned all of Carax’s novels, but someone broke in and burned them; he suspects Fumero, until Daniel and Fermín identify the likely culprit as the burned-faced man calling himself Laín Coubert.

Fernando explains why he connects Fumero to Carax: during their final year at the school, Fumero tried to kill Julián with his father’s shotgun, apparently driven by obsessive jealousy over Penélope, and Miquel stopped him. Asked about Penélope, Fernando can offer little except a lead: Jacinta Coronado, Penélope’s devoted governess, now lives alone in the Santa Lucía hospice and still talks about her, while Penélope vanished after 1919 when the Aldayas left for America. Fernando makes Daniel and Fermín promise not to torment Jacinta and to keep him informed, then sees them to the gate, quietly mourning the lost friendship of that long-ago group.