ins, pray for me!'

XVII

The Immaculate Conception, set on the walnut chest of drawers, was
smiling softly, with her slender lips, marked by a dash of carmine. Her
form was small and wholly white. Her long white veil, falling from head
to foot, had but an imperceptible thread of gold around its edge. Her
gown, draped in long straight folds over a sexless figure, was fastened
around her flexible neck. Not a single lock of her chestnut hair peeped
forth. Her countenance was rosy, with clear eyes upturned to heaven: her
hands were clasped--rosy, childlike hands, whose finger-tips appeared
beneath the folds of her veil, above the azure scarf which seemed to
girdle her waist with two streaming ends of the firmament. Of all her
womanly charms not one was bared, except her feet, adorable feet which
trod the mystical eglantine. And from those nude feet sprang golden
roses, like the natural efflorescence of her twofold purity of flesh.

'Virgin most faithful, pray for me,' the priest despairingly pleaded.

This Virgin had never distressed him. She was not a mother yet; she
did not offer Jesus to him, her figure did not yet present the rounded
outlines of maternity. She was not the Queen of Heaven descending,
crowned with gold and clothed in gold like a princess of the earth,
borne in triumph by a flight of cherubim. She had never assumed an
awesome mien; had never spoken to him with the austere severity of an
all-powerful mistress, the very sight of whom must bow all foreheads
to the dust. He could dare to look on her and love her, without fear of
being moved by the gentle wave of her chestnut hair; her bare feet alone
excited his affection, those feet of love which blossomed like a garden
of chastity in too miraculous a manner for him to seek to cover them
with kisses. She scented his room with lily-like fragrance. She was
indeed the silver lily planted in a golden vase, she was precious,
eternal, impeccable purity. Within the white veil, so closely drawn
round her, there could be nothing human--only a virgin flame, burning
with ever even glow. At night when he went to bed, in the morning
when he woke, he could see her there, still and ever wearing that same
ecstatic smile.

'Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother ever-virgin, pray for me!'
he stammered in his fear, pressing close to the Virgin's feet, as if he
could hear Albine's sonorous footfalls behind him. 'You are my refuge,
the source of my joy, the sea