ill upright, her head covered by a sort of hood from which her stiff,
wavy hair escaped in tangled grey locks like iron wire. Her face was
shrivelled like the peel of an onion, and so thin that, looking at her
in profile, daylight could be seen through her skin.

She knelt down at the foot of the first statue, and behind her, her
companions, girls of about eighteen for the most part, clasped their
hands and shut their eyes; and slowly a change came over them.

Under the breath of prayer, the soul, buried under the ashes of worldly
cares, flamed up, and the air that fanned it made it glow like an inward
fire, lighting up the thick cheeks, the stolid, heavy features. It
smoothed out the crackled surface of wrinkles, softened in the younger
women the vulgarity of chapped red lips, gave colour to the dull brown
flesh, overflowed in the smile on lips half parted in silent prayer, in
timid kisses offered with simple good faith, and returned no doubt in an
ineffable thrill by the Holy Child they had cherished from His birth,
who, since the martyrdom of Calvary, had grown to be the Spouse of
Sorrows.

They felt, perhaps, something of the raptures of the Blessed Virgin who
is Mother and Wife and at the same time the beatified Handmaid of God.

And in the silence a voice as from the remotest ages arose, and the
ancestress said, "_Pater Noster_," and they all repeated the prayer, and
then dragged themselves on their knees up the steps of the way of
crosses, where the fourteen upright posts, each with its cast metal
bas-relief, bordered a serpentine path, dividing the statues from the
groups. Thus they went forward, stopping long enough to recite an _Ave_
on each step they climbed, and then, helping themselves with their
hands, they mounted to the next. And when the rosary was ended the old
woman rose, and they solemnly followed her into the church, where they
all prayed a long time, prostrate before the altar; and the grandmother
stood up, gave each holy water at the door, led her flock to the spring
where they all drank again, and then they went away, without speaking a
word, one after another up the narrow path, ending as black specks just
as they had come, and vanishing on the horizon.

"Those women have been two days and two nights crossing the mountains,"
said a priest, coming up to Durtal. "They started from the depths of
Savoy, and have travelled almost without rest to spend a few minutes
here; they will sleep to night