, in the nave still more sonorous than in the
day-time, the softly joyful canticles of the Virgin Mary:

"Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!--"

Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers, their white
petals and their yellow pollen in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance in the
gardens or in the church, during the twilights of spring!

And as soon as Gracieuse entered there, at night, in the dying ring of
the bells--leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses
for the starry night of the wax tapers which reigned already in the
church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense and of
the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air
outside to that heavy and sepulchral cold that centuries amass in old
sanctuaries--a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying of
all her desires, a renunciation of all her terrestrial joys. Then, when
she had knelt, when the first canticles had taken their flight under the
vault, infinitely sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy,
a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions
traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousands of sheafs
of lilies, and white wings, shivers of white wings of angels--

Oh! to remain for a long time in that state, to forget all things, and
to feel herself pure, sanctified and immaculate, under that glance,
ineffably fascinating and soft, under that glance, irresistibly
appealing, which the Holy Virgin, in long white vestments, let fall from
the height of the tabernacle--!

But, when she went outside, when the night of spring re-enveloped her
with tepid breezes of life, the memory of the meeting which she had
promised the day before, the day before as well as every day, chased
like the wind of a storm the visions of the church. In the expectation
of Ramuntcho, in the expectation of the odor of his hair, of the touch
of his mustache, of the taste of his lips, she felt near faltering, like
one wounded, among the strange companions who accompanied her, among the
peaceful and spectral black nuns.

And when the hour had come, in spite of all her resolutions she was
there, anxious and ardent, listening to the least noise, her heart
beating if a branch of the garden moved in the night--tortured by the
least tardiness of the beloved one.

He came always with his same silent step of a rover at night, his
waistcoat on his shoulder, with as much p