agine that not to them would come the
suppliant with a heavy despair, they would be merely pained at their
helplessness before the tears of the grief that kills and the woe of
mothers sorrowing for their sons. But when the black-eyed maiden knelt
before the priest, courtly and debonair, begging him to send a husband
quickly, his lips surely would control themselves no longer, and his
smile would set the damsel's cheek a-blushing. And if a youth knelt
before Saint Catherine in her dainty _mantilla_, and vowed his heart was
breaking because his love gave him stony glances, she would look very
graciously upon him, so that his courage was restored, and he promised
her a silver heart as lovers in Greece made votive offerings to
Aphrodite.

At the Church of the _Espirito Santo_, in a little chapel behind one of
the transept altars, I saw, through a huge rococo frame of gilded wood,
a _Maria de los Dolores_ that was almost terrifying in poignant realism.
She wore a robe of black damask, which stood as if it were cast of
bronze in heavy, austere folds, a velvet cloak decorated with the old
lace known as _rose point d'Espagne_; and on her head a massive imperial
diadem, and a golden aureole. Seven candles burned before her; and at
vespers, when the church was nearly dark, they threw a cold, sharp light
upon her countenance. Her eyes were in deep shadow, strangely
mysterious, and they made the face, so small beneath the pompous crown,
horribly life-like: you could not see the tears, but you felt they were
eyes which would never cease from weeping.

I suppose it was all tawdry and vulgar and common, but a woman knelt in
front of the Mother of Sorrows, praying, a poor woman in a ragged shawl;
I heard a sob, and saw that she was weeping; she sought to restrain
herself and in the effort a tremor passed through her body, and she drew
the shawl more closely round her.

I walked away, and came presently to the most cruel of all these images.
It was a _Pieta_. The Mother held on her knees the dead Son, looking in
His face, and it was a ghastly contrast between her royal array and His
naked body. She, too, wore the imperial crown, with its golden aureole,
and her cloak was of damask embroidered with heavy gold. Her hair fell
in curling abundance about her breast, and the sacristan told me it was
the hair of a lady who had lost her husband and her only son. But the
dead Christ was terrible, His face half hidden by the long straight
hair