It was too early in the morning to find many people. Nevertheless,ñaltaMartayMarí scattered here and there, praying on bended knees before the altars, a few women with covered heads were to be seen; others pressed up to the latticed windows of the confessional and held their mantillas on both sides of their faces, while with a half-audible whispering they confided their misdeeds to the sacred tribunal of the Church. A few priests, who kept the doors of the confessionals open, could be seen in cassock and hood, bending forward, with their ears to the window, reflecting in their frowning faces and negligent attitude the weariness which they felt; others kept theirs hermetically sealed, and scarcely could any one in passing perceive the presence of a human being.
A few places in the sanctuary were bathed in a melancholy light, but the corners and the hollows between the pillars were left in almost perfect darkness. The huge brazen lamps swung in the spaces on cords attached to the roof. The leaded window of the two huge, open oriels, high up in the walls of the great central nave, admitted a sad sheet of light, extending like a pale altar-cloth before the principal shrine. On one side of this, at some little distance, was another small portable altar, upon which was raised an image of the Saviour with perforated breast, wherein was seen a bleeding heart, wearing a crown of thorns and haloed with flames; around the image were a host of lighted candles, the hissing and crackling of which sounded lugubriously in the immense, silent circuit of the church. It was a temporary altar set up because of the Nine Days' Festival of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was celebrated at that time.
Genoveva went to the sacristy to ask Fray Ignacio if her señorita could make her confession. The latter remained kneeling near the confessional, waiting for the priest. She felt a peculiar, timid impatience; a bit of fear mingled with anxiety and desire. The sanctuary was filled with a mingled odor of dampness and dust, of extinguished candles and of faded flowers, which inspired her with veneration. The moments preceding confession were filled with a delicious suspense for Maria. The circumstance and mystery which surrounded that intimate confidence, the most intimate in the world, exerted a certain fascination over her mind, and agitated her to the very depths of her being, without loathing. She felt slight chills run over her body, followed by flushes of heat, which mounted to her face and set it on fire. At that moment she thought not so much of her sins as of the way in which she should try to tell them.
