There was a young priest passing me at that moment,
and I said to him in Latin of the common sort that I could speak no
Spanish. I asked him if he could speak to me slowly in Latin, as I was
speaking to him. He answered me with this word, "_Paucissime_," which
I easily understood. I then asked him very carefully, and speaking slowly,
whether Benediction were about to be held--an evening rite; but as I did
not know the Latin for Benediction, I called it alternately "Benedictio,"
which is English, and "Salus," which is French. He said twice, "Si, si,"
which, whether it were Italian or French or local, I understood by the
nodding of his head; but at any rate he had not caught my meaning, for
when I came behind the high altar where the candles were, and knelt there,
I clearly saw that no preparations for Benediction were toward. There was
not even an altar. All there was was a pair of cupboard doors, as it were,
of very thickly carved wood, very heavily gilded and very old; indeed, the
pattern of the carving was barbaric, and I think it must have dated from
that turn of the Dark into the Middle Ages when so much of our Christian
work resembled the work of savages: spirals and hideous heads, and
serpents and other things.
By this I was already enormously impressed, and by a little group of
people around of whom perhaps half were children, when the young priest to
whom I had spoken approached and, calling a well-dressed man of the middle
class who stood by and who had, I suppose, some local prominence, went up
the steps with him towards these wooden doors; he fitted a key into the
lock and opened them wide.
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