erly speaking, is wholly filled with the black radiance of death.
The Spanish convent is the most funereal of all.
There rise, in obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloom, beneath domes vague with shadow, massive altars of Babel, as high as cathedrals; there immense white crucifixes hang from chains in the dark; there are extended, all nude on the ebony, great Christs of ivory; more than bleeding,--bloody; hideous and magnificent, with their elbows displaying the bones, their knee-pans showing their integuments, their wounds showing their flesh, crowned with silver thorns, nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops of rubies on their brows, and diamond tears in their eyes.
The diamonds and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep, their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron-tipped scourges, their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with prayer; women who think themselves wives, spectres who think themselves seraphim. Do these women think?
No. Have they any will?
No. Do they love? No. Do they live?
No. Their nerves have turned to bone; their bones have turned to stone.
Their veil is of woven night.
Their breath under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of death.
The abbess, a spectre, sanctifies them and terrifies them. The immaculate one is there, and very fierce.