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CHAPTER XVIII.
May! The grass ascends1, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous2 carpet, like silky velvet3, emanating4 spontaneously from the earth.
 
In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains5 humid and green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors6 on the Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf7, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive8, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.
 
In the fields, along the roads, the grasses quickly thicken; all the ledges9 of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the bent10 grass; everywhere is a profusion11 of gigantic Easter daisies, of buttercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of Algeria.
 
And, in the long, tepid12 twilights, pale iris13 or blue ashes in color, every night the bells of the month of Mary resound14 for a long time in the air, under the mass of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.
 
During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns15, with discreet16 babble17, with puerile18 and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers, they went together through the graveyard19, full of roses; together, always together, the little clandestine20 betrothed21, in light colored gowns, and the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets22 of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came to sing, in the nave23 still more sonorous24 than in the day-time, the softly joyful25 canticles of the Virgin26 Mary:
 
“Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!—”
 
Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers27, their white petals28 and their yellow pollen29 in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance30 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 starry31 night of the wax tapers which reigned32 already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense33 and of the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral34 cold that centuries amass35 in old sanctuaries—a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying36 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 vault37, infinitely38 sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy39, a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions40 traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousand............
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