her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads

when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and

slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more

dispirited by the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to

chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each

shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length

of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of

the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in

a great variety of heavenly securities. She would risk nothing on

the credit of any single intercessor. Out of the whole company of

saints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself her champion

elect against the Great Assize! I could only think of it as a

dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief.

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and

parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she

interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you

call seeing, whether you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had

known love: perhaps borne children, suckled them and given them

pet names. But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither

happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was

to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of

heaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped into the streets

and the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of it she would

be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It is

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