Here, Santa is a young girl, and later, a young beauty. The little house belongs to her, the pampered daughter of old Agustina, at whose warm side she sleeps night after night. She is the idol of her brothers Esteban and Fabián, who watch over and protect her, the pride of the village, the ambition of its young men, the envy of its young women, healthy, happy, and pure. What innocence in her spirit! What loveliness in her nubile body! But why have her hips grown broad and her flesh grown so silky soft? Why have her bosoms—oh, so much more marked than they were, and not so long ago—grown these rosebuds, and why do they tremble and ache with the curious explorations of her own fingers? Why does Father Guerra not allow her to describe these worries to him in the confessional, but instead, only counsel her not to look at her own breasts?

“You don't worry like that about the flowers, do you? You don't examine them every day to see how much they've grown, do you? Well, be like them, grow and become more beautiful without even realizing it. Be fragrant without knowing it. And so that you won't lose your virginal beauty and purity, pray, confide in me, adore your mother, take care of your brothers … and live, breathe deeply, laugh by yourself, and above all, love your guardian angel, the only male who will never deceive you.”

The dawn of Santa's young adulthood simply prolonged her childhood, without troubles graver than the death of a favorite hen or a plant that she tended and watered, such as the carnation that she found withered one morning after a hard frost, its stem broken and its petals strewn—hemorrhaged like strange drops of blood—on the ground. Aside from these small sorrows and others like them, hers was an existence without dark clouds, as she grew and developed, becoming more beautiful, adoring her mother, taking care of her brothers, and breathing deeply, but not laughing by herself, because the birds, envious no doubt, laughed with her, as did the orange trees and the river and—why not admit it?—even the bell in the little chapel laughed with her when announcing mass at 6:30 on Sunday mornings, the mass attended with equal devotion by the villagers and by the rich families from the capital who came to summer at San Angel, and attended, too, by various officials and personages of local importance such as the pharmacist, who sometimes entertained the villagers in the evenings by employing who-knows-what mysterious arts to set several large bottles aglow with purple, red, and yellow lights …

How lovely to awaken on work days before the early rising sun! In a moment, the impotent silence of night, which is soothing in its way, would be interrupted by the crow of a rooster to which other roosters would respond, and then others and still others, ever farther away, in locations impossible to know exactly, and Santa would half open her eyes but see only her mother, toward whom she had moved, timidly, ever closer in the darkness. Half asleep, she felt herself caressed and sensed her mother's warm breath under the sheets: