Lord God, what she saw!

She saw a priest standing with his back to the gilded altar that bristled with candles. He had raised the curtain of damask on the crystal and onyx tabernacle and held in his hand the monstrance with its sculpted rays so dazzling that they seemed forged of pieces of the same sun that entered the windows of the dome above him and sifted down onto the padre's gray hair and his embroidered vestments like golden pollen. The white humeral veil, glistening with gold thread, rested on his thin shoulders, and he had wrapped his hands in the ends of it so that impure human flesh would not touch the monstrance that contained the holy sacrament—the consecrated communion host—as he slowly lifted it up for the adoration of the faithful who had prostrated themselves before the altar.

Santa felt ecstatic, ready to die that instant, unmindful of her sins, face to face with the God of infinite goodness and mercy. And she regressed immediately to the practices that she had learned as a pious country girl, lowering her forehead to the church floor and kissing it over and over, with her fresh, full sinner's lips.

She was hardly aware when the organ and the bells fell silent, hardly registered the shuffle of footsteps when groups of the faithful departed from the temple or the scraping sound of benches and chairs being moved thereafter. Sitting up, filled with hope, she folded her hands and prayed fervently, with visions of her mother and her little white house in the village. So she did not notice at all the entrance of a battalion of little girls and half a dozen distinguished ladies—presidents, secretaries, and treasurers of some confraternity or lay association—who stared at her in disgust and pointed her out with angry whispers to a cassock-wearing chaplain. No, she did not notice these things, nor could she know whether these fine ladies had anything on their consciences, such as the adultery so common and so tolerated among aristocrats such as they.

The fine ladies, on the other hand, had recognized Santa for exactly what and who she was. Wasn't she the one who shamelessly bewitched their fathers, husbands, and sons with her firm, delicious flesh? Hadn't she exhibited herself enough in theaters and places of public diversion where señoras and señoritas (whom Santa ignored completely with the Olympian disdain of an empress without rivals) had memorized her face and her name?

Calling the sacristan, the fine ladies, the feathers on their hats atremble, raised their gloved index fingers in the air and issued an imperious order to the fellow, who stood with his hands pressing against his temples. The little girls looked now at their irate protectors, now at the kneeling woman, against whom the sacristan finally directed his vituperation:

“Get yourself out of here this instant!” he said loudly to Santa, who looked at him, dazed, from the depths her prayerful mysticism, without quite understanding.

“Get myself out of here … why? Do you own this church? Churches are for people seeking pardon, too!”