Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 14

Chapter 14

With only one lamp burning amid the verdure on the altar of the Virgin,
huge floating shadows filled the church at either end. From the pulpit a
sheet of gloom projected to the rafters of the ceiling. The confessional
looked quite black under the gallery, showing strange outlines
suggestive of a ruined sentry-box. All the light, softened and tinted as
it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded
Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud
round which gambolled the winged cherubim. At sight of that round lamp
gleaming amid the boughs one might have thought the pallid moon was
rising on the verge of a wood, casting its light upon a regal
apparition, a princess of heaven, crowned and clothed with gold, who
with her nude and Divine Infant had come to stroll in the mysterious
woodland avenues. Between the leaves, along the lofty plumes of
greenery, within the large ogival arbour, and even along the branches
strewing the flagstones, star-like beams glided drowsily, like the milky
rain of light that filters through the bushes on moonlit nights. Vague
sounds and creakings came from the dusky ends of the church; the large
clock on the left of the chancel throbbed slowly, with the heavy
breathing of a machine asleep. And the radiant vision, the Mother with
slender bands of chestnut hair, as if reassured by the nocturnal quiet
of the nave, came lower and lower, scarce bending the blades of grass in
the clearings beneath the gentle flight of her cloudy chariot.

Abbe Mouret gazed at her. This was the hour when he most loved the
church. He forgot the woeful figure on the cross, the Victim bedaubed
with carmine and ochre, who gasped out His life behind him, in the
chapel of the Dead. His thoughts were no longer distracted by the garish
light from the windows, by the gayness of morning coming in with the
sun, by the irruption of outdoor life--the sparrows and the boughs
invading the nave through the shattered panes. At that hour of night
Nature was dead; shadows hung the whitewashed walls with crape; a chill
fell upon his shoulders like a salutary penance-shirt. He could now
wholly surrender himself to the supremest love, without fear of any
flickering ray of light, any caressing breeze or scent, any buzzing of
an insect's wing disturbing him amidst the delight of loving. Never had
his morning mass afforded him the superhuman joys of his nightly
prayers.

With quivering lips Abbe Mouret now gazed at the tall Virgin. He could
see her coming towards him from the depths of her green bower in
ever-increasing splendour. No longer did a flood of moonlight seem to
float across the tree-tops. She seemed to him clothed with the sun; she
advanced majestically, glorious, colossal, and so all-powerful that he
was tempted at times to cast himself face downwards to shun the flaming
splendour of that gate opening into heaven. Then, amidst the adoration
of his whole being, which stayed his words upon his lips, he remembered
Brother Archangias's final rebuke, as he might have remembered words of
blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the
Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to God.
In the Brother's opinion it enervated the soul, put religion into
petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism quite
unworthy of the strong. He bore the Virgin a grudge for her womanhood,
her beauty, her maternity; he was ever on his guard against her,
possessed by a covert fear of feeling tempted by her gracious mien, of
succumbing to her seductive sweetness. 'She will lead you far!' he had
cried one day to the young priest, for in her he saw the commencement of
human passion. From contemplating her one might glide to delight in
lovely chestnut hair, in large bright eyes, and the mystery of garments
falling from neck to toes. His was the blunt rebellion of a saint who
roughly parted the Mother from the Son, asking as He did: 'Woman, what
have we in common, thou and I?'

But Abbe Mouret thrust away such thoughts, prostrated himself,
endeavoured to forget the Brother's harsh attacks. His rapture in the
immaculate purity of Mary alone raised him from the depths of lowliness
in which he sought to bury himself. Whenever, alone before the tall
golden Virgin, he so deceived himself as to imagine that he could see
her bending down for him to kiss her braided locks, he once more became
very young, very good, very strong, very just, full of tenderness.

Abbe Mouret's devotion to the Virgin dated from his early youth. Already
when he was quite a child, somewhat shy and fond of shrinking into
corners, he took pleasure in the thought that a lovely lady was watching
over him: that two blue eyes, so sweet, ever followed him with their
smile. When he felt at night a breath of air glide across his hair, he
would often say that the Virgin had come to kiss him. He had grown up
beneath this womanly caress, in an atmosphere full of the rustle of
divine robes. From the age of seven he had satisfied the cravings of his
affection by expending all the pence he received as pocket money in the
purchase of pious picture-cards, which he jealously concealed that he
alone might feast on them. But never was he tempted by the pictures of
Jesus and the Lamb, of Christ on the Cross, of God the Father, with a
mighty beard, stooping over a bank of clouds; his preference was always
for the winning portraits of Mary, with her tiny smiling mouth and
delicate outstretched hands. By degrees he had made quite a collection
of them all--of Mary between a lily and a distaff, Mary carrying her
child as if she were his elder sister, Mary crowned with roses, and Mary
crowned with stars. For him they formed a family of lovely young
maidens, alike in their attractiveness, in the grace, kindliness, and
sweetness of their countenances, so youthful beneath their veils, that
although they bore the name of 'Mother of God,' he had felt no awe of
them as he had often felt for grown-up persons.

They seemed to him of his own age, little girls such as he wished to
meet with, little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when
seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise. But
even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite
bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of
his religious love. Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or
two older than himself, as should always be the case with one's chiefest
friend. When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no longer kissed his
forehead at night time, but stood a little further from him with folded
arms, chastely smiling, ravishingly sweet. And he--he only named her now
in a whisper, feeling as if he would faint each time the well-loved name
passed his lips in prayer. No more did he dream of childish games within
the garden of heaven, but of continual contemplation before that white
figure, whose perfect purity he feared to sully with his breath. Even
from his own mother did he conceal the fervour of his love for Mary.

Then, a few years later, at the seminary, his beautiful affection for
her, seemingly so just, so natural, was disturbed by inward qualms. Was
the cult of Mary necessary for salvation? Was he not robbing God by
giving Mary a part, the greater part, of his love, his thoughts, his
heart, his entire being? Perplexing questions were these, provoking an
inward struggle which increased his passion, riveted his bonds. For he
dived into all the subtleties of his affection, found unknown joys in
discussing the lawfulness of his feelings. The books treating of
devotion to the Virgin brought him excuses, joyful raptures, a wealth of
arguments which he repeated with prayerful fervour. From them he learned
how, in Mary, to be the slave of Jesus. He went to Jesus through Mary.
He cited all kinds of proofs, he discriminated, he drew inferences.
Mary, whom Jesus had obeyed on earth, should be obeyed by all mankind;
Mary still retained her maternal power in heaven, where she was the
great dispenser of God's treasures, the only one who could beseech Him,
the only one who allotted the heavenly thrones; and thus Mary, a mere
creature before God, but raised up to Him, became the human link between
heaven and earth, the intermediary of every grace, of every mercy; and
his conclusion always was that she should be loved above all else in God
himself. Another time he was attracted by more complicated theological
curiosities: the marriage of the celestial spouse, the Holy Ghost
sealing the Vase of Election, making of the Virgin Mary an everlasting
miracle, offering her inviolable purity to the devotion of mankind. She
was the Virgin overcoming all heresies, the irreconcilable foe of Satan,
the new Eve of whom it had been foretold that she should crush the
Serpent's head, the august Gate of Grace, by which the Saviour had
already entered once and through which He would come again at the Last
Day--a vague prophecy, allotting a yet larger future role to Mary, which
threw Serge into a dreamy imagining of some immense expansion of divine
love.

This entry of woman into the jealous, cruel heaven depicted by the Old
Testament, this figure of whiteness set at the feet of the awesome
Trinity, appeared to him the very grace itself of religion, the one
consolation for all the dread inspired by things of faith, the one
refuge when he found himself lost amidst the mysteries of dogma. And
when he had thus proved to himself, point by point, that she was the way
to Jesus--easy, short, perfect, and certain--he surrendered himself anew
to her, wholly and without remorse: he strove to be her true devotee,
dead to self and steeped in submission.

It was an hour of divine voluptuousness! The books treating of devotion
to the Virgin burned his hands. They spoke to him in a language of love,
warm, fragrant as incense. Mary no longer seemed a young maiden veiled
in white, standing with crossed arms, a foot or two away from his
pillow. She came surrounded by splendour, even as John saw her, clothed
with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon beneath her
feet. She perfumed him with her fragrance, inflamed him with longing for
heaven, ravished him even with the ardent glow of the planets flaming on
her brow. He threw himself before her and called himself her slave. No
word could have been sweeter than that word of slave, which he repeated,
which he relished yet more and more as it trembled on his stammering
tongue, whilst casting himself at her feet--to become her thing, her
mite, the dust lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe. With
David he exclaimed: 'Mary is made for me,' and with the Evangelist he
added: 'I have taken her for my all.' He called her his 'beloved
mistress,' for words failed him, and he fell into the prattle of child
or lover, his breath breaking with intensity of passion. She was the
Blessed among women, the Queen of Heaven glorified by the nine Choirs of
Angels, the Mother of Predilection, the Treasure of the Lord. All the
vivid imagery of her cult unrolled itself before him comparing to her an
earthly paradise of virgin soil, with beds of flowering virtues, green
meadows of hope, impregnable towers of strength, and smiling dwellings
of confidence. Again she was a fountain sealed by the Holy Ghost, a
shrine and dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, the Throne of God, the
City of God, the Altar of God, the Temple of God, and the World of God.
And he walked in that garden, in its shade, its sunlight, beneath its
enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he
dwelt within Mary's beauteous precincts--resting, hiding, heedlessly
straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by
drop from her virginal bosom.

Every morning, on rising at the seminary, he greeted Mary with a hundred
bows, his face turned towards the strip of sky visible from his window.
And at night in like fashion he bade her farewell with his eyes fixed
upon the stars. Often, when he thus gazed out on fine bright nights,
when Venus gleamed golden and dreamy through the warm atmosphere, he
forgot himself, and then, like a soft song, would fall from his lips the
_Ave maris Stella_, that tender hymn which set before his eyes a distant
azure land, and a tranquil sea, scarce wrinkled by a caressing quiver,
and illuminated by a smiling star, a very sun in size. He recited, too,
the _Salve Regina_, the _Regina Coeli_, the _O gloriosa Domina_, all the
prayers and all the canticles. He would read the Office of the Virgin,
the holy books written in her honour, the little Psalter of St.
Bonaventura, with such devout tenderness, that he could not turn the
leaves for tears. He fasted and mortified himself, that he might offer
up to her his bruised and wounded flesh. Ever since the age of ten he
had worn her livery--the holy scapular, the twofold image of Mary sewn
on squares of cloth, whose warmth upon his chest and back thrilled him
with delight. Later on, he also took to wearing the little chain in
token of his loving slavery. But his greatest act of love was ever the
Angelic Salutation, the _Ave Maria_, his heart's perfect prayer. 'Hail,
Mary----' and he saw her advancing towards him, full of grace, blessed
amongst women; and he cast his heart at her feet for her to tread on it
in sweetness. He multiplied and repeated that salutation in a hundred
different ways, ever seeking some more efficacious one. He would say
twelve _Aves_ to commemorate the crown of twelve stars that encircled
Mary's brow; he would say fourteen in remembrance of her fourteen joys;
at another time he would recite seven decades of them in honour of the
years she lived on earth. For hours the beads of his Rosary would glide
between his fingers. Then, again, on certain days of mystical
assignation he would launch into the endless muttering of the Rosary.

When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon
the floor, the whole of Mary's garden with its lofty flowers of chastity
blossomed around him. Between his fingers glided the Rosary's wreath of
_Aves_, intersected by _Paters_, like a garland of white roses mingled
with the lilies of the Annunciation, the blood-hued flowers of Calvary,
and the stars of the Coronation. He would slowly tread those fragrant
paths, pausing at each of the fifteen dizains of _Aves_, and dwelling on
its corresponding mystery; he was beside himself with joy, or grief, or
triumph, according as the mystery belonged to one or other of the three
series--the joyful, the sorrowful, or the glorious. What an incomparable
legend it was, the history of Mary, a complete human life, with all its
smiles and tears and triumph, which he lived over again from end to end
in a single moment! And first he entered into joy with the five glad
Mysteries, steeped in the serene calm of dawn. First the Archangel's
salutation, the fertilising ray gliding down from heaven, fraught with
the spotless union's adorable ecstasy; then the visit to Elizabeth on a
bright hope-laden morn, when the fruit of Mary's womb for the first time
stirred and thrilled her with the shock at which mothers blench; then
the birth in a stable at Bethlehem, and the long string of shepherds
coming to pay homage to her Divine Maternity; then the new-born babe
carried into the Temple on the arms of his mother who smiled, still
weary, but already happy at offering her child to God's justice, to
Simeon's embrace, to the desires of the world; and lastly, Jesus at a
later age revealing Himself before the doctors, in whose midst He is
found by His anxious mother, now proud and comforted.

But, after that tender radiant dawn, it seemed to Serge as if the sky
were suddenly overcast. His feet now trod on brambles, the beads of the
Rosary pricked his fingers; he cowered beneath the horror of the five
Sorrowful Mysteries: Mary, agonising in her Son in the garden of Olives,
suffering with Him from the scourging, feeling on her own brow the
wounds made by the crown of thorns, bearing the fearful weight of His
Cross, and dying at his feet on Calvary. Those inevitable sufferings,
that harrowing martyrdom of the queen he worshipped, and for whom he
would have shed his blood like Jesus, roused in him a feeling of
shuddering repulsion which ten years' practice of the same prayers and
the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on,
light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the
resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the
brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the
hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death and the eternity
of life. With outstretched hands, and dazed with admiration, she beheld
the triumph of her Son ascending into heaven on golden clouds, fringed
with purple. She gathered the Apostles round her, and, as on the day of
her conception, participated in the glow of the Spirit of Love,
descending now in tongues of fire. She, too, was carried up to heaven by
a flight of angels, borne aloft on their white wings like a spotless
ark, and tenderly set down amid the splendour of the heavenly thrones;
and there, in her supreme glory, amidst a splendour so dazzling that the
light of the sun was quenched, God crowned her with the stars of the
firmament. Impassioned love has but one word. In reciting a hundred and
fifty _Aves_ Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur,
the ever recurring words, akin to the 'I love you' of lovers, assumed
each time a deeper and deeper meaning; and he lingered over it all,
expressed everything with the aid of the one solitary Latin sentence,
and learned to know Mary through and through, until, as the last bead of
his Rosary slipped from his hand, his heart grew faint with the thought
of parting from her.

Many a night had the young man spent in this way. Daybreak had found him
still murmuring his prayers. It was the moon, he would say to cheat
himself, that was making the stars wane. His superiors had to reprove
him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been
losing blood. On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving
of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin
smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson
fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned
with white roses. That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him
an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which
scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds. He erased the weapon,
and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn
from that exquisite flesh, as if tendered as an offering to himself. And
it was then he felt beloved: Mary was giving him her heart, her living
heart, even as it throbbed in her bosom, dripping with her rosy blood.

In all this there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a
material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was
praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he
might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate
bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was
beating for himself! His whole being quickened with rapture; he would
fain have kissed that heart, have melted in it, have lain beside it
within the depths of that open breast. Mary's love for him was an active
one; she desired him to be near her, to be wholly hers in the eternity
to come; her love was efficacious, too, she was ever solicitous for him,
watching over him everywhere, guarding him from the slightest breach of
his fidelity. She loved him tenderly, more than the whole of womankind
together, with a love as azure, as deep, as boundless as the sky itself.
Where could he ever find so delightful a mistress? What earthly caress
could be compared to the air in which he moved, the breath of Mary? What
mundane union or enjoyment could be weighed against that everlasting
flower of desire which grew unceasingly, and yet was never over-blown?
At this thought the _Magnificat_ would exhale from his mouth, like a
cloud of incense. He sang the joyful song of Mary, her thrill of joy at
the approach of her Divine Spouse. He glorified the Lord who overthrew
the mighty from their thrones, and who sent Mary to him, poor destitute
child that he was, dying of love on the cold tiled floor of his cell.

And when he had given all up to Mary--his body, his soul, his earthly
goods, and spiritual chattels--when he stood before her stripped, bare,
with all his prayers exhausted, there welled from his burning lips the
Virgin's litanies, with their reiterated, persistent, impassioned
appeals for heavenly succour. He fancied himself climbing a flight of
pious yearnings, which he ascended step by step at each bound of his
heart. First he called her 'Holy.' Next he called her 'Mother,' most
pure, most chaste, amiable, and admirable. And with fresh ardour he six
times proclaimed her maidenhood; his lips cooled and freshened each time
that he pronounced that name of 'Virgin,' which he coupled with power,
goodness, and fidelity. And as his heart drew him higher up the ladder
of light, a strange voice from his veins spoke within him, bursting into
dazzling flowers of speech. He yearned to melt away in fragrance, to be
spread around in light, to expire in a sigh of music. As he named her
'Mirror of Justice,' 'Seat of Wisdom,' and 'Source of Joy,' he could
behold himself pale with ecstasy in that mirror, kneeling on the warmth
of the divine seat, quaffing intoxication in mighty draughts from the
holy Source.

Again he would transform her, throwing off all restraint in his frantic
love, so as to attain to a yet closer union with her. She became a
'Vessel of Honour,' chosen of God, a 'Bosom of Election,' wherein he
desired to pour his being, and slumber for ever.* She was the 'Mystical
Rose'--a great flower which bloomed in Paradise, with petals formed of
the angels clustering round their queen, a flower so fresh, so fragrant,
that he could inhale its perfume from the depths of his unworthiness
with a joyful dilation of his sides which stretched them to bursting.
She became changed into a 'House of Gold,' a 'Tower of David,' and a
'Tower of Ivory,' of inestimable richness, of a whiteness that swans
might envy, and of lofty, massive, rounded form, which he would fain
have encircled with his outstretched arms as with a girdle of
submissiveness. She stood on the distant skyline as the 'Gate of
Heaven,' a glimpse of which he caught behind her shoulders when a puff
of wind threw back the folds of her veil. She rose in splendour from
behind the mountain in the waning hour of night, like the 'Morning Star'
to help all travellers astray, like the very dawn of Love. And when he
had ascended to this height--scant of breath, yet still unsatiated--he
could only further glorify her with the title of 'Queen,' with which he
nine times hailed her, as with nine parting salutations from the censer
of his soul. His canticle died joyfully away in those last ejaculations
of triumph: 'Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints. Queen conceived
without sin!' She, ever before him, shone in splendour; and he, on the
topmost step, only reached by Mary's intimates, remained there yet
another moment, swooning amidst the subtle atmosphere around him; still
too far away to kiss the edge of her azure robe, already feeling that he
was about to fall, but ever possessed by a desire to ascend again and
again, and seek that superhuman felicity.

* Curiously enough I find no trace of 'Bosom of Election' in the
Litany of the Blessed Virgin as printed in English Catholic
works.--ED.

How many times had not the Litany of the Virgin, recited in common in
the seminary chapel, left the young man with broken limbs and void head,
as if from some great fall! And since his departure from the seminary,
Abbe Mouret had grown to love the Virgin still more. He gave to her that
impassioned cult which to Brother Archangias savoured of heresy. In his
opinion it was she who would save the Church by some matchless prodigy
whose near appearance would entrance the world. She was the only miracle
of our impious age--the blue-robed lady that showed herself to little
shepherdesses, the whiteness that gleamed at night between two clouds,
her veil trailing over the low thatched roofs of peasant homes. When
Brother Archangias coarsely asked him if he had ever espied her, he
simply smiled and tightened his lips as if to keep his secret. Truth to
say, he saw her every night. She no longer seemed a playful sister or a
lovely pious maiden; she wore a bridal robe, with white flowers in her
hair; and from beneath her drooping eyelids fell moist glances of
hopeful promise that set his cheeks aglow. He could feel that she was
coming, that she was promising to delay no longer; that she said to him,
'Here I am, receive me!' Thrice a day when the _Angelus_ rang out--at
break of dawn, in the fulness of midday, and at the gentle fall of
twilight--he bared his head and said an _Ave_ with a glance around him
as if to ascertain whether the bell were not at last announcing Mary's
coming. He was five-and-twenty. He awaited her.

During the month of May the young priest's expectation was fraught with
joyful hope. To La Teuse's grumblings he no longer paid the slightest
attention. If he remained so late praying in the church, it was because
he entertained the mad idea that the great golden Virgin would at last
come down from her pedestal. And yet he stood in awe of that Virgin, so
like a princess in her mien. He did not love all the Virgins alike, and
this one inspired him with supreme respect. She was, indeed, the Mother
of God, she showed the fertile development of form, the majestic
countenance, the strong arms of the Divine Spouse bearing Jesus. He
pictured her thus, standing in the midst of the heavenly court, the
train of her royal mantle trailing among the stars; so far above him,
and of such exceeding might, that he would be shattered into dust should
she deign to cast her eyes upon him. She was the Virgin of his days of
weakness, the austere Virgin who restored his inward peace by an awesome
glimpse of Paradise.

That night Abbe Mouret remained for over an hour on his knees in the
empty church. With folded hands and eyes fixed on the golden Virgin
rising planet-like amid the verdure, he sought the drowsiness of
ecstasy, the appeasement of the strange discomfort he had felt that day.
But he failed to find the semi-somnolence of prayer with the delightful
ease he knew so well. However glorious and pure Mary might reveal
herself, her motherhood, the maturity of her charms, and the bare infant
she bore upon her arm, disquieted him. It seemed as if in heaven itself
there were a repetition of the exuberant life, through which he had been
moving since the morning. Like the vines of the stony slopes, like the
trees of the Paradou, like the human troop of Artauds, Mary suggested
the blossoming, the begetting of life. Prayer came but slowly to his
lips; fancies made his mind wander. He perceived things he had never
seen before--the gentle wave of her chestnut hair, the rounded swell of
her rosy throat. She had to assume a sterner air and overwhelm him with
the splendour of her sovereign power to bring him back to the unfinished
sentences of his broken prayer. At last the sight of her golden crown,
her golden mantle, all the golden sheen which made of her a mighty
princess, reduced him once more to slavish submission, and his prayer
again flowed evenly, and his mind became wrapped in worship.

In this ecstatic trance, half asleep, half awake, he remained till
eleven o'clock, heedless of his aching knees, fancying himself suspended
in mid air, rocked to and fro like a child, and yielding to restful
slumber, though conscious of some unknown weight that oppressed his
heart. Meanwhile the church around him filled with shadows, the lamp
grew dim, and the lofty sprays of leafage darkened the tall Virgin's
varnished face.

When the clock, about to strike, gave out a rending whine, a shudder
passed through Abbe Mouret. He had not hitherto felt the chill of the
church upon his shoulders, but now he was shivering from head to foot.
As he crossed himself a memory swiftly flashed through the stupor of his
wakening--the chattering of his teeth recalled to him the nights he had
spent on the floor of his cell before the Sacred Heart of Mary, when his
whole frame would quiver with fever. He rose up painfully, displeased
with himself. As a rule, he would leave the altar untroubled in his
flesh and with Mary's sweet breath still fresh upon his brow. That
night, however, as he took the lamp to go up to his room he felt as if
his throbbing temples were bursting. His prayer had not profited him;
after a transient alleviation he still experienced the burning glow
which had been rising in his heart and brain since morning. When he
reached the sacristy door, he turned and mechanically raised the lamp to
take a last look at the tall Virgin. But she was now shrouded in the
deep shadows falling from the rafters, buried in the foliage around her
whence only the golden cross upon her crown emerged.

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