II.
The church is cool and solitary; it once belonged to the Templars. These monk-soldiers obtained a foothold in the most out-of-the-way corners of Europe. The tower is square as a fortress; the enclosing wall has battlements like a fortified city. The dark old door-way would be easily defended. Upon its arch, which is very low, may be distinguished a half-obliterated Christ, and two fantastic, rudely colored birds. As you enter, a small uncovered tomb serves as font, and you are shown a low door through which passed the accursed race of the bigots. * Its first aspect is singular, but has nothing unpleasant about it. A good woman in a red capulet, knitting in hand, was praying near a confessional of badly planed boards, under an old brown gallery of turned wood. Poverty and antiquity are never ugly, and this expression of religious care seemed to suit well with the ruins and souvenirs of the middle ages scattered about us.
* Name applied among the Pyrenees to a people afflicted
with Cretinism.—Translator.
But deeply rooted in the people is a certain indefinable love of the ridiculous and absurd which succeeds in spoiling everything; in this poor church, tracery, from which the gilding is worn away, crosses a vault of scoured azure with tarnished stars, flames, roses and little cherubs with wings for cravats. A brownish pink angel, suspended by one foot, flies forward, bearing in its hand a golden crown. In the opposite aisle may be seen the face of the sun, with puffy cheeks, semicircular eyebrows, and looking as sapient as in an almanac. The altar is loaded with a profusion of tarnished gilding, sallow angels, with simple and piteous faces like those of children who have eaten too much dinner. All this shows that their huts are very dreary, naked and dull.
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A people that has just emerged from the dirt is apt to love gilding. The most insipid sweetmeat is delicious to one who has long eaten nothing but roots and dry bread.