“Of this—not a word!”
Luiza left the house, and walked slowly towards S. Roque. The door of the Church of the Misericordia was open, the embroidered banner fluttering in the doorway, gently stirred by the breeze. She felt impelled to enter, she knew not why; but it seemed to her that the coolness of the church would calm her agitated spirit. She felt so unhappy that she remembered God. She felt the need of something strong and powerful in which to take refuge; she knelt down at the foot of the altar, crossed herself, and recited a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria. But those prayers of her childhood afforded her no consolation; they were like soulless sounds that mounted no nearer to Heaven than did the agitated breath that framed them; she did not clearly understand their meaning; they had no application to her case. God could never guess by them what she asked of him, prostrate here in her anguish. She wanted to speak to God, to open her whole heart to him, but in what language? With words such as she used in speaking to Leopoldina? Would her prayers ascend so high that they would reach him? Was he so near that he could hear her? She remained kneeling, her arms powerless, her hands clasped, gazing, by the light of the yellow wax candles, at the tarnished embroideries, and the round and rosy face of an Infant Jesus.
Slowly, like rings of smoke floating upward in the atmosphere, her thoughts began to revolve around the time, now so far away, in which, through a feeling of sadness or of sentimentality, she used to visit the churches with frequency. Her mother was still living, and she, her heart heavy within her—when Bazilio had written to her, breaking the tie that bound them—sought to transmute her sadness into the ecstasy of devotion. A friend of hers, Joanna Silveira, had gone about this time to France, to take the veil; at times she longed to do so too, to become a sister of charity, to raise up the wounded on the field of battle, or to pass her life in the mystical and untroubled peace of a convent cell. What a difference between that life and her present one, so troubled by anger, so weighed down by sin!
A sacristan, passing by, coughed harshly, and as the young birds in the nest cease their chirping at a sudden noise, so were these voices from the past now silent within her. She sighed, rose slowly to her feet, and went sorrowfully homeward.
Juliana, who opened the door, said to her in the hall, in a supplicating voice,—
“Forgive me, Senhora; I was crazy; my head was light from not having slept during the whole night. I am very sorry.”
Luiza went directly to the parlor, without answering. Sebastião, who was to dine with them, was playing the serenade of “Don Giovanni.” When he saw her he exclaimed,—
“What makes you so pale?”
“I am only a little tired, Sebastião,” she answered. “I have just come home from church.”
Jorge was at that moment coming out of his study with some papers in his hand.