Præcedet vos in Galilæam.
Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere:
Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.
Amen. Alleluia.
Suddenly an idea came to her that this too was a play, in the particular sense that she wished her own reactions to be a play, that is to say a squeezing into a plot of the manifold manifestations of Life; and, if one chose to play on words, a plot against Life, as well: pruning, pruning, discarding, shaping, till the myriad dreams and aspirations of man, the ceaseless struggle, through chemists’ retorts, through the earth of gardens, through the human brain, of the Unknown to become the Known was reduced to an imaginary character called God; a nailing of the myriad ways by which man can become happy and free to a wooden cross a few cubits high; a reducing of his myriad forms of spiritual sustenance to a tiny wafer of flour; a tampering, too, with the past, saying “in the beginning was ...” but Life, noisy, tangible, resilient, supple, cunning Life, was laughing out there in the streets and fields at the makers of myths; for it knew that every plot against it was foredoomed to failure.
Then they went up to the altar; and, kneeling between the Doña and David, she received the host on her tongue.
The Holy Mother—Celestina, the old wise courtesan of Spain, skilled beyond all others in the distilling of perfumes, in the singing of spells—she was luring her back, she was luring her back ... in odore unguentorum tuorum curremus ... what cared Celestina that it was by the senses and the imagination that she held her victims instead of by the reason?
The Rock ... Peter’s Rock ... a Prometheus bound to it for ever, though the vulture should eat out her heart.