The Doña’s love of Christ dated from the first Seville Holy Week that she could remember.
She had sat with her mother and her little brother, Juanito, watching the pasos carried past on the shoulders of the cofradias ... many a beautiful Virgin, velvet-clad, pearl-hung, like Isabella the Catholic. Then had come a group of more than life-sized figures—a young, bearded man, his face as white as death and flecked with blood, the veins of his hands as knotted as the cords that bound them, surrounded by half a dozen fiendish-looking men, fists clenched as if about to strike him, some clutching stones in their upraised hands, all with faces contorted with hatred.
“Look! Look! Who are these wicked men?” cried Juanito.
“These are the Jews,” answered their mother.
“And who is the poor man?” asked the Doña.
“Jésus Christos.”
Juanito, his little fists clenched, was all for flying at the plaster bullies; but the Doña was howling for pity of the pobre caballero.
Then, at Christmas time in every church there was a crèche in which lay the Infant Jesus, his small, waxen hands stretched out in welcome, his face angelically sweet.
Also; at different times, for instance, when the Gospel was read in Spanish, during her preparation for her first Communion, the abstract presentation of the Liturgy had been supplemented with stories from His life on earth, and quotations from His own words.
Indeed, the sources and nature of the Doña’s knowledge of Jesus was not unlike that of some old peasant woman of Palestine. The old woman, say, would, from time to time, ride into Nazareth on her donkey, carrying a basket of grapes and olives to sell in the market: and perhaps, if the basket should have fallen and scattered the fruit, or if she had a pitcher to fill at the fountain, she may have received a helping hand or a kindly word from the gentlest and strangest-spoken young man that had ever crossed her path.