velvet mantles and armed with their good swords stood round the pillars,
unable to find room to bend their knees, which they never bent elsewhere.
Charming peasant women, whose dresses set off the beautiful lines of their
figures, gave their arms to white-haired old men. Youths with glowing eyes
found themselves beside old women decked out in gala dress. There were
couples trembling with pleasure, curious-fiancées, led thither by their
sweethearts, newly married couples and frightened children, holding one
another by the hand. All this throng was there, rich in colors, brilliant
in contrast, laden with flowers, making a soft tumult in the silence of
the night. The great doors of the church opened.

Those who, having come too late, were obliged to stay outside, saw in the
distance, through the three open doors, a scene of which the tawdry
decorations of our modern operas can give but a faint idea. Devotees and
sinners, intent upon winning the favor of a new saint, lighted thousands
of candles in his honor inside the vast church, and these scintillating
lights gave a magical aspect to the edifice. The black arcades, the
columns with their capitals, the recessed chapels glittering with gold and
silver, the galleries, the Moorish fretwork, the most delicate features of
this delicate carving, were all revealed in the dazzling brightness like
the fantastic figures which are formed in a glowing fire. It was a sea of
light, surmounted at the end of the church by the gilded choir, where the
high altar rose in glory, which rivaled the rising sun. But the
magnificence of the golden lamps, the silver candlesticks, the banners,
the tassels, the saints and the "ex voto" paled before the reliquary in
which Don Juan lay. The body of the blasphemer was resplendent with gems,
flowers, crystals, diamonds, gold, and plumes as white as the wings of a
seraphim; it replaced a picture of Christ on the altar. Around him burned
wax candles, which threw out waves of light. The good Abbot of San Lucas,
clad in his pontifical robes, with his jeweled mitre, his surplice and his