One clear April morning, they were walking to the church, Gracieuse and Ramuntcho. She, with an air half grave, half mocking, with a particular and very odd air, leading him there to make him do a penance¹ which she had ordered.
 
In the holy enclosure, the flowerbeds of the tombs were coming into bloom again, as also the rose bushes on the walls. Once more the new saps were awakening² above the long sleep of the dead. They went in together, through the lower door, into the empty church, where the old “benoite” in a black mantilla was alone, dusting the altars.
 
When Gracieuse had given to Ramuntcho the holy water and they had made their signs of the cross, she led him through the sonorous³ nave⁴, paved with funereal⁵ stones, to a strange image on the wall, in a shady corner, under the men's tribunes.
 
It was a painting, impregnated with ancient mysticism, representing the figure of Jesus with eyes closed, forehead bloody⁶, expression lamentable⁷ and dead; the head seemed to be cut off, separated from the body, and placed there on a gray linen⁸ cloth. Above, were written the long Litanies of the Holy Face, which have been composed, as everybody knows, to be recited in penance by repentant⁹ blasphemers. The day before, Ramuntcho, in anger, had sworn in an ugly manner: a quite unimaginable string of words, wherein the sacraments and the most saintly things were mingled¹⁰ with the horns of the devil and other villainous things still more frightful¹¹. That is why the necessity for a penance had impressed itself on the mind of Gracieuse.
 
“Come, my Ramuntcho,” she recommended, as she walked away, “omit nothing of what you must say.”
 
She left him then in front of the Holy Face, beginning to murmur¹² his litanies in a low voice, and went to the good woman and helped her to change the water of the white Easter daisies in front of the altar of the Virgin¹³.<............