May! The grass ascends¹, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous² carpet, like silky velvet³, emanating⁴ spontaneously from the earth.
 
In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains⁵ humid and green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors⁶ on the Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf⁷, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive⁸, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.
 
In the fields, along the roads, the grasses quickly thicken; all the ledges⁹ of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the bent¹⁰ grass; everywhere is a profusion¹¹ of gigantic Easter daisies, of buttercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of Algeria.
 
And, in the long, tepid¹² twilights, pale iris¹³ or blue ashes in color, every night the bells of the month of Mary resound¹⁴ for a long time in the air, under the mass of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.
 
During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns¹⁵, with discreet¹⁶ babble¹⁷, with puerile¹⁸ and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers, they went together through the graveyard¹⁹, full of roses; together, always together, the little clandestine²⁰ betrothed²¹, in light colored gowns, and the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets²² of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came to sing, in the nave²³ still more sonorous²⁴ than in the day-time, the softly joyful²⁵ canticles of the Virgin²⁶ Mary:
 
“Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!—”
 
Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers²⁷, their white petals²⁸ and their yellow pollen²⁹ in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance³⁰ in the gardens or in the church, during the twilights of spring!
 
And as soon as Gracieuse entered there, at night, in the dying ring of the bells—leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses for the starry³¹ night of the wax tapers which reigned³² already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense³³ and of the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral³⁴ cold that centuries amass³⁵ in old sanctuaries—a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying³⁶ of all her desires, a renunciation of all her terrestrial joys. Then, when she had knelt, when the first canticles had taken their flight under the vault³⁷, infinitely³⁸ sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy³⁹, a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions⁴⁰ traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousand............