Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/148



is the festival of forgiveness in the church to-day. From early in the morning there has been ringing of bells and concourse of peasants from miles round. Outside the church of Petrovice sellers have run up small booths and huts for the occasion, where all sorts of things are offered for sale—holy images, rosaries, cruciform ornaments, and some toys for the children the mothers have brought with them, but all so infinitely poor that there was scarcely anything to be had above a penny in price. It was most disheartening to look at the pictures suspended beneath the eaves of an old hovel—lithographs of the worst and most tasteless paintings, and of daubs almost blasphemous in their embodiment of bland Virgins and insipid Saviours. On closer inspection we discovered with surprise that this factory work was marked not only Paris, but most of it even New York. It is the indefatigable Yankees, brave Protestants, who are sitting on the other side of the ocean, gaining money by making hundreds of thousands of holy pictures for the Catholics in old Europe. No wonder that they are hideous. Even a lithograph of the most nauseous Carlo Dolci would be a relief among them.

The church is overcrowded; the doors are wide open, and a large column of men and women crowd before them to catch as much of the sermon as possible. But besides, all over the square in front of the church a whole little population is standing, sitting, and kneeling, uncovered, in deep devotion. All round lie beggars; about eighteen have arrived in a covered cart; disgusting cripples with naked arms or bandaged legs; the whole crowd of palsied beings on whom the Son of Man worked His miracles in days of yore. Near the church a chapel has been run up by its