Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/76

48 by a prolonged and mournful murmur. He thought first of a chorus of frogs, but immediately knew that no living beast ever haunted the silt of the drain. As he advanced, the noise became more distinct. Upon turning the corner near a crossroad close to the factory he discovered the cause.

In a little bracketed niche adorning the angle of two streets was enthroned a Madonna of painted wood about which a hundred tallow candles made a resplendent halo. The total obscurity of the rest of the road rendered this partial illumination especially fantastic. At the foot of the glistening tabernacle, before which there usually burned only a small night light, underneath this naive simulcarumsimulacrum [sic] of the Assumption, so low that the tongues of flame darting and trembling in the immobile, suffocating night could barely reach them, the poor women of the quarter swarmed in a prostrate mass. In black mantles and white caps, they told their rosaries, mumbling litanies in the broken and whining voices of beggars who tell their misfortunes. They had each paid their share of this offering of illumination in the hope of prevailing, through the intercession of His Mother, upon the God who at will lets loose and withholds devouring plagues.

It was to be expected that the illumination would not last as long as the psalmody. The aureole was already punctured with black stains. And each time that a candle threatened to become extinguished the supplicants redoubled their prayers, lamented more loudly and quickly. Without doubt the dear souls of a brother, a husband or a child corresponded to those agonizing flames. And they would cease trembling at the moment when the invalid was in the throes of death. It was as if so many last breaths extinguished