Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/198

 At a little distance knelt a group of fashionable girls under the guardianship of their mamma, and followed by a female servant—a substitute for the old dueña. After the sign of the cross and the bow to the altar, the two lines of beaux on each side of the edifice, first attracted the attention of the penitents; but their prayer-books were immediately opened, the forehead, mouth, and breast were again crossed, and they hummed a prayer, with an occasional aside to mother or sister, in the midst of their devotion. After this mingled occupation of prayer, chatting, crossing, and criticism had been carried on for ten minutes, they closed their books, sank from their knees backward on the floor, and sitting thus on the boards, threw aside their mantillas so as to display a pet dimple or a pet diamond. Presently, remembering that there were other churches to visit, they rose slowly, and lounged off, to another chapel to bring up the arrears of their aves and paters.

I have thus sketched both the street-walking and church-praying of to-day, but there was one church which I must mention specially. The Chapel of "Nuestra Señora de Loreto" is situated some distance from the centre of fashion in Mexico, and is considered quite a pilgrimage by the pedestrians who walk but once a year. I visited it, both in the morning and at night. In the early part of the day, the crowd was small; but after sunset it was almost impossible to effect an entrance, notwithstanding the doors and square in front were guarded by sentinels with fixed bayonets.

The church was transformed into a grove of orange, lemon, and flowering shrubbery; and the blaze of a multitude of wax torches was reflected from the altar, around which the twelve Apostles were seated at the Lost Supper, amid a pile of silver and gold plate and jewels, arranged in a multitude of odd devices, not only on the table but from the floor to the ceiling. In grotesque contrast with all this splendor, there were common oranges sprinkled with tin foil, and twopenny glass decanters filled with dyed waters.

As I entered from the front door of this edifice, the first thing that attracted my notice was a side altar converted into an arbor, in the centre of which was a well with Christ and the woman of Samaria beside it. The lady had been fitted out by a most fashionable mantuamaker, in a costume of blue satin picked out with pink, and while she leaned gracefully on a silver pitcher, resting on the edge of the well, our Saviour stood opposite in a mantle of purple velvet, embroidered with gold, and covered with a Guyaquil sombrero!

A short distance from this, in the place of another side altar, next to the chief one, was the representation of the entombment of our Lord. The body, swathed in linen, was laid in a glass coffin. "Mary the Mother," dressed in a full suit of black velvet, with a fine cambric handkerchief in hand, stood among the shrubbery at its foot. In the foreground, two little urchins of waxen angelhood, also dressed in black velvet, (with black wings and skirts looped up in front, so as to display their