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In one corner, an old woman was driving a busy trade in penny-worths of barley candy. Diminutive altar-boys in white lace cassocks and red, fur-trimmed capes, offered religious papers for sale. It was a harvest day for beggars, and "for the love of the good God" many a sou was given into feeble dirty hands.
"Our idea," said Lutorius, "was to arrange that Truttidius be present with a number of horse-hair sieves, practically with his whole stock of his best, and that one of those be chosen before the whole College of Pontiffs, perhaps by your Majesty, perhaps by some one of the altar-boys, blindfolded, if you like that idea, or in any other manner which seems good to you."
In 1779 the Bishop of Havana took into his household as servants, and into the cathedral as altar-boys, three harum-scarum Indians, then said to have come from Florida, now believed to have been of Mexican origin, though there were not wanting citizens who solemnly declared that the trio had come from a warmer place than any on the surface of this planet.
Deane gave all the altar-boys a year ago, don't you remember? Don't you remember she made almost all of them too small?" Mrs. Costello sat in stunned silence. "I never heard the like!" said she, presently. Teresa's fears awakened anew. "Oh, will Sister let her wear it, do you think, mother?" "Well, I don't know, Tess." Mrs. Costello was plainly at a loss.
After this appeared two torches borne by the chanters, then the curé, with stole, surplice, cope, and biretta. Four altar-boys escorted him, a fifth carried the holy-water basin, and in the rear came the sacristan. He got up on the raised edge of the hole in which stood the poplar tree, adorned with tri-coloured ribbons.
Thea sat on Felipe's coat, since Silvo's was already about her shoulders. The youths lay down on the shining gravel beside her, one on her right and one on her left. Johnny already called them "LOS ACOLITOS," the altar-boys. The talk all about them was low, and indolent. One of the girls was playing on Johnny's guitar, another was picking lightly at a mandolin.
The little fluttering thing seemed to be saying that to him as it poised on the page, and, as his eyes went into a dream, began to crawl softly, like a rope-walker, up one of his fingers, with a frail, half-frightened hold, while, high up, over the walls of the garden the poplars were discreetly swaying to the southern wind, and the lilac-bushes were carelessly tossing this way and that their fragrance, as altar-boys swing their censers in the hushed chancel, but ah! so different an incense.
The people were gazing at this altar, and at the image, and at what the white-robed priests were doing. The strains of solemn music from the organ blended with the voices of priests chanting the service. Clouds of incense rose from censers, swung with solemn motion by the altar-boys, and the fragrance of the incense was wafted down the long aisles. At last, the tinkling of a bell.
Two men in black held a tawdry red canopy, a priest walked beneath it holding the sacrament covered with a cloth, and before him marched a couple of little altar-boys in short white surplices, such as you see in Rubens, and holding lacquered lamps.
And now the organ broke softly, miraculously, into enchanting and enveloping sound, that seemed to shake the church bodily with its great trembling touch, and from a door on the left of the altar the procession streamed, altar-boys and altar-boys and altar-boys, followed through the altar-gate by the tall young priest who would "say the Stations."
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