The ñaltaMartayMaríhappiest moments of her life were those which she consecrated to prayer, which in her case was a sweet colloquy of two lovers, incomprehensible for those who have never fathomed the secret depths of the divine love or tasted the delights of the mystical union. By dint of holding converse with God, of communicating to Him her most occult thoughts and feelings, of confessing with tears each day the most trivial spots on her conscience, she succeeded in bringing about with the Almighty a sacred familiarity, full of joy and consolation. At the twilight hour, after she had ceased from the pious tasks which kept her busy all the day, she was in the habit of retiring to her room to enjoy at her ease the sweet delights which Jesus granted to her fervent prayers as a recompense for the labors and humiliations of the day.
One calm, quiet evening, toward the end of winter, Maria found herself in her room, prostrate in prayer, before the image of Jesus. All the blinds were open to let in the slowly fading light. From the one that looked inland could be seen the wide stretch of level meadows, and the gentle hills on the horizon bathed in a purple vapor, which grew thicker and thicker till it changed to mist. From the one facing the river could be seen its tranquil surface, motionless as though all that sheet of water had been suddenly changed to stone; near El Moral were four or five low sand-hills called appropriately Los Arenales, which, struck by the last rays of the setting sun, gleamed like mighty topazes. Not the slightest sound disturbed the silence of the boudoir, which at that moment, by reason of its gloom and loneliness, was like a great confessional.
For a long hour the young woman had been communing with the Beloved of her heart, and no earthly thought had made its way into her enraptured spirit. Never had she felt herself so abstracted and lifted above the flesh, above mundane interests. All the life of her body had gone to her heart, which beat with unwonted violence. She kept her eyes closed. After she had repeated all the prayers that she could remember, some of them composed purposely for her, she allowed her lips to rest, and abandoned herself to a delicious meditation in which her imagination wandered away as if in a boundless field enamelled with flowers. Both her confessor and her books of devotion counselled her to think often on the bloody passion and death of the Redeemer, and so she had done until she was filled with grief and burdened with tears. In her mind she saw that agonized, grief-stricken face of Jesus nailed upon the cross, those dying eyes lifted, wherein still burned the eternal love and compassion of a God. When she saw him going toward Calvary, laden with the heavy cross and stumbling, once, again, and yet again, overcome by fatigue, not finding in the bloodthirsty faces of those who surrounded him one look of sympathy, she felt her throat contract and her breast choke with sobs. She had been present at all the agonies of Christ, one after the other, from the memorable night in the garden until the moment when he closed his eyes forever between the two thieves, the victim of the perfidy of men. The sublime words of pardon which he uttered as he died rang in her ears like a promise of heaven and a hope of seeing him once more, haloed with glory, in the other life.