Journey to Portugal by José Saramago

The traveller returned to Amarante along the road which follows the Fornelo River, this time without stopping. A basic and prudent precaution, as Amarante is endowed with a woman's devices and is well able to capture the incautious for days on end. Only a few kilometres further on lies Telões. Here there's a monastery with a spacious, if heavily restored, portico. Whenever the traveller departs from the main roads, he always reaps the benefits. Telões is situated in a wide, open valley through which runs an unimpressive little river, and as the traveller is about to enter the church, the bell starts tolling. It's the hourly peal, broadcast on amplifiers with four speakers angled at the cardinal points, diffusing a thunderous recording of the bronze bells up and down the streets. The traveller would have preferred the ordinary ding-dong of the originals to their electronic copies, but there was no way that progress would stop short of the valleys simply to please him.

So let Telões be, with its newfangled chimes. Inside the church is an altarpiece to All Souls attracting the traveller's attention. It shows St Michael with his sacred lance, painted in strokes of natural colour, but with his eyes ogling the supremely beautiful victim, endowed with firm and tempting breasts, burning voluptuously among the flames. It can't be right for the Church to punish the temptations of the flesh and simultaneously stimulate them in such a fashion at Telões. The traveller departed from the church in a state of mortal sin.