Journey to Portugal by José Saramago

Day dawned for the traveller, a day for a lot of travel. First call was at the Serra do Falperra, which once rivalled the pine groves of Azambuja for the number of its assaults and robberies but which today is a bucolic spot, ideal for family picnics. Here the church of Santa Maria Magdalena can be seen in its infinite grace, an eighteenth-century masterpiece by the architect André Soares, who also sculpted the saint kept in a niche above the main window. Such sculptures from the hardest granite irresistibly remind the traveller of the clay models which famously also distinguished the 1700s. There would seem to be little in common between the plasticity of clay and the rigidity of stone, but perhaps the relationship is less material than spiritual, implicit in the authors' manner of tracing clothes and gestures, or in the decorative surrounds of which the facade affords a superlative example.

The traveller can't get inside but isn't about to complain; it's a rare case where the objects of most loveliness are in view to all who pass by. Here no sin of avarice is being committed.