The Dawn of All Read online

  (IV)

  And so the day went by like a dream; and the man who still seemedto himself as one risen from the dead into a new and whollybewildering world, watched and gathered impressions andassimilated them. Once or twice during the day he found himselfat meals with Father Jervis; he asked questions now and then andscarcely heard the answers; he talked with ecclesiastics a littlewho came and went; but, for the most part almost unknown tohimself, he worked interiorly, busy as a bee, building up, not somuch facts as realizations, into the new and strangeworld-edifice that was gradually forming about him. He waspresent at the visit of the Pope to the tomb of the Apostle, andwatched from a tribune, even then so concentrated on observationthat he was hardly conscious of connected thought, as the vastdoors rolled back and a vision as of such a celestial troop aswas dreamed of by the old Italian painters came up out of thevivid sunlight into the cool darkness of the basilica, as theroofs gave back the roaring of the fervent thousands and theclear cry of the silver trumpets; watched as the army ofecclesiastics deployed this way and that, and the Father ofPrinces and Kings came on between his royal children to the gatesof the Confession ringed by the golden lamps, and went down tokneel by the body of the first Fisherman-King.

  And again at Vespers, from the same tribune, he heard the peal ofthe new great organs in the dome, and the psalm-melodies rockingfrom side to side between the massed choirs; he glanced now andagain at the royal tribune opposite, where, each beneath acanopy, the rulers of the earth sat together to do honour to theLord and His Anointed. And, above all, he watched, still withthat steady set face that made Father Jervis look at him once ortwice, the central figure of all, now on his throne, with hisassistants beside him, now passing up to the altar to incense it,and finally passing out again on the _sedia gestatoria_ to thepalace where at last he ruled indeed.

  Last of all, as the sun began to sink behind the monstrous dome,and Rome stood out like an Oriental city of dreams, and thepurple lights came out on the low-lying hills, and theilluminations glowed from every window, and blazed beneath thefeet and round the heads of the gigantic apostolic figuresgathered round their Lord--there, watching again from his window,he saw, in a sudden hush over the heads of the countless crowdsthe tiny white figure standing above the tapestries with thePapal triple cross glinting beside him like a thread, and heardthe thin voice, gnat-like and clear, declare the "help of theLord who," as the thunder of the square answered him, "hath madeheaven and earth," and then invoke upon the city and the world,before the tremendous _Amen_, the blessing of God Almighty,Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  CHAPTER VI