Through and through vermilion billows the masons dived and thrust
across the breadth of the gallery, conveying ladders, crowbars,
hammers. Conclavial porters threw down rolls of carpet which they were
about to spread, and sat upon them. Berstein squawked and expectorated.
Hadrian winced: and marked the man. At the clang of hammers, masonry
began to fall: a white dust hovered in the air: the vermilion college
swept away with the white Pope. Some went to the end of the gallery,
where loud voices became protestant: midway, the Germans halted with
most of the Italians: they conversed more moderately. A few paces
beyond the range of operations, the Pope remained quite still: by His
side, He detained Macca with His cross: behind Him, congregated the
Bishop of Caerleon and the nine Cardinal-Compromissaries.
In a break of the clang of the hammers, Hadrian intoned "Kyrie
eleēson." Mundo gave prompt response. The assemblage at first failed
to catch the idea: but, by degrees, voice acceded to voice; and the
_Litanies of the Saints_ magniloquently reverberated through the
gallery.
Outside, in the Square of St. Peter's, only a few hundreds of people
were collected. Interest in the proceedings of the Conclave was
nearly dead; and several special correspondents were beginning to
think seriously of the superior excitements of a murder-trial at New
Bailey. But many old-fashioned Romans wished to be able to tell their
grand-children that they themselves had been in the square when the
Pope was proclaimed in the church; and, again, on the morning of St
George's Day, no smoke had been vomited from the Xystine chimney. The
affair was very mysterious! What combinations behind those white walls!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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