The Palace chapel is on the story below; and as it possesses no exterior, but is merely as it were a hall in the present Palace, whatever it may have been in the time of that Norman Prince who built it; and as young naval officers do not speak much of such matters, I was altogether unprepared for the glory which burst upon us when we pushed the leather-covered folding doors open and stepped into a little _basilica_, I think they call it, full of the smell of the sweetest incense, and very softly but perfectly lit with huge silver lamps hung from the Arabic ceiling, and fed with aromatic oil, which displayed to me what looked like a scene from the "Arabian Nights." The chapel had tall Moorish-looking arches and walls covered with golden mosaics, and a wondrously carved white marble candlestick as tall as two or three men, and its floors and altar-parapet and lower walls were made up of huge panels and pieces of rich crimson porphyry divided with white marble, and the inlaid mosaic borders they call the Cosmato. The quaint shapes, the rich scents and colours almost stunned my senses; and gorgeously robed priests, who seemed all white and jewels, passed to and fro performing some solemn and beautiful service, of which I could make nothing, but of which even I, an irreverent young Protestant sailor, felt the holiness. The music, too, was sweet and rich and pervading. I could imagine any one who was stricken to the heart, as the poor Queen had been in those first days, coming here for comfort. It was so above the ordinary human, as to suggest ideas of the presence of the Divine. As soon as I could get over my astonishment, I noted that there was nothing corresponding to our pews,--there were but a few loose chairs, which those of the Palace, high or low, who came in to worship, picked up and carried where they would. The Admiral motioned us to place some of these in the shadow near the door, that, not being of the religion, we might sit as unobtrusive as possible. The service which had just begun was to last some half-hour, and My Lady had told him that he should wait through it for the music. When I got over my feeling of awe, I was a little disturbed by what seemed to me the antics of the service: the small boys dressed, as it seemed to my ignorant mind, like so many small priests, who were for ever bringing some book or robe or other article from the opposite point of the chapel to where the priest was performing; the tinkling of the little silver bells, which directed sometimes the movements of the boys, sometimes of the worshippers (they seemed to know which without being told); the swinging of censers; the changing of the robes of the performing priest; and the breaking out of a sweet clear intonation from some unsuspected corner.