He was disturbed by another touch on his arm; and, looking up,
perceived that his friend was attracting his attention almost
mechanically, and without looking at him.
"Look," murmured Father Jervis--"it's the white jennet."
Beneath, the street was now as wholly ecclesiastical as it had
been military just before, except that the Papal zouaves marched
in single file on either side of the procession. But within there
was just one packed army, going eight abreast, of seminarians and
clerics. These were just passing as the priest looked again, and
close on their heels came the Court and the Cardinals; the latter
an indescribable glory of scarlet, riding four abreast in broad
hats and ample cloaks. But he gave scarcely more than a glance at
these; for, full in sight for at least half a minute, advancing
straight towards him down the roaring street, moved a canopy held
by figures he could not clearly make out, and beneath it,
detached and perfectly visible, on a white horse, a white figure,
its shoulders just draped in scarlet and its head shadowed by a
great scarlet hat, came slowly towards him.
(IV)
And so the day went by like a dream; and the man who still seemed
to himself as one risen from the dead into a new and wholly
bewildering world, watched and gathered impressions and
assimilated them. Once or twice during the day he found himself
at meals with Father Jervis; he asked questions now and then and
scarcely heard the answers; he talked with ecclesiastics a little
who came and went; but, for the most part almost unknown to
himself, he worked interiorly, busy as a bee, building up, not so
much facts as realizations, into the new and strange
world-edifice that was gradually forming about him. He was
present at the visit of the Pope to the tomb of the Apostle, and
watched from a tribune, even then so concentrated on observation
that he was hardly conscious of connected thought, as the vast
doors rolled back and a vision as of such a celestial troop as
was dreamed of by the old Italian painters came up out of the
vivid sunlight into the cool darkness of the basilica, as the
roofs gave back the roaring of the fervent thousands and the
clear cry of the silver trumpets; watched as the army of
ecclesiastics deployed this way and that, and the Father of
Princes and Kings came on between his royal children to the gates
of the Confession ringed by the golden lamps, and went down to
kneel by the body of the first Fisherman-King.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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