“What did you say?” “Are you quite sure the procession will not be too much for you? The sun is very hot.” “What does the sun matter?” Montanelli spoke in a cold, measured voice, and the priest again fancied that he must have given offence. “Forgive me, Your Eminence. I thought you seemed unwell.” Montanelli rose without answering. He paused a moment on the upper step of the throne, and asked in the same measured way: “What is that?” The long train of his mantle swept down over the steps and lay spread out on the chancel-floor, and he was pointing to a fiery stain on the white satin. “It's only the sunlight shining through a coloured window, Your Eminence.” “The sunlight? Is it so red?” He descended the steps, and knelt before the altar, swinging the censer slowly to and fro. As he handed it back, the chequered sunlight fell on his bared head and wide, uplifted eyes, and cast a crimson glow across the white veil that his ministers were folding round him. He took from the deacon the sacred golden sun; and stood up, as choir and organ burst into a peal of triumphal melody. “Pange, lingua, g]oriosi Corporis mysterium, Sanguinisque pretiosi Quem in mundi pretium, Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium.” The bearers came slowly forward, and raised the silken canopy over his head, while the deacons of honour stepped to their places at his right and left and drew back the long folds of the mantle. As the acolytes stooped to lift his robe from the chancel-floor, the lay fraternities heading the procession started to pace down the nave in stately double file, with lighted candles held to left and right. He stood above them, by the altar, motionless under the white canopy, holding the Eucharist aloft with steady hands, and watched them as they passed. Two by two, with candles and banners and torches, with crosses and images and flags, they swept slowly down the chancel steps, along the broad nave between the garlanded pillars, and out under the lifted scarlet curtains into the blazing sunlight of the street; and the sound of their chanting died into a rolling murmur, drowned in the pealing of new and newer voices, as the unending stream flowed on, and yet new footsteps echoed down the nave.