We were privileged to see the Ring on one of Mary's greatest feast days (December 8th), and to examine it closely, even to handle it. We shall not ever forget the sight, which was impressive, and savoured almost of a pagan rite. The Ring was exposed from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. We went to see it in the evening. In the square outside it was dark and pouring with cold rain, the great church too was dark and cold, a candle or two in the organ loft, and the organ sending a stream of mysterious music across the aisle, for the benediction. In the chapel of the Relic there was light--a blaze of innumerable candles, and underneath, the priests and an immense throng of people at their prayers. A staircase hung with crimson damask had been built for the day up the side of the wall to the little platform where the Ring is kept. We climbed the stairs to the platform and entered the chapel up above. There were only a few of the privileged Perugians there: some ladies, two smiths with the bolt and keys, the custodian, one or two members of the municipality, and the _Ring_ which, in the light of all its candles, had an extraordinary, nay an even uncanny effect, and seemed cut out of some large opal.[59] When the service below was ended, the priest of the Ring arrived up the ladder. He took the relic out of its shrine, and a strange, half hysterical prayer went up from the tiny crowd. With the excessive courtesy peculiar to the Perugians we were asked to come forward: "You people of Perugia can always see your Ring, and these ladies are strangers," said the priest, who bade us examine it closely. Then the locking up began, and it was a mighty business. The relic is kept in a wonderful variety of cases. It is first locked into a little leathern case with a golden key kept by the bishop. Fifteen other different locks, their keys kept by fifteen different persons of importance in the city, follow. The weight of the last iron chest which covers the other boxes is stupendous. Two locksmiths and a custodian could scarcely manage to close it. As the locking up proceeded the candles went gradually out in the cathedral, and only one or two small tapers remained to light the mysterious burial. We passed from the chapel into the rain-swept square, and some of Ciatti's strange, unlikely fables ran in our head as we splashed through the desolate wind-swept streets. He tells us of the marvellous properties of the Ring--how the power possessed by it was so potent that people's ills were cured by merely looking at it, and how when a Tuscan lady had the audacity to wear it, her hand became withered, even as a dead leaf in autumn. And then he gives the story of the finding of the Ring:--