The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Volume 5Zola, Émile
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The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Volume 5
Zola, Émile
Catholics -- Fiction; Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Rome (Italy) -- Fiction
A surprise awaited the young priest. He had expected such a
lying-in-state as is seen in France and elsewhere, all windows closed so
as to steep the room in night, and hundreds of candles burning round a
/catafalco/, whilst from ceiling to floor the walls were hung with black
drapery. He had been told that the bodies would lie in the throne-room
because the antique chapel on the ground floor of the palazzo had been
shut up for half a century and was in no condition to be used, whilst the
Cardinal's little private chapel was altogether too small for any such
ceremony. And thus it had been necessary to improvise an altar in the
throne-room, an altar at which masses had been said ever since dawn.
Masses and other religious services were moreover to be celebrated all
day long in the private chapel; and two additional altars had even been
set up, one in a small room adjoining the /anticamera nobile/ and the
other in a sort of alcove communicating with the second anteroom: and in
this wise priests, Franciscans, and members of other Orders bound by the
vow of poverty, would simultaneously and without intermission celebrate
the divine sacrifice on those four altars. The Cardinal, indeed, had
desired that the Divine Blood should flow without pause under his roof
for the redemption of those two dear souls which had flown away together.
And thus in that mourning mansion, through those funeral halls the bells
scarcely stopped tinkling for the elevation of the host, whilst the
quivering murmur of Latin words ever continued, and consecrated wafers
were continually broken and chalices drained, in such wise that the
Divine Presence could not for a moment quit the heavy atmosphere all
redolent of death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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