At first the enormous disappointment of Rome had saddened and hurt him. He had fancied that where there was no head there could be no house, that where the leader was gone the army must scatter and be hewn in pieces. But as he stayed on, from week to week and from month to month, he learned to understand that the Church had never been more alive, more growing, and more militant than at that very time when the true and rightful pontiffs were made outcasts one after the other, while their places, earthly and spiritual, were given to instruments of feud and party. For the Church was the world, while Rome meant seven or eight thousand half-starved and turbulent ruffians, with their wives and children, eager always for change, because it seemed that no change could be for the worse. But in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter there was peace; there the white-haired priests solemnly officiated in the morning and at noon, and toward evening more than a hundred rich voices of boys and men sang the vesper psalms in the Gregorian tones; there slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in rich clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting to the ancient floor; there, as in many a minster and cloister of the world, the Church was still herself, as she was, and is, and always will be; there words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned which had been familiar to the lips of the Apostles, which are familiar to our lips and ears to-day, and of which we are sure that lips unborn will repeat them to centuries of generations. Gilbert, type of Christian layman, kneeled in the old cathedral, and chanted softly after the choir, and breathed the incense-laden air that seemed as natural to him as ever the hay-scented breeze of summer had been, and he was infinitely refreshed in soul and body. But then again, alone in his room at the Lion Inn, late in the night, when he had been poring over the beautifully written copy of Boethius, given him by the Abbot of Sheering, he often opened wide the wooden shutters of his window and looked out at the castle and at the flowing river that eddied and gleamed in the moonlight. Then life rose before him in a mystery for him to solve by deeds, and he knew that he was not to dream out his years in the shadowy city, and the strong old instinct of his race bade him go forth and cut his fortune out of the world's flank alive. Then his blood rose in his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the other, as he leaned over the stone sill and drew the night air sharply between his closed teeth; and he resolved then to leave Rome and to go on in search of strange lands and masterful deeds. On such nights, when the wind blew down the river in the spring, it brought to him all the hosts of fancy, spirit armies, ghostly knights, and fairy maidens, and the forecast shadows of things to come. There was a tragic note, also;