A climax of horror is reached when a search is made for the buried body of a patron saint of the church, till, in the uncertain light of morning, the coffin is found and opened, and the bishop with his gloved hands draws out the shrouded shrunken form. At this Denys has an access of terror, and rolls in a fit upon the grass. But he recovers himself, and though by this time suspected of sorcery, he gives much anxious care to the setting up of the great organ of the church. “The carpenters, under his instruction, set up the great wooden passages for the thunder; while the little pipes of pasteboard simulated the sound of the human voice singing to the victorious notes of the long metal trumpets.” At last he ventures to appear in public at a pageant. The haircloth he wears scratches his lips and makes them bleed, and at the sight, an unholy fury fills the crowd. He is literally torn in pieces. “The soul of Denys was already at rest, as his body, now borne along in front of the crowd, was tossed hither and thither, torn at last limb from limb. The men stuck little shreds of his flesh, or, failing that, of his torn raiment, into their caps; the women lending their long hairpins for the purpose.” In such a passage as this the horror passes beyond the range of perfect art; and the shadow is heightened by the natural tranquillity and austerity of the writer. One cannot help feeling that Pater was here overpowered by his conception, and that he allowed to escape him, for almost the only time in his writings, a kind of almost animal zest in blood and carnage. There is no lack of what is commonly called power, but there is a lack of the restraint which as a rule Pater so diligently preached. It reminds one of the tale of Tod Lapraik in _Catriona_, where the staid and smiling weaver dances alone in a hollow of the rocks in the black glory of his heart; or of the still more grim story of Kipling, where the veil that separates the man from the brute is twitched aside, and the unhappy wretch, intoxicated by a bestial instinct, asks eagerly for raw meat, and rolls and digs in the earth beneath the dark shrubs of the garden.