III
Yet even at that sound and sight his soul scarcely tightened the languidthreads that united it through every fibre of his body with the world ofsense. He saw and heard the tumult in the passage, frantic eyes andmouths crying aloud, and, in strange contrast, the pale ecstatic facesof those princes who turned and looked; even within the tranquilpresence-chamber of the spirit where two beings, Incarnate God and allbut Discarnate Man, were locked in embrace, a certain mental processwent on. Yet all was still as apart from him as a lighted stage and itsdrama from a self-contained spectator. In the material world, now asattenuated as a mirage, events were at hand; but to his soul, balancednow on reality and awake to facts, these things were but a spectacle....
He turned to the altar again, and there, as he had known it would be, inthe midst of clear light, all was at peace: the celebrant, seen asthrough molten glass, adored as He murmured the mystery of theWord-made-Flesh, and once more passing to the centre, sank upon Hisknees.
Again the priest understood; for thought was no longer the process of amind, rather it was the glance of a spirit. He knew all now; and, by aninevitable impulse, his throat began to sing aloud words that, as hesang, opened for the first time as flowers telling their secret to thesun.
_O Salutaris HostiaQui coeli pandis ostium. . . ._
They were all singing now; even the Mohammedan catechumen who had burstin a moment ago sang with the rest, his lean head thrust out and hisarms tight across his breast; the tiny chapel rang with the fortyvoices, and the vast world thrilled to hear it....
Still singing, the priest saw the veil laid as by a phantom upon thePontiff's shoulders; there was a movement, a surge of figures--shadowsonly in the midst of substance,
_... Uni Trinoque Domino ...._
--and the Pope stood erect, Himself a pallor in the heart of light, withspectral folds of silk dripping from His shoulders, His hands swathed inthem, and His down-bent head hidden by the silver-rayed monstrance andThat which it bore....
_... Qui vitam sine terminoNobis donet in patria ...._
... They were moving now, and the world of life swung with them; of somuch was he aware. He was out in the passage, among the white, frenziedfaces that with bared teeth stared up at that sight, silenced at last bythe thunder of _Pange Lingua_, and the radiance of those who passed outto eternal life.... At the corner he turned for an instant to see thesix pale flames move along a dozen yards behind, as spear-heads about aKing, and in the midst the silver rays and the White Heart of God....Then he was out, and the battle lay in array....
That sky on which he had looked an hour ago had passed from darknesscharged with light to light overlaid with darkness--from glimmeringnight to Wrathful Day--and that light was red....
From behind Thabor on the left to Carmel on the far right, above thehills twenty miles away rested an enormous vault of colour; here were nogradations from zenith to horizon; all was the one deep smoulder ofcrimson as of the glow of iron. It was such a colour as men have seen atsunsets after rain, while the clouds, more translucent each instant,transmit the glory they cannot contain. Here, too, was the sun, pale asthe Host, set like a fragile wafer above the Mount of Transfiguration,and there, far down in the west where men had once cried upon Baal invain, hung the sickle of the white moon. Yet all was no more thanstained light that lies broken across carven work of stone....
_... In suprema nocte coena,_
sang the myriad voices,
_Recumbens cum fratribusObservata lege plenaCibis in legalibusCibum turbae duodenaeSe dat suis manibus ...._
He saw, too, poised as motes in light, that ring of strangefish-creatures, white as milk, except where the angry glory turned theirbacks to flame, white-winged like floating moths, from the tiny shapefar to the south to the monster at hand scarcely five hundred yardsaway; and even as he looked, singing as he looked, he understood thatthe circle was nearer, and perceived that these as yet knew nothing....
_Verbum caro, panem verumVerbo carnem efficit ....
They were nearer still, until now even at his feet there slid along theground the shadow of a monstrous bird, pale and undefined, as betweenthe wan sun and himself moved out the vast shape that a moment ago hungabove the Hill.... Then again it backed across and waited ...
_Et si census deficitAd formandum cor sincerumSola fides sufficit ...._
He had halted and turned, going in the midst of his fellows, hearing,he thought, the thrill of harping and the throb of heavenly drums; and,across the space, moved now the six flames, steady as if cut of steel inthat stupendous poise of heaven and earth; and in their centre thesilver-rayed glory and the Whiteness of God made Man....
... Then, with a roar, came the thunder again, pealing in circle beyondcircle of those tremendous Presences--Thrones and Powers--who,themselves to the world as substance to shadow, are but shadows againbeneath the apex and within the ring of Absolute Deity.... The thunderbroke loose, shaking the earth that now cringed on the quivering edge ofdissolution....
TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUMVENEREMUR CERNUIET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUMNOVO CEDAT RITUI.
Ah! yes; it was He for whom God waited now--He who far up beneath thattrembling shadow of a dome, itself but the piteous core of unimaginedsplendour, came in His swift chariot, blind to all save that on which Hehad fixed His eyes so long, unaware that His world corrupted about Him,His shadow moving like a pale cloud across the ghostly plain whereIsrael had fought and Sennacherib boasted--that plain lighted now with ayet deeper glow, as heaven, kindling to glory beyond glory of yetfiercer spiritual flame, still restrained the power knit at last to therelief of final revelation, and for the last time the voices sang....
PRAESTET FIDES SUPPLEMENTUMSENSUUM DEFECTUI ....
... He was coming now, swifter than ever, the heir of temporal ages andthe Exile of eternity, the final piteous Prince of rebels, the creatureagainst God, blinder than the sun which paled and the earth that shook;and, as He came, passing even then through the last material stage tothe thinness of a spirit-fabric, the floating circle swirled behind Him,tossing like phantom birds in the wake of a phantom ship.... He wascoming, and the earth, rent once again in its allegiance, shrank andreeled in the agony of divided homage....
... He was coming--and already the shadow swept off the plain andvanished, and the pale netted wings were rising to the cheek; and thegreat bell clanged, and the long sweet chord rang out--not more thanwhispers heard across the pealing storm of everlasting praise....
.... GENITORI GENITOQUELAUS ET JUBILATIOSALUS HONOR VIRTUS QUOQUESIT ET BENEDICTIOPROCEDENTI AB UTROQUECOMPAR SIT LAUDATIO.
and once more
PROCEDENTI AB UTROQUECOMPAR SIT LAUDATIO ....
Then this world passed, and the glory of it.
THE END
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