V
A hush is over the little precipitous market-town. The hot May sun beats down on the waiting lines of people, on the fragrant linden-trees shading the quiet street, on the fluttering banners and pennants everywhere.
The air is full of dim sound; wild drift of far-off bell-music, the deep hum and stir of the expectant people, the voice of the wind, sweet and low, in the green lime labyrinth overhead. Every glance is turned up the street, where the church of Saint Francis of Assisi lifts its bluff sandstone tower against the blue. The great west door stands open. Straining the eye, the nearest watchers can just make out a glint of altar lights through the cavernous dark within—the rich uncertain glow of candles given back from a thousand gleaming points of silver chalice and golden cross and glittering filigree.
And now the last rumbling harmony of the organ dies away. For a moment a deeper silence than ever fills the Gothic gloom. Then the thin fine note of a clarinet lifts up its trembling signal in the darkness. The brazen trombones join in with their passionate, deep-voiced music. The lights begin to move and dance, growing nearer and stronger. ‘They are coming!’—to the remotest end of the waiting line the whisper spreads.
Slowly the procession winds its way through the great church door, and down the precipitous street. First the gilded, jewel-encumbered cross, borne aloft by a young priest in a black cassock and snowy, deep-laced surplice. Then the singing multitude of schoolgirls, all in white, with wreath-crowned veils like so many Lilliputian brides. Now the boys from the convent seminary in crimson shoulder-sashes, with their fussing marshals; and the elder women after, in their doleful, decorous black. Banners swaying; rainbow streamers flying; the shrill child-voices blent with the sound of the wind in the glad green leaves overhead.
Now the trumpets and clarinets have turned the bend of the street. The singing gives way to deeper music. More banners come flinging and flaunting into the sunny vista. The gay procession takes on a darker tinge. Sisters in black, sisters in brown, sisters in grey; weary faces, sad faces, comely faces; winter and glowing spring and ripe calm autumn, all in the same cold livery of sorrow, all with the like abandonment to destiny so plainly fettering the innate unrule of will.
The musicians pass on: the deep blurring melody fades: the pageant changes.
Monks and friars now. An old Capuchin father totters by in his rough brown frock, carrying a candle on a brazen stick. After him a score of his own degree, all bearing lights that glimmer and blink superfluously in the sunshine, and all chanting a long slow antiphon in a minor key. Old men reeking of the cloister, bent nearly double with their weight of years; sturdy young friars, ruddy-jowled, tonsured, with only half an eye to their book; suave-faced, grey-headed superiors, eyes in the sky, calm, transfigured, the vanquished world behind every man’s broad back.
And now a weird, dirge-like note creeps down the sun-bathed street, and a murmur follows it through the craning, nudging crowd. The end, the crown, of the pageant is suddenly in view. It is all shining celestial white now, as the choristers sweep slowly by in their spotless lawn and lace, chanting their pseudo-requiem as they move. Behind them a bevy of major priests, of comfortable figure, gorgeously caparisoned. Little scarlet-robed acolytes walking backwards and strewing the way with rich-hued flowers; swinging censers vouchsafing their hallow of dim smoke upon the common air. And then at last—under the great square baldacchino—the old Roman bishop himself, holding aloft the precious monstrance, like a glittering captive star.
A vision now of billowing white and gold; and the low, sad chant swelling, falling; and the languorous fragrance of the incense and the trampled flowers. Wrapped to the eyes in his heavy, gilt-encrusted cope, the old priest grasps his cherished burden with all the little might of his trembling blue-veined hands. His eyes are on the gold-rayed treasure-casket, held but an inch or two beyond his flushed, illuminated face. A trance-like stupor seems to be upon him as he moves, guided on either side by those other two, almost as splendidly robed as himself, who keep a grip on the fringe of his silken coat, and lead him onward in his passionate ecstasy, treading thin air, enrapt, magnificent with other-worldly light.
It is over now. The great canopy has moved on, its bearers keeping ceremonious step and step. More richly accoutred priests follow in a holy rear-guard. Then the crowd closes up eagerly behind, and surges after them, bare-headed, jostling together; catching now and again a phrase of the mournful melody, and giving it an echo that sobs away into silence far in the sunny length of the street.
As I stand apart, here in the deep shadow of the convent wall, the thronging multitude sweeps by, growing thinner with every moment. The gleaming star of the monstrance sends back a last clear flash of sunlight as it turns the distant foot of the hill. Soon the straggling human fringe of the procession vanishes after it. A debris of blossom litters the long deserted way. Flags and streamers wave their bright hues over the dusty solitude. The street is forsaken, quiet again; save for the bells in the upper air, and the wind in the trees.