"Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor,
Lava me, et super nivem dealbabor."
Then followed the chanted Mass at the High Altar. There were gleaming lights, gorgeous vestments, clouds of incense. All the symbolism of an age when the worship of the English people was richer in ceremonial than that of Continental nations was there. It impressed the minds of rude warriors who could neither read nor write with the sense of a mysterious world, other than their own—of dread realities and awful powers beyond the reach of mortal warfare. If it appealed rather to the imagination than the reason, yet it may be thought, it thereby reached its mark the more surely. The Church was still the salt of the earth, which preserved the whole mass from utter corruption, and in a world of violence and wrong, pointed to a land of peace and joy beyond this transitory scene.
So felt Osric, and his eyes filled with tears as emotions he could hardly analyse stirred his inmost soul.
And Brian—well, he was as a man who views his natural face in a glass, and going away, forgets what manner of man he was.
After Mass the Empress Maude greeted her dear friend and faithful follower Brian Fitz-Count with no stinted welcome. She almost fell upon his shoulder, proud woman though she was, and wept, when assured she should soon see her son, Prince Henry, at Wallingford, for she was but a woman after all.
She insisted upon an interview with the Abbot, from which Brian would fain have dissuaded her, but she took the bit in her teeth.
After a while that dignitary came, and bowed gracefully, but not low.
"Dost thou know, lord Abbot, whom thou hast entertained?"