Up the spiral staircase he crept into the loft; there some cushions were left by chance amongst the remains of the organ; he contrived to make a couch out of two or three of them and slept.
How long he knew not, but at length he seemed to hear the bells ring out the midnight hour, and he began to dream that he was assisting at a solemn office for the dead. He awoke and raised himself up; the same sounds he had heard in his dream were actually ascending from below.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.”
Then followed the words of the psalm:—
“Te decet hymnus Deus in Syon, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.”[26]
He gazed around him in amazement. He discovered the familiar odour of incense, he perceived the glimmer of many tapers. He dared at last, not knowing whether he beheld ghosts or living men, to look over the edge of the gallery, and saw a company of monks in the familiar Benedictine habit, standing around an open grave, while beyond them the desecrated altar was set up, and furnished with its accustomed ornaments, and the Celebrant with his assistant ministers, stood before it.
Then he was convinced that he beheld living men and no phantoms, and that he saw before him those who survived of his former preceptors and teachers, the monks of Glastonbury.
Whom then were they burying? for whom did they chant the requiem Mass?
And now the epistle was read, and afterwards the solemn sounds of the sequence arose:—