The introit passed, and the Gospel, and the offertory, and then came the solemn moment in which the priest, after having blessed the Sacred Wafer, took it in the tips of his fingers and began to elevate it.
A cloud of incense, rolling forth in azure waves, filled the length and breadth of the church; the little bells rang out with silvery vibrations, and Master Pérez placed his quivering hands upon the keys of the organ.
The hundred voices of its metal tubes resounded in a prolonged, majestic chord, which died away little by little, as if a gentle breeze had stolen its last echoes.
To this opening chord, that seemed a voice lifted from earth to heaven, responded a sweet and distant note, which went on swelling and swelling in volume until it became a torrent of pealing harmony.
It was the song of the angels, which, traversing the ethereal spaces, had reached the world.
Then there began to be heard a sound as of far-off hymns entoned by the hierarchies of seraphim, a thousand hymns at once, melting into one, which, nevertheless, was no more than accompaniment to a strange melody,—a melody that seemed to float above that ocean of mysterious echoes as a strip of fog above the billows of the sea.
One anthem after another died away; the movement grew simpler; now there were but two voices, whose echoes blended; then one alone remained, sustaining a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The priest bowed his face, and above his gray head, across an azure mist made by the smoke of the incense, appeared to the eyes of the faithful the uplifted Host. At that instant the thrilling note which Master Pérez was holding began to swell and swell until an outburst of colossal harmony shook the church, in whose corners the straitened air vibrated and whose stained glass shivered in its narrow Moorish embrasures.
From each of the notes forming that magnificent chord a theme was developed,—some near, some far, these keen, those muffled, until one would have said that the waters and the birds, the winds and the woods, men and angels, earth and heaven, were chanting, each in its own tongue, an anthem of praise for the Redeemer’s birth.
The multitude listened in amazement and suspense. In all eyes were tears, in all spirits a profound realization of the divine.
The officiating priest felt his hands trembling, for the Holy One whom they upheld, the Holy One to whom men and archangels did reverence, was God, was very God, and it seemed to the priest that he had beheld the heavens open and the Host become transfigured.