“Is that a new method,” thought he, “or have I said something that displeased her?”
“What dost thou think of Pani Osnovski?” asked he of Marynia in the evening.
“I think that Pan Svirski may be right in some measure.”
And Pan Stanislav answered: “She is writing at this moment ‘memoirs,’ which ‘Yozio’ considers a masterpiece.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
Next morning when Marynia came out to her husband he hardly knew her. Dressed in black, and with a black lace veil on her head, she seemed taller, more slender, darker, and older. But he was pleased by a certain solemnity in her which recalled the ceremony of their marriage. Half an hour later they started. On the road Marynia confessed to fear, and a beating of the heart. He pacified her playfully, though he, too, was moved somewhat; and when, after a short drive, they entered the gigantic half-circle in front of St. Peter’s, he felt also that his pulse was not beating as every day, and, besides, he had a strange feeling of being smaller than usual. Near the steps, where stood a number of Swiss guards, arrayed in the splendid uniform invented by Michael Angelo, they found Svirski, who led them up with a throng of people, mostly Belgians. Marynia, who was somewhat dazed, did not know herself when she entered a very spacious hall, in which the throng was still denser, excepting on a space in the centre, where the Swiss guards were posted in lines, and kept a broad passage open. The crowd, among which the French and Flemish languages were to be heard, whispered in low voices, and turned their heads and eyes toward a passage, in which, from time to time, appeared, through the adjoining hall, forms in remarkable costumes, which reminded Pan Stanislav of galleries in Antwerp or Brussels. It seemed to him that the Middle Ages were rising from the dead: now it was some knight of those ages, in a helmet, different indeed from helmets on the ancient portraits, but with steel on his breast; now a herald in a short red dalmatica, and with a red cap on his head; at times through the open door appeared purple cardinals, or violet bishops, ostrich feathers, lace on black velvet, and heads immensely venerable, white hair and faces, as if from a sarcophagus. But it was evident that the glances of the throng were falling on those peculiar dresses and colors and faces, as if, in passing, that their eyes were waiting for something beyond, something higher, some other heart; it was clear that in people’s minds attention was fixed as was feeling in their souls, in waiting for a moment which comes once in a lifetime, and is memorable ever after. Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia by the hand, so as not to lose her in the throng, felt that hand tremble from emotion; as to him, in the midst of those silent crowds and beating hearts, before that historical dignity of former ages rising from the dead, as it were, in the midst of that attention and expectation, he felt a second time the wonderful impression of becoming smaller and smaller, till he was the smallest that he had ever been in life.
At that moment a low and rather panting voice whispered near them,—
“I have been looking for you, and found you with difficulty. The ceremony will begin at once, it seems.”
But it was not to begin at once. The monsignor acquaintance greeted Svirski meanwhile, and, speaking a few words to him, conducted the whole party politely to the adjoining hall, which was fitted in crimson damask. Pan Stanislav saw with astonishment that this hall, too, was full of people, with the exception of one end, which was reserved by a guard of honor, and in which was an armchair on an elevation, and before it a number of prelates and bishops conversing confidentially. Here expectation and attention were more expressly visible. It was evident that people were holding their breath; and all faces had a solemn, mysterious expression. The azure clearness of the day, mingled with the purple reflections of the tapestry, filled that hall with a kind of unusual light, in which the rays of the sun, breaking in here and there through the window-panes, appeared very ruddy and of a deeper red.