Then from the mystical shadows began to loom the shapes of pillars, massive, yet so dimly coloured as to seem impalpable, as if they were beneath the sea; brocades, marbles, altars set with jasper, silver, and chrysolite became visible in the side chapels, here and there the rapt faces of angels showed from some dark painting on the wall, the air was redolent of the incense, the wax smoke, and the scent of flowers. This mingled perfume was near as ancient as the church, which had remained for so long enclosed from the light and air that it seemed as if built underground.
Such light as there was streamed richly from the coloured glass windows where saints and bishops blazed together in wheels and panels of glory.
Rénèe fixed her eyes on the High Altar which was flushed with a shadow like golden-red wine, in the middle of which the flat, gold, ruby-studded doors of the shrine that held the Eucharist flashed and shone like the Eye of God itself. Beyond, the pillars and arches of the Lady Chapel rose up dim, and appearing of a translucent quality in the shade which here, flushed with the light from gold-coloured windows, was sea-green and amber behind the crimson of the altar.
Round the huge candlesticks of dark red Florentine copper were alabaster bowls, almost transparent, veined with violet, which held the first lilies of the year in sweet clusters—the lilies from wood and field called Easter lilies from the time of their coming.
The church was empty save for here and there the dark bent figure of a peasant before some side altar.
Rénèe could not bring herself to bend the knee before the idols her father had perished to disown, and, with a trembling in her limbs as if some physical power had seized her and a choking in her throat as if the sweet thick air was poisonous, she turned and fled quickly into the pale sunshine without.
The excited people were already beginning to gather to watch the passing of the petitioners on their way to the palace.
Rénèe did not know which way the procession was to pass, and she was largely ignorant of the city, but she followed the direction in which the great mass of the crowd was going.
She particularly noticed this crowd and its demeanour, the soberness, the earnestness, the silence of these people.
None of them seemed to be treating the occasion as a festival or as a holiday, if they showed a certain satisfaction it was grave and serious; very few of them were armed, and all of them were restrained in gestures and speech.