“I may be dead, after all,” he said to himself; “for the infernal pit can have nothing worse than this.”
His heart was too weak for rage; it sunk within him in the impotence of despair. His strength was ebbing fast, when he fancied he heard a distant sound. He put away the thought; but the wave of a remote harmony beat again upon his ear. He raised himself up; it was becoming distinct. So sweet it sounded, so like a chorus of angelic voices, but in another sphere, that he said to himself: “Who would have thought that Heaven was so near to hell! Or are they accompanying the fearful Judge to try me?”
And now a faint glimmer of light appeared at the same distance as the sounds; and the words of the strain were clearly heard:
“In pace, in idipsum, dormiam et requiescam.”[156]
“Those words are not for me. They might do at a martyr’s entombment; they cannot at a reprobate’s burial.”
The light increased; it was like a dawn glowing into day; it entered the gallery and passed across it, bearing in it, as in a mirror, a vision too distinct to be unreal. First, there came virgins robed and holding lamps; then four who carried between them a form wrapped up in a white linen cloth, with a crown of thorns upon the head; after them the youthful acolyte Tarcisius bearing a censer steaming with perfumed smoke; and, after others of the clergy, the venerable Pontiff himself, attended by Reparatus, and another deacon. Diogenes and his sons, with sorrowful countenances, and many others, among whom he could distinguish Sebastian, closed the procession. As many bore lamps or tapers, the figures seemed to move in an unchanging atmosphere of mildest light.
And as they passed before him, they chanted the next verse of the psalm:
“Quoniam Tu Domine singulariter in spe constituisti me.”[157]
“That,” he exclaimed, rousing himself up, “that is for me.”
With this thought he had sprung upon his knees; and by an instinct of grace words which he had before heard came back to him like an echo; words suited to the moment; words which he felt that he must speak. He crept forward, faint and feeble, turned along the gallery through which the funeral procession was passing, and followed it, unobserved, at a distance. It entered a chamber and lighted it up, so that a picture