Twenty years have gone by since then, and God has touched our hair with silver in token of the eternal peace to come. And still in the deeps of the night the memory breaks into our dreams, and lifts us broad awake with a scream of horror. Yet, would we part with that dread remembrance? No, not for worlds!
How sweet it is in memory once again, to walk those old streets of the lost Capital, to see once more the faces of that time, of men brought near to Heaven in their pain, of women glorified by suffering, and little children waiting patiently for the end. We never hoped to live, we rarely cared, for hope was dead in many a smiling face. Fear was dead, too; there was nothing to be afraid of, except life. Men spoke very gently when they met, women would purse their lips and hurry on. One got so used and inured to horrors that the environment of death was no more to be thought of than the air we breathed.
One saw so many deeds of sacrifice, so many saintly and heroic actions, that these made the framework to one's thoughts of life.
So is the memory sweet of those embittered days when, grim confused wars racked all the peoples of the earth; those days of famine, pillage, massacre, of wasting pestilence, and flaming desolation. Heaven and hell were opened, but men looked upward.
XII
THE THIRD DAY
On the third day the Primate called the whole nation to fasting, humiliation, and prayer. At St. Paul's Cathedral the Litany was to be read; and when the great bell began to toll his minutes over the Capital our Lady said she would attend that service.
For by this time the press had spoken in no uncertain voice. A newspaper is, indeed, like a lens, a burning glass condensing the thought of the people into one clear flame of utterance.
The clear flame had fallen upon the Lord Protector and his Parliament, the nation waited for the Queen to strike, and she did well to trust the poor who loved her.
So, dressed in deep mourning, and attended only by Miss Temple, our Lady drove out through the gates in an open carriage. She would have no bodyguard, save in the protection of the mob. The troops cheered as they opened their lines for her passage, men came uncovered, and begged leave to draw her carriage, and all through the streets she was guarded by crowds of men with a great deal of noise, but much besides of loving reverence.