Then the chant was taken up anew—a miserere. They grasped their scourges and marched even more sturdily than if their chant had been a battle song. Their aspect was that of a people who had come from a starving town. Their cheeks were sunken; their cheek-bones protruded; their lips were bloodless, and dark rings encircled their eyes. All the scourges were stained with blood.
With astonishment and uneasiness all Bergamo flocked together to gaze upon them. Red, bloated faces stood out against those that were pale; heavy, lust-weary eyes were lowered before the keen, flashing glances of the pilgrims; grinning, blasphemous mouths were struck dumb by these chants. The townspeople were spellbound.
But it was not long before the pall was shaken off. Some recognized among the cross-bearers a half-crazed cobbler of Brescia, and in a moment the procession became a butt of ridicule. Moreover, this was something new, a diversion from the monotony of every-day life, and as the strangers marched on to the cathedral, they were followed as a band of jugglers might be or as a tame bear is followed.
But soon anger seized the jostling crowd. It was clear that these cobblers and tailors had come to convert them, to pray, and to speak words that none wished to hear. Two gaunt, grizzled philosophers who had formulated blasphemy into a system incited the populace out of sheer wickedness of heart, so that the mob grew more threatening as the procession marched to the church, and more fiercely enraged. Bergamo was about to lay hands on these singular, scourge-bearing tailors. Not a hundred paces from the portal of the church a tavern opened its doors and a whole band of roisterers poured out, one on the shoulders of another. And they took their places at the head of the procession, singing and howling, assuming a mock-religious mien—all save one, who jerked his thumbs contemptuously toward the grass-grown steps of the church. Rough laughter then arose, and pilgrims and blasphemers entered the sanctuary in peace.
It was strange to be in that place again, to roam through the great cool nave, in air heavy with the stale fumes of snuffed wax tapers, over sunken flagstones so familiar to the foot, and over stones with their worn ornaments and polished inscriptions, in contemplation of which the mind had often grown so weary. And while the eye, half curiously, half involuntarily rested in the dim half-light of the vaults or strayed over the mellow gaudiness of dusty gold and grimy colors, or began to lose itself in the grotesque shadows of the apse, a kind of longing arose, not to be suppressed.
Meanwhile the tavern roisterers played their pranks on the main altar itself. A tall, strong young butcher removed his white apron and wound it about his neck so that it hung at his back like a cloak. Thus arrayed, he celebrated mass, with the wildest and most shocking words of sacrilege. A small, elderly, round-bellied fellow, lively and agile in spite of his fat, with the face of a peeled pumpkin, played sexton and responded with ribald songs; he made his genuflexions and turned his back upon the altar, and rang his bell like a clown; and the other tipplers, as they made their genuflexions, threw themselves flat on the ground and roared with laughter, hiccuping drunkenly.
All within the church laughed, hooted, and jeered at the strangers, and bade them notice how God was esteemed in Old Bergamo. Yet they wished not so much to mock God as to rack the souls of these penitents with their impiety.
In the centre of the nave the pilgrims halted and groaned, such was their anguish. Their blood boiled with hate, and they thirsted for vengeance. They prayed to God, with hands and eyes uplifted, that He might smite His blasphemers for the mockery offered Him in His house. Gladly would they perish with the presumptuous infidels, if He would but show His might; blissfully would they be crushed beneath His feet, if He would but triumph, and if these godless throats might be made to shriek in agony and despair.
They lifted up their voices in a miserere, each note of which rang like a prayer for that rain of fire that once swept over Sodom, for the strength that was Samson’s when he grasped the pillars of the Philistine temple. They prayed with words and with song; they bared their shoulders and prayed with their scourges. Kneeling, row on row, stripped to the waist they whirled stinging, knotted cords over their backs.
Frantically they scourged, until the blood spurted under their hissing lashes. Each stroke was an offering to God. Stroke on stroke came down, until arms sank or were cramped into knots. Thus they lay, row on row, with frenzied look and foaming mouth, blood dripping from their bodies.