The Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces, and the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.
After a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the picture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she observed that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered with frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs; one more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out into the church again, bewildered and enchanted.
“I will tell them nothing about it,” was her conclusion as she went home. “They might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little secret of my own.”
They went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the finest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and were so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The chapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came, and the place was soon crowded.
Nothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel, the beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes, with rich lace on those picturesque little cotte of theirs, and the music—each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up, down through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d’Arpino, and faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and loitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one instant against the white band of Carrara marble—cornice, capitals, figures, and flowers—under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and red of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido’s saints threw them into relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim under that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss on the music in mid-air.
The light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below began to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and the pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers, each flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.
Going out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly contrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out to her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a window of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so solid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it were an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle which the Jews bore with them.
“If only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it is all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!”
They lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M—— came out of the sacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People were gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen also in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings, snatching it up unseen by the custodi, and scampering out again. The lights went out, the cancelle were closed, and finally our friends were forced to go home.
They stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps, the two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr. Vane had but one word: “There is a certain Protestant hymn that used to make me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,” he said. “But, remembering it now by the light of this festa, I think heaven couldn’t be better described than as a place——