t
longthroated, copper instrument uttered.

A child's shrill voice took up the reply, and from time to time a priest
sitting in a stall and wearing a biretta, got up, muttered something,
and sat down again, while the three singers continued, with their eyes
fixed on the big book of plain song lying open before them on the
outstretched wings of an eagle, mounted on a pivot.

Then silence ensued, and so the service went on, and towards the end of
it, Rosa, with her head in both her hands, suddenly thought of her
mother and her village church on a similar occasion. She almost fancied
that that day had returned, when she was so small, and almost hidden in
her white dress, and she began to cry.

First of all, she wept silently, and the tears dropped slowly from her
eyes, but her emotion increased with her recollections, and she began to
sob. She took out her pocket-handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and held it
to her mouth, so as not to scream, but it was useless.

A sort of rattle escaped her throat, and she was answered by two other
profound, heart-breaking sobs; for her two neighbors, Louise and Flora,
who were kneeling near her, overcome by similar recollections, were
sobbing by her side, amidst a flood of tears, and as they are
contagious, _Madame_ soon in turn found that her eyes were wet, and on
turning to her sister-in-law, she saw that all the occupants of her seat
were also crying.

Soon, throughout the church, here and there, a wife, a mother, a sister,
seized by the strange sympathy of poignant emotion, and agitated by
those handsome ladies on their knees, who were shaken by their sobs,
was moistening her cambric pocket-handkerchief, and pressing her beating
heart with her left hand.

Just as the sparks from an engine will set fire to dry grass, so the
tears of Rosa and of her companions infected the whole congregation in a
moment. Men, women, old men, and lads in new blouses were soon all
sobbing, and something superhuman seemed to be hovering over their
heads; a spirit, the powerful breath of an invisible and all-powerful
being.

Suddenly a species of madness seemed to pervade the church, the noise of
a crowd in a state of frenzy, a tempest of sobs and stifled cries. It
passed through them like gusts of wind which bow the trees in a forest,
and the priest, paralyzed by emotion, stammered out incoherent prayers,
without finding words, prayers of the soul, when it soars towards
heaven.

The people behind h