Friday, in the tribune of St. Peter's, the
extreme end of the church where the vast window of yellow glass gives a
perpetually golden light. The chair believed to have been that of St.
Peter's is here placed, enclosed in ivory and supported by statues of
four Fathers of the church, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom,
and St. Athanasius, from a design of Bernini.

In the tribune is the tomb of Urban VIII (who was Matteo Barberini), of
which the redundant decoration tells the story that it is also Bernini's
work. Opposite this tomb is that of Paul III, by della Porta, under the
supervision of Michael Angelo, it is said, and the beauty and dignity of
the bronze figure of the aged Pope, in the act of giving the
benediction, quite confirm this tradition. On a tablet in the wall of
the tribune are engraved the names of all the bishops and prelates who,
in 1854, accepted the belief of the Immaculate Conception,--this tablet
being placed by the order of Pio Nono.

In this tribune on the late afternoon of the Good Friday of 1907 the
seats were filled with worshippers to listen to the three hours' chant
of the Miserere. Princes and peasants sat side by side, and an immense
throng who could not find seats stood, often wandering away in the dim
distances of the cathedral and ever and again returning. The high altar,
where Canova's beautiful figure of the kneeling Pope always enchains the
visitor, was, as usual, surrounded. The lights burned--these perpetual
lamps--and the moving throng went and came. The scene grew mystic,
dream-like, as the solemn music floated on the air.

The Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, on the left of the cathedral, was made
into the sepulchre that day, and anything more beautiful than the myriad
altar lights and the flowers could not be imagined. At the altar
black-robed nuns were kneeling, and all over the chapel, kneeling on the
floor, were people of all grades and ranks of life, from the duchess and
princess to the beggar woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and
her baby in her arms. St. Peter's was nearly filled all that day with
people, not crowded, but apparently thronged in almost every part.

The altar in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament was one mass of deep red
roses. The chapel was completely darkened, but the blaze of myriads of
tall candles illuminated the roses and the black-robed nuns and the
black-robed devotees. It was a scene never to be forgotten.

Even in the latter-day R