h succeeding room. And at last the Sala Clementina
which the Swiss Guards had just quitted was reached again, and Signor
Squadra, who hitherto had not turned his head, thereupon drew aside
without word or gesture, and, saluting Pierre with a last bow, allowed
him to pass on. Then he himself disappeared.

And Pierre descended the two flights of the monumental staircase where
the gas jets in their globes of ground glass glimmered like night lights
amidst a wondrously heavy silence now that the footsteps of the sentries
no longer resounded on the landings. And he crossed the Court of St.
Damasus, empty and lifeless in the pale light of the lamps above the
steps, and descended the Scala Pia, that other great stairway as dim,
deserted, and void of life as all the rest, and at last passed beyond the
bronze door which a porter slowly shut behind him. And with what a
rumble, what a fierce roar did the hard metal close upon all that was
within; all the accumulated darkness and silence; the dead, motionless
centuries perpetuated by tradition; the indestructible idols, the dogmas,
bound round for preservation like mummies; every chain which may weigh on
one or hamper one, the whole apparatus of bondage and sovereign
domination, with whose formidable clang all the dark, deserted halls
re-echoed.

Once more the young man found himself alone on the gloomy expanse of the
Piazza of St. Peter's. Not a single belated pedestrian was to be seen.
There was only the lofty, livid, ghost-like obelisk, emerging between its
four candelabra, from the mosaic pavement of red and serpentine porphyry.
The facade of the Basilica also showed vaguely, pale as a vision, whilst
from it on either side like a pair of giant arms stretched the quadruple
colonnade, a thicket of stone, steeped in obscurity. The dome was but a
huge roundness scarcely discernible against the moonless sky; and only
the jets of the fountains, which could at last be detected rising like
slim phantoms ever on the move, lent a voice to the silence, the endless
murmur of a plaint of sorrow coming one knew not whence. Ah! how great
was the melancholy grandeur of that slumber, that famous square, the
Vatican and St. Peter's, thus seen by night when wrapped in silence and
darkness! But suddenly the clock struck ten with so slow and loud a chime
that never, so it seemed, had more solemn and decisive an hour rung out
amidst blacker and more unfathomable gloom. All Pierre's poor weary frame