f dreams, and the
purple lights came out on the low-lying hills, and the
illuminations glowed from every window, and blazed beneath the
feet and round the heads of the gigantic apostolic figures
gathered round their Lord--there, watching again from his window,
he saw, in a sudden hush over the heads of the countless crowds
the tiny white figure standing above the tapestries with the
Papal triple cross glinting beside him like a thread, and heard
the thin voice, gnat-like and clear, declare the "help of the
Lord who," as the thunder of the square answered him, "hath made
heaven and earth," and then invoke upon the city and the world,
before the tremendous _Amen_, the blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER VI

(I)

It was a few minutes after they had finished their almost silent
meal that evening, that Monsignor suddenly leaned forward from his
chair in the great cool loggia and passed his hands over his eyes
like a sleepy man. From the streets outside still came the murmur
of innumerable footsteps and voices and snatches of music.

"Tired?" asked the other gently. (He had not spoken for some
minutes, and remembering the long silence, had wondered if, after
all, it had been wise to bring a man with such an experience
behind him to such a rush and excitement as that through which
they had passed to-day.)

Monsignor said nothing for an instant. He looked round the room,
opened and closed his lips, and then, leaning back again,
suddenly smiled. Then he took up the pipe he had laid aside just
now and blew through it.

"No," he said. "Exactly the opposite. I feel awake at last."

"Eh?"

"It seems to have got into me at last. All this . . . all this
very odd world. I have begun to see."

"Please explain."

Monsignor began to fill his pipe slowly.

"Well, Versailles, even, didn't quite do it," he said. "It
seemed to me a kind of game--certainly a very pleasant one;
but----" (He broke off.) "But what we've seen to-day seems
somehow the real thing."

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, I can see for myself now that all that you've told me is
real--that the world's really Christian, and so on. It was those
Chinese guards, I think, which as much as anything----"

"Chinese? . . . I don't remember them."

The prelate smiled again.

"Well, I scarcely noticed them at the time, either. But I've been
thinking about them. And then all the rest of it . . . and the
Pope. . . . By t