n must still do penance and
flush scarlet with shame to remember that once he turned his back on
the risen light.

There was no appeal to the lurid, no picture of the tumbling palaces,
the running figures, the coughing explosions, the shaking of the earth
and the dying of the doomed. It was rather with those hot hearts
shouting in the English and German streets, or aloft in the winter air
of Italy, the ugly passions that warred there, as the volors rocked at
their stations, generating and fulfilling revenge, paying back plot with
plot, and violence with violence. For there, cried the voice, was man as
he had been, fallen in an instant to the cruel old ages before he had
learned what he was and why.

There was no repentance, said the voice again, but there was something
better; and as the hard, stinging tones melted, the girl's dry eyes of
shame filled in an instant with tears. There was something better--the
knowledge of what crimes man was yet capable of, and the will to use
that knowledge. Rome was gone, and it was a lamentable shame; Rome was
gone, and the air was the sweeter for it; and then in an instant, like
the soar of a bird, He was up and away--away from the horrid gulf where
He had looked just now, from the fragments of charred bodies, and
tumbled houses and all the signs of man's disgrace, to the pure air and
sunlight to which man must once more set his face. Yet He bore with Him
in that wonderful flight the dew of tears and the aroma of earth. He had
not spared words with which to lash and whip the naked human heart, and
He did not spare words to lift up the bleeding, shrinking thing, and
comfort it with the divine vision of love....

Historically speaking, it was about forty minutes before He turned to
the shrouded image behind the altar.

"Oh! Maternity!" he cried. "Mother of us all---"

And then, to those who heard Him, the supreme miracle took place.... For
it seemed now in an instant that it was no longer man who spoke, but One
who stood upon the stage of the superhuman. The curtain ripped back, as
one who stood by it tore, panting, at the strings; and there, it seemed,
face to face stood the Mother above the altar, huge, white and
protective, and the Child, one passionate incarnation of love, crying to
her from the tribune.

"Oh! Mother of us all, and Mother of Me!"

So He praised her to her face, that sublime principle of life, declared
her glories and her strength, her Immaculate Motherhood,