grandeur, all the rigidity of dogma, all the immobility of
tradition exhumed with its _fascioe_ which alone kept it erect. Still
Pierre fancied he could detect that the Pope was ill and weary, suffering
from the attack of fever which Nani had spoken of when glorifying the
courage of that old man of eighty-four, whom strength of soul alone now
kept alive.

The service began. Alighting from the _sedia gestatoria_ before the altar
of the Confession, his Holiness slowly celebrated a low mass, assisted by
four prelates and the pro-prefect of the ceremonies. When the time came
for washing his fingers, Monsignor the Majordomo and Monsignor the Grand
Chamberlain, accompanied by two cardinals, poured the water on his august
hands; and shortly before the elevation of the host all the prelates of
the pontifical court, each holding a lighted taper, came and knelt around
the altar. There was a solemn moment, the forty thousand believers there
assembled shuddered as if they could feel the terrible yet delicious
blast of the invisible sweeping over them when during the elevation the
silver clarions sounded the famous chorus of angels which invariably
makes some women swoon. Almost immediately an aerial chant descended from
the cupola, from a lofty gallery where one hundred and twenty choristers
were concealed, and the enraptured multitude marvelled as though the
angels had indeed responded to the clarion call. The voices descended,
taking their flight under the vaulted ceilings with the airy sweetness of
celestial harps; then in suave harmony they died away, reascended to the
heavens as with a faint flapping of wings. And, after the mass, his
Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the _Te Deum_,
which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up,
each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation
joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and
glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect.
And then the scene became one of extraordinary magnificence: there was
Bernini's triumphal, flowery, gilded _baldacchino_, surrounded by the
whole pontifical court with the lighted tapers showing like starry
constellations, there was the Sovereign Pontiff in the centre, radiant
like a planet in his gold-broidered chasuble, there were the benches
crowded with cardinals in purple and archbishops and bishops in violet
silk, there were the tribu