the first time, he saw people calling on a divinity
with hymns,--not to carry out a fixed ritual, but calling from the
bottom of the heart, with the genuine yearning which children might
feel for a father or a mother. One had to be blind not to see that those
people not merely honored their God, but loved him with the whole
soul. Vinicius had not seen the like, so far, in any land, during any
ceremony, in any sanctuary; for in Rome and in Greece those who still
rendered honor to the gods did so to gain aid for themselves or
through fear; but it had not even entered any one's head to love those
divinities.

Though his mind was occupied with Lygia, and his attention with seeking
her in the crowd, he could not avoid seeing those uncommon and wonderful
things which were happening around him. Meanwhile a few more torches
were thrown on the fire, which filled the cemetery with ruddy light and
darkened the gleam of the lanterns. That moment an old man, wearing a
hooded mantle but with a bare head, issued from the hypogeum. This man
mounted a stone which lay near the fire.

The crowd swayed before him. Voices near Vinicius whispered, "Peter!
Peter!" Some knelt, others extended their hands toward him. There
followed a silence so deep that one heard every charred particle that
dropped from the torches, the distant rattle of wheels on the Via
Nomentana, and the sound of wind through the few pines which grew close
to the cemetery.

Chilo bent toward Vinicius and whispered,--"This is he! The foremost
disciple of Christ-a fisherman!"

The old man raised his hand, and with the sign of the cross blessed
those present, who fell on their knees simultaneously. Vinicius and his
attendants, not wishing to betray themselves, followed the example of
others. The young man could not seize his impressions immediately, for
it seemed to him that the form which he saw there before him was both
simple and uncommon, and, what was more, the uncommonness flowed just
from the simplicity. The old man had no mitre on his head, no garland of
oak-leaves on his temples, no palm in his hand, no golden tablet on his
breast, he wore no white robe embroidered with stars; in a word, he
bore no insignia of the kind worn by priests--Oriental, Egyptian,
or Greek--or by Roman flamens. And Vinicius was struck by that same
difference again which he felt when listening to the Christian hymns;
for that "fisherman," too, seemed to him, not like some high priest
skill