ed. She took a ticket for the platform, and he
opened one of the camp stools that stand about in the enormous empty
cathedral and sat down, his back against a marble pillar.

Oh, it was nice to rest here. After the market outside, with its
noise and the buzzing of voices and all the gaudy colours, he found a
twilight here filled with the perfume of incense. It did not disturb
him that doors opened and closed, that people came in and out in
crowds. That here a guide gave the visitors the information he had
learnt by heart, drawling it quite loudly in a cracked voice without
heeding that he meanwhile almost stumbled over the feet of those who
were kneeling on low benches, confessing their sins in a whisper to a
priest seated there. That there someone was celebrating mass--the
priests were curtsying and ringing their bells--whilst here a cook
chattered to a friend of hers, the fowls that were tied together by
their legs lying beside her.

All that did not disturb him, he did not notice it even. The
delicious twilight filled his senses, he was so sleepy, felt such a
blessed fatigue. All the saints smiled before his closing eyes, sweet
Marys and chubby little angels resembling cupids. He felt at his ease
there. Milan Cathedral, that wonder of the world, lost its embarrassing
grandeur; the wide walls moved together, became narrow and home-like,
and still they enfolded the world a peaceful world in which
sinners kneel down and rise again pure. Wolfgang was seized with a
great longing to kneel down there also. Oh, there it was again, the
longing he had had in his boyhood. How he had loved the church their
maid Cilia had taken him to. He still loved it, he loved it anew, he
loved it now with a more ardent love than in those days. He felt at
home in this church, he had the warm feeling of belonging to it. _Qui
vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum._ The golden monstrance gleamed as
it was raised on high, those who were praying bowed low, blissful
harmonies floated under the high arched dome, ever more and more
beautiful--more and more softly. His eyelids closed.

And he saw Cilia--as fresh, as beautiful as life itself. Oh, how
very beautiful. Surely she had not looked like that before? He knew
that he was dreaming, but he was not able to shake off the dream. And
she came quite close to him--oh, so close. And she made the sign of the
cross--over him the organ played softly--hark, what was she saying,
what was she whispering abo