stood for a
chryselephantine divinity in the porch of some pagan temple.

Odo, riding beside the Duke's litter, had leisure to note not only the
diverse features of the procession but their varying effect on the
spectators. It was plain that, as Trescorre had said, the pilgrimage was
popular with the people. That imaginative sensuousness which has
perpetually renewed the Latin Church by giving form and colour to her
dogmatic abstractions, by transforming every successive phase of her
belief into something to be seen and handled, found an irresistible
outlet in a ceremony that seemed to combine with its devotional intent a
secret element of expiation. The little prince was dimly felt to be
paying for the prodigality of his fathers, to be in some way a link of
suffering between the tongue-tied misery of the fields and the insolent
splendour of the court; and a vague faith in the vicarious efficacy of
his devotion drew the crowd into momentary sympathy with its rulers. Yet
this was but an underlying element in the instinctive delight of the
people in the outward forms of their religion. Odo's late experiences
had wakened him to the influences acting on that obscure substratum of
human life that still seemed, to most men of his rank, of no more
account than the brick lining of their marble-coated palaces. As he
watched the mounting excitement of the throng, and pictured to himself
the lives suddenly lit up by this pledge of unseen promises, he wondered
that the enemies of the Church should ascribe her predominance to any
cause but the natural needs of the heart. The people lived in unlit
hovels, for there was a tax on mental as well as on material windows;
but here was a light that could pierce the narrowest crevice and scatter
the darkness with a single ray.

Odo noted with equal interest the impression produced by the various
members of the court and the Church dignitaries. The Duke's litter was
coldly received, but a pitying murmur widened about the gilt chair in
which Prince Ferrante was seated at his governor's side, and the
approach of Trescorre, mounted on a fine horse and dressed with his
usual sober elegance, woke a shout that made him for a moment the
central figure of the procession. The Bishop was none too warmly
welcomed; but when Crescenti appeared, white-haired and erect among the
parish priests, the crowd swayed toward him like grasses in the suction
of a current; and one of the Duke's gentlemen, seeing Odo