with huge oak clothes-presses. Opening their doors, He looked for a cloak among piles and festoons of new clothes. There were several of crimson velvet. After vainly searching for something plain, He put on one of these and proceeded to the outer door, taking a breviary from the table on the way. Out in the corridor, He signed to the nearest guard. The black-red-yellow-and-steel figure came and kneeled.

[Pg 99]

[Pg 99]

"Do you know the way into St. Peter's?" the Pope said.

"But yes, Most Holy Father."

"Procure what keys are necessary and conduct Us thither, son."

"But securely, Most Holy Father."

The Swiss went on before. Hadrian followed, feeling annoyed by the salutes with which He was received along the way. He had been so long unnoted that notice irritated and abashed Him. Life would be unbearable if trumpets and quaint halberds greeted every movement. He had not the stolidity of born personages. Presently, He threw back His cloak and kept head and hand raised in a gesture which petrified. They passed through innumerable passages and descended stairs, emerging in a chapel where lights burned about a tabernacle of gilded bronze and lapis lazuli. Here He paused, while His escort unlocked the gates of the screen. Once through that, He sent-back the guard to his station: but He Himself went-on into the vast obscurity of the basilica. He walked very slowly: it was as though His eyes were wrapped in clear black velvet, so intense and so immense was the darkness. Then, very far away to the right, He saw as it were a coronal of dim stars glimmering,—on the floor, they seemed to be. He was in the mighty nave; and the stars were the ever-burning lamps surrounding the Confession. He slowly approached them. As He passed within them, He took one from its golden branch and descended the marble steps. Here, He spread the cloak on the floor; placed the lamp beside it: and fell to prayer. Outside, in the City and the World, men played, or worked, or sinned, or slept. Inside at the very tomb of the Apostle the Apostle prayed.

At midnight, bolts of great doors clanged, and fell. A cool air crept in. Subsacristans set-up iron candlesticks, huge, antique, here and there upon the marmoreal pavement. The burning torch of each made a little oasis of light in the immeasurable gloom. From[Pg 100] far away, a slim white form which carried a crimson cloak swiftly came, shedding benedictions on the startled beholders; and disappeared in the 

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