The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

the Mass, not to celebrate, so at the end of the Indulgentiam he turned from the altar and walked slowly to the episcopal throne, celebrant and ministers bowing low as he passed.

“I’m afraid His Eminence is not well,” one of the canons whispered to his neighbour; “he seems so strange.”

Montanelli bent his head to receive the jewelled mitre. The priest who was acting as deacon of honour put it on, looked at him for an instant, then leaned forward and whispered softly:

“Your Eminence, are you ill?”

Montanelli turned slightly towards him. There was no recognition in his eyes.

“Pardon, Your Eminence!” the priest whispered, as he made a genuflection and went back to his place, reproaching himself for having interrupted the Cardinal’s devotions.

The familiar ceremony went on; and Montanelli sat erect and still, his glittering mitre and gold-brocaded vestments flashing back the sunlight, and the heavy folds of his white festival mantle sweeping down over the red carpet. The light of a hundred candles sparkled among the sapphires on his breast, and shone into the deep, still eyes that had no answering gleam; and when, at the words: “Benedicite, pater eminentissime,” he stooped to bless the incense, and the sunbeams played among the diamonds, he might have recalled some splendid and fearful ice-spirit of the mountains, crowned with rainbows and robed in drifted snow, scattering, with extended hands, a shower of blessings or of curses.

At the elevation of the Host he descended from his throne and knelt before the altar. There was a strange, still evenness about all his movements; and as he rose and went back to his place the major of dragoons, who was sitting in gala uniform behind the Governor, whispered to the wounded captain: “The old Cardinal’s breaking, not a doubt of it. He goes through his work like a machine.”

“So much the better!” the captain whispered back. “He’s been nothing but a millstone round all our necks ever since that confounded amnesty.”

“He did give in, though, about the court-martial.”

“Yes, at last; but he was a precious time making up his mind to. Heavens, how close it is! We shall all get sunstroke in the procession. It’s a pity we’re not Cardinals, to have a canopy held over our heads all the way⁠—Sh-sh-sh! There’s my uncle looking at us!”

Colonel Ferrari had turned round to glance severely at the two younger officers. After the solemn event of yesterday morning he was in a devout and serious frame of mind, and inclined to reproach them with a want of proper feeling about what he regarded as “a painful necessity of state.”

The masters of the ceremonies began to assemble and place in order those who were to take part in the procession. Colonel Ferrari rose from his place and moved up to the chancel-rail, beckoning to the other officers to accompany him. When the Mass was finished, and the Host had been placed behind the crystal shield in the processional sun, the celebrant and his ministers retired to the sacristy to change their vestments, and a little buzz of whispered conversation broke out through the church. Montanelli remained seated on his throne, looking straight before him, immovably. All the sea of human life and motion seemed to surge around and below him, and to die away into stillness about his feet. A censer was brought to him; and he raised his hand with the action of an automaton, and put the incense into the vessel, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

The clergy had come back from the sacristy, and were waiting in the chancel for him to descend; but he remained utterly motionless. The deacon of honour, bending forward to take off the mitre, whispered again, hesitatingly:

“Your Eminence!”

The Cardinal looked round.

“What did you say?”

“Are you quite sure the procession will not be too much for you? The sun is very hot.”

“What does the sun matter?”

Montanelli spoke in a cold, measured voice, and the priest again fancied that he must have given offence.

“Forgive me, Your Eminence. I thought you seemed unwell.”

Montanelli rose without answering. He paused a moment on the upper step of the throne, and asked in the same measured way:

“What is that?”

The long train of his mantle swept down over the steps and lay spread out on the chancel-floor, and he was pointing to a fiery stain on the white satin.

“It’s only the sunlight shining through a coloured window, Your Eminence.”

“The sunlight? Is it so red?”

He descended the steps, and knelt before the altar, swinging the censer slowly to and fro. As he handed it back, the chequered sunlight fell on his bared head and wide, uplifted eyes, and cast a crimson glow across the white veil that his ministers were folding round him.

He took from the deacon the sacred golden sun; and stood up, as choir and organ burst into a peal of triumphal melody.

“Pange, lingua, gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi
Quem in mundi pretium,
Fructus ventris generosi
Rex effudit gentium.”

The bearers came slowly forward, and raised the silken canopy over his head, while the deacons of honour stepped to their places at his right and left and drew back the long folds of the mantle. As the acolytes stooped to lift his robe from the chancel-floor, the lay fraternities heading the procession started to pace down the nave in stately double file, with lighted candles held to left and right.

He stood above them, by the altar, motionless under the white canopy, holding the Eucharist aloft with steady hands, and watched them as they passed. Two by two, with candles and banners and torches, with crosses and images and flags, they swept slowly down the chancel steps, along the broad nave between the garlanded pillars, and out under the lifted scarlet curtains into the blazing sunlight of the street; and the sound of their chanting died into a rolling murmur, drowned in the pealing of new and newer voices, as the unending stream flowed on, and yet new footsteps echoed down the nave.

The companies of the