And all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever
worshipped there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked every
space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in clusters over the
parapets of the galleries, they clung to the images in every niche, and
still the vast throng kept flowing and flowing in, until the living were
lost in the rush of the returning dead who had reclaimed their own.
Then, as his dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself
seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate;
its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, its piers shaped themselves
into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast changed to the wind
whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton.
And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was
as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound
along through an old street, chanting, as they walked. In his dream he
glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He
entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was
kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding
the Divine Child in her arms, and his lips seemed to whisper,
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!
He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before the spare,
agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a long passion of tears
and broken prayers.
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