Book 4. The Palace Of Blacherne - Chapter 4. The Pannychides

________________________________________________
_ BOOK IV. THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE
CHAPTER IV. THE PANNYCHIDES

An invitation from the Emperor to remain and view the procession marching up the heights of Blacherne had been of itself a compliment; but the erection of a stand for the Prince turned the compliment into a personal honor. To say truth, however, he really desired to see the Pannychides, or in plain parlance, the Vigils. He had often heard of them as of prodigious effect upon the participants. Latterly they had fallen into neglect; and knowing how difficult it is to revive a dying custom, he imagined the spectacle would be poor and soon over. While reflecting on it, he looked out of the window and was surprised to see the night falling. He yielded then to restlessness, until suddenly an idea arose and absorbed him.

Suppose the Emperor won to his scheme; was its success assured? So used was he to thinking of the power of kings and emperors as the sole essential to the things he proposed that in this instance he had failed to concede importance to the Church; and probably he would have gone on in the delusion but for the Mysteries which were now to pass before him. They forced him to think of the power religious organizations exercise over men.

And this Church--this old Byzantine Church! Ay, truly! The Byzantine conscience was under its direction; it was the Father Confessor of the Empire; its voice in the common ear was the voice of God. To cast Christ out of its system would be like wrenching a man's heart out of his body. It was here and there--everywhere in fact--in signs, trophies, monuments --in crosses and images--in monasteries, convents, houses to the Saints, houses to the Mother. What could the Emperor do, if it were obstinate and defiant? The night beheld through the window crept into the Wanderer's heart, and threatened to put out the light kindled there by the new-born hope with which he had come from the audience.

"The Church, the Church! It is the enemy I have to fear," he kept muttering in dismal repetition, realizing, for the first time, the magnitude of the campaign before him. With a wisdom in wickedness which none of his successors in design have shown, he saw the Christian idea in the bosom of the Church unassailable except a substitute satisfactory to its professors could be found. Was God a sufficient substitute? Perhaps--and he turned cold with the reflection--the Pannychides were bringing him an answer. It was an ecclesiastical affair, literally a meeting of Churchmen en masse. Where--when--how could the Church present itself to any man more an actuality in the flesh? Perhaps--and a chill set his very crown to crawling--perhaps the opportunity to study the spectacle was more a mercy of God than a favor of Constantine.

To his great relief, at length the officer who had escorted him from the Grand Gate came into the room.

"I am to have the honor," he said, cheerfully, "of conducting you to the stand His Majesty has prepared that you may at ease behold the Mysteries appointed for the night. The head of the procession is reported appearing. If it please you, Prince of India, we will set out."

"I am ready."

The position chosen for the Prince was on the right bank of a cut through which the road passed on its ascent from the arched gateway by the Chapel to the third terrace, and he was borne thither in his sedan.

Upon alighting, he found himself on a platform covered by a canopy, carpeted and furnished with one chair comfortably cushioned. At the right of the chair there was a pyramid of coals glowing in a brazier, and lest that might not be a sufficient provision against the damps of the hours, a great cloak was near at hand. In front of the platform he observed a pole securely planted and bearing a basket of inflammables ready for conversion into a torch. In short, everything needful to his well-being, including wine and water on a small tripod, was within reach.

Before finally seating himself the Prince stepped out to the brow of the terrace, whence he noticed the Chapel below him in the denser darkness of the trees about it like a pool. The gleam of armor on the area by the Grand Gate struck him with sinister effect. Flowers saluted him with perfume, albeit he could not see them. Not less welcome was the low music with which the brook cheered itself while dancing down to the harbor. Besides a cresset burning on the landing outside the Port entrance, two other lights were visible; one on the Pharos, the other on the great Galata tower, looking in the distance like large stars. With these exceptions, the valley and the hill opposite Blacherne, and the wide-reaching Metropolis beyond them, were to appearances a blacker cloud dropped from the clouded sky. A curious sound now came to him from the direction of the city. Was it a rising wind? Or a muffled roll from the sea? While wondering, some one behind him said:

"They are coming."

The voice was sepulchral and harsh, and the Prince turned quickly to the speaker.

"Ah, Father Theophilus!"

"They are coming," the Father repeated.

The Prince shivered slightly. The noise beyond the valley arose more distinctly.

"Are they singing?" he asked.

"Chanting," the other answered.

"Why do they chant?"

"Knowest thou our Scriptures?"

The Wanderer quieted a disdainful impulse, and answered:

"I have read them."

The Father continued:

"Presently thou wilt hear the words of Job: 'Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me in secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time and remember me.'"

The Prince was startled. Why was one in speech so like a ghost selected his companion? And that verse, of all to him most afflicting, and which in hours of despair he had repeated until his very spirit had become colored with its reproachful plaint--who put it in the man's mouth?

The chant came nearer. Of melody it had nothing; nor did those engaged in it appear in the slightest attentive to time. Yet it brought relief to the Prince, willing as he was to admit he had never heard anything similar--anything so sorrowful, so like the wail of the damned in multitude. And rueful as the strain was, it helped him assign the pageant a near distance, a middle distance, and then interminability.

"There appear to be a great many of them," he remarked to the Father.

"More than ever before in the observance," was the reply.

"Is there a reason for it?"

"Our dissensions."

The Father did not see the pleased expression of his auditor's face, but proceeded: "Yes, our dissensions. They multiply. At first the jar was between the Church and the throne; now it is the Church against the Church--a Roman party and a Greek party. One man among us has concentrated in himself the learning and devotion of the Christian East. You will see him directly, George Scholarius. By visions, like those in which the old prophets received the counsel of God, he was instructed to revive the Pannychides. His messengers have gone hither and thither, to the monasteries, the convents, and the eremitic colonies wherever accessible. The greater the presence, he says, the greater the influence."

"Scholarius is a wise man," the Prince said, diplomatically.

"His is the wisdom of the Prophets," the Father answered.

"Is he the Patriarch?"

"No, the Patriarch is of the Roman party--Scholarius of the Greek."

"And Constantine?"

"A good king, truly, but, alas; he is cumbered with care of the State."

"Yes, yes," said the Prince. "And the care leads to neglect of his soul. Kings are sometimes to be pitied. But there is then a special object in the Vigils?"

"The Vigils to-night are for the restoration of the unities once more, that the Church may find peace and the State its power and glory again. God is in the habit of taking care of His own."

"Thank you, Father, I see the difference. Scholarius would intrust the State to the Holy Virgin; but Constantine, with a worldlier inspiration, adheres to the craft held by Kings immemorially. The object of the Vigils is to bring the Emperor to abandon his policy and defer to Scholarius?"

"The Emperor assists in the Mystery," the Father answered, vaguely.

The procession meantime came on, and when its head appeared in front of the Grand Gate three trumpeters blew a flourish which called the guards into line. A monk advanced and held parley with an officer; after which he was given a lighted torch, and passed under the portal in lead of the multitude. The trumpeters continued plying their horns, marking the slow ascent.

"Were this an army," said Father Theophilus, "it would not be so laborious; but, alas! the going of youth is nowhere so rapid as in a cloister; nor is age anywhere so feeble. Ten years kneeling on a stony floor in a damp cell brings the anchorite to forget he ever walked with ease."

The Prince scarcely heard him; he was interested in the little to be seen crossing the area below--a column four abreast, broken into unequal divisions, each division with a leader, who, at the gate, received a torch. Occasionally a square banner on a cross-stick appeared-- occasionally a section in light-colored garments; more frequently a succession of heads without covering of any kind; otherwise the train was monotonously rueful, and in its slow movement out of the darkness reminded the spectator on the height of a serpent crawling endlessly from an underground den. Afterwhile the dim white of the pavement was obscured by masses stationary on the right and left of the column; these were the people stopping there because for them there was no further pursuit of the spectral parade.

The horns gave sonorous notice of the progress during the ascent. Now they were passing along the first terrace; still the divisions were incessant down by the gate--still the chanting continued, a dismal dissonance in the distance, a horrible discord near by. If it be true that the human voice is music's aptest instrument, it is also true that nothing vocalized in nature can excel it in the expression of diabolism.

Suddenly the first torch gleamed on the second terrace scarce an hundred yards from the Chapel.

"See him now there, behind the trumpeters--Scholarius!" said Father Theophilus, with a semblance of animation.

"He with the torch?"

"Ay!--And he might throw the torch away, and still be the light of the Church."

The remark did not escape the Prince. The man who could so impress himself upon a member of the court must be a power with his brethren of the gown generally. Reflecting thus, the discerning visitor watched the figure stalking on under the torch. There are men who are causes in great events, sometimes by superiority of nature, sometimes by circumstances. What if this were one of them? And forthwith the observer ceased fancying the mystical looking monk drawing the interminable train after him by the invisible bonds of a will mightier than theirs in combination--the fancy became a fact. "The procession will not stop at the Chapel," the Father said; "but keep on to the palace, where the Emperor will join it. If my Lord cares to see the passage distinctly, I will fire the basket here."

"Do so," the Prince replied.

The flambeau was fired.

It shed light over the lower terraces right and left, and brought the palace in the upper space into view from the base of the forward building to the Tower of Isaac; and here, close by, the Chapel with all its appurtenances, paved enclosure, speeding brook, solemn cypresses, and the wall and arched gateway at the hither side stood out in almost daytime clearness. The road in the cut underfoot must bring the frocked host near enough to expose its spirit.

The bellowing of the horns frightened the birds at roost in the melancholy grove, and taking wing, they flew blindly about.

Then ensued the invasion of the enclosure in front of the Chapel-- Scholarius next the musicians. The Prince saw him plainly; a tall man, stoop-shouldered, angular as a skeleton; his hood thrown back; head tonsured; the whiteness of the scalp conspicuous on account of the band of black hair at the base; the features high and thin, cheeks hollow, temples pinched. The dark brown cassock, leaving an attenuated neck completely exposed, hung from his frame apparently much too large for it. His feet disdained sandals. At the brook he halted, and letting the crucifix fall from his right hand, he stooped and dipped the member thus freed into the water, and rising flung the drops in air. Resuming the crucifix, he marched on.

It cannot be said there was admiration in the steady gaze with which the Prince kept the monk in eye; the attraction was stronger--he was looking for a sign from him. He saw the tall, nervous figure cross the brook with a faltering, uncertain step, pass the remainder of the pavement, the torch in one hand, the holy symbol in the other; then it disappeared under the arch of the gate; and when it had come through, the sharp espial was beforehand with it, and waiting. It commenced ascending the acute grade--now it was in the cut--and now, just below the Prince, it had but to look up, and its face would be on a level with his feet. At exactly the right moment, Scholarius did look up, and--stop.

The interchange of glances between the men was brief, and can be likened to nothing so aptly as sword blades crossing in a red light.

Possibly the monk, trudging on, his mind intent upon something which was part of a scene elsewhere, or on the objects and results of the solemnities in celebration, as yet purely speculative, might have been disagreeably surprised at discovering himself the subject of study by a stranger whose dress proclaimed him a foreigner; possibly the Prince's stare, which we have already seen was at times powerfully magnetic, filled him with aversion and resentment; certain it is he raised his head, showing a face full of abhorrence, and at the same time waved the crucifix as if in exorcism.

The Prince had time to see the image thus presented was of silver on a cross of ivory wrought to wonderful realism. The face was dying, not dead; there were the spikes in the hands and feet, the rent in the side, the crown of thorns, and overhead the initials of the inscription: This is the King of the Jews. There was the worn, buffeted, bloodspent body, and the lips were parted so it was easy to think the sufferer in mid-utterance of one of the exclamations which have placed his Divinity forever beyond successful denial. The swift reversion of memory excited in the beholder might have been succeeded by remorse, but for the cry:

"Thou enemy of Jesus Christ--avaunt!"

It was the voice of Scholarius, shrill and high; and before the Prince could recover from the shock, before he could make answer, or think of answering, the visionary was moving on; nor did he again look back.

"What ails thee, Prince?"

The sepulchral tone of Father Theophilus was powerful over the benumbed faculties of His Majesty's guest; and he answered with a question:

"Is not thy friend Scholarius a great preacher?"

"On his lips the truth is most unctuous."

"It must be so--it must be so! For"--the Prince's manner was as if he were settling a grave altercation in his own mind--"for never did a man offer me the Presence so vitalized in an image. I am not yet sure but he gave me to see the Holy Son of the Immaculate Mother in flesh and blood exactly as when they put Him so cruelly to death. Or can it be, Father, that the effect upon me was in greater measure due to the night, the celebration, the cloud of ministrants, the serious objects of the Vigils?"

The answer made Father Theophilus happy as a man of his turn could be--he was furnished additional evidence of the spiritual force of Scholarius, his ideal.

"No," he answered, "it was God in the man."

All this time the chanting had been coming nearer, and now the grove rang with it. A moment, and the head of the first division must present itself in front of the Chapel. Could the Wanderer have elected then whether to depart or stay, the Pannychides would have had no further assistance from him--so badly had the rencounter with Scholarius shaken him. Not that he was afraid in the vulgar sense of the term. Before a man can habitually pray for death, he must be long lost to fear. If we can imagine conscience gone, pride of achievement, without which there can be no mortification or shame in defeat, may yet remain with him, a source of dread and weakness. The chill which shook Brutus in his tent the evening before Philippi was not in the least akin to terror. So with the Prince at this juncture. There to measure the hold of the Christian idea upon the Church, it seemed Scholarius had brought him an answer which finished his interest in the passing Vigils. In brief, the Reformer's interest in the Mystery was past, and he wished with his whole soul to retreat to the sedan, but a fascination held him fast.

"I think it would be pleasanter sitting," he said, and returned to the platform.

"If I presume to take the chair, Father," he added, "it is because I am older than thou."

Hardly was he thus at ease when a precentor, fat, and clad in a long gown, stepped out of the grove to the clear lighted pavement in front of the Chapel. His shaven head was thrown back, his mouth open to its fullest stretch, and tossing a white stick energetically up and down in the air, he intoned with awful distinctness: "The waters wear the stones. Thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth, and Thou destroyest the hopes of man."

The Prince covered his ears with his hands.

"Thou likest not the singing?" Father Theophilus asked, and continued: "I admit the graces have little to do with musical practice in the holy houses of the Fathers." But he for whom the comfort was meant made no reply. He was repeating to himself: "Thou prevailest forever against him, and he passeth."

And to these words the head of the first division strode forward into the light. The Prince dropped his hands in time to hear the last verse: "But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn."

For whom was this? Did the singers know the significancy of the text to him? The answer was from God, and they were merely messengers bringing it. He rose to his feet; in his rebellious passion the world seemed to melt and swim about him. He felt a longing to burn, break, destroy--to strike out and kill. When he came to himself, Father Theophilus, who thought him merely wonder struck by the mass of monks in march, was saying in his most rueful tone: "Good order required a careful arrangement of the procession; for though the participants are pledged to godly life, yet they sometimes put their vows aside temporarily. The holiest of them have pride in their establishments, and are often too ready to resort to arms of the flesh to assert their privileges. The Fathers of the Islands have long been jealous of the Fathers of the city, and to put them together would be a signal for riot. Accordingly there are three grand divisions here--the monks of Constantinople, those of the Islands, the shores of the Bosphorus and the three seas, and finally the recluses and hermits from whatever quarter. Lo! first the Fathers of the Studium--saintly men as thou wilt see anywhere."

The speech was unusually long for the Father; a fortunate circumstance of which the Prince availed himself to recover his self-possession. By the time the brethren eulogized were moving up the rift at his feet, he was able to observe them calmly. They were in long gowns of heavy gray woollen stuff, with sleeves widening from the shoulders; their cowls, besides covering head and visage, fell down like capes. Cleanly, decent-looking men, they marched slowly and in order, their hands united palm to palm below their chins. The precentor failed to inspire them with his fury of song.

"These now coming," Father Theophilus said of the second fraternity," are conventuals of Petrion, who have their house looking out on the harbor here. And these," he said of the third, "are of the Monastery of Anargyres--a very ancient society. The Emperor Michael, surnamed the Paphlegonian, died in one of their cells in 1041. Brotherhood with them is equivalent to saintship."

Afterwhile a somewhat tumultuous flock appeared in white skirts and loose yellow cloaks, their hair and beard uncut and flying. The historian apologized.

"Bear with them," he said; "they are mendicants from the retreats of Periblepte, in the quarter of Psammatica. You may see them on the street corners and quays, and in all public places, sick, blind, lame and covered with sores. They have St. Lazarus for patron. At night an angel visits them with healing. They refuse to believe the age of miracles is past."

The city monastics were a great host carrying banners with the name of their Brotherhoods inscribed in golden letters; and in every instance the Hegumen, or Abbot, preceded his fraternity torch in hand.

A company in unrelieved black marched across the brook, and their chanting was lugubrious as their garb.

"Petra sends us these Fathers," said Theophilus--"Petra over on the south side. They sleep all day and watch at night. The second coming they say will happen in the night, because they think that time most favorable for the trumpeting herald and the splendor of the manifestations."

Half an hour of marching--men in gray and black and yellow, a few in white--men cowled--men shorn and unshorn--barefooted men and men in sandals--a river of men in all moods, except jovial and happy, toiling by the observing stand, seldom an upturned face, spectral, morose, laden body and mind--young and old looking as if just awakened after ages of entombment;--a half hour of dismal chanting the one chapter from the book of the man in the land of Uz, of all utterances the most dismal;--a half hour of waiting by the Prince for one kindly sign, without discovering it--a half hour, in which, if the comparison be not too strong, he was like a soul keeping watch over its own abandoned body. Then Father Theophilus said:

"From the cloisters of St. James of Manganese! The richest of the monasteries of Constantinople, and the most powerful. It furnishes Sancta Sophia with renowned preachers. Its brethren cultivate learning. Their library is unexcelled, and they boast that in the hundreds of years of their society life, they had never an heretic. Before their altars the candles are kept burning and trimmed forever. Their numbers are recruited from the noblest families. Young men to whom the army is open prefer God-service in the elegant retirement of St. James of Manganese. They will interest you, Prince; and after them we will have the second grand division."

"Brethren of the Islands?"

"Yes, of the Islands and the sea-shores."

Upon the pavement then appeared a precentor attired like a Greek priest of the present day; a rimless hat black and high, and turned slightly outward at the top; a veil of the same hue; the hair gathered into a roll behind, and secured under the hat; a woollen gown very dark, glossy, and dropping in ample folds unconfined from neck to shoe. The Hegumen followed next, and because of his age and infirmities a young man carried the torch for him. The chanting was sweet, pure, and in perfect time. All these evidences of refinement and respectability were noticed by the Prince, and looking at the torch-bearer again, he recognized the young monk, his room-mate in the White Castle.

"Knowest thou the youth yonder?" he asked, pointing to Sergius.

"A Russian recently arrived," the Father replied. "Day before yesterday he was brought to the palace and presented to the Emperor by the Princess Irene. He made a great impression."

The two kept their eyes on the young man until he disappeared ascending the hill.

"He will be heard from;" and with the prediction the Prince gave attention to the body of the Brotherhood.

"These men have the bearing of soldiers," he said presently.

"Their vows respecting war are liberal. If the panagia were carried to the walls, they would accompany it in armor."

The Prince smiled. He had not the faith in the Virgin of Blacherne which the Father's answer implied.

The St. James' were long in passing. The Prince kept them in sight to the last four. They were the aristocracy of the Church, prim, proud; as their opportunities were more frequent, doubtless they were more wicked than their associates of the humbler fraternities; yet he could not promise himself favor from their superior liberality. On the contrary, having a great name for piety to defend, if a test offered, they were the more certain to be hard and vindictive--to send a heretic to the stake, and turn a trifling variation from the creed into heresy.

"Who is this?" the Prince exclaimed, as a noble-looking man in full canonicals stepped out of the cypress shadows, first of the next division.

"Master of Ceremonies for the Church," Father Theophilus replied. "He is the wall between the Islanders and the Metropolitans."

"And he who walks with him singing?"

"The Protopsolete--leader of the Patriarch's Choir."

Behind this singer the monks of the Isles of the Princes! In movement, order, dress, like their predecessors in the march--Hegumen with their followers in gray, black and white--hands palm to palm prayerfully-- chanting sometimes better, sometimes worse--never a look upward but always down, as if Heaven were a hollow in the earth, an abyss at their feet, and they about to step into it.

The Prince was beginning to tire. Suddenly he thought of the meeting of pilgrims at El Zaribah. How unlike was the action there and here! That had been a rush, an inundation, as it were, by the sea, fierce, mad, a passion of Faith fostered by freedom; this, slow, solemn, sombre, oppressive--what was it like? Death in Life, and burial by programme so rigid there must not be a groan more or a tear less. He saw Law in it all--or was it imposition, force, choice smothered by custom, fashion masquerading in the guise of Faith? The hold of Christ upon the Church began to look possible of measurement.

"Roti first!" said the Father. "Rocky and bare, scarce a bush for a bird or grass for a cricket. Ah, verily he shall love God dearly or hate the world mortally who of free will chooses a cloister for life at Roti!"

The brethren of the three convents of the Island marched past clad in short brown frocks, bareheaded, barefooted. The comments of the historian were few and brief.

"Poor they look," he said of the first one, "and poor they are, yet Michael Rhangabe and Romain Lacapene were glad to live and die with them." Of the second: "When Romain Diogenes built the house these inhabit, he little dreamed it would shelter him, a refugee from the throne." Of the third: "Dardanes was a great general. In his fortunate days he built a tower on Roti with one cell in it; in an evil hour he aspired to the throne--failed--lost his eyes, retired to his lonesome tower--by his sanctity there drew a fraternity to him, and died. That was hundreds of years ago. The brethren still pray for his soul. Be it that evil comes of good; not less does good come of evil--and so God keeps the balances."

In the same manner he descanted on the several contingents from Antigone as they strode by; then of those from God's houses at Halki, the pearl of the Marmora; amongst them the monastery of John the Precursor, and the Convents of St. George, Hagia Trias, and lastly the Very Holy House of the All Holy Mother of God, founded by John VIII. Palaeologus. After them, in turn, the consecrated from Prinkipo, especially those from the Kamares of the Basilissa, Irene, and the Convent of the Transfiguration.

The faithful few from the solitary Convent on the Island of Oxia, and the drab-gowned abstinents of the monastery of Plati, miserables given to the abnormity of mixing prayer and penance with the cultivation of snails for the market in Constantinople, were the last of the Islanders.

Then in a kind of orderly disorganization the claustral inculpables from holy houses on Olympus down by the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and the Bithynian shore behind the Isles of the Princes, and some from retreats in the Egean and along the Peloponnesus, their walls now dust, their names forgotten.

"Where is the procession going?" the Prince now asked.

"Look behind you--up along the front of the palace."

And casting his eyes thither, the questioner beheld the ground covered with a mass of men not there before.

"What are they doing?"

"Awaiting the Emperor. Only the third grand division is wanting now; when it is up His Majesty will appear."

"And descend to the Chapel?"

"Yes."

For a time a noise more like the continuous, steady monotone of falling water than a chant had been approaching from the valley, making its darkness vocal. It threatened the gates awhile; now it was at the gates. The Prince's wonder was great, and to appease it Father Theophilus explained:

"The last division is at hand."

In the dim red light over the area by the gate below, the visitor beheld figures hurriedly issuing from the night--figures in the distance so wild and fantastic they did not at first seem human. They left no doubt, however, whence the sound proceeded. The white sand of the road up the terraces was beaten to dust under the friction and pressure of the thousands of feet gone before; this third division raised it into an attending cloud, and the cloud and the noise were incessant.

Once more the Prince went out to the brink of the terrace. The monotony of the pageant was broken; something new was announcing itself. Spectres--devils--gnomes and jinn of the Islamitic Solomon--rakshakas and hanumen of the Eastern Iliads--surely this miscellany was a composition of them all. They danced along the way and swung themselves and each other, howling like dervishes in frenzy. Again the birds took wing and flew blindly above the cypresses, and the end of things seemed about to burst when a yell articulate yet unintelligible shook the guarded door of the venerable Chapel.

Then the demoniacs--the Prince could not make else of them--leaping the brook, crowding the pent enclosure, hasting to the arched exit, were plainly in view. Men almost naked, burned to hue of brick-dust; men in untanned sheepskin coats and mantles; men with every kind of headgear, turbans, handkerchiefs, cowls; men with hair and beard matted and flying; now one helped himself to a louder yell by tossing in air the dirty garment he had torn from his body, hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of them, too weary and far spent for violent exertion, marched with their faces raised, and clapping their hands or beating their breasts, now barking short and sharp, like old hounds dreaming, then finishing with long-drawn cries not unlike the ending of a sorrowful chorus. Through the gate they crowded, and at sight of their faces full of joy unto madness, the Prince quit pitying them, and, reminded of the Wahabbees at El Zaribah, turned to Father Theophilus.

"In God's name," he said, "who are these?"

"A son of India thou, and not know them at sight?"

There was surprise in the question, and a degree of unwarranted familiarity, yet the Father immediately corrected himself, by solemnly adding: "Look there at that one whirling his mantle of unshorn skin over his head. He has a cave on Mt. Olympus furnished with a stool, a crucifix, and a copy of the Holy Scriptures; he sleeps on the stone; the mantle is his bedding by night, his clothing by day. He raises vegetables, and they and snow-water seeping through a crevice in his cavern subsist him.... And the next him--the large man with the great coat of camel's hair which keeps him scratched as with thorns--he is from the Monastery of St. Auxentius, the abode of a powerful fraternity of ascetics. A large proportion of this wing of the celebrants is of the same austere house. You will know them by the penitential, dun-colored garment--they wear no other.... Yonder is a brother carrying his right arm at a direct angle above his shoulder, stiff and straight as a stick of seasoned oak. He is of a colony of Stylites settled on this shore of the upper Bosphorus overlooking the Black Sea. He could not lower the arm if he wished to; but since it is his certificate of devoutness, the treasures of the earth laid at his feet in a heap would be insufficient to induce him to drop it though for an instant. His colony is one of many like it. Spare him thy pity. He believes the clinch of that hand holds fast the latch of Heaven.... The shouters who have just entered the arch in a body have hermitaries in close grouping around the one failing monastery on Plati, and live on lentils and snails; aside from which they commit themselves to Christ, and so abound in faith that the Basileus in his purple would be very happy were he true master of a tithe of their happiness.... Hast thou not enough, O Prince? Those crossing the brook now?--Ah, yes! They are anchorites from Anderovithos, the island. Pitiable creatures looked at from the curtained windows of a palace--pitiable, and abandoned by men and angels! Be not sure. Everything is as we happen to see it--a bit of philosophy, which, as they despise the best things secularly considered of this life, steels them to indifference for what you and I, and others not of their caste, may think. They have arrived at a summit above the corrupting atmosphere of the earth, where every one of them has already the mansion promised him by our Blessed Lord, and where the angels abide and delight to serve him.... For the rest, O Prince, call them indifferently recluses, hermits, anticenobites, mystics, martyrs, these from Europe, those from isolations deep somewhere in Asia. Who feeds them? Did not ravens feed Elijah? Offer them white bread and robes of silk, yesterday's wear of a king. 'What!' they will ask. 'Shall any man fare better than John the Forerunner?' Speak to them of comfortable habitations, and they will answer with the famous saying, 'Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.' What more is there to be said? Thou seest them, thou knowest them."

Yes, the Prince knew them. Like the horde which stood by the Black Stone envious of Mirza's dying, these were just as ready to die for Christ. He smiled grimly, and thought of Mahommed, and how easy the Church had made the conquest of which he was dreaming.

It was with a sense of relief he beheld the tail of the division follow its body up to the palace.

Then, last of all, came the dignitaries of the Church, the Cartulaire, least in rank, with many intermediates, up to the Cyncelle, who, next to the absent Patriarch, represented him. If what had preceded in the procession was poor and unpretentious, this part was splendid to excess. They were not more than eighteen or twenty in number, but they walked singly with considerable intervals between them; while on the right and left of each, a liveried servant carried a torch which gave him to be distinctly seen. And the flashing of gold on their persons was wonderful to the spectator. Why not? This rare and anointed body was the Church going in solemnity to assist the Basileus in a high ceremony.

Afterwhile the Emperor appeared descending to the Chapel.

To the Prince's amazement, he was in a plain, priestly black frock, without crown, sword, sceptre or guard; and so did his guise compare with the magnificence of the ecclesiastics surrounding him, he actually seemed in their midst a prisoner or a penitent. He passed his visitor like one going from the world forgetting and forgot.

"An explanation, Father," said the Prince. "The Church is in its robes, but my august friend, the Emperor, looks as if he had suffered dethronement."

"Thou wilt presently see His Majesty enter the Chapel alone. The legend supposes him there in presence directly of God; if so, what merit would there be in regalia? Would his sword or sceptre make his supplication more impressive?"

The Prince bowed.

And while he watched, the gold-clad escort halted before the Holy House, the door opened, and Constantine went in unattended. Then, the door being shut behind him, the clergy knelt, and remained kneeling. The light from the torches was plenteous there, making the scene beautiful.

And yet further, while he stood watching, the trumpeting and chanting on the level in front of the palace behind him ceased, and a few minutes afterwards, he was aware of the noise of many feet rushing in a scramble from all directions to the Chapel. Here and there flambeaux streamed out, with hundreds of dark-gowned excited figures speeding after them as best they could.

The bank the Prince occupied was overrun, like other contiguous spaces. The object of the invaders was to secure a position near the revered building as possible; for immediately on attaining it they dropped to their knees, and began counting their rosaries and mumbling prayers. At length it befell that the terraces far and near were densely crowded by monks in low recitation.

"My Lord," said Father Theophilus, in a tone of reserved depth, "the Mystery is begun. There is no more to be seen. Good-night!" And without ado, he too knelt where he stood, beads in hand, eyes fixed upon the one point of devotional interest.

When the sedan was brought, the Prince gave one last glance at the scene, feeling it was to be thenceforward and forever a burden on his memory. He took in and put away the weather-stained Chapel, centre of so much travail; the narrow court in front of it brilliantly lighted and covered with priests high and low in glittering vestments; the cypresses looming skyward, stately and stiff, like conical monuments: the torches scattered over the grounds, revealing patches of men kneeling, their faces turned toward the Chapel: the mumbling and muttering from parts unlighted telling of other thousands in like engagement. He had seen battle-fields fresh in their horrors; decks of ships still bloody; shores strewn with wreckage and drowned sailors, and the storm not spent; populous cities shaken down by earthquakes, the helpless under the ruins pleading for help; but withal never had he seen anything which affected him as did that royal park at mid of night, given up to that spectral multitude!

It seemed he could not get away from the spectacle soon enough; for after issuing from the Grand Gate, he kept calling to his carriers, impatiently: "Faster, my men, faster!" _

Read next: Book 4. The Palace Of Blacherne: Chapter 5. A Plague Of Crime

Read previous: Book 4. The Palace Of Blacherne: Chapter 3. The New Faith Proclaimed

Table of content of Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book