All those
various "offices" which, in Pontifical, Missal and Breviary, devout
imagination had elaborated from age to age with such a range of
spiritual colour and light and shade, with so much poetic tact in
quotation, such a depth of insight into [32] the Christian soul, had
joined themselves harmoniously together, one office ending only where
another began, in the perpetual worship of this mother of churches,
which had also its own picturesque peculiarities of "use," proud of
its maternal privilege therein. And the music rose--warmed,
expanded, or fell silent altogether--as the order of the year, the
colours, the whole expression of things changed, gathering around the
full mystic effulgence of the pontiff in his own person, while the
sacred theme deepened at the great ecclesiastical seasons, when the
aisles overflowed with a vast multitude, and like a court, combed,
starched, rustling around him, Gaston and his fellows "served"
Monseigneur--they, zealous, ubiquitous, more prominent than ever,
though for the most part profoundly irreverent, and, notwithstanding
that, one and all, with what disdain of the untonsured laity!
Well! what was of the past there--the actual stones of the temple and
that sacred liturgical order--entered readily enough into Gaston's
mental kingdom, filling places prepared by the anticipations of his
tranquil, dream-struck youth.
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