Next morning when Marynia came out to her husband he hardly knew her. Dressed in black, and with a black lace veil on her head, she seemed taller, more slender, darker, and older. But he was pleased by a certain solemnity in her which recalled the ceremony of their marriage. Half an hour later they started. On the road Marynia confessed to fear, and a beating of the heart. He pacified her playfully, though he, too, was moved somewhat; and when, after a short drive, they entered the gigantic half-circle in front of St. Peter’s, he felt also that his pulse was not beating as every day, and, besides, he had a strange feeling of being smaller than usual. Near the steps, where stood a number of Swiss guards, arrayed in the splendid uniform invented by Michael Angelo, they found Svirski, who led them up with a throng of people, mostly Belgians. Marynia, who was somewhat dazed, did not know herself when she entered a very spacious hall, in which the throng was still denser, excepting on a space in the centre, where the Swiss guards were posted in lines, and kept a broad passage open. The crowd, among which the French and Flemish languages were to be heard, whispered in low voices, and turned their heads and eyes toward a passage, in which, from time to time, appeared, through the adjoining hall, forms in remarkable costumes, which reminded Pan Stanislav of galleries in Antwerp or Brussels. It seemed to him that the Middle Ages were rising from the dead: now it was some knight of those ages, in a helmet, different indeed from helmets on the ancient portraits, but with steel on his breast; now a herald in a short red dalmatica, and with a red cap on his head; at times through the open door appeared purple cardinals, or violet bishops, ostrich feathers, lace on black velvet, and heads immensely venerable, white hair and faces, as if from a sarcophagus. But it was evident that the glances of the throng were falling on those peculiar dresses and colors and faces, as if, in passing, that their eyes were waiting for something beyond, something higher, some other heart; it was clear that in people’s minds attention was fixed as was feeling in their souls, in waiting for a moment which comes once in a lifetime, and is memorable ever after. Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia by the hand, so as not to lose her in the throng, felt that hand tremble from emotion; as to him, in the midst of those silent crowds and beating hearts, before that historical dignity of former ages rising from the dead, as it were, in the midst of that attention and expectation, he felt a second time the wonderful impression of becoming smaller and smaller, till he was the smallest that he had ever been in life.

At that moment a low and rather panting voice whispered near them,—

“I have been looking for you, and found you with difficulty. The ceremony will begin at once, it seems.”

But it was not to begin at once. The monsignor acquaintance greeted Svirski meanwhile, and, speaking a few words to him, conducted the whole party politely to the adjoining hall, which was fitted in crimson damask. Pan Stanislav saw with astonishment that this hall, too, was full of people, with the exception of one end, which was reserved by a guard of honor, and in which was an armchair on an elevation, and before it a number of prelates and bishops conversing confidentially. Here expectation and attention were more expressly visible. It was evident that people were holding their breath; and all faces had a solemn, mysterious expression. The azure clearness of the day, mingled with the purple reflections of the tapestry, filled that hall with a kind of unusual light, in which the rays of the sun, breaking in here and there through the window-panes, appeared very ruddy and of a deeper red.

They waited some time yet; at last, in the first hall a murmur was heard, then a muttering, then a shout, and, finally, in the open side door appeared a white figure borne by the noble guard. Marynia’s hand pressed Pan Stanislav’s nervously; he returned the pressure; and swift impressions, merged in one general feeling of the exceptional and solemn import of the moment, flashed through their minds, as during the ceremony of their marriage.

One of the cardinals began to speak, but Pan Stanislav neither heard nor understood what he said. His eyes, his thoughts, his whole soul, were with the figure clothed in white. Nothing in it escaped his attention,—its unparalleled emaciation, its frailness, its thinness, and its face as pale, and at the same time as transparent, as faces of the dead are. There was in it something which had no physical strength, or in every case it seemed to him simply half body, half apparition, as it were, a light shining through alabaster; a spirit, fixed in some transparent matter; an intermediate link between two worlds; a link human yet, though already preterhuman, earthly so far, but also above earthly things. And through a marvellous antithesis the matter in it seemed to be something apparitional, and the spirit something material.

Afterward, when people began to approach it for a blessing; when Pan Stanislav saw his Marynia at its feet; when he felt that to those knees, already half empyrean, one might still incline as to those of a father,—an emotion surpassing everything seized him; his eyes were as if mist-covered; never in life had he felt himself such a small grain of sand, but at the same time he felt himself a grain of sand in which the grateful heart of a little child was throbbing.

After they had gone out, all were silent. Marynia had eyes as if roused from sleep; Vaskovski’s hands were trembling. Bukatski dragged himself in to lunch; but, being ill, he could not excite conversation in any one. Svirski, strange to say, talked little while Marynia was sitting, and returned continually to the same subject; from time to time he repeated,—

“Yes, yes; whoever has not seen that can have no conception of it. That will remain.”

In the evening Pan Stanislav and Marynia went to see the sunset from TrinitÀ dei Monti. The day ended very beautifully. The whole city was buried in a kind of hazy golden gleam; under their feet, far down in the valley, on the Piazza di Spagna, darkness was beginning, but a darkness yet lighted, in the mild tones of which irises and white lilies were visible among the flowers set out on both sides of the Via Condotti. In the whole picture there was great and undisturbed repose,—a kind of soothing announcement of night and sleep. Then the Piazza di Spagna began to sink more and more in the shade, but the TrinitÀ was shining continually in purple.

Pan Stanislav and Marynia felt this calmness reflected in themselves; they descended the giant stairs then with a wonderful feeling of peace in their souls. All the impressions of the day settled down in them in lines as great and calm as those twilight belts, which were still shining above them. “Knowest thou,” said Pan Stanislav, “what I remember yet from childhood’s years? That with us at home they always said the evening rosary together.” And he looked with an inquiring glance into Marynia’s eyes.

“Oh, my Stas!” said she, with a voice trembling from emotion, “I did not dare to mention this—my best.”

“‘Service of God,’—dost thou remember?”

But she had said that formerly with such simplicity, and as a thing so self-evident, that she remembered nothing whatever about it.