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.