suspicions desperately clung to. "How hard it is to be a Christian!"
moans the persevering non-Catholic. "How impossible it is to be anything
else!" cries the Catholic.

We went round, then, singing. The procession was so huge that it seemed
to have no head and no tail. It involved itself a hundred times over; it
swirled in the square, it humped itself over the Rosary Church; it
elongated itself half a mile away up beyond our Mother's garlanded
statue; it eddied round the Grotto. It was one immense pool and river of
lights and song. Each group sang by itself till it was overpowered by
another; men and women and children strolled along patiently singing and
walking, knowing nothing of where they went, nothing of what they would
be singing five minutes hence. It depended on the voice-power of their
neighbours.

For myself, I found myself in a dozen groups, before, at last, after an
hour or so, I fell out of the procession and went home. Now I walked
cheek by jowl with a retired officer; now with an artisan; once there
came swiftly up behind a company of "Noelites"--those vast organizations
of boys and girls in France--singing the _Laudate Mariam_ to my _Ave
Maria_; now in the middle of a group of shop-girls who exchanged remarks
with one another whenever they could fetch breath. I think it was all
the most joyous and the most spontaneous (as it was certainly the
largest) human function in which I have ever taken part. I have no idea
whether there were any organizers of it all--at least I saw none. Once
or twice a solitary priest in the midst, walking backward and waving
his arms, attempted to reconcile conflicting melodies; once a very old
priest; with a voice like the tuba stop on the organ, turned a
humorously furious face over his shoulder to quell some mistake--from
his mouth, the while issuing this amazingly pungent volume of sound. But