At first the enormous disappointment of Rome had saddened and hurt him.
He had fancied that where there was no head there could be no house,
that where the leader was gone the army must scatter and be hewn in
pieces. But as he stayed on, from week to week and from month to month,
he learned to understand that the Church had never been more alive,
more growing, and more militant than at that very time when the true
and rightful pontiffs were made outcasts one after the other, while
their places, earthly and spiritual, were given to instruments of feud
and party. For the Church was the world, while Rome meant seven or
eight thousand half-starved and turbulent ruffians, with their wives
and children, eager always for change, because it seemed that no change
could be for the worse.

But in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter there was peace; there the
white-haired priests solemnly officiated in the morning and at noon,
and toward evening more than a hundred rich voices of boys and men sang
the vesper psalms in the Gregorian tones; there slim youths in violet
and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense
floated in rich clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting to the
ancient floor; there, as in many a minster and cloister of the world,
the Church was still herself, as she was, and is, and always will be;
there words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned which had been
familiar to the lips of the Apostles, which are familiar to our lips
and ears to-day, and of which we are sure that lips unborn will repeat
them to centuries of generations. Gilbert, type of Christian layman,
kneeled in the old cathedral, and chanted softly after the choir, and
breathed the incense-laden air that seemed as natural to him as ever
the hay-scented breeze of summer had been, and he was infinitely
refreshed in soul and body. But then again, alone in his room at the
Lion Inn, late in the night, when he had been poring over the