The choir-screen terminated in pulpits at either side, and here again the Apostles stood in solemn guardianship on its broad parapet—­but emblems, rather; of the stony rigidity of doctrines which have been shaped by the minds of men from some little phase of truth, than of that glowing, spiritualized, human sympathy which, as the soul of man grows upward into comprehension, is the apostle of an ever widening truth.  And over the richly sculptured central arch which forms the entrance to the choir, against the incongruous glitter of gold and jewels and magnificent garments and lights and sumptuous, overwrought details—­the very extravagance of the Renaissance—­a great black marble crucifix bore aloft the most solemn Symbol of the Christian Faith.

The religious ceremonial with which the festival had opened was over, and down the aisles on either side, past the family altars, with their innumerable candles and lanterns and censers,—­ceaselessly smoking in memorial of the honored dead,—­the brothers of the Frari and the Servi marched in solemn procession to the chant of the acolytes, returning to mass themselves in the transepts, in fuller view of the pulpits, before the contest began.  The Frari had taken their position on the right, under the elaborate hanging tomb of Fra Pacifico—­a mass of sculpture, rococo, and gilding; the incense rising from the censer swinging below the coffin of the saint carried the eye insensibly upward to the grotesque canopy, where cumbrous marble clouds were compacted of dense masses of saints’ and cherubs’ heads with uncompromising golden halos.

Some of the younger brothers scattered leaflets containing heads of the theses.

There was a stir among the crowd; a few went out, having witnessed the pageant; but there was a flutter of increased interest among those who remained, as a venerable man, in the garb of the Frari, mounted the pulpit on the right.

The Abbe Morelli sat in an attitude of breathless interest, and now a look of intense anxiety crossed his face.  “It is Fra Teodoro, the ablest disputant of the Frari!” he exclaimed.  “The trial is too great.”

The lady with him drew closer, arranging the folds of the ample veil which partially concealed her face, so that she might watch more closely.  But it was on Don Ambrogio Morelli that she fixed her gaze with painful intensity, reading the success or failure of the orator in her brother’s countenance.

“Ambrogio!” she entreated, when the argument had been presented and received with every sign of triumph that the sacredness of the place made decorous, “thou knowest that I have no understanding of the Latin—­was it unanswerable?”

“Nay,” her brother answered, uneasily; “it was fine, surely; but have no fear, Fra Teodoro is not incontrovertible, and the Servi have better methods.”

“May one ask the name of the disputant who is to respond?” a stranger questioned courteously of Don Ambrogio.