between improvised barriers which led from the tribune to the door of the sacristy, and which had been so arranged as to prevent confusion.  Here they waited, greeting their acquaintances when they could recognise them in the dim twilight of the church, and watching the ever-increasing crowd that surged slowly backward and forward outside the barrier.  The old prince was entitled by an hereditary office to a place in the great procession of the day, and was not now with them.

Orsino felt as though the whole world were assembled about him within the huge cathedral, as though its heart were beating audibly and its muffled breathing rising and falling in his hearing.  The unceasing sound that went up from the compact mass of living beings was soft in quality, but enormous in volume and sustained in tone, a great whispering which, might have been heard a mile away.  One hears in mammoth musical festivals the extraordinary effect of four or five thousand voices singing very softly; it is not to be compared to the unceasing whisper of fifty thousand men.

The young fellow was conscious of a strange, irregular thrill of enthusiasm which ran through him from time to time and startled his imagination into life.  It was only the instinct of a strong vitality unconsciously longing to be the central point of the vitalities around it.  But he could not understand that.  It seemed to him like a great opportunity brought “within reach but slipping by untaken, not to return again.  He felt a strange, almost uncontrollable longing to spring upon one of the tribunes, to raise his voice, to speak to the great multitude, to fire all those men to break out and carry everything before them.  He laughed audibly at himself.  Sant’ Ilario looked at his son with some curiosity.

“What amuses you?” he asked.

“A dream,” answered Orsino, still smiling.  “Who knows?” he exclaimed after a pause.  “What would happen, if at the right moment the right man could stir such a crowd as this?”

“Strange things,” replied Sant’ Ilario gravely.  “A crowd is a terrible weapon.”

“Then my dream was not so foolish after all.  One might make history to-day.”

Sant’ Ilario made a gesture expressive of indifference.

“What is history?” he asked.  “A comedy in which the actors have no written parts, but improvise their speeches and actions as best they can.  That is the reason why history is so dull and so full of mistakes.”

“And of surprises,” suggested Orsino.

“The surprises in history are always disagreeable, my boy,” answered Sant’ Ilario.

Orsino felt the coldness in the answer and felt even more his father’s readiness to damp any expression of enthusiasm.  Of late he had encountered this chilling indifference at almost every turn, whenever he gave vent to his admiration for any sort of activity.