At the door of Percy’s suite, the Englishman paused, made a little gesture of reverence, and went in without a word.

A secretary, young Mr. Brent, lately from England, stood up as his patron came in.

“Eminence,” he said, “the English papers are come.”

Percy put out a hand, took a paper, passed on into his inner room, and sat down.

There it all was—­gigantic headlines, and four columns of print broken by startling title phrases in capital letters, after the fashion set by America a hundred years ago.  No better way even yet had been found of misinforming the unintelligent.

He looked at the top.  It was the English edition of the Era.  Then he read the headlines.  They ran as follows: 

“THE NATIONAL WORSHIP.  BEWILDERING SPLENDOUR.  RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM.  THE ABBEY AND GOD.  CATHOLIC FANATIC.  EX-PRIESTS AS FUNCTIONARIES.”

He ran his eyes down the page, reading the vivid little phrases, and drawing from the whole a kind of impressionist view of the scenes in the Abbey on the previous day, of which he had already been informed by the telegraph, and the discussion of which had been the purpose of his interview just now with the Holy Father.

There plainly was no additional news; and he was laying the paper down when his eye caught a name.

“It is understood that Mr. Francis, the ceremoniarius (to whom the thanks of all are due for his reverent zeal and skill), will proceed shortly to the northern towns to lecture on the Ritual.  It is interesting to reflect that this gentleman only a few months ago was officiating at a Catholic altar.  He was assisted in his labours by twenty-four confreres with the same experience behind them.”

“Good God!” said Percy aloud.  Then he laid the paper down.

But his thoughts had soon left this renegade behind, and once more he was running over in his mind the significance of the whole affair, and the advice that he had thought it his duty to give just now upstairs.

Briefly, there was no use in disputing the fact that the inauguration of Pantheistic worship had been as stupendous a success in England as in Germany.  France, by the way, was still too busy with the cult of human individuals, to develop larger ideas.

But England was deeper; and, somehow, in spite of prophecy, the affair had taken place without even a touch of bathos or grotesqueness.  It had been said that England was too solid and too humorous.  Yet there had been extraordinary scenes the day before.  A great murmur of enthusiasm had rolled round the Abbey from end to end as the gorgeous curtains ran back, and the huge masculine figure, majestic and overwhelming, coloured with exquisite art, had stood out above the blaze of candles against the tall screen that shrouded the shrine.  Markenheim had done his work well; and Mr. Brand’s passionate discourse had well prepared the popular mind for the revelation.  He had quoted in his peroration passage after passage from the Jewish prophets, telling of the City of Peace whose walls rose now before their eyes.