He did not quite understand what was happening to him.  “Sweet Jesus, be to me not a Judge but a Saviour,” he whispered beneath his breath, gripping the granite of the pillar; and a moment later knew how futile was that prayer.  It was gone like a breath in this vast, vivid atmosphere of man.  He had said mass, had he not? this morning—­in white vestments.—­Yes; he had believed it all then—­desperately, but truly; and now....

To look into the future was as useless as to look into the past.  There was no future, and no past:  it was all one eternal instant, present and final....

Then he let go of effort, and again began to see with his bodily eyes.

* * * * *

The dawn was coming up the sky now, a steady soft brightening that appeared in spite of its sovereignty to be as nothing compared with the brilliant light of the streets.  “We need no sun,” he whispered, smiling piteously; “no sun or light of a candle.  We have our light on earth—­the light that lighteneth every man....”

The Campanile seemed further away than ever now, in that ghostly glimmer of dawn—­more and more helpless every moment, compared with the beautiful vivid shining of the streets.

Then he listened to the sounds, and it seemed to him as if somewhere, far down eastwards, there was a silence beginning.  He jerked his head impatiently, as a man behind him began to talk rapidly and confusedly.  Why would he not be silent, and let silence be heard?...  The man stopped presently, and out of the distance there swelled up a roar, as soft as the roll of a summer tide; it passed up towards him from the right; it was about him, dinning in his ears.  There was no longer any individual voice:  it was the breathing of the giant that had been born; he was crying out too; he did not know what he said, but he could not be silent.  His veins and nerves seemed alight with wine; and as he stared down the long street, hearing the huge cry ebb from him and move toward the palace, he knew why he had cried, and why he was now silent.

A slender, fish-shaped thing, as white as milk, as ghostly as a shadow, and as beautiful as the dawn, slid into sight half-a-mile away, turned and came towards him, floating, as it seemed, on the very wave of silence that it created, up, up the long curving street on outstretched wings, not twenty feet above the heads of the crowd.  There was one great sigh, and then silence once more.

* * * * *

When Percy could think consciously again—­for his will was only capable of efforts as a clock of ticks—­the strange white thing was nearer.  He told himself that he had seen a hundred such before; and at the same instant that this was different from all others.

Then it was nearer still, floating slowly, slowly, like a gull over the sea; he could make out its smooth nose, its low parapet beyond, the steersman’s head motionless; he could even hear now the soft winnowing of the screw—­and then he saw that for which he had waited.