It was yet cool and early, when he followed his patron, whom he was to serve as chaplain, along the broad passages of the Vatican towards the room where the Pope and Cardinals were to assemble.  Through a window, as he looked out into the Piazza, the crowd was yet more dense, if that were possible, than it had been an hour before.  The huge oval square was cobbled with heads, through which ran a broad road, kept by papal troops for the passage of the carriages; and up the broad ribbon, white in the eastern light, came monstrous vehicles, a blaze of gilding and colour and cream tint; slow cheers swelled up and died, and through all came the rush and patter of wheels over the stones, like the sound of a tide-swept pebbly beach.

As they waited in an ante-chamber, halted by the pressure in front and behind—­a pack of scarlet and white and purple—­he looked out again, and realised what he had known only intellectually before, that here before his eyes was the royalty of the old world assembled—­and he began to perceive its significance.

Round the steps of the basilica spread a great fan of coaches, each yoked to eight horses—­the white of France and Spain, the black of Germany, Italy and Russia, and the cream-coloured of England.  Those stood out in the near half-circle, and beyond was the sweep of the lesser powers:  Greece, Norway, Sweden, Roumania and the Balkan States.  One, the Turk, was alone wanting, he reminded himself.  The emblems of some were visible—­eagles, lions, leopards—­guarding the royal crown above the roof of each.  From the foot of the steps to the head ran a broad scarlet carpet, lined with soldiers.

Percy leaned against the shutter, and began to meditate.  Here was all that was left of Royalty.  He had seen their palaces before, here and there in the various quarters, with standards flying, and scarlet-liveried men lounging on the steps.  He had raised his hat a dozen times as a landau thundered past him up the Course; be had even seen the lilies of France and the leopards of England pass together in the solemn parade of the Pincian Hill.  He had read in the papers every now and again during the last five years that family after family had made its way to Rome, after papal recognition had been granted; he had been told by the Cardinal on the previous evening that William of England, with his Consort, had landed at Ostia in the morning and that the tale of the Powers was complete.  But he had never before realised the stupendous, overwhelming fact of the assembly of the world’s royalty under the shadow of Peter’s Throne, nor the appalling danger that its presence constituted in the midst of a democratic world.  That world, he knew, affected to laugh at the folly and the childishness of it all—­at the desperate play-acting of Divine Right on the part of fallen and despised families; but the same world, he knew very well, had not yet lost quite all its sentiment; and if that sentiment should happen to become resentful—–­