The pressure relaxed; Percy slipped out of the recess, and followed in the slow-moving stream.

Half-an-hour later he was in his place among the ecclesiastics, as the papal procession came out through the glimmering dusk of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament into the nave of the enormous church; but even before he had entered the chapel he heard the quiet roar of recognition and the cry of the trumpets that greeted the Supreme Pontiff as he came out, a hundred yards ahead, borne on the sedia gestatoria, with the fans going behind him.  When Percy himself came out, five minutes later, walking in his quaternion, and saw the sight that was waiting, he remembered with a sudden throb at his heart that other sight he had seen in London in a summer dawn three months before....

Far ahead, seeming to cleave its way through the surging heads, like the poop of an ancient ship, moved the canopy beneath which sat the Lord of the world, and between him and the priest, as if it were the wake of that same ship, swayed the gorgeous procession—­Protonotaries Apostolic, Generals of Religious Orders and the rest—­making its way along with white, gold, scarlet and silver foam between the living banks on either side.  Overhead hung the splendid barrel of the roof, and far in front the haven of God’s altar reared its monstrous pillars, beneath which burned the seven yellow stars that were the harbour lights of sanctity.  It was an astonishing sight, but too vast and bewildering to do anything but oppress the observers with a consciousness of their own futility.  The enormous enclosed air, the giant statues, the dim and distant roofs, the indescribable concert of sound—­of the movement of feet, the murmur of ten thousand voices, the peal of organs like the crying of gnats, the thin celestial music—­the faint suggestive smell of incense and men and bruised bay and myrtle—­and, supreme above all, the vibrant atmosphere of human emotion, shot with supernatural aspiration, as the Hope of the World, the holder of Divine Vice-Royalty, passed on his way to stand between God and man—­this affected the priest as the action of a drug that at once lulls and stimulates, that blinds while it gives new vision, that deafens while it opens stopped ears, that exalts while it plunges into new gulfs of consciousness.  Here, then, was the other formulated answer to the problem of life.  The two Cities of Augustine lay for him to choose.  The one was that of a world self-originated, self-organised and self-sufficient, interpreted by such men as Marx and Herve, socialists, materialists, and, in the end, hedonists, summed up at last in Felsenburgh.  The other lay displayed in the sight he saw before him, telling of a Creator and of a creation, of a Divine purpose, a redemption, and a world transcendent and eternal from which all sprang and to which all moved.  One of the two, John and Julian, was the Vicar, and the other the Ape, of God....  And Percy’s heart in one more spasm of conviction made its choice....