Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession.  Aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza.  And to his amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight.  Two minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper man selling the Corriere, and little carriages rattling through.  Now, as if by magic, nobody, nothing.  It was as if they had all melted into thin air.

The waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain.  A carriage came trotting into the square—­an odd man took his way alone—­the traffic began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had disappeared.  Then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned his neck, peering round the square.  He spoke with two youths—­rather loutish youths.  Then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant.

“What was it?  What were the shots?” Aaron asked him.

“Oh—­somebody shooting at a dog,” said the man negligently.

“At a dog!” said Aaron, with round eyes.

He finished his tea, and went out into the town.  His hotel was not far from the cathedral square.  Passing through the arcade, he came in sight of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into the afternoon air.  He was not as impressed as he should have been.  And yet there was something in the northern city—­this big square with all the trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams:  and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea-urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots and flower beds on the other:  the big shops going all along the further strands, all round:  and the endless restless nervous drift of a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter.  It struck him the people were afraid of themselves:  afraid of their own souls, and that which was in their own souls.

Turning up the broad steps of the cathedral, he entered the famous building.  The sky had cleared, and the freshened light shone coloured in living tablets round the wonderful, towering, rose-hearted dusk of the great church.  At some altars lights flickered uneasily.  At some unseen side altar mass was going on, and a strange ragged music fluttered out on the incense-dusk of the great and lofty interior, which was all shadow, all shadow, hung round with jewel tablets of light.  Particularly beautiful the great east bay, above the great altar.  And all the time, over the big-patterned marble floor, the faint click and rustle of feet coming and going, coming and going, like shallow uneasy water rustled back and forth in a trough.  A white dog trotted pale through the under-dusk, over the pale, big-patterned floor.  Aaron came to the side altar where mass was going on, candles ruddily wavering.  There