was a small cluster of kneeling women—­ a ragged handful of on-looking men—­and people wandering up and wandering away, young women with neatly dressed black hair, and shawls, but without hats; fine young women in very high heels; young men with nothing to do; ragged men with nothing to do.  All strayed faintly clicking over the slabbed floor, and glanced at the flickering altar where the white-surpliced boys were curtseying and the white-and-gold priest bowing, his hands over his breast, in the candle-light.  All strayed, glanced, lingered, and strayed away again, as if the spectacle were not sufficiently holding.  The bell chimed for the elevation of the Host.  But the thin trickle of people trickled the same, uneasily, over the slabbed floor of the vastly-upreaching shadow-foliaged cathedral.

The smell of incense in his nostrils, Aaron went out again by a side door, and began to walk along the pavements of the cathedral square, looking at the shops.  Some were closed, and had little notices pinned on them.  Some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant things.  Men were carrying newspapers.  In the cafes a few men were seated drinking vermouth.  In the doorway of the restaurants waiters stood inert, looking out on the streets.  The curious heart-eating ennui of the big town on a holiday came over our hero.  He felt he must get out, whatever happened.  He could not bear it.

So he went back to his hotel and up to his room.  It was still only five o’clock.  And he did not know what to do with himself.  He lay down on the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling.  It was a terrible business in reckitt’s blue and browny gold, with awful heraldic beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field.

As he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or God-knows-what, he heard a loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening.  Rising, he went on to his little balcony.  It was a sort of procession, or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man’s fist.  There had been a big meeting, and this was the issue.  The procession was irregular, but powerful, men four abreast.  They emerged irregularly from the small piazza to the street, calling and vociferating.  They stopped before a shop and clotted into a crowd, shouting, becoming vicious.  Over the shop-door hung a tricolour, a national flag.  The shop was closed, but the men began to knock at the door.  They were all workmen, some in railway men’s caps, mostly in black felt hats.  Some wore red cotton neck-ties.  They lifted their faces to the national flag, and as they shouted and gesticulated Aaron could see their strong teeth in their jaws.  There was something frightening in their lean, strong Italian jaws, something inhuman and possessed-looking in their foreign, southern-shaped faces, so much more formed and demon-looking than northern faces.  They had a demon-like set purpose, and the noise of their voices was like a jarring of steel weapons.  Aaron wondered what they wanted.  There were no women—­all men—­a strange male, slashing sound.  Vicious it was—­the head of the procession swirling like a little pool, the thick wedge of the procession beyond, flecked with red flags.