Alwyn dined at his hotel, and then, finding it still too early to retire to rest, strolled slowly across the Platz, looking up at the sublime God’s Temple above him, the stately Cathedral, with its wondrously delicate carvings and flying buttresses, on which the moonlight glittered like little points of pale flame.  He knew it of old; many and many a time had he taken train from Bonn, for the sole pleasure of spending an hour in gazing on that splendid “sermon in stone,”—­one of the grandest testimonies in the world of man’s instinctive desire to acknowledge and honor, by his noblest design and work, the unseen but felt majesty of the Creator.  He had a great longing to enter it now, and ascended the steps with that intention; but, much to his vexation, the doors were shut.  He walked from the side to the principal entrance; that superb western frontage which is so cruelly blocked in by a dwarfish street of the commonest shops and meanest houses,—­and found that also closed against him.  Disappointed and sorry, he went back again to the side of the colossal structure, and stood on the top of the steps, close to the central barred doors, studying the sculptured saints in the niches, and feeling a sudden, singular impression of extreme loneliness,—­a sense of being shut out, as it were, from some high festival in which he would gladly have taken part.

Not a cloud was in the sky, ... the evening was one of the most absolute calm, and a delicious warmth pervaded the air,—­the warmth of a fully declared and balmy spring.  The Platz was almost deserted,—­only a few persons crossed it now and then, like flitting shadows,—­and somewhere down in one of the opposite streets a long way off, there was a sound of men’s voices singing a part-song.  Presently, however, this distant music ceased, and a deep silence followed.  Alwyn still remained in the sombre shade of the cathedral archway, arguing with himself against the foolish and unaccountable depression that had seized him, and watching the brilliant May moon soar up higher and higher in the heavens; when,—­all at once, the throbbing murmur of the great organ inside the Dom startled him from pensive dreaminess into swift attention.  He listened,—­the rich, round notes thundered through the stillness with forceful and majestic harmony; anon, wierd tones, like the passionate lament of Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen” floated around and above him:  then, a silvery chorus of young voices broke forth in solemn unison: 

“Kyrie Eleison!  Christe Eleison!  Kyrie Eleison!”

A faint cold tremor crept through his veins,—­his heart beat violently,—­again he vainly strove to open the great door.  Was there a choir practising inside at this hour of the night?  Surely not!  Then,—­from whence had this music its origin?  Stooping, he bent his ear to the crevice of the closed portal,—­but, as suddenly as they had begun, the harmonies ceased; and all was once more profoundly still.