herbs and flowers. Thence one of the rector's chaplains conducted them
to the church, placing them, in company with the monastery's other noble
guests, in a tribune constructed above the choir. It was Odo's first
sight of a great religious ceremony, and as he looked down on the church
glimmering with votive offerings and gold-fringed draperies, and seen
through rolling incense in which the altar-candles swam like stars
reflected in a river, he felt an almost sensual thrill of pleasure at
the thought that his life was to be passed amid scenes of such mystic
beauty. The sweet singing of the choir raised his spirit to a higher
view of the scene; and the sight of the huddled misery on the floor of
the church revived in him the old longing for the Franciscan cowl.

From these raptures he was speedily diverted by the sight awaiting him
at the conclusion of the mass. Hardly had the spectators returned to the
rector's windows when, the doors of the church swinging open, a
procession headed by the rector himself descended the steps and began to
make the circuit of the court. Odo's eyes swam with the splendour of
this burst of banners, images and jewelled reliquaries, surmounting the
long train of tonsured heads and bathed in a light almost blinding after
the mild penumbra of the church. As the monks advanced, the pilgrims,
pouring after them, filled the court with a dark undulating mass through
which the procession wound like a ray of sunlight down the brown bosom
of a torrent. Branches of oleander swung in the air, devout cries hailed
the approach of the Black Madonna's canopy, and hoarse voices swelled to
a roar the measured litanies of the friars.

The ceremonies over, Odo, with the canonesses, set out to visit the
chapels studding the beech-knoll above the monastic buildings. Passing
out of Juvara's great portico they stood a moment above the grassy
common, which presented a scene in curious contrast to that they had