to whom a special service at the Church is like a new comedy at the
theatre,--women with coloured kerchiefs knotted over their hair or
across their bosoms--men, more or less roughly clad, yet all paying
compliment to the Saint's feast-day by some extra smart touch in their
attire, if it were only a pomegranate flower or orange-blossom stuck in
their hats, or behind their ears. It was a mixed crowd, all of the
working classes, who are proverbially called 'the common,' as if those
who work, are not a hundred times more noble than those who do nothing!
A few carriages, containing some wealthy ladies of the nobility, who,
to atone for their social sins, were in the habit of contributing
largely to the Church, passed every now and again through the crowd,
but taken as a spectacle it was simply a 'popular' show, in which the
children of the people took part, and where the people themselves were
evidently more amused than edified.

While the bells were ringing the procession gradually formed;--a dozen
or more priests leading,--incense-bearers and acolytes walking next,--
and then the long train of little children and girls carrying their
symbolic banners, following after. The way they had to walk was a
steep, winding ascent, through tortuous streets, to the Cathedral,
which stood in the centre of a great square on an eminence which
overlooked the whole city, and as soon as they started they began to
sing,--softly at first, then more clearly and sweetly, till gradually
the air grew full of melody, rising and falling on the capricious gusts
of wind which tore at the gilded and emblazoned banners, and tossed the
white veils of the maidens about like wreaths of drifting snow. Two men
standing on the Cathedral hill, watched the procession gradually
ascending--one tall and heavily-built, with a dark leonine head made
more massive-looking by its profusion of thick and unmanageable hair--
the other lean and narrow-shouldered, with a peaked reddish-auburn