spread out through the gardens.

"Look!" said he; "you can see the foremost tapers ascending amidst the
greenery."

Then came an enchanting spectacle. Little flickering lights detached
themselves from the great bed of fire, and began gently rising, without
it being possible for one to tell at that distance what connected them
with the earth. They moved upward, looking in the darkness like golden
particles of the sun. And soon they formed an oblique streak, a streak
which suddenly twisted, then extended again until it curved once more. At
last the whole hillside was streaked by a flaming zigzag, resembling
those lightning flashes which you see falling from black skies in cheap
engravings. But, unlike the lightning, the luminous trail did not fade
away; the little lights still went onward in the same slow, gentle,
gliding manner. Only for a moment, at rare intervals, was there a sudden
eclipse; the procession, no doubt, was then passing behind some clump of
trees. But, farther on, the tapers beamed forth afresh, rising heavenward
by an intricate path, which incessantly diverged and then started upward
again. At last, however, the time came when the lights no longer
ascended, for they had reached the summit of the hill and had begun to
disappear at the last turn of the road.

Exclamations were rising from the crowd. "They are passing behind the
Basilica," said one. "Oh! it will take them twenty minutes before they
begin coming down on the other side," remarked another. "Yes, madame,"
said a third, "there are thirty thousand of them, and an hour will go by
before the last of them leaves the Grotto."

Ever since the start a sound of chanting had risen above the low rumbling