world--the
personification of hugeness and magnificence combined.

Pierre still wandered on, gazing, overcome, as yet not distinguishing
details. He paused for a moment before the bronze statue of St. Peter,
seated in a stiff, hierarchical attitude on a marble pedestal. A few of
the faithful were there kissing the large toe of the Saint's right foot.
Some of them carefully wiped it before applying their lips; others, with
no thought of cleanliness, kissed it, pressed their foreheads to it, and
then kissed it again. Next, Pierre turned into the transept on the left,
where stand the confessionals. Priests are ever stationed there, ready to
confess penitents in every language. Others wait, holding long staves,
with which they lightly tap the heads of kneeling sinners, who thereby
obtain thirty days' indulgence. However, there were few people present,
and inside the small wooden boxes the priests occupied their leisure time
in reading and writing, as if they were at home. Then Pierre again found
himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty
lamps, scintillating like stars. The high altar, at which the Pope alone
can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under
its gigantic, flowery _baldacchino_, the casting and gilding of which
cost two and twenty thousand pounds. But suddenly Pierre remembered the
ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could
hear nothing of it. As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away
piping of a flute, was wafted to him. Then the volume of sound slowly
increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an
organ peal. The sunlight here filtered through red curtains drawn before
the windows, and thus the chapel glowed like a furnace whilst resounding
with the grave music. But in that huge pile all became so slight, so
weak, that at sixty paces neither voice nor organ could be distinguished.

On entering the basilica Pierre had fancied that it was quite empty and
lifeless. There were, however, some people there, but so few and far
between that their presence was not noticed. A few tourists wandered
about wearily, guide-book in hand. In the grand nave a painter with his
easel was taking a view, as in a public gallery. Then a French seminary
went by, conducted by a prelate who named and explained the tombs. But in
all that space these fifty or a hundred people looked merely like a few
black ants who had lost t