d the Consoler of the afflicted, whose Divine Son was
even now on His way, as at Cana itself, to turn the water of
sorrow into the wine of joy. . . . Then, as the canopy came out,
at an imperious gesture from the tiny swaying figure in the
pulpit, the music ceased; great trumpets sounded a phrase; there
was a rustle and a movement as of a breaking wave as the crowds
knelt; and the _Pange Lingua_ rose up in solemn adoration. . . .

As he came down the steps, his eyes quick with tears, he saw for
the first time the lines of the sick in the place to which he had
been told to look. There they lay, some four thousand in number,
placed side by side in two great circling rows round the whole
arena, a fringe of pain to the exultant crowds, in litters laid
so close together that they seemed but two great continuous beds,
and between them the high flower-strewn platform along which
Jesus of Nazareth should pass by. There they lay, all of them
bathed to-day in the strange water that had sprung up a hundred
and fifty years ago under the fingers of a peasant child, waiting
for the sacramental advent of Him who had made both that water
and those for whose healing it was designed.

And yet not all were cured--not perhaps one in ten of all who
came in confidence. That surely was wonderful. . . . Was it then
that that same Sovereign Power who had permitted the pain elected
to retain His own sovereignty, and to show that the Lawgiver was
fettered by no law? One thing at least was certain, if those
records which the priest had examined this morning were to be
believed, that no receptiveness of temperament, no subjective
expectancy of cure, guaranteed that the cure would take place.
Natures that had responded marvellously in the mental
laboratories seemed ineffective here; natures that were inert and
immovable under the influence of sympathetic science leapt up
here to meet the call of some Voice whose very existence a
hundred years ago had been in doubt.

The front of the long procession, Monsignor saw, had reached now
the doors of the basilica, and would presently, after making the
complete round, pour down into the arena to allow the Blessed
Sacrament to move more quickly. It was an exquisite sight, even
from here, as the prelate set foot on the platform and began to
move to the left. The long lines of tapers, four deep, went like
some great serpent, rippling with light, above the heads of the
sick; and here and there in the slopes