nkments. (He knew by now all about
the lock-system that counteracted the ebb and flow of the tides.)
Scarcely a hundred yards away curved out another bridge, and
behind that another and another, down into the distance, all
outlined in half-lights that shone like stars and flashed back
like heaven itself from the smooth-running water beneath. An
extraordinary silence lay over all--the silence of a sleeping
city--though it was scarcely yet midnight, and though the city
itself on either side of the river lay white and glowing in the
lights that burned everywhere till dawn.

At first it quieted him--this vision of earthly peace, this
perfection to which order and civilization had come; and then, as
he regarded it, it enraged him. . . .

For was not this very vision an embodiment of the force that he
hated? It was this very thing that oppressed and confined his
spirit--this inexorable application of eternal principles to
temporal affairs. Here was a city of living men, each an
individual personality, of individual tastes, thoughts, and
passions, each a world to himself and monarch of that world. Yet
by some abominable trick, it seemed, these individuals were not
merely in external matters forced to conform to the Society which
they helped to compose, but interiorly too; they actually had
been tyrannized over in their consciences and judgments, and
loved their chains. If he had known that the fires of revolt lay
there sleeping beneath this smooth exterior he would have hated
it far less; but he had seen with his own eyes that it was not
so. The crowds that had swarmed a while ago round the Cathedral,
pouring in and filling it for the _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving that
one more country had been brought under the yoke; the sea of
faces that had softly applauded and bowed beneath the blessing of
those two Cardinals in scarlet; the enthusiasm, the more amazing
in its silent orderliness, which had greeted the restoration of
the old national Abbey to its Benedictine founders--even the very
interviews he had had with quiet, deferential men, who, he
understood, stood at the very head of the secular powers; the
memory of the young King kissing the ring of the abbot at the
steps into the choir--all these things proved plainly enough that
by some supernatural alchemy the very minds of men had been
transformed, that they were no longer free to rebel and resent
and assert inalienable rights--in short, that a revolution had
passed over th