rds away, urging,
encouraging, inspiring. They had vowed themselves to death, if that were
God's Will; and if not, the intention would be taken for the deed. They
were under obedience now; their wills were no longer theirs but God's;
under chastity--for their bodies were bought with a price; under
poverty, and theirs was the kingdom of heaven.

He had ended by a great silent Benediction of the City and the World:
and there were not wanting a half-dozen of the faithful who had seen,
they thought, a white shape in the form of a bird that hung in the air
while he spoke white as a mist, translucent as water....

The consequent scenes in the city and suburbs had been unparalleled, for
thousands of families had with one consent dissolved human ties.
Husbands had found their way to the huge houses on the Quirinal set
apart for them; wives to the Aventine; while the children, as confident
as their parents, had swarmed over to the Sisters of St. Vincent who had
received at the Pope's orders the gift of three streets to shelter them
in. Everywhere the smoke of burning went up in the squares where
household property, rendered useless by the vows of poverty, were
consumed by their late owners; and daily long trains moved out from the
station outside the walls carrying jubilant loads of those who were
despatched by the Pope's delegates to be the salt of men, consumed in
their function, and leaven plunged in the vast measures of the infidel
world. And that infidel world welcomed their coming with bitter
laughter.

From the rest of Christendom had poured in news of success. The same
precautions had been observed as in Rome, for the directions issued were
precise and searching; and day after day came in the long rolls of the
new Religious drawn up by the diocesan superiors.

Within the last few days, too, other lists had arrived, more glorious
than all. Not only did reports stream in that already the Order was
beginning its work and that already broken communications were being
re-established, that devoted missioners were in process of organising
themselves, and that hope was once more rising in the most desperate
hearts; but better than all this was the tidings of victory in another
sphere. In Paris forty of the new-born Order had been burned alive in
one day in the Latin quarter, before the Government intervened. From
Spain, Holland, Russia had come in other names. In Dusseldorf eighteen
men and boys, surprised at their singing o