Chanting was heard in the church, muffled at first and then loud,
as the door was thrown open:
"_Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis_."
The two sufferers appeared. The girl, supported on either side, was
walking; the man, as limp as a corpse, was being borne along, some women
carrying his shoulders, others his feet; and the bearers were also
chanting, with solemn faces:
"_Sancta Virgo virginum, ora pro nobis_."
The women in the square all fell on their knees, the astonished
_carabinieri_ standing in their midst. The students were silent, while
a party of ladies and gentlemen, about to enter the square from the Val
d'Aniene mule-path, stopped their mules. First Maria, then Noemi, knelt,
drawn towards the earth by an impulse which made them tremble with
emotion. Giovanni hesitated. This was not his faith. It seemed to him
an offence to the Creator, the Giver of reason, to allow a sick man to
journey a long distance on a mule, that he might be miraculously healed
by an image, a relic, or a man. Still it was faith. It was--enclosed in
a rough envelope of frail ignorance--that sense denied, to proud minds,
of the hidden truth which is life; that mysterious radium within the
mass of impure ore.
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