There, opposite to him, in the blaze of sunlight, stood the throne that for a thousand years had faced the throne of the Fisherman, now as a dependant, now as a rebel—­stable and fixed at last in its allegiance.  Here beneath him lay London, the finest city in the world, where, if ever anywhere, had been tried the experiment of a religion resting on the strength of a national isolation instead of an universal supernationalism;—­it had been tried, and found wanting.  Beneath him lay his own cathedral, already blazing within like a treasure-cave, ready for its consummation, without, tranquil and strong; behind him the ancient Abbey once again in the hands of its children; far away to the right, seeming strangely near in this lucid atmosphere, hung, like a bubble, the great dome below which, as he knew, stood the first basilican altar in London, newly consecrated as a sign of its papal dignities and privileges.  And beyond that again London; and yet again London, a wonderful white city, gleaming at a thousand points with cross and spire and dome and pinnacle, patched with green in square and park and open space—­London come back again at last to her ancient faith and her old prosperity.

But this was not all.

For he knew and his imagination circled out wider and wider that he might take it in—­he knew that Europe itself at last dwelt again with one mind in her house.  There beyond the channel—­across which ten minutes ago, as the thunder of guns had told him, the Arbiter of the World had come at last with his train of kings behind him—­there lay the huge continent, the great plains of France, the forests of Germany, the giant tumbled debris of Switzerland, the warm and radiant coasts, the ancient world-stage of Italy, passionate Spain which never yet had wholly lost her love.  There all lay, at one at last, each her own, with her own liberties and customs and traditions, yet each in the service of her neighbour, since each and all alike lay beneath the Peace of God.

Still wider fled his thought. . . .  He saw to the southwards and far away westwards across the seas, how now this country, now that, flew its flag and administered its laws, yet how those flags all together saluted the Crossed Keys; how those laws, however diverse, bowed all together before the Law of Liberty; and how there, farther yet, already the gates of the East had rolled back, and how there peered out across half the world the patient seeking faces of those old children of earth, awakened at last to destinies greater than their own—­awakened, not as men had once feared, by the thunder of Christian guns, but by the call of the Shepherd to sheep that were not of His Fold. . . .

So there the vision lay before him—­this man who had lost his memory and had found a greater gift instead.

* * * * *

An old priest in the white fur of a canon came gently up the deck from behind. . . .

“Your Eminence . . .” he said, “they have signalled up the line. . . .  I thought, perhaps——­”