Beneath him, seen now from the opposite end from which he had looked this morning, lay the Place, under a wholly different appearance.  The centre of the great oval was cleared, with the exception of a huge pulpit, surmounted by a circular sounding-board, that stood in the middle.  But round this empty space rose, in tier after tier, masses of humanity beyond all reckoning, up and up, as on the sides of an enormous amphitheatre, as far as the highest roofs of the highest buildings that looked on to the space.  Before him rose the pile of churches, and here too, on every platform roof and stair, swarmed the spectators.  The doors of the three churches were flung wide, and far within, in the lighted interiors, lay the heads of countless crowds, as cobble-stones, seen in perspective.  The whole Place was in shadow now, as the sun had just gone down, but the sky was still alight overhead, a vast tender-coloured vault, as sweet as a benediction.  Here and there, in the illimitable blue, like crumbs of diamond dust, gleamed the first stars of evening.

And from this vast multitude, swayed by a white figure within the pulpit, articulate now as the listener emerged, rose up a song to Mary, as from one soft and gigantic voice, appealing to Her Presence who for over a century and a half, it seemed, had chosen to dwell here by virtue and influence, the Great Mother of the redeemed and 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.