We pay two sous for a chair and take our places, under a fire of glances from our neighbours, who pray the while, and tell their beads; and we have scarcely time to notice the beautiful proportions of the nave, the carving in the side chapels, or the grotesque figures that we have before alluded to, when the service commences, and we can just discern in the distance the priests at the high altar (looking in their bright stiff robes, and with their backs to the people, like golden beetles under a microscope); we cannot hear distinctly, for the moving of the crowd about us, the creaking of chairs, and the whispering of many voices; but we can see the incense rising, the children in white robes swinging silver chains, and the cocked hat of the tall ‘Suisse’ moving to and fro.

Presently the congregation sits down, the organ peals forth and a choir of sweet voices chaunts the ‘Agnus Dei.’  Again the congregation kneels to the sound of a silver bell; the smoke of incense curls through the aisles, and the golden beetles move up and down; again there is a scraping of chairs, a shuffling of feet, and a general movement towards the pulpit, the men standing in groups round it with their hats in their hands; then a pause, and for the first time so deep a silence that we can hear the movement of the crowd outside, and the distant rattle of drums.

All eyes are now turned to the preacher; a man of about forty, of an austere but ordinary (we might almost say low) type of face, closely shaven, with an ivory crucifix at his side and a small black book in his hand.  He makes his way through the crowded aisles, and ascends the new pulpit in the centre of the church, where everyone of the vast congregation can both see and hear him.

His voice was powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive; he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any artifice to engage attention.  He commenced with a rhapsody—­startling in the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages—­a rhapsody to the Virgin—­

‘O sweet head of my mother; sacred eyes!’

* * * * *

and then an appeal—­an appeal for us ‘true Catholics’ to the ’Queen of Heaven, the beautiful, the adorable.’  He elevated our hearts with his moving voice, and, by what we might call the electricity of sympathy, almost to a frenzy of adoration; he taught us how the true believer, ‘clad in hope,’ would one day (if he leaned upon Mary his mother in all the weary stages of the ‘Passage of the Cross’) be crowned with fruition.  He lingered with almost idolatrous emphasis on the charms of Mary, and with his eyes fixed upon her image, his hands outstretched, and a thousand upturned faces listening to his words, the aisles echoed his romantic theme:—­

  ’With my lips I kneel, and with my heart,
  I fall about thy feet and worship thee.’