Crucis meant when he spoke of the deep hold of the Church upon the people.  Every colour, every gesture, every word and note of music that made up the texture of the gorgeous ceremonial might indeed seem part of a long-studied and astutely-planned effect.  Yet each had its root in some instinct of the heart, some natural development of the inner life, so that they were in fact not the cunningly-adjusted fragments of an arbitrary pattern but the inseparable fibres of a living organism.  It was Odo’s misfortune to see too far ahead on the road along which his destiny was urging him.  As he sat there, face to face with the people he was trying to lead, he heard above the music of the mass and the chant of the kneeling throng an echo of the question that Don Gervaso had once put to him:—­“If you take Christ from the people, what have you to give them instead?”

He was roused by a burst of silver clarions.  The mass was over, and the Duke and Duchess were to descend from their tribune and venerate the holy image before it was carried through the church.

Odo rose and gave his hand to his wife.  They had not seen each other, save in public, since their last conversation in her closet.  The Duchess walked with set lips and head erect, keeping her profile turned to him as they descended the steps and advanced to the choir.  None knew better how to take her part in such a pageant.  She had the gift of drawing upon herself the undivided attention of any assemblage in which she moved; and the consciousness of this power lent a kind of Olympian buoyancy to her gait.  The richness of her dress and her extravagant display of jewels seemed almost a challenge to the sacred image blazing like a rainbow beneath its golden canopy; and Odo smiled to think that his childish fancy had once compared the brilliant being at his side to the humble tinsel-decked Virgin of the church at Pontesordo.

As the couple advanced, stillness fell on the church.  The air was full of the lingering haze of incense, through which the sunlight from the clerestory poured in prismatic splendours on the statue of the Virgin.  Rigid, superhuman, a molten flamboyancy of gold and gems, the wonder-working Madonna shone out above her worshippers.  The Duke and Duchess paused, bowing deeply, below the choir.  Then they mounted the steps and knelt before the shrine.  As they did so a crash broke the silence, and the startled devotees saw that the ducal diadem had fallen from the Madonna’s head.

The hush prolonged itself a moment; then a canon sprang forward to pick up the crown, and with the movement a murmur rose and spread through the church.  The Duke’s offering had fallen to the ground as he approached to venerate the blessed image.  That this was an omen no man could doubt.  It needed no augur to interpret it.  The murmur, gathering force as it swept through the packed aisles, passed from surprise to fear, from fear to a deep hum of anger;—­for the people understood, as plainly as though she had spoken, that the Virgin of the Valseccas had cast from her the gift of an unbeliever...