As the procession wound into the
church, to the ringing of bells and the chanting of the choir, Odo was
struck by the spectacle of that line of witnesses, watching in
glassy-eyed irony the pomp and display to which their moldering robes
and tarnished insignia seemed to fix so brief a term. Once or twice
already he had felt the shows of human power as no more than vanishing
reflections on the tide of being; and now, as he knelt near the shrine,
with its central glitter of jewels and its nimbus of wavering lights,
and listened to the reiterated ancient wail:
"Mater inviolata, ora pro nobis!
Virgo veneranda, ora pro nobis!
Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis!"
it seemed to him as though the bounds of life and death were merged, and
the sumptuous group of which he formed a part already dusted over with
oblivion.
2.13.
Spite of the Mountain Madonna's much-vaunted powers, the first effect of
the pilgrimage was to provoke a serious indisposition in the Duke.
Exhausted by fasting and emotion, he withdrew to his apartments and for
several days denied himself to all but Heiligenstern, who was suspected
by some of suffering his patient's disorder to run its course with a
view to proving the futility of such remedies. This break in his
intercourse with his kinsman left Odo free to take the measure of his
new surroundings. The company most naturally engaging him was that which
surrounded the Duchess; but he soon wearied of the trivial diversions it
offered.
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