I have
given your Highness the warning it was my duty to give. Beyond that I
had no thought of trespassing."
And still Odo was silent. A dozen answers struggled to his lips; but
they were checked by the stealing sense of duality that so often
paralysed his action. He had recovered his lucidity of vision, and his
impulses faded before it like mist. He saw life again as it was, an
incomplete and shabby business, a patchwork of torn and ravelled effort.
Everywhere the shears of Atropos were busy, and never could the cut
threads be joined again.
He took his wife's hand and bent over it ceremoniously. It lay in his
like a stone.
4.8.
The jubilee of the Mountain Madonna fell on the feast of the
Purification. It was mid-November, but with a sky of June. The autumn
rains had ceased for the moment, and fields and orchards glistened with
a late verdure.
Never had the faithful gathered in such numbers to do honour to the
wonder-working Virgin. A widespread resistance to the influences of free
thought and Jansenism was pouring fresh life into the old formulas of
devotion. Though many motives combined to strengthen this movement, it
was still mainly a simple expression of loyalty to old ideals, an
instinctive rallying around a threatened cause. It is the honest
conviction underlying all great popular impulses that gives them their
real strength; and in this case the thousands of pilgrims flocking on
foot to the mountain shrine embodied a greater moral force than the
powerful ecclesiastics at whose call they had gathered.
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