Proceeding now to the special service mentioned in the extract from the last report of Count Corti to Mahommed.

The nave of Sancta Sophia was in possession of a multitude composed of all the Brotherhoods of the city, interspersed with visiting delegations from the monasteries of the Islands and many of the hermitic colonies settled in the mountains along the Asiatic shore of the Marmora. In the galleries were many women; amongst them, on the right-hand side, the Princess Irene. Her chair rested on a carpeted box a little removed from the immense pilaster, and raised thus nearly to a level with the top of the balustrade directly before her, she could easily overlook the floor below, including the apse. From her position everybody appeared dwarfed; yet she could see each figure quite well in the light of the forty arched windows above the galleries.

On the floor the chancel, or space devoted to the altar, was separated from the body of the nave by a railing of Corinthian brass, inside which, at the left, she beheld the Emperor, in Basilean regalia, seated on a throne--a very stately and imposing figure. Opposite him was the chair of the Patriarch. Between the altar and the railing arose a baldacchino, the canopy of white silk, the four supporting columns of shining silver. Under the canopy, suspended by a cord, hung the vessel of gold containing the Blessed Sacraments; and to the initiated it was a sufficient publication of the object of the assemblage.

Outside the railing, facing the altar, stood the multitude. To get an idea of its appearance, the reader has merely to remember the description of the bands marching into the garden of Blacherne the night of the Pannychides. There were the same gowns black and gray; the same tonsured heads, and heads shock-haired; the same hoods and glistening rosaries; the same gloomy, bearded faces; the same banners, oriflammes, and ecclesiastical gonfalons, each with its community under it in a distinctive group. Back further towards the entrances from the vestibule was a promiscuous host of soldiers and civilians; having no part in the service, they were there as spectators.

The ceremony was under the personal conduct of the Patriarch. Silence being complete, the choir, invisible from the body of the nave, began its magnificent rendition of the Sanctus--"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest"--and during the singing, His Serenity was clothed for the rite. Over his cassock, the deacons placed the surplice of white linen, and over that again a stole stiff with gold embroidery. He then walked slowly to the altar, and prayed; and when he had himself communicated, he was led to the baldacchino, where he blessed the Body and the Blood, and mixed them together in chalices, ready for delivery to the company of servers kneeling about him. The Emperor, who, in common with the communicants within and without the railing, had been on his knees, arose now and took position before the altar in a prayerful attitude; whereupon the Patriarch brought him a chalice on a small paten, and he put it to his lips, while the choir rang the dome with triumphal symphony.

His Serenity next returned to the baldacchino, and commenced giving the cups to the servers; at the same time the gate leading from the chancel to the nave was thrown open. Nor rustle of garment, nor stir of foot was heard.

Then a black-gowned figure arose amidst a group not far from the gate, and said, in a hoarse voice, muffled by the flaps of the hood covering his head and face:

"We are here, O Serenity, by thy invitation--here to partake of the Holy Eucharist--and I see thou art about sending it to us. Now not a few present believe there is no grace in leavened bread, and others hold it impiety to partake thereof. Wherefore tell us"--

The Patriarch looked once at the speaker; then, delivering the chalice, signed the servers to follow him; next instant, he stood in the open gateway, and with raised hands, cried out:

"Holy things to the holy!"

Repeating the ancient formula, he stepped aside to allow the cup-bearers to pass into the nave; but they stood still, for there came a skurry of sound not possible of location, so did it at the same moment seem to be from the dome descending and from the floor going up to the dome. It was the multitude rising from their knees.

Now the Patriarch, though feeble in body, was stout of soul and ready-witted, as they usually are whose lives pass in combat and fierce debate. Regarding the risen audience calmly, he betook himself to his chair, and spoke to his assistants, who brought a plain chasuble, and put it on him, covering the golden stole completely. When he again appeared in the spaceway of the open gate, as he presently did, every cleric and every layman in the church to whom he was visible understood he took the interruption as a sacrilege from which he sought by the change of attire to save himself.

"Whoso disturbs the Sacrament in celebration has need of cause for that he does; for great is his offence whatever the cause."

The Patriarch's look and manner were void of provocation, except as one, himself rudely disposed, might discover it in the humility somewhat too studied.

"I heard my Brother--it would be an untruth to say I did not--and to go acquit of deceit, I will answer him, God helping me. Let me say first, while we have some differences in our faith, there are many things about which we are agreed, the things in agreement outnumbering those in difference; and of them not the least is the Real Presence once the Sacraments are consecrated. Take heed, O Brethren! Do any of you deny the Real Presence in the bread and wine of communion?"

No man made answer.

"It is as I said--not one. Look you, then, if I or you--if any of us be tempted to anger or passionate speech, and this house, long dedicated to the worship of God, and its traditions of holiness too numerous for memory, and therefore of record only in the Books of Heaven, fail the restraints due them, lo, Christ is here--Christ in Real Presence--Christ our Lord in Body and Blood!"

The old man stood aside, pointing to the vessel under the baldacchino, and there were sighs and sobs. Some shouted: "Blessed be the Son of God!"

The sensation over, the Patriarch continued:

"O my Brother, take thou answer now. The bread is leavened. Is it therefore less grace-giving?"

"No, no!" But the response was drowned by an affirmative yell so strong there could be no doubt of the majority. The minority, however, was obstinate, and ere long the groups disrupted, and it seemed every man became a disputant. Now nothing serves anger like vain striving to be heard. The Patriarch in deep concern stood in the gateway, exclaiming: "Have a care, O Brethren, have a care! For now is Christ here!" And as the babble kept increasing, the Emperor came to him.

"They are like to carry it to blows, O Serenity."

"Fear not, my son, God is here, and He is separating the wheat from the chaff."

"But the blood shed will be on my conscience, and the Panagia"--

The aged Prelate was inflexible. "Nay, nay, not yet! They are Greeks. Let them have it out. The day is young; and how often is shame the miraculous parent of repentance."

Constantine returned to his throne, and remained there standing.

Meantime the tumult went on until, with shouting and gesticulating, and running about, it seemed the assemblage was getting mad with drink. Whether the contention was of one or many things, who may say? Well as could be ascertained, one party, taking cue from the Patriarch, denounced the interruption of the most sacred rite; the other anathematized the attempt to impose leavened bread upon orthodox communicants as a scheme of the devil and his arch-legate, the Bishop of Rome. Men of the same opinions argued blindly with each other; while genuine opposition was conducted with glaring eyes, swollen veins, clinched hands, and voices high up in the leger lines of hate and defiance. The timorous and disinclined were caught and held forcibly. In a word, the scene was purely Byzantine, incredible of any other people.

The excitement afterwhile extended to the galleries, where, but that the women were almost universally of the Greek faction, the same passion would have prevailed; as it was, the gentle creatures screamed azymite, azymite in amazing disregard of the proprieties. The Princess Irene, at first pained and mortified, kept her seat until appearances became threatening; then she scanned the vast pit long and anxiously; finally her wandering eyes fell upon the tall figure of Sergius drawn out of the mass, but facing it from a position near the gate of the brazen railing. Immediately she settled back in her chair.

To justify the emotion now possessing her, the reader must return to the day the monk first presented himself at her palace near Therapia. He must read again the confession, extorted from her by the second perusal of Father Hilarion's letter, and be reminded of her education in the venerated Father's religious ideas, by which her whole soul was adherent to his conceptions of the Primitive Church of the Apostles. Nor less must the reader suffer himself to be reminded of the consequences to her--of the judgment of heresy upon her by both Latins and Greeks--of her disposition to protest against the very madness now enacting before her--of her longing, Oh, that I were a man!--of the fantasy that Heaven had sent Sergius to her with the voice, learning, zeal, courage, and passion of truth to enable her to challenge a hearing anywhere-of the persistence with which she had since cared for and defended him, and watched him in his studies, and shared them with him. Nor must the later incident, the giving him a copy of the creed she had formulated--the Creed of Nine Words--be omitted in the consideration.

Now indeed the reader can comprehend the Princess, and the emotions with which she beheld the scene at her feet. The Patriarch's dramatic warning of the Real Presence found in her a ready second; for keeping strictly to Father Hilarion's distinction between a right Creed and a form or ceremony for pious observance, the former essential to salvation, the latter merely helpful to continence in the Creed, it was with her as if Christ in glorified person stood there under the baldacchino. What wonder if, from indignation at the madness of the assembly, the insensate howling, the blasphemous rage, she passed to exaltation of spirit, and fancied the time good for a reproclamation of the Primitive Church?

Suddenly a sharper, fiercer explosion of rage arose from the floor, and a rush ensued--the factions had come to blows!

Then the Patriarch yielded, and at a sign from the Emperor the choir sang the Sanctus anew. High and long sustained, the sublime anthem rolled above the battle and its brutalism. The thousands heard it, and halting, faced toward the apse, wondering what could be coming. It even reached into the vortex of combat, and turned all the unengaged there into peacemakers.

Another surprise still more effective succeeded. Boys with lighted candles, followed by bearers of smoking censers, bareheaded and in white, marched slowly from behind the altar toward the open gate, outside which they parted right and left, and stopped fronting the multitude. A broad banner hung to a cross-stick of gold, heavy with fringing of gold, the top of the staff overhung with fresh flowers in wreaths and garlands, the lower corners stayed by many streaming white ribbons in the hands of as many holy men in white woollen chasubles extending to the bare feet, appeared from the same retreat, carried by two brethren known to every one as janitors of the sacred chapel on the hill-front of Blacherne.

The Emperor, the Patriarch, the servers of the chalices, the whole body of assistants inside the railing, fell upon their knees while the banner was borne through the gate, and planted on the floor there. Its face was frayed and dim with age, yet the figure of the woman upon it was plain to sight, except as the faint gray smoke from the censers veiled it in a vanishing cloud.

Then there was an outburst of many voices:

"The Panagia! The Panagia!"

The feeling this time was reactionary.

"O Blessed Madonna!--Guardian of Constantinople!--Mother of God!--Christ is here!--Hosannas to the Son and to the Immaculate Mother!" With these, and other like exclamations, the mass precipitated itself forward, and, crowding near the historic symbol, flung themselves on the floor before it, grovelling and contrite, if not conquered.

The movement of the candle and censer bearers outside the gate forced Sergius nearer it; so when the Panagia was brought to a rest, he, being much taller than its guardians, became an object of general observation, and wishing to escape it if possible, he took off his high hat; whereupon his hair, parted in the middle, dropped down his neck and back fair and shining in the down-beating light.

This drew attention the more. Did any of the prostrate raise their eyes to the Madonna on the banner, they must needs turn to him next; and presently the superstitious souls, in the mood for miracles, began whispering to each other:

"See--it is the Son--it is the Lord himself!"

And of a truth the likeness was startling; although in saying this, the reader must remember the difference heretofore remarked between the Greek and Latin ideals.

About that time Sergius looked up to the Princess, whose face shone out of the shadows of the gallery with a positive radiance, and he was electrified seeing her rise from her chair, and wave a hand to him.

He understood her. The hour long talked of, long prepared for, was at last come--the hour of speech. The blood surged to his heart, leaving him pallid as a dead man. He stooped lower, covered his eyes with his hands, and prayed the wordless prayer of one who hastily commits himself to God; and in the darkness behind his hands there was an illumination, and in the midst of it a sentence in letters each a lambent flame--the Creed of Father Hilarion and the Princess Irene--our Lord's Creed:

"I BELIEVE IN GOD, AND JESUS CHRIST, HIS SON."

This was his theme!

With no thought of self, no consciousness but of duty to be done, trusting in God, he stood up, pushed gently through the kneeling boys and guardians of the Panagia, and took position where all eyes could look at the Blessed Mother slightly above him, and then to himself, in such seeming the very Son. It might have been awe, it might have been astonishment, it might have been presentiment; at all events, the moaning, sobbing, praying, tossing of arms, beating of breasts, with the other outward signs of remorse, grief and contrition grotesque and pitiful alike subsided, and the Church, apse, nave and gallery, grew silent--as if a wave had rushed in, and washed the life out of it.

"Men and brethren," he began, "I know not whence this courage to do comes, unless it be from Heaven, nor at whose word I speak, if not that Jesus of Nazareth, worker of miracles which God did by him anciently, yet now here in Real Presence of Body and Blood, hearing what we say, seeing what we do."

"Art thou not He?" asked a hermit, half risen in front of him, his wrap of undressed goatskin fallen away from his naked shoulders.

"No; his servant only am I, even as thou art--his servant who would not have forsaken him at Gethsemane, who would have given him drink on the Cross, who would have watched at the door of his tomb until laid to sleep by the Delivering Angel--his servant not afraid of Death, which, being also his servant, will not pass me by for the work I now do, if the work be not by his word."

The voice in this delivery was tremulous, and the manner so humble as to take from the answer every trace of boastfulness. His face, when he raised it, and looked out over the audience, was beautiful. The spectacle offered him in return was thousands of people on their knees, gazing at him undetermined whether to resent an intrusion or welcome a messenger with glad tidings.

"Men and brethren," he continued, more firmly, casting the old Scriptural address to the farthest auditor, "now are you in the anguish of remorse; but who told you that you had offended to such a degree? See you not the Spirit, sometimes called the Comforter, in you? Be at ease, for unto us are repentance and pardon. There were who beat our dear Lord, and spit upon him, and tore his beard; who laid him on a cross, and nailed him to it with nails in his hands and feet; one wounded him in the side with a spear; yet what did he, the Holy One and the Just? Oh! if he forgave them glorying in their offences, will he be less merciful to us repentant?"

Raising his head a little higher, the preacher proceeded, with increased assurance:

"Let me speak freely unto you; for how can a man repent wholly, if the cause of his sin be not laid bare that he may see and hate it?

"Now before our dear Lord departed out of the world, he left sayings, simple even to children, instructing such as would be saved unto everlasting life what they must do to be saved. Those sayings I call our Lord's Creed, by him delivered unto his disciples, fro............