Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/204

 'It was so strange about the ghost.'

'Yes.'

Again his nostrils sniffed the twilight air.

With Roger she saw the great religious procession that comes but once in three years. They sat upon the iron balcony of a prominent English resident, a pious woman but lately turned to 'The Church.' She hoped that through this spectacle faith and hope might be planted in the hard, irreligious heart of the young man. The sun had set, and the city was sunk in night. Christo Morto and Good Friday. Pilate had washed his hands. Peter had denied his Lord. Judas had hanged himself, and Christ not yet risen.

First came ancient Roman horsemen, flashing through the dark, then infantry, a stupendous number of laymen bearing torches, some red and some green, and boys and priests and marshals. There was almost a suggestion of blood lust in the rather ugly insistence upon the symbols of Christ's death, but the words said during the hours upon the cross, printed upon silk banners, were moving in their tragedy. Last was a conclave of priests surrounded by torchbearers in so black a black that only their white faces and bony hands were visible. These preceded and followed the effigy of the dead Christ which was borne under a black canopy and on a black litter as the Brothers of Mercy bear their dead. Then Roger pointed out the weird corpse-flowers carried delicately by devout little boys. They were, said Roger, es-