"_Jésus, Fils de Marie, ayez pitié de nous!_"
Then with a surge rose up the plainsong melody.
"_Parce, Domine!_" sang the people. "_Parce populo tuo! Ne in aeternum irascaris nobis._"
"_Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto._"
"_Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen._"
Then again the single voice and the multitudinous answer:
And then an adjuration to her whom He gave to be our Mother.
Then once more the singing; then the cry, more touching than all:
Then the kindling shout that brought the blood to ten thousand faces:
"_Hosanna! Hosanna au Fils de David!_" (I shook to hear it).
"_Hosanna!_" cried the priest, rising from his knees with arms flung wide.
"_Hosanna!_" roared the people, swift as an echo.
"_Hosanna! Hosanna!_" crashed out again and again, like great artillery.
Yet there was no movement among those piteous prostrate lines. The Bishop, the _ombrellino_ over him, passed on slowly round the circle; and the people cried to Him whom he bore, as they cried two thousand years ago on the road to the city of David. Surely He will be pitiful upon this day--the Jubilee Year of His Mother's graciousness, the octave of her assumption to sit with Him on His throne!
"_Jésus, vous êtes mon Seigneur et mon Dieu!_"
If ever "suggestion" could work a miracle, it must work it now. "We expect the miracles during the procession to-morrow and on Sunday," a priest had said to me on the previous day. And there I stood, one of a hundred thousand, confident in expectation, thrilled by that voice, nothing doubting or fearing; there were the sick beneath me, answering weakly and wildly to the crying of the priest; and yet there was no movement, no sudden leap of a sick man from his bed as Jesus went by, no vibrating scream of joy--"_Je suis guéri! Je suis guéri!_"--no tumultuous rush to the place, and the roar of the _Magnificat_, as we had been led to expect.
The end was coming near now. The monstrance had reached the image once again, and was advancing down the middle. The voice of the priest grew more passionate still, as he tossed his arms and cried for mercy
"_Jésus, ayez pitié de nous!--ayez pitié[Transcriber's Note: original had "pitiê"] de nous!_"
And the people, frantic with ardour and desire, answered him in a voice of thunder: