But the clamor continued; I heard such a clatter of hobnailed shoes on the pavement, besides, that I could bear it no longer, got up, slipped into some of my clothes, opened the door, and descended by our winding private stairway into the court.
The door of St. Sabas's tomb was wide open!
Were the graves opening, and the dead taking the air? Did this tomb open of its own accord? Out of its illuminated interior would the saint stalk forth and join this great procession, the reveille of the quick and the slow?
From above and from below, up stairs and down stairs, out of caves and grottos and all odd roosting-places, the monks and pilgrims were pouring and streaming into the court; and the bells incessantly called more and more importunately as the loiterers delayed.
The church was open, and lighted at the altar end. I glided in with the other ghostly, hastily clad, and yawning pilgrims. The screen at the apse before the holy place, a mass of silver and gilding, sparkled in the candlelight; the cross above it gleamed like a revelation out of the gloom; but half of the church was in heavy shadow. From the penetralia came the sound of priestly chanting; in the wooden stalls along each side of the church stood, facing the altar, the black and motionless figures of the brothers. The pilgrims were crowding and jostling in at the door. A brother gave me a stall near the door, and I stood in it, as statue-like as I could, and became a brother for the time being.
At the left of the door stood a monk with impassive face; before him on a table were piles of wax tapers and a solitary lighted candle. Every pilgrim who entered bought a taper and paid two coppers for it. If he had not the change the monk gave him change, and the pilgrim carefully counted what he received and objected to any piece he thought not current. You may wake these people up any time of night, and find their perceptions about money unobscured. The seller never looked at the buyer, nor at anything except the tapers and the money.
The pilgrims were of all ages and grades; very old men, stout, middle-aged men, and young athletic fellows; there were Russians from all the provinces; Greeks from the isles, with long black locks and dark eyes, in fancy embroidered jackets and leggins, swarthy bandits and midnight pirates in appearance. But it tends to make anybody look like a pirate to wake him up at twelve o'clock at night, and haul him into the light with no time to comb his hair. I dare say that I may have appeared to these honest people like a Western land-pirate. And yet I should rather meet some of those Greeks in a lighted church than outside the walls at midnight.