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What else?" Sweat began to break out on Bagot's face, and he spoke as though he were carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders, low and brokenly. "Then I said, 'And if virgins has it so fine, why didn't you stay one?" "Blasphemer!" said the priest in a stern, reproachful voice, his face turning a little pale, and he brought the crucifix to his lips. "To the mother of your child shame! What more?"
Above that lean figure of death looked out the worn old face, serene and confident. He was again holding the book and crucifix clasped to his breast, as he stepped to the edge of the scaffold. The cry died to a murmur and ceased abruptly as he began his speech, every word of which was audible. "Christian people," he began, "I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's holy Catholic Church."
He is now a Lazarus in rags and poverty and weariness, but immortal, and a son of the Lord God Almighty; and the prayer he now offers, though amid many superstitions, I believe God will hear; and among the Apostles whose sculptured forms stand in the surrounding niches he will at last be lifted, and into the presence of that Christ whose sufferings are represented by the crucifix before which he bows; and be raised in due time out of all his poverties into the glorious home built for him and built for us by 'Him who maketh the Seven Stars and Orion."
Others thronged around the balustrade, shouting "Vivent les gueux!" and hoarsely commanding the image to join in the beggars' cry. Then, leaving the spot, the mob roamed idly about the magnificent church, sneering at the idols, execrating the gorgeous ornaments, scoffing at crucifix and altar.
A writer of fiction could indeed produce some dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's 'Nouvelles, and christen it 'The Crucifix of Crema. And how delighted would Webster have been if he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath! He might have placed it in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his Duchess.
The regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them; and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty thousand soldiers at once."
Again, in the height of Barbarossa's power, when Charles V., hoisting the crucifix at his masthead, led his crusading Spaniards against Goletta, and it fell, after a month's desperate siege, without pause or rest the troops, half dead with heat and thirst, pressed on to Tunis to liberate twenty thousand Christian captives.
From the representations, descriptions, and remains of it, it may be gathered that the whole was much carved, niched, and canopied, and decorated in colour; and there is a note extant showing that Lambert Bernardi in the sixteenth century repaired "the painted cloth of the crucifix over the high altar."
The usual attitude of the Mater Dolorosa by the crucifix is that of intense but resigned sorrow; the hands clasped, the head declined and shaded by a veil, the figure closely wrapped in a dark blue or violet mantle.
Many years had passed now since it had seen any sort of occupation save that of bats, owls and mice. There was a fireplace at the far end that had long been blocked up, but that still showed curious carving, the heads of monkeys and rabbits, winged birds, a twisting dragon with a long tail, and the figure of a saint holding up a crucifix.
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