Then
another form of the exaltation of faith glowed, beneath the crypt, in the
Church of the Rosary, where nights were spent in a paradise of rapture,
amidst the silent delights of the communion, the mute appeals in which
the whole being pines, burns, and soars aloft. And as though the cries
raised before the Grotto and the perpetual adoration of the Rosary were
not sufficient, that clamour of ardent entreaty burst forth afresh on the
walls of the crypt around him; and here it was eternised in marble, here
it would continue shrieking the sufferings of humanity even into the
far-away ages. It was the marble, it was the walls themselves praying,
seized by that shudder of universal woe which penetrated even the world's
stones. And, at last, the prayers ascended yet higher, still higher,
soared aloft from the radiant Basilica, which was humming and buzzing
above him, full as it now was of a frantic multitude, whose mighty voice,
bursting into a canticle of hope, he fancied he could hear through the
flagstones of the nave. And it finally seemed to him that he was being
whirled away, transported, as though he were indeed amidst the very
vibrations of that huge wave of prayer, which, starting from the dust of
the earth, ascended the tier of superposed churches, spreading from
tabernacle to tabernacle, and filling even the walls with such pity that
they sobbed aloud, and that the supreme cry of wretchedness pierced its
way into heaven with the white spire, the lofty golden cross, above the
steeple.
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