noon
He had fancied that where there was no head there could be no house , that where the leader was gone the army must scatter and be hewn in pieces . But as he stayed on , from week to week and from month to month , he learned to understand that the Church had never been more alive , more growing , and more militant than at that very time when the true and rightful pontiffs were made outcasts one after the other , while their places , earthly and spiritual , were given to instruments of feud and party . For the Church was the world , while Rome meant seven or eight thousand half-starved and turbulent ruffians , with their wives and children , eager always for change , because it seemed that no change could be for the worse . But in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter there was peace ; there the white-haired priests solemnly officiated in the morning and at noon , and toward evening more than a hundred rich voices of boys and men sang the vesper psalms in the Gregorian tones ; there slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar , and the incense floated in rich clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting to the ancient floor ; there , as in many a minster and cloister of the world , the Church was still herself , as she was , and is , and always will be ; there words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned which had been familiar to the lips of the Apostles , which are familiar to our lips and ears to-day , and of which we are sure that lips unborn will repeat them to centuries of generations . Gilbert , type of Christian layman , kneeled in the old cathedral , and chanted softly after the choir , and breathed the incense-laden air that seemed as natural to him as ever the hay-scented breeze of summer had been , and he was infinitely refreshed in soul and body . But then again , alone in his room at the Lion Inn , late in the night , when he had been poring over the beautifully written copy of Boethius , given him by the Abbot of Sheering , he often opened wide the wooden shutters of his window and looked out at the castle and at the flowing river that eddied and gleamed in the moonlight . Then life rose before him in a mystery for him to solve by deeds , and he knew that he was not to dream out his years in the shadowy city , and the strong old instinct of his race bade him go forth and cut his fortune out of the world 's flank alive .