Then Pierre again found himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty lamps, scintillating like stars.

The high altar, at which the Pope alone can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under its gigantic, flowery _baldacchino_, the casting and gilding of which cost two and twenty thousand pounds.

But suddenly Pierre remembered the ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could hear nothing of it.

As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away piping of a flute, was wafted to him.

Then the volume of sound slowly increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an organ peal.