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Monsignor Masterman had begun to stare, almost with unintelligent eyes, at the thronged street, beneath, watching the great carriages come past, each surmounted by a crown with its proper supporters, each surrounded by a small guard drawn from the troops that had ridden by just now.

He identified a few here and there; and his heart gave a strange leap as the Imperial Crown of England came in sight, held up by the Lion and the Unicorn, and beneath it, within the gilded coach, the face of a boy capped and robed in scarlet.

And then he looked up again, startled by a silence broken only by the footsteps of the horses and the wheels over the matted roadway, and the murmur of talking.
The piazza was now one sea of white and purple, with emblems, gold and silver and jewelled, shining here and there; the green strip was gone; for the Papal procession was begun; and then, on the instant, as he looked, there was a new group standing beneath the giant columns of the portico, and the cry of the silver trumpets told to the thousands that waited that the Vicar of Christ had come out into this city that was again the City of God.
Very slowly he came down the steps, a tiny white and gemmed figure, yet perfectly visible on the high throne on which he was borne, his hand swaying as he came, and the huge fans moving behind him like protecting deities.