It is very dim
except when its altar is blazing with candles and its hanging lamps
lighted. As we have already said, a visit to this chapel or merely
passing through it, for a person who has confessed, satisfies the
outward conditions of the Pardon.
In the gran ruota which we were about to witness the Neapolitans
entered in an unbroken line at the lower door, passed out without
stopping at the upper, ran down the side-aisle of the church and out of
the door, in again at the great door, up the nave, and again through
the chapel, repeating this over and over for fifteen or twenty minutes.
While they make the wheel no one else enters the chapel: all are
spectators.
It was for these poor people the supreme moment. They had come from
afar at an expense which they could ill afford; they had endured
fatigue, perhaps hunger; and they had been mocked at. But, so far, they
had accomplished their task. They had confessed their sins with all the
fervor and sincerity of which they were capable, had visited the
birthplace, the home, the basilica and the distant mountain-retreat of
St. Francis, and they had gathered the miraculous yellow fennel-flowers
of the mountain.
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