Now they were to receive the Pardon. The chains of
hell had fallen from them in confession: at the moment of entering the
chapel the bonds of Purgatory would also be loosened, and if they
should drop dead there, or die before having committed another sin,
they would fly straight to heaven as larks into the morning sky. No
passing from a miserable present to a miserable Purgatory, but
unimaginable bliss in an instant. Their ideal bliss might not be the
highest which the human mind is capable of conceiving, but it was the
highest that they could conceive, and their souls strained blindly
upward to that point where imagination faints against the thrilling
cord with which the body holds the spirit in tether. To these people
heaven was not a mere theological expression, a vague place which might
or might not be: it was as real as the bay and the sky of Naples and
the smoking volcano that nursed for ever their sense of unknown
terrors. It was as real as the poppies in their grass and the oranges
ripening on their trees. Maria Santissima, in her white robe and the
blue mantle where they could count the creases, was there, with ever
the vision of a Babe in her arms, and Gesu, the arms of whose cross
should fall into folds of a glorious garment about his naked crucified
form, in sleeves to his hands, in folds about his feet and raised into
a crown about his head.
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