"Let the body receive Christian burial," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
"Our vengeance ceases with death."
This truly Christian sentiment was received with universal approval.
Death seemed to all a good place at which to stop.
"Brethren," said the Deacon Militant, as he struggled with the resurgent
Stevens, "there seems some life here! Methinks the heart beats, and--"
The remainder of the passage from the ritual was lost to Amidon by
reason of the fact that Stevens had placed one foot against the Deacon's
stomach and hurled that august officer violently to the floor.
"Let every test of life be applied," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
"Perchance some higher will than ours decrees his preservation. Take the
body hence for a time; if possible, restore him to life, and we will
consider his fate."
The recess which followed was clearly necessary to afford an opportunity
for the calming of the risibilities of the Martyrs. The stage, too, had
to be reset. Amidon's ethnological studies had not equaled his reading
in _belles-lettres_, and he was unable to see the deep significance of
these rites from an historical standpoint, and that here was a survival
of those orgies to which our painted and skin-clad ancestors devoted
themselves in spasms of religious frenzy, gazed at by the cave-bear and
the mammoth.
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