The Dawn of All

The first objects of which he became aware were his own hands clasped on his lap before him, andthe cloth cuffs from which they emerged; and it was these latter that puzzled him.

So engrossed washe that at first he could not pay attention to the strange sounds in the air about him; for these cuffs,though black, were marked at their upper edges with a purpled line such as prelates wear.

Hemechanically turned the backs of his hands upwards; but there was no ring on his finger.

Then helifted his eyes and looked.He was seated on some kind of raised chair beneath a canopy.

A carpet ran down over a couple ofsteps beneath his feet, and beyond stood the backs of a company of ecclesiastics-secular priests incotta, cassock, and biretta, with three or four bare-footed Franciscans and a couple of Benedictines.Ten yards away there rose a temporary pulpit with a back and a sounding-board beneath the opensky; and in it was the tall figure of a young friar, preaching, it seemed, with extraordinary fervour.Around the pulpit, beyond it, and on all sides to an immense distance, so far as he could see,stretched the heads of an incalculable multitude, dead silent, and beyond them again trees, greenagainst a blue summer sky.He looked on all this, but it meant nothing to him.

It fitted on nowhere with his experience; heknew neither where he was, nor at what he was assisting, nor who these people were, nor who thefriar was, nor who he was himself.

He simply looked at his surroundings, then back at his hands anddown his figure.He gained no knowledge there, for he was dressed as he had never been dressed before.

His capedcassock was black, with purple buttons and a purple cincture.

He noticed that his shoes shone withgold buckles; he glanced at his breast, but no cross hung there.

He took off his biretta, nervously,lest some one should notice, and perceived that it was black with a purple tassel.

He was dressedthen, it seemed, in the costume of a Domestic Prelate.

He put on his biretta again.Then he closed his eyes and tried to think; but he could remember nothing.

There was, it seemed,no continuity anywhere. But it suddenly struck him that if he knew that he was a Domestic Prelate,and if he could recognize a Franciscan, he must have seen those phenomena before.

Where? When?