And in that day only the Cathedral and the Rock
will stand out above the flood.
And this was a Polchester Jubilee. There may have been some consciousness
of that little old woman driving in her carriage through the London
streets, but in the main the Town suddenly took possession, cried aloud
that these festivities were for Herself, that for a week at least the Town
would assert Herself, bringing into Her celebration the Cathedral that was
her chief glory, but of whom, nevertheless, she was afraid; the Rock upon
which she was built, that never changed, the country that surrounded and
supported her, the wild men who had belonged to her from time immemorial,
the River that encircled her.
That week seemed to many, on looking back, a strangely mad time, days
informed with a wildness for which there was no discernible reason--men
and women and children were seized that week with some licence that they
loved while it lasted, but that they looked back upon with fear when it
was over. What had come over them? Who had been grinning at them?
The strange things that occurred that week seemed to have no individual
agent.
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