Page:Dreams and Images.djvu/308

Ranged the licentiates, and bachelors,
And, out beyond, the thousand students,—gay
In plumes and ruffs, or rags and disrepair,—
There entered Bacharel Frei Constantino
Citing the obligations; whereupon
Egidio began his argument
With exposition and arrangement clear,
And summary abrupt and crushing, as
His old experience in the courts had taught,—
So free in tone and doctrine that the throng
Swayed on their benches, beating noisily
Great tomes together like the roll of drums.
Then silence for Suarez's quodlibet;
As half-reluctant, without emphasis,
His cold unwavering voice proposed the plan
Of his objection,—When uproarious
Upon the instant, Frei Egidio
In tones of thunder shouted o'er the hall,—
"Nego majorem!"—the scholastic world's
Unmitigated insult! How would he,
Spain's boasted theologian, reply
To Portugal's? The Jesuits around
Suarez's rostrum marvelled, whispered, turned,
And hid their faces, when they saw him bowed
Silent a moment, ere descending, calm,
He led them home across the jeering town.
Then the mad acclamations; bells of shrine
And monastery on the hills; the sweep
Of robes prelatical, the cavalcade
Of gorgeous nobles into Santa Cruz;
The blare of trumpets, and the lanterns strung
Yellow beneath the moon; the beggar throngs;
The maskers down the lanes; the nightingales