THE ALL-NIGHT VIGIL: A CROWD OF VISITORS ARRIVES

But while we were thus employed and the virgins' voices singing psalms mingled with the lamentations were filling the place, somehow the news had quickly spread throughout the whole neighbourhood, and all the people that lived near were streaming towards the place, so that the entrance hall could no longer hold the concourse.

When the all-night vigil for her, accompanied ^[69] by hymn-singing, as in the case of martyrs' festivals, was finished, and the dawn came, the multitude of men and women that had flocked in from all the neighbouring country were interrupting the psalms with wailings. But I, sick at heart though I was owing to the calamity, was yet contriving, so far as was possible with what we had, that no suitable [994A] accompaniment of such a funeral should be omitted.