When great personages are received their suites are also presented, after which the Pope retires with his guest to the small private throne-room.
Before coming to the Pope's presence it is necessary to pass through many anterooms, the Sala Clementina, the hall of the palfrenieri and sediarii,—that is, of the grooms and chair-porters,—the hall of the gendarmes, the antechamber of the Palatine Guard, that of the officers on duty, the hall of the Arras, that of the chamberlains and Noble Guards and at last the antechamber of the Maestro di Camera—there are eight in all. Persons received in audience are accompanied by the 'camerieri segreti,' who do the honours in full dress, wearing their chains and carrying their staves.
The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of a yellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of several former Popes stand upon marble columns.
To the Pope's bedroom, only his private valet and his secretaries have access. It is of small dimensions, and contains only a bed, in an alcove adorned with graceful marble columns, a writing-table, an arm-chair and kneeling stool, and one wardrobe.
Besides these, there is his private study, in which the table and chair stand upon a little carpeted platform, other tables being placed on each side upon the floor, together with an extremely uncomfortable but magnificent straight-backed arm-chair, which is one of the gifts offered on the occasion of the episcopal jubilee. There is, moreover, a little room containing only a lounge and an old-fashioned easy-chair with 'wings' and nothing else. It is here that the Holy Father retires to take his afternoon nap, and the robust nature of his nerves is proved by the fact that he lies down with his eyes facing the broad light of the window.
The private apartment occupies the second floor, according to Italian reckoning, though we Americans should call it the third; it is on a level with Raphael's loggie. The floor above it is inhabited by Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State.
The 'pontifical court,' as it is called, consists (1898) of Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Mario Mocenni, the pro-prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, a personage of the highest importance, who has sole control of everything connected with the Vatican palace and all the vast mass of adjoining buildings; the Maggiordomo, who, besides many other functions, is the manager of the museums, galleries and inhabited apartments; the Maestro di Camera, who nearly corresponds to a master of ceremonies, and superintends all audiences; the almoner and manager of the papal charities, assisted by a distinguished priest, who is also a lawyer, formerly secretary to the well-known Monsignor de Merode; a monk of the Dominican order, who supervises the issuing of books printed at the Vatican; a chief steward; four private secretaries, who take turns of service lasting a week for each, and are always with the Pope, and finally the chief of the Vatican police. Moreover, his Holiness has his private preacher, who delivers sermons before him in Advent and Lent, and his confessor, both of whom are always Capuchin monks, in accordance with a very ancient tradition.
It must not be supposed by the uninitiated that these few persons in any way represent the central directive administration of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, the only one of them who is occupied in that larger field is Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The others are, strictly speaking, the chief personages of the pontifical household, as we should say. But their offices are not sinecures. The Pope's restless energy extracts work from the men about him as one squeezes water from a sponge. In the days of Pius the Ninth, after the fall of the temporal power, the Vatican was overrun and overcrowded with useless but well-paid officials, officers and functionaries great and small, who took refuge there against the advancing wave of change. When Leo the Thirteenth had been on the throne only a few weeks, there was sold everywhere a comic print representing the Pope, with a huge broom, sweeping all the useless people pell-mell down the steps of the Vatican into the Piazza of Saint Peter's. As often happens, the caricaturist saw the truth. In a reign that has lasted twenty years, Leo the Thirteenth has done away with much that was useless, worthless and old-fashioned, and much that cumbered the narrow patch of earth on which so important a part of the world's business is transacted. He is a great simplifier of details, and a strong leveller of obstructions, so that his successor in the pontificate will find it a comparatively easy thing to keep the mechanism in order in its present state.
THE VATICAN FROM THE PIAZZA OF SAINT PETER'S