All this had now disappeared for Margaret, and a new enchantment had taken the place of the old illusion and disappointment. For she[220] was now able to disentangle the strange jumble of ancient and modern Rome. In this more understanding and familiar view, she says:—
"The old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the emperors, drunk with blood and gold, return for us. The seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more."
In the later Papal Rome she discerns, through the confusion of rite and legend, a sense which to her marks the growth "of the human spirit struggling to develop its life." And the Rome of that day was dear to her in spite of its manifold corruptions; dear for the splendor of the race, surviving every enslaving and deforming influence; dear for the new-born hope of freedom which she considered safe in the nursing of Pope Pius.
Most of the occasions chronicled by Margaret in her letters of this period are of the sort familiarly known to travellers, and even to readers of books of travel.
The prayers for the dead, early in November, the festival of San Carlo Borromeo, the veiling of a nun, the worship of the wooden image called "the most Holy Child," idolatrous, Margaret thinks, as that of the Capitoline Jove, the blessing of the animals, the festival of the Magi at the Propaganda,—these events are all described[221] by her with much good thought and suggestion.
She saw the Pope occasionally at the grand ceremonies of the Church, and saw the first shadow fall upon his popularity, partly in consequence of some public utterances of his which seemed to Margaret "deplorably weak in thought and absolute in manner," and which she could not but interpret as implying that wherever reform might in future militate against sacerdotal traditions, it would go to the wall, in order that the priest might triumph.
The glorious weather had departed almost as soon as she had sung its praises, namely, on the 18th of December; after which time her patience was sorely tried by forty days of rain, accompanied by "abominable reeking odors, such as blessed cities swept by the sea-breeze never know." We copy from one of her letters a graphic picture of this time of trial:—
"It has been dark all day, though the lamp has only been lit half an hour. The music of the day has been, first, the atrocious arias which last in the Corso till near noon. Then came the wicked organ-grinder, who, apart from the horror of the noise, grinds exactly the same obsolete abominations as at home or in England, the 'Copenhagen Waltz,' 'Home, Sweet Home,' and all that! The cruel chance that both an[222] English my-lady and a councillor from the provinces live opposite, keeps him constantly before my window, hoping for bajocchi.
"Within, the three pet dogs of my landlady, bereft of their walk, unable to employ their miserable legs and eyes, exercise themselves by a continual barking, which is answered by all the dogs in the neighborhood. An urchin returning from the laundress, delighted with the symphony, lays down his white bundle in the gutter, seats himself on the curb-stone, and attempts an imitation of the music of cats as a tribute to the concert.
"The door-bell rings. Chi è? ('Who is it?') cries the handmaid. Enter a man poisoning me at once with the smell of the worst possible cigars, insisting I shall look upon frightful, ill-cut cameos and worse-designed mosaics, made by some friend of his. Man of ill odors and meanest smile! I am no countess to be fooled by you."