"I left Rome," she says, "after those days, with entire determination, but with infinite reluctance. America seemed the place of exile, Rome the home of sympathy and comfort.... And now I must confess that, after so many intense and vivid pages of life, this visit to Rome, once a theme of fervent and solemn desire, becomes a mere page of embellishment in a serious and instructive volume."
Here follows a disquisition on "the Roman problem for the American thinker"; the last passage gives her conclusion:—
"A word to my countrymen and countrywomen, who, lingering on the edge of the vase, are lured by its sweets, and fall into its imprisonment. It is a false, false superiority to which you are striving to join yourself. A prince of puppets is not a prince, but a puppet; a superfluous duke is no dux; a titular count does not count. Dresses, jewels, and equipages of tasteless extravagance; the sickly smile of disdain for simple people; the clinging together, by turns eager and haughty, of a clique that becomes daily smaller in intention, and whose true decline consists in its numerical increase—do not dream that these lift you in any true way—in any true sense. For Italians to believe that it does, is natural; for Englishmen to believe it, is discreditable; for Americans, disgraceful."
The Terrys were at this time living in Palazzo Odescalchi. Our mother observes that "the whole of my modest house in Boylston Place would easily, as to solid contents, lodge in the largest of those lofty rooms. The Place itself would equally lodge in the palace. I regard my re-found friends with wonder, and expect to see them execute some large and stately manœuvre, indicating their possession of all this space."
It was Holy Week when they arrived in Rome, and she was anxious that the "neophytes" should see as much as possible of its impressive ceremonies. She took them to St. Peter's to see the washing of the pilgrims' feet by noble Roman ladies, and to hear the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel. These functions are briefly chronicled in the Journal and more fully in "From the Oak to the Olive."
"Solid fact as the performance of the functions remains, for us it assumes a forcible unreality, through the impeding intervention of black dresses and veils, with what should be women under them. But as these creatures push like battering-rams, and caper like he-goats, we shall prefer to adjourn the question of their humanity, and to give it the benefit of a doubt. We must except, however, our countrywomen from dear Boston, who were not seen otherwise than decently and in order."
A vivid description follows of the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, ending with the illumination of St. Peter's.
"A magical and unique spectacle it certainly is, with the well-known change from the paper lanterns to the flaring lampions. Costly is it of human labor, and perilous to human life. And when I remembered that those employed in it receive the sacrament beforehand, in order that imminent death may not find them out of a state of grace, I thought that its beauty did not so much signify."
In the Journal she writes, April 19: "It is the golden calf of old which has developed into the papal bull."
At a concert she saw the Abbé Liszt, "whose vanity and desire to attract attention were most apparent."