“Buona Pasqua!” said Filomena, when we came into breakfast this morning. Her Easter offering lay on the table, two hard-boiled eggs in a little basket of twisted bread at each plate. Soon after, Pompilia brought her inevitable regalo, a pair of lilac tissue paper fans (she has a relative who works in the paper factory). As I passed the door Pompilia’s annual basket of flowers, sent by her cousins every Easter, was brought in. Ignazio, the gardener, met us on the terrace with a pot of the biggest violets I have ever seen.
“Only yourself, Signora, and the Princess Doria, in all Rome, have these magnificent violets, the last novelty from Londra. The Prince has just introduced them. His gardener is my friend; così I am able to offer this bel’ vasino di fiori!”
A little later, Lorenzo, Villegas’ factotum, arrived with a basket of lemons from the Villino garden, covered with their own glossy green leaves and intoxicating blossoms; the petals are thick, pink outside, white inside, like orange flowers, only larger, and with a less cloying perfume.
We were up on the terrace in time to see the Host carried through the street; that was not allowed when we first came to live in the Borgo Nuovo. Little by little the old picturesque ceremonies of the Church are creeping back. It is a pretty sight. First march lovely little girls in white, scattering flowers; then come acolytes, deacons, young clerics—I am hazy about their titles—swinging censers, carrying the crucifix and banner; the arch-priest bearing the Sacrament in a golden monstrance, over which he holds protectingly the sides of his long, stiff, embroidered vestment, above his head a white and gold baldacchino supported by four young priests. The whole procession, children, acolytes, priests, attendant women in black veils, went singing across the piazza of St. Peter’s and down our street under a rain of pink and green disks of tissue paper thrown from the windows in lieu of flowers. Across the street Giuseppe, the baker, in white cap and drawers, naked to the waist, stood at his shop door cooling his heated body. Behind him in the dark shop as the boy opened the oven door and fed the flame with armfuls of brushwood, we caught the roar and blaze of fagots in a fiery cavern.
Giuseppe, a radical (the parroco says a Freemason, that means sure damnation) stood at his door as the procession passed and nodded to his little girl, the prettiest of the attendant cherubim, dropping rosebuds. It is pleasant to see one’s daughter chosen before others, and religion is an excellent thing in woman, according to Giuseppe’s philosophy. The crisp, appetizing smell of his hot bread suggested luncheon, which, in honor of the festa, was served on the terrace. The atmosphere has been ecstatically clear and golden all day, the view sublime, snow-clad peaks in the distance, the foreground purple, hazy, delicious. The bells of St. Peter’s (silent since Holy Thursday) have made constant music in the air. A fine day, with a trifle too much breeze for dignity; it blows the girls’ curls and draperies, even the scant skirts of the young priest pacing back and forth on the monastery terrace across the way, breviary in hand. He always ignores our presence, looks through us as if we were made of glass; but I catch him gazing with longing eyes at our roses and lilies that nod and gossip behind their screen of ivy; at the passion flowers and honeysuckles, haunts of the bee and butterfly. He knows as well as we do every stage of our roof garden’s history since that day six years ago when we potted the pink ivy geranium and the white carnation from the Campo di Fiori, the beginning of this earthly paradise. We have had a great deal of rain lately, which has been good for the yellow and orange-colored lichens that enamel the tiled roofs all about us, and alas! very good for slugs and snails. As to wall flowers, they simply ramp from every crack and cranny of the gorgeous cinque cento cornice, with its sharp-cut egg and dart (symbols of life and death), fragments of which still cling to the inner walls of our courtyard. The wild flowers run riot over the Corridojo di Castello, the quaint old fortified passage leading from the Vatican to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The Corridojo, built of tufa stone, is two stories high; the upper story is open like a loggia, the lower closed, with little slits to let in the light. Just behind our Palazzo the Corridojo crosses a back street by an enchanting arch, with the arms of the Pope who built or restored it carved on a stone escutcheon. In the old days the passage was used in time of danger as an escape from the Vatican to the fortress of Sant’ Angelo; the Pope himself always kept the keys, according to Patsy, who dropped in for tea and maritozzi and gave us a discourse on the subject.
“Who keeps the keys now?” I asked.
“Chi lo sa? Since 1870 the Corridojo has been walled up. I once got a peep into it. ’T is going to wrack and ruin, which is a shame and disgrace.”
“Whose fault is it?”
“Chi lo sa? Lay it to the municipality,—they deserve a few extra curses thrown in for luck, on account of the artificial rockwork with which they are defacing the Pincio and the Janiculum.”
“Perhaps the Corridojo is no-man’s-land, now that the Vatican belongs to the Pope and the fortress to the King?”