After Crescentius had departed from the chamber, Stephania gazed long and wistfully into the starlit night without, so calm and so serene.
Then a laugh, wild and shrill, broke from her lips, and sinking back among her cushions, a shower of tears came to her relief.
CHAPTER IX
THE SERMON IN THE GHETTO
he Contubernium Hebræorum, as it is loftily styled in the pontifical edicts of the time, the Roman Ghetto, was a district of considerable extent, reclaimed originally from the swamps of the Tiber at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, and surrounded either by lofty walls, or houses which were not permitted to have even a loop-hole to the exterior. Five massive gates, guarded by the halberdiers of the Roman magistrate were opened at sun-rise and closed at sun-set to emit and to receive back their jealously guarded inmates, objects of unutterable contempt and loathing with the populace, into whose heart the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages had infused a veneration and love for the person of the Redeemer rather than for his attributes, and whose passions and devotions were as yet unalloyed by the skepticism and indifference which began to pervade the higher ranks of society in the century of the Renaissance.
Three or four times a year, a grand attempt at conversion was made, the Pope appointing the most renowned ecclesiastics to deliver the sermons.
On the occasion about to be described towards the end of the year 999, the Jews had good reason to expect a more than commonly devout throng in the train of the pontifical delegate. They had prepared accordingly. Upon entering the gates of the Ghetto the beholder was struck with the dreary and melancholy aspect of the houses and the emptiness of the little shops which appeared like holes in the walls. Such precious wares as they possessed had been as carefully concealed as those they had abstracted on the eve of their departure from Egypt. The exceeding narrowness of the streets, which were in some parts scarcely wide enough to allow two persons to walk abreast, and seemed in a manner arched, in-as-much as one story extended above the others, increased the disagreeable effect. Noisome smells greeted the nostrils on every turn and the flutter of rags from numerous dark lattices seemed to testify to the poverty within.
Such the Roman Ghetto appeared on the eve of the great harangue for which the reigning Pontiff, Gregory V, had, in accordance with the tradition of the Holy See, delegated the most renowned light of the church. Not a Jew was to be seen, much less a Jewess, throughout the whole line of march from the gates of the Ghetto to the large open square where they held their markets, and where they had been summoned to assemble in mass. The long narrow and intricate windings misled many who did not keep pace with the Pope's delegate and his attendants, but the greater part of the rabble rushed into the square like a mountain stream, leaping over opposing boulders, shouting, laughing, yelling and crushing one another, as if they were taking possession of a conquered city.
The square itself was paved with volcanic tufa, very unevenly laid. In the center was a great fountain of granite without the least ornament, intended exclusively for the use of the inmates of this dreary quarter. Into this square radiated numberless streets and alleys giving its disordered architecture the appearance of being reft and split into chasms, some of the houses being doubtfully propped with timbers.