“I am constantly going to the Vatican in this breathless way,” the Signora said, as they drove rapidly through the hot sunshine. “With the usual sublime ignorance of men, and especially of clergymen, of the intricacies of the feminine toilet, my kind friends always give me ten minutes to prepare. One needs to keep one’s papal court dress laid out all ready for use at a moment’s warning. Fortunately, it is very simple. But Bianca has found time to mount the papal colors,” she added, seeing a bunch of yellow jasmine tucked into her friend’s belt.
“Is it allowed?” the girl asked doubtfully. “I can leave it in the carriage. But I always like to have a flower about me.”
“Oh! keep it,” her friend replied, and smiled, but suppressed the words that would have followed. For while Bianca Vane carried that face about with her, she never lacked a flower.
They were just in time for the audience, and an hour later drove slowly homeward through the silent town. Bianca was leaning back in the corner of the carriage with her eyes shut. The audience had been especially pleasant for her; for the Holy Father, seeing her kneel with her hands tightly clasped, and her eyes, full of delight, raised to his face, had smiled and laid his hand on her head, instead of giving it to her to kiss. The others said but little. The languor of the hour was upon them.
“Does any one say, Signora, that the Pope has a shining face?” Mr. Vane asked.
“Certainly,” she replied.
“Then I am not original in thinking that I found something luminous about him,” the gentleman went on. “It is as if I had seen a lamp. And what a sweet voice he has!
He said ‘la Chiesa’ in a tone that made me think of David mourning over Absalom.”
Mr. Vane had been much impressed by the beautiful presence of the reverend Pontiff, and had behaved himself, not only like a gentleman, but like a Catholic. The Signora had seen how he blushed in kissing the Pope’s hand, not as if with shame at paying such an act of homage, but as if some new sentiment of tender reverence and humility had just entered his heart. It had been very pleasant to her to see this, both on account of the love she bore the object of the homage, and the respect she had, and wished to retain, for him who paid it.
The driver held in his panting horses, and walked them on the side of the streets where a narrow strip of shadow cooled the heat of the burning stones; the pines and cypress in the gardens they passed, which in the morning had been so full of silvery twitterings that the fine, sweet sounds seemed almost to change the color of them and make them glisten with brightness, were now sombre and silent. The birds were all hid in their dark green shadows, or perched in cool, sunless angles and nooks of vases, balustrades, statues, and cornices of church or palace. Here and there a workman lay stretched at length on the sidewalk or on steps, sleeping soundly.