The spring is a slow one, but the violets are out, the fruit-trees in bloom, and the roses budding. There is no dust; the road, like all Tuscan roads, smooth and firm, curbed and guttered, weeded to the edge, fringed with unbroken borders of olive, mulberry, and vines. Along the wayside, and in the doorways, old women and children are braiding straw. Men and girls, in holiday attire, are flocking to the great triennial festa; some in carts, drawn by mild-eyed, dove-colored oxen; some on foot; others in jaunty spring-wagons, jerked along by plucky little ponies. The whole country is astir, with a general concentration on Prato. It must surely be something worth seeing that provokes such a deliberate crowd. Still, I asked no questions. It is so much more interesting to anticipate a spectacle vaguely than exactly. The indefinite anxiety about the form in which a dawning unknown will finally present itself is always more engrossing than mere curiosity to realize a picture distinctly foreshadowed. Yet, while speculating on what the good people of Prato could possibly make of the awful mystery they were undertaking to represent, I must confess that I felt apprehensive lest some awkward handling should affront the unutterably sacred.
At sunset we reached the fine old walls, and came to a halt just inside the gate. To drive further was impossible. The city swarmed with contadini from the neighborhood; with natives and forestieri from Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Lucca, and even Milan; with the beautiful maidens of Segna and the dark silk-venders of Pescia. It was evident, at a glance, that the ceremony was to be a procession. The piazzas were all ready for illumination; every window along the line of march displayed at least two lamps suspended from brackets of thick iron wire; every door and balcony was thronged with still, expectant faces.
As two of our party, a young artist and a mature cosmopolitan, were bent on seeing the cathedral, we managed to reach it after toiling through the crowd. It is wonderful how many objects your disciplined sight-seer can absorb at once. He is never satisfied with less than a constellation in his field of vision. The emotional jumble that maddens a novice serves only to tranquillize his nerves. He is utterly insensible to the charm of a separately entertained idea—the undulating, widening waves of thought dispersed evenly and unbrokenly from one central point of agitation. He is, apparently, never so happy as when the surface of sensation is pelted with fresh impressions, overshowered with novelties, tremulous and titillating with myriads of clashing circlets. But, although the Duomo is partly of the twelfth century, although it is said to enshrine the Sacratissima Cintola, although its choir contains the best specimens of Fra Lippo Lippi, I was not sorry to find the doors locked. My mind was so preoccupied with the coming Passion that I scarcely cared to do more than glance at the fine balcony built by Donatello for the exposition of the treasured girdle.
We drifted about the piazza till dark, when an electrical movement and murmur of the people announced the near approach of the initial moment. Instantly a thousand ladders are up against the house-sides; swiftly and mysteriously the throng of on-lookers melts away; the bands of Pistoia and Prato unite in a minor march; the momently deserted streets are filled with radiance and music—the great triennial festa has begun. Half-past seven; a perfect night; no moon, a low breeze, and faint starlight. We are in the rear of the starting-point; the procession must traverse the whole town—two hours—before it reaches us. But we shall have the best of it then, for the close is said to be even more solemn and better ordered than the start.
The narrow sidewalks are lined with spectators; doors, windows, and balconies alive with faces; but there is little movement and less conversation. Although we had a room of our own, we found ourselves addressing each other in whispers. At nine o'clock the silence deepened; the low rustling in the balconies ceased; our hostess crossed herself; the glare of coming torches lights up a living lane of men bare-headed, of women mutely praying with clasped hands; and then a solitary Roman knight, with casque and spangled robe, and steed unshod, glides noiselessly into view, like an apparition. After him a band of mounted knights, clad as at Calvary, ride slowly, silently together; then a blast from twenty trumpets, in superb unison, by twenty Bersaglieri of the Guard; and then—a sight which to this day brings the tears to my eyes as I recall it—thirty gladiatorial lictors, ten abreast, stripped to the waist, bare-headed, belted, filleted—all picked men of equal height—moving with a step that spurned the ground, light but swift and stern as fate. How that wonderful step startled us! How its determined energy transported us to Jerusalem! They have sustained it for two hours without the slightest symptom of weariness. They march on as if they could keep the pace forever.
After these, in helmet and cuirass, with shield and sword and spear, come the Roman legionaries, true to tradition in gait, garb, and array.
"Watch the sway of their spears," whispered our artist friend, as the long lances flashed through the air with the even sweep of an admiral's oars.
It was worth watching: nearly as much so as the wonderful stride of the lictors. And, all the while, you could not hear a footfall, a comment, or a murmur; the procession passed like a vision through the heart of that still, torchlit, reverent multitude. But, as the dread sequel approached, I began to tremble—began to fear they might overdo it—although the marching of those drilled lictors and the swaying of those legionary spears might have reassured me. Fresh companies of knights, fresh sections of the cohort are filing forward, every man of them as earnest and absorbed as if he were climbing the hill of the Crosses Three. Not a sign or gesture of levity, distraction, or fatigue; not even a side-glance at the living walls that hemmed them in.
As the vanguard melts away, the sudden glare of many torches, the sudden chaunt of many voices, again invade the solemn stillness with music and light. Marshalled groups of ecclesiastics, each group with its separate choir, are seen advancing in endless perspective; and in the centre of each choir, between two torch-bearers, a lovely boy, with downcast eyes and rigid face, supports some symbol of the Passion. One by one, at measured intervals, the precious emblems of salvation are thus successively displayed—each with its guard of acolytes, its escort of deacons and sub-deacons, its swelling choral, its angelic boy-bearer. Those rapt, concentrated, inspired young faces! I see them now bending in meek beauty over the Scourge, the Crown, the Reed, the Cross, the Nails, the Sponge, the Spear.