One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.
There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts. It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that divide the road-ways. For many generations this village had been famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and Hans Andersen, in his Improvisatore, once gave the most vivid and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read this description, and few in this country at least have seen the procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration, especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of the Infiorata, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome hurried to see it.
It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice, especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly indescribable of circumstances—the loveliness of a southern summer's day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings; the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision; and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin integrity to the God of love, to Gesù Sacramentato, as the Italians so ingeniously and touchingly say.
Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere. Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family, there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else, concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the feet of the eager crowd.
From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons, and the Gobelins—more precious and more fair than the silken hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.
And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God, its mission will be over.
Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the "Infiorata," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?
Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere. Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this floral "via sacra."
The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads, and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession, somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of crushed flower-petals.
And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth; people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are detained at the inns of the white village whose gallerie of elm and ilex are so famous round Rome.