This conversation did not, however, take place till the end of the first week. The first day the house-keeping seemed to have arranged itself without human intervention.
As they seated themselves at the luncheon-table the soft boom of the gun from St. Angelo proclaimed the hour of noon, and immediately another booming, as soft, but more musical, came from the near campanile of the Liberian basilica, where the great bell struck the Angelus, followed by all the bells in the tower in a festa ringing.
“That is Maria Assunta and her four ladies of honor,” the Signora said, with all the pride of a proprietor. “I may as well tell you that they and the church they belong to are my one weakness in Rome. I have been up the campanile to visit those bells, have read their inscriptions and touched their embossed sides, even while
they were being rung. An Italian boy who was with me exclaimed when I put my hand to the ringing rim of the great bell: ‘E un peccato! Ha fatto tacere Maria Santissima!’”
They smiled and listened. It pleased them to know what the Signora liked and how she liked.
“I remember the first time I saw that church,” she said, pleased to go on. “It was my first Christmas in Rome, and, after having heard a Mass at Aurora, I went out alone later, to lose myself and see what I would come to. I wandered into the long street that is now so familiar, and saw the tip of a campanile peeping at me over the hill in front like a beckoning finger. I followed, and presently knew where I must be, though I had carefully refrained from reading descriptions of anything. The morning was fresh and clear, but inside the church was quite dim, except that the round window high up the eastern end of the nave was thrust through by a long bar of sunshine that looked as though it might make a hole for itself out the other end, it was so live and solid. I recollected pictures I had seen of the Jewish tabernacle, with the two bars by which it was carried, or lifted, and I said to myself, Suppose another gold bar should be put in, and the whole church, and all who are in it, carried off over hill and dale, and through the air to some Promised Land fairer than Italy. There was a man up outside who seemed to be afraid of such a catastrophe; for he was struggling to draw together the two halves of a red curtain over the window. It was not easy to do—I presume he was resisted—but finally everything was shut out but a blush. All that upper end
of the nave was rosy, and pink reflections ran along the inner sides of the two rows of white columns, like ripples in water, and faded at the grand altar they had strained to reach. You could fancy they sighed with contentment when they did reach it. The sacristy-bell rang for a Mass beginning just as I entered, and I took that as an indication that I was to go no further till I had heard it. So I knelt close to the door in a little nook by the tribune. The priest stopped at the altar in the very farthest corner. I could see him between the columns, and so far away that I could hardly know when he knelt or rose. When the Mass was over, I seated myself where the bases of two columns before the Borghese Chapel form a grand marble throne, and there I stayed the whole forenoon.”
“Nothing strikes me more in Catholic churches,” Mr. Vane said, “than to see a worshipper attending to the service from some far nook or corner, with a crowd of people walking about between him and the altar. You do not seem to think it necessary to be near the priest or hear what he is saying. That is one great difference between you and Protestants. What their minister says is all. Though, to be sure,” he added, “one wouldn’t always know what the priest were saying, if one were close to him.”
“It isn’t necessary as long as we know what he is doing,” the Signora replied rather quickly. “Besides, Catholics, even uneducated ones, do know very nearly the words he is speaking, without hearing them. It is a mistake constantly made by Protestants to think that Catholics do not understand, because they themselves do not. They forget that there is little variety in the service, and that in all essential
parts one Mass is like all other Masses. An intelligent Catholic, whether he can read or not, can tell you just what the priest is doing as far off as he can see him, and knows just what prayers he should offer at the moment. As for the priest or his assistant not speaking distinctly, they often do, oftener than not; and when they do not, it is not strange. The same words, repeated over and over again, even when repeated with the whole heart, have a tendency to become indistinct, and to drop the consonants and keep only the vowels. The torso of sound is all right.”