“Sprinkle with holy sounds the air, as the priest with the hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them.”
Some one has said of this street that it is like a boa-constrictor after it has swallowed an ox and stretched itself out to digest him, and the Quirinal Hill is the ox.
All the world was out that evening, and even the most insensible promenader spared a glance for the sky. It was Roman form with Gothic colors, the round arch of the heavens a pale, pure gold, bright, yet tender as a flower, and against that background, less like a city than like an embossed picture, Rome, with its great cupola, its crowded beauties of architecture, its pines and its cypresses. Of the personages, more or less distinguished, in the circle of carriages behind them, the new-comers took but little note. The old papal picture, with its cardinals’ coaches and its prelates’ costumes, was effaced, and there was nothing in the human part of the scene more striking than the last Paris fashions—as if some tyro with his coarse brush should paint over a Titian. If one should seek for royalty in that crowd, he would not find the angelic old king, clothed in white, as if already among the blest, beaming on all the faces turned toward him, and giving benediction right and left as he went. In place of that might be seen to pass a brutal face, with the color of one half-strangled, with upturned nose and curled-up moustache, and with eyes whose glances no respectable woman would encounter. The Roman people used to say, “When the pope comes out,
the sun comes out”; but no such shining proverb was suggested by this dark and forbidding face.
The Signora, looking with her friends, seemed herself to behold Rome for the first time, and to see in swift contrast both present and past. Was it past, indeed, and for ever, that dominion of centuries, around which had gathered a glory so unique? She stretched her hands out involuntarily, and sighed in the song of the vanquished Moors:
“Ay de mi, Alhama!”
Mr. Vane turned to her rather suddenly. “I have great confidence in your sincerity,” he said, “and I believe that you who know the truth need not fear. Now, setting aside the questions of the right of the church to possess Rome, and the need she has of it as a base of operations, and the fact that the great functions are no longer performed, tell me, do you really regret the old time?”
“You are setting aside a great deal,” she said smilingly; “but I answer you yes with all my heart. Rome has lost in every way. There seems no longer in the world a place for tired people to come to. All is hurry, and fret, and fuss; and comfort is gone. Has it ever occurred to you to think that many people, especially in progressive countries, inflict an immense deal of discomfort on themselves and others in striving for what they call the comforts of life, losing with one hand what they gain with the other? The contented spirit is gone, the quiet, the patience, the simplicity, the charity. Poverty was never before unpitied in Rome, and now the poor not only beg, they starve. They never starved in the old time. I would not undervalue
the improvements of modern science—I am proud of them; but they are not all, nor the greatest, glories of life. Such of them as suited the place would have come in gently and gradually, without disturbing anything. They have been brought in at the point of the bayonet, and the bayonet-point has been left in them. We still feel it. I sometimes pity these progressionists, who are often, no doubt, sincere in their hopes and aspirations, as well as immensely conceited at the same time. They feel the pains of life for themselves and for others, and they fancy that they have found a new solution for the problem that the church solved centuries ago, and that they can have heaven let down to them, instead of having the trouble of climbing to it. It’s a pitiful thing to dedicate one’s life to a great mistake. Yes, Rome is spoilt, looking at it from a philanthropic as well as from an artistic and a religious point of view.”