SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER XIII.
“OUR LADY OF SNOW.”
“To-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,” the Signora said on the morning of the 4th of August. “It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday, and the loveliest of birthdays, too—just a sweet little poem.”
“Let us give ourselves up to it entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and see if we cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I really do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.”
“We must, then, shut the world out for two days,” the Signora replied. “I would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is impossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the old time while one is having much social intercourse with people about, even goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow ground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you pray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in, and your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some friend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch with one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you utter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you listen in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer intelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you have received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One understands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of silence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of our Lord: “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no.”
“Still, I should think,” Bianca observed dreamily, “that one might be so settled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others, instead of being influenced by them.”
“Very true, you dear little visionary!” replied the Signora, pinching the pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If one were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with conspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on everybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be approached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a nun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with the consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common mortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a bridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the stream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side of the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm stand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and keep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not preach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till the day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the church, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at some of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole over here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there—my patron with St. Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which he has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day. By this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the festa of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh thought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.”
An unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately to go to the church.
They had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but such a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its attractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which they had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went first into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is painted in one of the pendentives of the cupola—a space shaped like an inverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at either side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space. The most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which floats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with its large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.
From there they visited the grand loggia to look once more at the mosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the fourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on the open façade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth century, building the new façade, enclosed them in the grand loggia from which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower side. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits enthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book open at the words, “I am the light of the world.” At either hand above an angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four figures—the Blessed Virgin and saints—stand at right and left, the symbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half, separated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the church, has, on the left, two pictures—one the sleeping Pope Liberius, the other the sleeping Giovanni—over both of whom hovers the same vision of the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall fall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to the pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession, coming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send down the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning, this visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.
Opposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the portico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the long street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree, and the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.