A Visit to a Certain Old Gentleman: Leaves From a Roman Note-Book

IT was only after the gravest consideration that we decided to visit a Certain Old Gentleman. There were so many points to be considered. It was by no means certain that a Certain Old Gentleman wanted us to visit him. Though we knew him, in a vague way, to be sure, — through friends of ours who were friends of his, — he did not know us at all. Then he was, according to report, a very particular old gentleman, standing squarely on his dignity, and so hedged about by conventional ideas of social etiquette, so difficult of approach, and so nearly impossible to become acquainted with when approached, that it was an audacious thing to seriously contemplate dropping in on him familiarly. What impelled us to wish to do so? Certainly we had no desire to pay court to him. He had formerly occupied a high official position, but now he was retired, so to speak, into private life, — a sufficient reason in itself why he should be let alone. In brief, there were a hundred reasons why we should not visit him, and there was not one why we should. It was that that decided us, I think.

It comes back to me like the reminiscence of a dream, rather than as the memory of an actual experience, that

May afternoon when the purpose first unfolded itself to us. We were sitting in the fading glow of the day on the last of the four marble steps which linked our parlor to the fairy - like garden of the Albergo di Russia in the Via Babuino. Our rooms were on the groundfloor, and this garden, shut in on three sides by the main building and the wings of the hotel, and closed at the rear by the Pincian Hill, up which the garden clambered half-way in three or four luxuriant terraces, seemed naturally to belong to our suite of apartments. All night we could hear the drip of the fountain among the cactus leaves, and catch at intervals the fragrance of orange-blooms, blown in at the one window we dared leave open. It was here we took the morning air a few minutes before breakfast; it was on these steps we smoked our cigar after the wonders of the day were done. We had the garden quite to ourselves, for the cautious tourist had long since taken wing from Rome, frightened by the early advance of summer. The great caravansary was nearly empty. Aside from the lizards, I do not recollect seeing any living creature in that garden during our stay, except a little frowsy wad of a dog, which dashed into our premises one morning, and seizing on a large piece of sponge made off with it up the Pincian Hill. If that sponge fell to the lot of some timeencrusted Romanese, and Providence was merciful enough to inspire him with a conception of its proper use, it cannot be said of that little Skye terrier that he lived in vain.

If no other feet than ours invaded those neatly-graveled walks, causing the shy, silvery lizards to swiftly retreat to the borders of the flower-beds or behind the corpulent green tubs holding the fan-palms, we were keenly conscious now and then of being overlooked. On pleasant afternoons lines of carriages and groups of gayly-dressed people went winding up the steep road which, skirted with ilexes and pines and mimosa bushes, leads to the popular promenade of the Pincio. There, if anywhere, you get a breath of fresh air in the heated term, and always the most magnificent view of the city and its environs. There, of old, were the gardens of Lucullus; and there Messalina, with wicked good taste, had her pleasure-house, and held her Saturnalia; and there, to-day, the band of Victor Emmanuel plays twice a week in the sunset, luring thither all the sunny belles and beaux of Rome. Monte Pincio, as I have said, sloped down on one side to our garden. On the crest of the hill commanding our demesne was a low wall of masonry. From time to time a killing Roman fop would come and lean in an elegant attitude against this wall, nursing himself on the ivory ball of his cane, and staring unblushingly at the blonde-haired lady sitting under her own hired fig-tree in the hotel garden. What a fascinating creature he was, with his little black mustache, almost as heavy as a pencil mark, his olive skin, his wide, effeminate eyes, his slender rattan figure, and his cameo sleeve-studs ! What a sad dog he was, to melt into those languishing postures up there, and let loose all those facile blandishments, careless of the heart-break he must inevitably cause the simple American signora in the garden below! We used to glance up at this gilded youth from time to time, and it was a satisfaction to reflect what an ineffable idiot he was, like all his kind in every land under the sun.

This was our second sojourn in Rome, and we had spent two industrious weeks picking up the threads of the Past, dropped temporarily in April in order to run down and explore Naples before Southern Italy became too hot to hold us: two busy weeks, into which were crowded visits to the Catacombs and the Baths of Caracalla, and excursions on the Campagna, — at this time of year a vast red sea of poppies strewn with the wrecks of ancient tombs; we had humiliated our nostrils in strolling through the Ghetto, and gladdened our eyes daily with the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Piazza del Campidoglio; we had made a pilgrimage to the Abbey alle Tre Fontane, and regarded with a proper sense of awe the three fountains which had gushed forth at the points where the head of the Apostle Paul landed, in those three eccentric leaps it accomplished after his execution ; we had breathed the musky air of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Basilica San Paolo, and once, by chance, on a minor fête day, lighted on a pretty pageant in St.John Lateran; we had looked our fill of statuary and painting, and jasper and lapis-lazuli; we had burrowed under the Eternal City in crypt and dungeon, and gazed down upon it from the dizzy Lantern of St. Peter’s. The blighting summer was at hand; the phantasmal malaria was stalking the Campagna at night: it was time to go. There was nothing more to be done in Rome unless we did the Roman fever, — nothing but that, indeed, if we were not inclined to pay a visit to a Certain Old Gentleman. This alternative appeared to have so many advantages over the Roman fever that it at once took the shape of an irresistible temptation. At least it did to Madama and me, but the other pilgrim of the party was of a more reflective mind, and was disposed to look at the question judicially. He was not going to call on a Certain Old Gentleman as if he were a frescoed panel in the Sistine Chapel; it was not fair to put a human being on the same footing as a nameless heathen statue dug out of the lava of Pompeii; the statue could not complain, and would put itself in a false position if it did complain, at being treated as a curiosity; but the human being might, and had a perfect right to protest. H—’s objections to the visit were so numerous and so warmly put, that Madama and I were satisfied he had made up his mind to go.

“ However, the gentleman is not adverse to receiving strangers, as I understand it,” said H—.

“On the contrary,” I said, “it is one of the relaxations of his old age, and he is especially hospitable to our countrymen. A great many Americans " —

“ Then let us go, by all means,” interrupted Madama. “ Among the Romans one should do — as Americans do.”

“ Only much better,” I suggested. “ I have sometimes been not proud of my countrymen on this side of the water. The Delaneys in the Borghese Gallery, the other day! I almost longed for the intervention of the Inquisition. If it had been in Venice and in the fifteenth century, I ’d have dropped an anonymous communication into the letter-box of the Palace of the Doges, and had the Council of Ten down on Miss Fanny Delaney in no time.”

“ The chances are he is out of town,” said Madama, ignoring my vindictiveness.

“ He has a summer residence near Albano,” said H—, “ but he never goes there now; at least he has not occupied the villa for the last few years, in fact, not since 1870.”

“ Where does he pass his summers, then? ” asked Madama.

“ In Rome.”

“ How eccentric! ”

“ I suppose he has his weak points, like the rest of us,” said H—, charitably.

“ He ought to have his strong points, to endure the summer in Rome, with the malaria, and the sirocco, and the typhoon, and all the dreadful things that befall.”

“ The typhoon, my dear ” —

Though the discussion did not end here that May evening on the steps of the hotel-garden, it ends here in my record; it being sufficient for the reader to know that we then and there resolved to undertake the visit in question. The scribe of the party dispatched a note to Signor V— expressing a desire to pay our respects to his venerable friend before we left town, and begging that an early day, if any, be appointed for the interview. Signor V— was an Italian acquaintance of ours who carried a diplomatic key that fitted almost any lock.

We breakfasted betimes, the next morning, and sat lingering over our coffee, awaiting Signor V—’s reply to our note. The reply had so impressive an air of not coming, that we fell to planning an excursion to Tivoli, and had ordered a carriage to that end, when Stefano appeared, bearing an envelope on his silver-plated waiter. (I think he was born with that waiter in his hand; he never laid it down for a moment; if any duty obliged him to use both hands, he clapped the waiter under his arm or between his knees; I used to fancy that it was attached to his body by some mysterious, invisible ligament, the severing of which would have caused his instant death.) Signor V— advised us that his venerable friend would be gracious enough to receive us that very day at one half-hour after noon. In a postscript the signor intimated that the gentlemen would be expected to wear evening dress, minus gloves, and that it was imperative on the part of Madama to be costumed completely in black and to wear only a black veil on her hair. Such was one of the whims of a Certain Old Gentleman.

Here a dilemma arose. Among Madama’s wardrobe there was no costume of this lugubrious description. The nearest approach to it was a statuesque black robe, elaborately looped and covered with agreeable arabesques of turquoiseblue silk. There was nothing to do but to rip off these celestial trimmings, and they were ripped off, though it went against the woman-heart. Poor, vain little silk dress, that had never hcen worn, what swift retribution overtook you for being nothing but artistic, and graceful, and lovely, and — Parisian, which includes all blessed adjectives!

From the bottom of a trunk in which they had lain since we left London, H— and I exhumed our dress-coats.

Though perfectly new (like their amiable sister, the black silk gown), they came out looking remarkably aged. They had inexplicable bulges in the back, as if they had been worn by somebody with six or eight shoulder-blades, and were covered all over in front with minute wrinkles, recalling the famous portrait of the late Dr. Parr in his hundred and fiftieth year. H— and I

got into our creased elegance with not more intemperate comment than might be pardoned, and repaired to the parlor, where we found Madama arranging a voluminous veil of inky crape over her hair, and regarding herself in a fulllength mirror with gloomy satisfaction. The carriage was at the porte cochère, and we departed, stealing silently through the deserted hotel corridor, and looking for all the world, I imagine, like a couple of rascally undertakers making off with a nun.

We had been so expeditious in our preparations that on seating ourselves in the carriage we found much superfluous time on our hands; so we went around Robin Hood’s barn to our destination, — a delightful method in Rome, — taking the Cenci Palace and the Hilda’s Tower of Hawthorne’s romance in our impartial sweep, and stopping at a shop in the Piazza di Spagna, where Madama purchased an amber rosary for only about three times as many lire as she need have paid for it anywhere else on the globe. If an Italian shop-keeper should be submitted to a chemical analysis, and his rascality carefully separated from the other ingredients and thrown away, there would be nothing left of him.

There were not many persons to be seen in the streets. It was nearing the hour when Rome keeps in - doors and takes its ease; besides, it was out of season, as I have stated, and the Gaul and the Briton, and the American savage with his bowie-knife and revolver, had struck a trail northward. At the church portals, to be sure, was the usual percentage of distressing beggars, — The old hag out of Macbeth, who insists on lifting the padded leather door-screen for you, the one-eyed man, the one-armed man, the one-legged man, and other fragments. The poor you have always with you, in Italy. They lash themselves, metaphorically, to the spokes of your carriage-wheel, and go around with you.

Ever since our second arrival in Rome the population seemed to have been undergoing a process of evaporation. From the carriage-window now and then we caught sight of a sandaled monk flitting by in the shadow of a tall building,— the sole human thing that appears to be in a hurry in this stagnant city. His furtive air betrays his consciousness that he is only tolerated where he once ruled nearly supreme. It is an evil time for him; his tenure is brief. Now that the government has unearthed him, he is fading out like a Pompeian fresco. As he glides by, there in the shade, with the aspect of a man belated on some errand of vital import, I have an idea he is not going anywhere in particular. Before these doleful days had befallen the Church of Rome, every third figure you met was a gray-cowled friar, or a white-robed Dominican, or a shovel-hatted reverend father looking like a sharp raven; but they all are rare birds now, and, for the most part, the few that are left stick to their perches in the stricken, moldy old monasteries and convents. shedding their feathers and wasting away hour by hour, the last of the brood!

In the vicinity of Trajan’s Column we encountered a bewildered - looking goat-herd, who had strayed in from the Campagna, perhaps with some misty anticipation that the Emperor Nero had a fresh lot of choice Christians to be served up that day in the arena of the Coliseum. I wondered if this rustic wore those pieces of hairy goatskin laced to his calves in July and August. It threw one into a perspiration to look at him. But I forgave him on inspection, for with his pointed hat, through an aperture of which his hair had run to seed, and his scarlet sash, and his manycolored tattered habiliments, he was the only bit of picturesque costume we saw in Rome. Picturesque costume is a thing of the past there, except those fraudulent remains of it that hang about the studios in the Via Margutta, or at the steps of the Trinità de’ Monti, on the shoulders of professional models.

Even the Corso was nearly deserted and quite dull this day, and it is scarcely gay when it is thronged, as we saw it early in the spring. Possibly it is lively during the Carnival. It would need masking and music and illumination to lift its chronic gloom, in spite of its thousand balconies. The sense of antiquity and the heavy, uncompromising architecture of Rome oppress one painfully until one comes to love her. My impression of Rome is something so solid and tangible that I have felt at times as if I could pack it in a box, like a bas-relief, or a statue, or a segment of a column, and send it home by the Cunard line. Compared with the airiness and grace and color of other Continental cities, Rome is dull. The arcades of Bologna and the dingy streets of Verona and Padua are not duller. But what a spell she casts over you, and how she grows upon you, the mother city of the world!

If I linger by the way, and seem in no haste to get to a Certain Old Gentleman, it is because the Roman atmosphere has in it some medicinal property that induces reverie and procrastination, and relaxes the sinews of effort. I wonder where Caligula found the vivacity to torture his victims, and Brutus the enterprise to stab Cæsar.

Our zigzag route brought us back to the Piazza del Popolo, from which we turned into the Via Ripetta on the left, and rattled over the stone pavement past the Castle of St. Angelo, towards St. Peter’s. It was not until the horses slackened their speed, and finally stood still in a spacious cortile at the foot of a wide flight of stone steps, that our purpose dropped a certain fantastic aspect it had worn, and became a serious if not a solemn business. Notwithstanding our deliberations over the matter at the hotel, I think I had not fully realized that in proposing to visit a Certain Old Gentleman we were proposing to visit the Pope of Rome. The proposition had seemed all along like a piece of mild pleasantry, as if one should say, " I think I ’ll drop round on Titus Flavius in the course of the forenoon,” or “I’ve half a mind to look in on Cicero and Pompey, and see how they feel this morning after their little dissipation last night at the villa of Lucullus.” The Pope of Rome — not the Pope regnant, but the Pope of Rome in the abstract — had up to that hour presented himself to my mental eye as an august spectacular figure, belonging to no particular period, who might turn out after all to be an ingenious historical fiction perpetrated by the same humorist that invented Pocahontas. The Pope of Rome! — he had been as vague to me as Adam and as improbable as Noah.

But there stood Signor V— at the carriage-step, waiting to conduct us into the Vatican, and there on either side of the portals at the head of the massive staircase lounged two of the papal guard in that jack-of-diamonds costume which Michael Angelo designed for them—in the way of a practical joke, I fancy. They held halberds in their hands, these mediæval gentlemen, and it was a mercy they did n’t chop us to pieces as we passed between them. What an absurd uniform for a man-at-arms of the nineteenth century! These fellows, clad in rainbow, suggested a pair of harlequins out of a Christmas pantomime. Farther on we came to more stone staircase, and more stupid papal guard with melodramatic battle-axes, and were finally ushered into a vast, high-studded chamber at the end of a much-stuccoed corridor.

Coming as we did out of the blinding sunshine, this chamber seemed to us at first but a gloomy cavern. It was so poorly lighted by numerous large windows on the western side that several seconds elapsed before we could see anything distinctly. One or two additional windows would have made it quite dark. At the end of the apartment, near the door at which we had entered, was a dais with three tawdry rococo gilt armchairs, having for background an enormous painting of the Virgin, but by what master I was unable to make out. The draperies of the room were of some heavy dark stuff, a green rep, if I remember, and the floor was covered with a thick carpet through which the solid stone flagging beneath repelled the pressure of your foot. There was a singular absence of color everywhere, of that mosaic work and Renaissance gilding with which the eyes soon become good friends in Italy. The frescoes of the ceiling, if there were any frescoes, were in some shy neutral tint, and did not introduce themselves to us. On the right, at the other extremity of the room, was a double door, which led, as we were correct in supposing, to the private apartments of the Pope.

Presently our eyes grew reconciled to the semi-twilight, which seemed to have been transported hither with a faint spicy odor of incense from some ancient basilica,—a proper enough light for an audience-chamber in the Vatican. Fixed against the wall on either side, and extending nearly the entire length of the room, was a broad settee, the greater part of which was already occupied when we entered. Signor V— stationed himself at our side and began a conversation with H— on the troubles that had overtaken and the perils that still menaced the True Church. The disintegration of nunneries and monasteries and the closing up of religious houses had been fraught with much individual suffering. Hundreds of simple, learned men had been suddenly thrust out into a world of which they had no knowledge and where they were as helpless as so many infants. In some instances the government had laid hands on strictly private properties, on funds contributed by private persons to establish asylums for women of noble birth in reduced circumstances,— portionless daughters and cousins desirous of leading a life of pious meditation and seclusion. Many of these institutions possessed enormous revenues, and were strong temptations to the Italian government, whose money-chest gave out a pathetically hollow sound when tapped against in 1870. One does not need to be a Catholic to perceive the injustice of this kind of seizure; one’s sympathy may go forth with the unhoused nuns: as to the monks,—it does not hurt any man to earn his own living. The right and the necessity to work ought to be regarded as a direct blessing from God, by men who, for these many centuries, have had their stomachs “ with good capon lined,” chiefly at the expense of the poor.

Conversation had become general; every one spoke in a subdued tone, and a bee-like hum rose and fell on the air. With the exception of a neat little body with her husband at our right, the thirty or forty persons present were either French, German, English, Russian, or Italian.

I remarked to Signor V— on the absence of the American element, and attributed it to the lateness of the season.

“That does not wholly explain it,” said Signor V—. “There were numerous applications from Americans to attend this reception, but his Holiness just at present is not inclined to receive many Americans.”

“ Why not?”

“A few weeks since, his Holiness was treated with great disrespect by an American, a lawyer from one of your Western States, I believe, who did not rise from his seat or kneel when the Pope entered the room.”

“ He ought to have risen, certainly; but is it imperative that one should kneel?”

“It is; but then, it is not imperative on any one to be presented to his Holiness. If the gentleman did not wish to conform to the custom, he ought to have stayed away.”

“ He might have been ignorant of that phase of the ceremony,” said I, with an uneasy reflection that I was in some sort a duplicate of my unhappy countryman. “ What befell him? ”

“ He was courteously escorted from the chamber by the gentleman in waiting,” said Signor V—, glancing at an official near the door, who looked as if he were a cross between a divinity student and a policeman.

It occurred to me that few things would be less entertaining than to be led out of this audience-chamber in the face and eyes of France, Germany, Russia, and Italy, —in the face and eyes of the civilized world, in fact, for would not the next number of Galignani’s Messenger have a paragraph about it? I had supposed that Catholics knelt to the Pope, as a matter of course, but that Protestants were exempt from paying this homage, on the same ground that Quakers are not expected to remove their hats like other folk. I wondered what Friend Eli would do, if destiny dropped him into the midst of one of the receptions of Pius IX. However, it was somewhat late to go to the bottom of the matter, so I dismissed it from my mind, and began an examination of my neighbors.

A cynic has observed that all cats are gray in the twilight. He said cats, but meant women. I am convinced that all women are not alike in a black silk dress, very simply trimmed and with no color about it except a white rose at the corsage. There are women — perhaps not too many — whose beauty is heightened by an austere toilette. Such a one was the lady opposite me, with her veil twisted under her chin and falling negligently over the left shoulder. The beauty of her face flashed out like a diamond from its sombre setting. She had the brightest of dark eyes, with such a thick, long fringe of dark eyelashes that her whole countenance turned into night when she dropped her eyelids; when she lifted them, it was morning again. As if to show us what might be done in the manner of contrasts, nature had given this lady some newly coined Roman gold for hair. I think Eve was that way, — both blonde and brunette. My vis-à-vis would have been gracious in any costume, but I am positive that nothing would have gone so well with her as the black silk dress, fitting closely to the pliant bust and not losing a single line or curve. As she sat, turned three-quarters face, the window behind her threw the outlines of her slender figure into sharp relief. I tell this to the reader. The lady herself was perfectly well aware of it.

Next to this charming person was a substantial English matron, who wore her hair done up in a kind of turret, and looked like a lithograph of a distant view of Windsor Castle. She sat bolt upright, and formed, if I may say so, the initial letter of a long line of fascinatingly ugly women. Imagine a row of Sphinxes in deep mourning. It would have been an unbroken line of feminine severity, but for a handsome young priest with a strikingly spiritual face, who came in, like a happy word in parenthesis, half-way down the row. I soon exhausted the resources of this part of the room; my eyes went back to the Italian lady so prettily framed in the embrasure of the window, and would have lingered there had I not got interested in an old gentleman seated on my left. When he came into the room, blinking his kindly blue eyes and rubbing his hands noiselessly together and beaming benevolently on everybody, just as if he were expected, I fell in love with him. His fragile, aristocratic hands appeared to have been done up by the same blanchisseuse who did his linen, which was as white and crisp as an Alpine snow-drift, as were also two wintry strands of hair trained artfully over either ear. Otherwise he was as bald and shiny as a glacier. He seated himself with an old-fashioned, courteous bow to the company assembled, and a protesting wave of the hand, as if to say, “ Good people, I pray you, do not disturb yourselves,” and made all that side of the room bright with his smiling. He looked so clean and sweet, just such a wholesome figure as one would like to have at one’s fireside as grandfather, I began formulating the wish that I might, thirty or forty years hence, be taken for his twin brother; when a neighbor of his created a disturbance.

This neighbor was a young Italian lady or gentleman — I do not know which — of perhaps ten months’ existence, who up to the present time had been asleep in the arms of its bonne. Awaking suddenly, the bambino had given vent to the shrillest shrieks, impelled thereto by the strangeness of the surrounding features, or perhaps by some conscientious scruples about being in the Vatican, I picked out the mother at once by the worried expression that flew to the countenance of a lady near me, and in a gentleman who instantly assumed an air of having no connection whatever with the baleful infant, I detected the father. I do not remember to have seen a stronger instance of youthful depravity and duplicity than that lemon-colored child afforded. The moment the nurse walked with it, it sunk into the sweetest of slumber, peace settled upon its little nose like a drowsy bee upon the petal of a flower; but the instant the bonne made a motion to sit down, it broke forth again. I do not know what ultimately became of the vocal goblin; possibly it was collared by the lieutenant of the guard outside, and thrown into the deepest dungeon of the palace; at all events it disappeared after the announcement that his Holiness would be with us shortly. Whatever virtues Pius IX. may claim, punctuality is not one of them, for he had kept us waiting three quarters of an hour, and we had still another fifteen minutes to wait.

The monotonous hum of conversation ceased abruptly, the two sections of the wide door I have mentioned were thrown open, and the Pope, surrounded by his cardinals and a number of foreign princes, entered. The occupants of the two long settees rose, and then, as if they were automata worked by the same tyrannical wire, sunk simultaneously into an attitude of devotion. For an instant I was seized with a desperate desire not to kneel. There is something in an American knee, when it is rightly constructed, that makes it an awkward thing to kneel with before any man born of woman.

Perhaps, if the choice were left one, either to prostrate one’s self before a certain person or be shot, one might make a point of it — and be shot. But that was not the alternative in the present case. If I had failed to follow the immemorial custom I would not have had the honor of a fusillade, but would have been ignominiously led away by one of those highly-colored Swiss guards, and, in my dress suit, would have presented to the general stare the appearance of a pretentious ace of spades being wiped out by a gay right-bower. Such a humiliation was not to be thought of! So, wishing myself safely back amid the cruder civilization of the New World, and with a mental protest accompanied by a lofty compassion for the weakness and cowardice of human kind, I slid softly down with the rest of the miserable sinners. I was in the very act, when I was chilled to the marrow by catching a sidelong glimpse of my benign old gentleman placidly leaning back in his seat, with his hands folded over his well-filled waistcoat and that same benevolent smile petrified on his countenance. He was fast asleep.

Immediately a tall, cadaverous person in a scant, funereal garment emerged from somewhere, and touched the sleeper on the shoulder. The old gentleman unclosed his eyes slowly and with difficulty, and was so far from taking in the situation that he made a gesture as if to shake hands with the tall, cadaverous person. Then it all flashed upon the dear old boy, and he dropped to his knees with so comical and despairing an air of contrition that the presence of forty thousand popes would not have prevented me from laughing.

Another discomposing incident occurred at this juncture. Two removes below me was a smooth-faced German of gigantic stature; he must have been six or seven inches over six feet in height, but so absurdly short between the knee-cap and ankle that as he knelt he towered head and shoulders above us all, resembling a great, overgrown schoolboy, standing up as straight as he could. It was so he impressed one of the ghostly attendants, who advanced quickly towards him with the evident purpose of requesting him to kneel. Discovering his error just in time, the reverend father retreated much abashed.

All eyes were now turned toward the Pope and his suite, and this trifling episode passed unnoticed save by two or three individuals in the immediate neighborhood, who succeeded in swallowing their smiles, but did not dare glance at each other afterwards. The Pope advanced to the centre of the upper end of the room, leaning heavily on his ivoryhandled cane, the princes in black and the cardinals in scarlet standing behind him in picturesque groups, like the chorus in an opera. Indeed, it was all like a scene on the stage. Several of the princes were Russian, with names quite well adapted to not being remembered. Among the Italian gentlemen was Cardinal Nobli Vattelesehi, — he was not a cardinal then, by the way, — who died not long since.

Within whispering distance of the Pope stood Cardinal Antonelli — a man who would not escape observation in any assembly of notable personages. If the Inquisition should be revived in its early genial form, and the reader should fall into its hands, — as would very likely be the case, if a branch office were established in this country,—he would feel scarcely comfortable if his chief inquisitor had so cold and subtle a countenance as Cardinal Antonelli’s.

We occasionally meet in political or in social life a man whose presence seems to be an anachronism, — a man belonging to a type we fancied extinct; he affects us as a living dodo would the naturalist., though perhaps not with so great an enthusiasm. Cardinal Antonelli, in his bearing and the cast of his countenance, had that air of remoteness which impresses us in the works of the old masters. I had seen somewhere a head of Velasquez for which the cardinal might have posed. With the subdued afternoon light falling upon him through the deep-set window, he seemed like some cruel prelate escaped from one of the earlier volumes of Froude’s History of England, — subtle, haughty, and intolerant. I did not mean to allow so sinister an impression to remain on my mind; but all I have since read and heard of Cardinal Antonelli has only partially obliterated it. A not unfriendly biographical sketch gives us this silhouette of the cardinal: “ He is a man of unbending disposition, a zealous conservative, and a strenuous opponent of the innovating spirit of the age. His manners are cold, reserved, and little calculated to make him popular, but his devotion to the religious and political interests of the Church of Rome is great, and is supported by a remarkable energy and strength of character. His personal appearance is striking and imposing, impressing all who see him with a sense of the remarkable powers of intellect for which he is distinguished.”

It was a pleasure to turn from the impassible prime minister to the gentle and altogether lovely figure of his august master, with his small, sparkling eyes, remarkably piercing when he looked at you point-blank, and a smile none the less winsome that it lighted up a mouth denoting unusual force of will. His face was not at all the face of a man who had passed nearly half a century in arduous diplomatic and ecclesiastical labors; it was certainly the face of a man who had led a temperate, blameless private life, in noble contrast to many of his profligate predecessors, whom the world was only too glad to have snugly stowed away in their gorgeous porphyry coffins with a marble mistress carved atop.

Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti was born in Sinigaglia on the 13th of May, 1792; the week previous to this reception he had celebrated his eighty-third birthday; but he did not look over sixty-five or seventy, as he stood there in his cream-white skull-cap of broadcloth and his long pontifical robes of the same material, — a costume that lent an appearance of height to an undersized, stoutly built figure. With his silvery hair straggling from beneath the skullcap, and his smoothly-shaven pale face, a trifle heavy, perhaps because of the double chin, he was a very beautiful old man. After pausing a moment or two in the middle of the chamber, and taking a bird’s-eye glance at his guests, the Pope began his rounds. Assigned to each group of five or ten persons was an official who presented the visitors by name, indicating their nationality, station, etc. So far as the nationality was involved, that portion of the introduction was obviously superfluous, for the Pope singled out his countrymen at a glance, and at once addressed them in Italian, scarcely waiting for the master of ceremonies to perform his duties. To foreigners his Holiness spoke in French. After a few words of salutation he gave his hand to each person, who touched it with his lips or his forehead, or simply retained it an instant. It was a deathly cold hand, on the forefinger of which was a great seal ring bearing a mottled gray stone that seemed frozen. As the Pope moved slowly along, devotees caught at the hem of his robe and pressed it to their lips, and in most instances bowed down and kissed his feet. I suppose it was only by years of practice that his Holiness was able to avoid stepping on a nose here and there.

It came Our turn at last. As he approached us he said with a smile, “ Ah, I see you are Americans.” Signor V— then presented us formally, and the Pope was kind enough to say to us what he had probably said to twenty thousand other Americans in the course of several hundred similar occasions. After the Pope had passed on, the party that had paid their respects to him resumed their normal position, —I am not sure this was not the most enjoyable feature of the affair, — and gave themselves up to watching the other presentations. When these were concluded, the Pope returned to the point of his departure, and proceeded to bless the rosaries and crosses and souvenirs that had been brought, in greater or lesser numbers, by every one. There were salvers piled with rosaries, arms strung from wrist to shoulder with rosaries,— so many carven amulets, and circlets of beads and crucifixes, indeed, that it would have been the labor of weeks to bless them separately; so his Holiness blessed them in bulk.

It was then that the neat little American lady who sat next us confirmed my suspicions as to her brideship, by slyly slipping from her wedding finger a plain gold ring, which she attached to her rosary with a thread from her veil. Seeing herself detected in the act, she turned to Madama and, making up the most piquant little face in the world, whispered confidentially, “ Of course I’m not a Roman Catholic, you know; but if there’s anything efficacious in the blessing, I don’t want to lose it. I want to take all the chances.” For my part, I hope and believe the Pope’s blessing will cling to that diminutive wedding ring for many and many a year.

This ceremony finished, his Holiness addressed to his guests the neatest of farewells, delivered in enviable French, in which he wished a prosperous voyage to those pilgrims whose homes lay beyond the sea, and a happy return to all. When he touched, as he did briefly, on the misfortunes of the church, an adorable fire came into his eyes; fifty of his eighty-three winters slipped from him as if by enchantment, and for a few seconds he stood forth in the prime of life. He spoke some five or seven minutes, and nothing could have been more dignified and graceful than the matter and the manner of his words. The benediction was followed by a general rustle and movement among the princes and cardinals at the farther end of the room; the double door opened softly, and closed, — and that was the last the Pope saw of us.

Thackeray, in his Book of Ballads, has a blithe rhyme to the effect that

There has a change come over the complexion of things since these verses were written. Certainly the Pope’s palace is the Vatican, and it is presumable that be has every facility for draining his can à discrétion; but as to his being a happy man, there are doubts; and as to envying him his exalted position, we cannot imagine any one doing that unless it be Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli.¹

What a mighty voice used to issue from the papal throne, causing the little kings to tremble in their shoes! But today the thunders of the Vatican have lost their reverberation. After having exercised almost unlimited influence, and for the most part with moderation and wisdom, let it be said, the Pope finds himself in his old age shorn of his power, his kingdom shrunken to a household. Since the gauntleted hand of united Italy closed on the temporal sceptre of Pius IX., he has never left the Vatican, not even, it is said, to officiate on great occasions in St. Peter’s. The Pope’s gilded coach, with its sleek horses and imposing footmen, seems to have trundled off into space, for it is seen no more in the streets of Rome. The carriages of the cardinals, too, with their scarlet hangings, have taken the same invisible road. You meet no purple-stockinged eminenze now, with their attendants, on the piazzas. There are now no grand fêtes, no splendid church pageants. A cloud has fallen upon the Church of Rome. Some say the cloud will pass away. Most things pass away! A long night of superstition has passed. It is morning in Italy.

T. B. Aldrich.