The Dishes
Appeared To Be Chiefly Composed Of Fish And Vegetables.
The Pope
helped the Thirteen to wine also; and, during the whole dinner,
somebody read something aloud, out of a large book--the Bible, I
presume--which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the
least attention.
The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to
each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce;
and if they thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly
right. His Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets
through a troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was
all over.
The Pilgrims' Suppers: where lords and ladies waited on the
Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when they had
been well washed by deputy: were very attractive. But, of all the
many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward observances, in
themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the
Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, but to
the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good Friday.
This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said to
have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house and to be the identical
stair on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-
seat. Pilgrims ascend it, only on their knees. It is steep; and,
at the summit, is a chapel, reported to be full of relics; into
which they peep through some iron bars, and then come down again,
by one of two side staircases, which are not sacred, and may be
walked on.
On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a hundred
people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one
time; while others, who were going up, or had come down--and a few
who had done both, and were going up again for the second time--
stood loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in a
sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister, with a slit in the top,
incessantly, to remind them that he took the money. The majority
were country-people, male and female. There were four or five
Jesuit priests, however, and some half-dozen well-dressed women. A
whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way up--
evidently enjoying it very much. They were all wedged together,
pretty closely; but the rest of the company gave the boys as wide a
berth as possible, in consequence of their betraying some
recklessness in the management of their boots.
I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and so
unpleasant, as this sight--ridiculous in the absurd incidents
inseparable from it; and unpleasant in its senseless and unmeaning
degradation. There are two steps to begin with, and then a rather
broad landing. The more rigid climbers went along this landing on
their knees, as well as up the stairs; and the figures they cut, in
their shuffling progress over the level surface, no description can
paint.
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