How many carriages were there, I don't know;
yet there was room for them too, and to spare.
The great steps of
the church were densely crowded. There were many of the Contadini,
from Albano (who delight in red), in that part of the square, and
the mingling of bright colours in the crowd was beautiful. Below
the steps the troops were ranged. In the magnificent proportions
of the place they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans,
lively peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of pilgrims
from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all
nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects; and
high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making rainbow
colours in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and
tumbled bountifully.
A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony; and
the sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery.
An awning was stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man
from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were
turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen
approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's
feathers, close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is
very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all
the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by
any means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon the
ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that
the benediction was given; drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms
clashed; and the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller
heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like
parti-coloured sand.
What a bright noon it was, as we rode away! The Tiber was no
longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old bridges,
that made them fresh and hale again. The Pantheon, with its
majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, had
summer light upon its battered walls. Every squalid and desolate
hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the
filth and misery of the plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as
certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head!) was fresh
and new with some ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded
street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of
the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices: and dismal
prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading of
the blocked-up windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to
the rusty bars, turned THEM towards the overflowing street: as if
it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way.
But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon,
what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once more, and the
whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with
innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, and winking and
shining all round the colonnade of the piazza!
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