She Said Nothing,
But When We Came Out She Stood A Moment On The Pavement Beside Our Cab
And Confessed Herself A New England Girl, From An Inland Town, Who Was
Travelling With Relatives.
She had been sick, and she had come alone, as
soon as she could get out, to see the wonders of the Capuchin church,
because she had heard so much of them.
We said we hoped she had been
pleased, and she said, "Oh yes, indeed," and then she said, "Well,
good-bye," and gently tilted away, leaving us glad that there could
still be in an old, spoiled world such sweetness and innocence and
easily gratified love of the beautiful.
Taking Rome so easily, so provisionally, while waiting the eventualities
of the colds which mild climates are sure to give their frequenters from
the winterlands, I became aware of a latent anxiety respecting St.
Peter's. I did not feel that the church would really get away without
our meeting, but I felt that it was somehow culpably hazardous in me to
be taking chances with it. As a family, we might never collectively
visit it, and, in fact, we never did; but one day I drove boldly (if
secretly) off alone and renewed my acquaintance with this contemporary
of mine; for, if you have been in Rome a generation and a half ago, you
find that you are coeval not only with the regal, the republican, and
the imperial Rome, but with each Rome of the successive popes, down, at
least, to that of Pius IX.
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