To Other Eyes Than Those Of Faith It Has
The Effect Of A Life-Size But Not Life-Like Doll, Piously Bedizened And
Jewelled Over, But Rather Ill-Humored Looking, Or, If Not That, Proud
Looking Or Severe Looking.
To the eyes in which its sickbed visits have
dried the tears it must wear an aspect of heavenly pity and beauty; and
I am very willing to believe that these are the eyes which see it
aright.
As it was, and taking it literally, it seemed far less
mechanical and unfeeling than the monk who pulled it out and pushed it
back on its wheeled platform. But he must get tired of showing it to the
unbelievers who come out of curiosity, and very likely I should, if I
were in his place, as nonchalantly wipe across the glass front of the
shrine the card with the Bambino's legend printed in various languages
on it, which you may then buy with the blessing from the glass for
whatever you choose to give.
Where art and antiquity are so abundant as in Rome, the Bambino incident
is probably what the reader, when he has visited the Church of Ara Coeli
will chiefly remember, and I will not pretend to be any better than the
reader, though I will say that I have a persistent sense of something
important about the roof; and there are the Pinturrichio frescos, which
an old Sienese like me must have the taste for. The not easily praiseful
Hare says it is "one of the most interesting of Christian churches," and
without allowing that there are any other sorts of churches I may allow
that this is one of the least unlovely in Rome. Trinita de' Monti seemed
to be another, but only, I dare say, subjectively, because of the
exquisite pleasure we had one afternoon in March when we went into it
for the nuns' singing of the Benediction. That, we had been told, was
something which no one coming to Rome should miss; and we were so
anxious not to miss it that on our way to the Pincian Hill we stopped at
the foot of the church-steps, and reassured ourselves of the hour
through the kindness of an English-speaking nurse-maid at the bottom and
of a gentle nun at the top, who both told us the hour would be exactly
five.
When we came back at that time and bought our way into the church by
rightful payment to the two blind beggars who guarded its doors, we
found it packed with people who bad been more literally punctual. They
were of all nations, but a large part were Anglo-Americans, and a young
girl of this race rose and gave her seat, with a sweet insistence that
would not be denied, to that one of us who deserved it most. He who was
left leaning against the soft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make
some young priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push
up, and he enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his
forbearance. He was there, to be sure, an alien and a heretic, out of
mere curiosity, and they were there probably so rapt in their devout
attention that they did not notice their errant step-brother, and so did
not think to offer him the hospitality of their mother church's house.
But he would not make any such allowance; he condemned them with the
unsparing severity of the strap-hanger in a trolley-car, who blushes
with shame for the serried rows of men sitting behind their newspapers.
When he was at his wit's end to find excuse for them a priest on another
bench made room, and he sank down glad to forgive and forget; but now he
would not have yielded his place to any other Protesant in Christendom.
In the collective curiosity he lost the sense of self-reproach for his
own, and eagerly bent his gaze on the group of officiating priests at
the high altar beyond the grille of the choir. The altar was all a blaze
of electric lights, and there was a novel effect in their composition in
the crosses resting diagonally on either side of it. Next the grille
showed the feathers and fashions of the mothers and sisters of the young
girls from the school of the adjoining Convent of the Sacred Heart, and
midway between these visitors, like a flock of white birds stooping on
some heavenly plain, the white veils of the girls stretched in lovely
levels to left and right. Nothing could have attuned the spirit for the
surprise awaiting it like this angelic sight; and when the voices of the
nuns fell suddenly from the organ gallery, behind all the people, like
the singing of the morning stars molten in one adoring music and falling
from the zenith down, whatever moments of innocent joy life might have
had it could have had none surpassing that.
But when we came out the self-mockery with which life is apt to recover
itself from any exaltation began. In returning from the Pincio the only
cab we had been able to get was the last left of the very worst cabs in
Rome, and we had bidden the driver wait for us at the church-steps, not
without some hope that he would play us false. But there he was, true
to his word, with such disciplined fidelity as that of the Roman
sentinels who used to die at their posts; and we mounted to ours with
the muted prayer that we, at least, might reach home alive. This did not
seem probable when the driver whipped up his horse. It appeared to have
aged and sickened while we were in the church, though we had thought it
looked as bad as could be before, and it lurched alarmingly from side to
side, recovering itself with a plunge of its heavy head away from the
side in which its body was sinking.
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