Palazzo Rusticucci, Rome, February 7, 1900.

“If I am ever a rich man,—” Patsy began.

“Which heaven forfend—you have not the gift!” said the monsignore.

“Wait and see!—I shall build a great church.”

“Like St. Peter’s there?”

We were on the terrace. The sun was setting behind the chapel of the Vatican. There was still light enough for the yellow of the sun-soaked faÇade, the pale blue of the dome, to tell against the gray and rosy sky.

“Oh, make it the Parthenon! They both give a fellow the same sort of feeling as being in love does, or seeing Niagara.”

“It is not a bad use to put a fortune to,” the monsignore agreed.

“It is about time the artists had their innings!” Patsy declared. “I should like to be referee. Gladiators, prize-fighters wouldn’t be in it. What fun can there be in backing such creatures, or even a horse? I would rather stake my fortune on an architect like Bramante—trust my future reputation to a painter like Pinturricchio than to a Flying Childers or a Goldsmith Maid.”

“First catch your hare,” said the monsignore.

“The woods are full of ’em. Give the artists a chance, and you’ll see the trouble is not with them! The opportunity must come first. A country has the art it deserves. When we Americans want beauty as much as we want rapid transit we shall get it.”

“There are some signs,” said the monsignore. “We have art patrons who pay enormous sums for old masters.”

“Our art patrons lack imagination,” said Patsy. “It is so easy, so obvious, to buy ‘old masters,’ to patronize Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli! I should pick my men, give ’em the track, and let ’em show their paces. Wait till I build my cathedral: you will see an architect, a painter, and a sculptor or two.”

“‘The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, wrought with a sad sincerity,’” quoted the monsignore. He had come to tell us about the Pope’s opening the Porta Santa on Christmas eve,—the first of the many functions of this Anno Santo.

Finally we “muzzled” Patsy, and the monsignore seized his chance to speak.

“As the ceremony was in the portico of St. Peter’s,” he said, “a comparatively small place, very few invitations were issued. The papal throne was erected near the Porta Santa,—the Jubilee door,—it is the one on the extreme right of the portico, you will remember it by the cross upon it. The Pope knocked three times upon the Porta Santa with a mallet, saying as he did so, “Aperite mihi portas justitiae (Open to me the door of justice).” At the words the door (which was last opened by Leo the Twelfth, in 1825) fell away as if by magic, and His Holiness walked alone into the vast empty church, where there was no other living being but himself. He tottered down the aisle, past the splendid tombs of his predecessors, beneath that unmarked sepulchre over the door, where Pius the Ninth lies waiting the day when he must make room for him in his tomb as he made room for him on his throne. At the shrine of St. Peter the Pope knelt and said a prayer. For me that was the great moment in the whole gorgeous ceremony.”

“It all comes back to the simple human situation of an old man passing the tomb where he soon must lie!” was Patsy’s comment.

“It is just the simple human situation that the Church always comes back to,” said the monsignore.

“Oh, I say! simple, you know! That’s putting it a little strong. The scene you describe is simple and touching, but, as a rule, the services over there are more gorgeous and theatrical than religious!”

“Granted,—St. Peter’s is the stage on which the dramas of the church are played. Why not? Why not use every art to the glory of God—music, the drama, all the rest? There are a hundred quiet parish churches where one can go for devotion and aspiration.”

Patsy’s company is always stimulating, but he rather interfered with my getting all the information I wanted from the monsignore. I did manage to extract the facts that the Anno Santo was instituted by Boniface VIII., in 1300, that it was originally meant to celebrate it every hundred years; that the Romans petitioned to have the time shortened to every fifty years, then to thirty-three years (the supposed earthly life of Christ), and finally to every twenty-five years; that at the five other Basilicas in Rome ceremonies like those at St. Peter’s were celebrated on the same day—a cardinal opening the Porta Santa in each, and that during the Anno Santo plenary indulgence is obtainable by all Catholics who pass a certain number of times in a given number of days, through the holy doors of St. Peter’s, and the five other Basilicas, repeating the appointed prayers.

“Every twenty-five years, you say?” Patsy insisted, “and the last Jubilee was in 1825—how is that?”

“In 1850 and again in 1875 Rome was so unsettled that the observance of the Anno Santo was not expedient,” said the monsignore, shortly.

“Let me see,” mused Patsy; “in 1850 Pius the Ninth was at Gaeta, trying a change of air for his health, and Mazzini was at the head of the Roman Republic. In 1875, Pius still thought that the Dukes of Savoy were only casual visitors and had not yet realized that they had come to Rome to stay. Isn’t that about the size of it?”

“My dear boy,” said the monsignore imperturbably, “now you are talking about things you do not understand.” He talked of other things for a few moments and then went away.

On Christmas Eve the pilgrims began to arrive in torrents, and have been pouring in and out of the city ever since. They will not be allowed to come in July and August—supposed to be the least healthy months. They have gathered from the uttermost parts of the earth hordes of strangers invading Rome as I believe it has not been invaded since the days of Attila and his Huns. From the terrace we see pilgrims from all the Catholic nations of the earth pass to bow the knee and drop the obolo at the feet of the Prisoner of the Vatican. These vast pilgrimages, sometimes several thousand strong—are admirably managed. A dearth of cabs is the first sign we notice of their arrival. The piazza is deserted, not a cab in sight. A little later a procession of cabs, crowded with pilgrims (six to a carriage) and their belongings—the queerest boxes, bales, bundles begin to rattle across the piazza to the vast buildings in the rear of the Vatican where the pilgrims lodge. They usually stay three days; during that time they are received by the Pope, visit all the Basilicas, see the sights, and depart richer in experience and plenary indulgence, leaving the Pope, the shop keepers, hotel keepers, and cabmen richer in money. Each flood gilds (or silver plates) poor old Rome till it shines as it has not shone in years.

I did not suppose there were so many splendid costumes left in the world as have passed through the Piazza of St. Peter’s and under my eyes during these few months! Hungarians in tight-fitting black breeches, jackets trimmed with black astrakhan and long high boots. Herzegovinians with wonderful garments of white sheepskin, embroidered in red silk outlined designs (the woolly side of the sheepskin is worn next the person, the outside looks like parchment), fur-trimmed boots, hair cut square across the shoulders, faces of rapt devotion. The Poles were a superb group, the women wore costumes of striped vermilion and emerald green, the men, scarlet breeches, green jackets, and picturesque woollen caps. There were Cossacks from the river Don, with long, gray woollen caftans down to their heels, high pointed caps, and cartridge belts over their shoulders, they would be ugly customers to come up against on a less peaceful excursion. While driving, we passed one Don Cossack who reminded us so vividly of Taras Bulba, the hero of Gogol’s Iliad of the North, that we followed him for half an hour, as he stalked about the city, looking at the sights as if they were all perfectly familiar to him. He was a giant with a mane of bronzed hair, dark eyes, high cheek bones, and a look of indomitable power, of silent reserved strength, that made the careless casual passer-by seem an effete, over-civilized being. He wore jewel-handled daggers stuck in a waist belt, fastened with turquoises “as big as my two thumbs.” He must be “somebody” at home.

The other evening J. brought home the news that there were a lot of pilgrims lodged in the wing of the Palazzo Torlonia, opposite his studio. The next morning R. and I hurried over to the Borgo St. Angelo to see what was to be seen. The Palazzo Giraud Torlonia, which has a splendid front on the Borgo Nuovo, only a block away from the Rusticucci—has two long wings in the rear, with a courtyard between them, the entrance to both wings being on the Borgo St. Angelo, rather a squalid back street. The studio is a vast room as big as a church on the second floor. When my mother was in Rome, on her wedding journey, she danced in this room at one of the famous balls, given by old Torlonia, the banker prince, the founder of the family, and grandfather of the present incumbent, J.’s landlord. The studio—at the time J. took it the only available one in Rome large enough for his purpose—could only be had by hiring the whole wing, with its three stories, the right to re-let being refused. This makes him master of all he surveys, as the grim, stone-paved courtyard, with its ever-flowing fountain fringed with maidenhair fern, goes with his wing.

I received a shock on entering the studio, and looking at the big picture for the first time in days. The little blindfold Love who led the procession of the centuries in The Flight of Time, has been painted out! He now exists only in my memory, and in the cartoon, a red chalk drawing hanging in our hall. Though the composition is better without him, it gave me a pang to find him gone. To console me, I found three portrait studies of the beautiful Lady K.

From the studio windows we could see into the vast high rooms of the opposite ell, which is hired for the pilgrims, when, as on this occasion, they cannot all be accommodated in the huge lazzaretto the Pope built during the last cholera summer. That was in 1884. Naples was decimated by the disease; everybody believed that the cholera would come to Rome (everybody except J., who calmly passed the summer here). The Pope built the great lazzaretto against the cholera’s coming; King Humbert, of the high courage, went to meet the cholera, went to pest-stricken Naples, walked through the hospital wards where the cholera patients lay, spoke comfortably to them, won new glory for the brave house of Savoy, a fresh hold on his people’s hearts. As the lazzaretto—it has never been used as such—was not big enough to hold the French pilgrimage, some of it spilled over into the empty wing of the Torlonia Giraud Palace, across the courtyard from the studio.

When R. and I arrived on the scene it was the hour of bedmaking. We could see the neat, light figures of the nuns (to whose care the entertainment of the pilgrims is entrusted) tucking in the sheets, smoothing out the pillows of the long lines of white cots that filled the rooms. On the sidewalk, outside the green door—all our doors in the Borgo seem to be green—sat a group of old men smoking the solemn, after-breakfast pipe. Feeling that we must see the pilgrims at nearer view, we went down to the street and out of our door just in time to meet a rosy young sister as she came out of the opposite door with a little old peasant woman, whose face was wrinkled and brown as an English walnut. The old peasant wore over a full white linen shirt a dark cloth jacket cut square at the bosom, with straps going over the shoulders. The double-breasted jacket was fastened with silver buttons and heavily embroidered in a charming pattern with variegated silks. On her head was a plain white cap of sheer muslin turned back over the ears, and hanging to the shoulders. Under the muslin cap was a sort of gilt skull-cap. She wore a heavy plaited skirt of dark blue broadcloth, sabots painted black, long earrings of filigree gold inset with seed pearls. Even beside the pure linen of the sister, she positively shone with cleanliness.

“Look well at that jacket,” I said to R., “did you ever see one like it before?”

“Why, it is our Breton jacket!”

You perhaps remember that at the old yellow house where R. lives there is a trunk full of “dressing up things,” the theatrical wardrobe of the children, largely made up of the old finery of three preceding generations!

“Did you ever see that cap before?” I asked R.

“Why it’s grandmama’s cap!”

“Long ago, when you were only a baby, grandmother and I passed a summer in Brittany. At Quimper, where we spent some happy weeks, a jacket like that was made for me, and we found the one and only model for grandmama’s cap.”

The little old peasant woman carried a large blue cotton umbrella, with time-yellowed ivory handle and points, a perfect ark, under which three even four generations might take refuge from a deluge. I looked at her so intently, with such a passion of longing memory, that she must have seen something more than common curiosity in my glance, for she gave me a second look less preoccupied, more gentle than the first, and then paused. I grasped the opportunity, and going up to her asked in French how things were at Quimper? She listened patiently, politely, understanding nothing of what I said till I pronounced the magic word “Quimper.” Then the old eyes grew keen and intent. She put out a hand and answered me in a flood of kindly Breton, whose sound only was familiar to me. For some minutes we stood there in the middle of the Borgo St. Angelo, shaking hands, looking intently at each other, first one, then the other repeating the word “Quimper!” To her it meant home; to me, the one thing dearer! Then with a last tightening of the hands we parted. We recognized other of the Breton costumes, from St.-Pol-de-Leon, Douarnenez, the Morbihan, we remembered having seen some of them at the great pardon of PloËrmel. The caps of Quimper are quite distinct from the caps of Quimperle, you understand, though the towns are not far apart!

That afternoon, with a roll of thunder drums and a flash of lightning, the deluge descended upon the Borgo. I rushed to the watch-tower—our upper terrace, to see the storm. From the four quarters of the sky the lightning swords smote at each other; from the soft white clouds above the Castle St. Angelo came rose-colored lightning with a growl; from a purple rack over St. Peter’s a piercing yellow zigzag, like a Saracen blade, followed by the crack of cannon. Veils of rain fell, mixed with the white spray of the fountains, and were driven in smoky sheets across the square. The piazza was alive with pilgrims coming away from St. Peter’s, where service was just over, the steps were black with people. The pilgrims scattered like leaves before the storm; the skirts of women and priests were blown about, like the bewitched draperies of the Bernini statues on the faÇade of the church. In the midst of the hurrying, scurrying crowd I made out the blue umbrella ark of Quimper, valiantly held up by a tall young peasant; my little old woman—perhaps his mother—paddled along on one side, a stout wench—perhaps his wife—on the other. The cabs were all snatched up in a moment. Down in the Borgo I could see the gobbo waiting for me at our door. I had to keep a pressing engagement and dared not delay till the tempest passed, lest the gobbo and his cab be ravished from my sight. As we rattled along the Borgo Nuovo, I recognized the parroco; he was without an umbrella and was getting soaked to the skin. As we would pass his door it seemed the part of friendship to give him a lift.

“Stop!” I cried to the gobbo; “the parroco is going our way, we will take him home.”

“There is no use in stopping,” said the gobbo. I insisted. Sulky and grumbling he drew up just outside the hospital of the Santo Spirito. The water was rushing through the gutter like a small millstream.

“Jump in, padre, we will take you home.”

“No, no. Thank you—it is impossible!”

I persisted.

“Drive on!” he cried impatiently to the gobbo. To me more gently, “It would not do for me to be seen driving with a lady.”

As the gobbo whipped up the old white horse, a crowded carriage containing four women and two foreign-looking priests passed us. I looked back at the parroco; he shrugged his shoulders, his lips formed the words, “What can you expect? They are French!”

“What did I tell you, Signora mia?” murmured the gobbo. “It would have been a scandal for the poor parroco to be seen driving with you!”

Wasn’t that slap at the French nice? The parroco served his two years in the army when he was young; he is a good Italian, a son of the soil, a son of the Church. The passions of his race are strong in him, and in spite of his cassock he hates a Frenchman!

Coming home late that evening we found behind our door a small wallet lined with coarse red morocco. It contained nothing but memoranda of modest expenditures:

Cab, one franc.

Candles, six sous.

Tobacco, fifty centimes.

Rosary of amethyst beads (for Berthe), four francs.

Souvenirs of Rome, seven francs, etc.

Crabbedly written on the flyleaf was the address of a priest of Vaucluse. Vaucluse! Isn’t that a name to conjure with? We read the poor priest’s case as easily as his simple record of expenses. No people are quite so attentive to the pilgrims as the “light-fingered gentry.” The thief who stole the pocket-book, after taking out whatever of value it contained, threw it into our doorway to be rid of it. J. has sent it by post to the priest at Vaucluse; it will at least help him to make up his accounts.

“Souvenirs,” always a staple of Roman trade, are more in evidence in the shop windows than ever. The French pilgrims buy a great many souvenirs. We saw our old friend from Quimper in a shop in the Borgo. To get another look at her, and to show her to Patsy, who was with me, we went in and looked at souvenirs. Besides the “articles of religion” there were semi-religious articles; spoons, pens, pins, a thousand useless nothings bearing the triple crown, the keys of Peter, the sacred initials. The shop-keeper laid a tray full before Patsy, who turned them over indifferently. “Fancy keeping stamps in this,” he held up a box with the white dove of the Spirito Santo inlaid upon the cover, “or cutting Punch with that!” he displayed a paper knife with the figure of the Lamb. “I say, you know, the common use the shop-keepers put these sacred symbols to is more than I can stand!”

The shop-keeper thought he understood; we caught his whisper to his wife, “They are not Christians, they are Saracens!” to us he said, “Have patience, sir, here is your affair!”

He opened a drawer under the counter. It contained the same souvenirs, the same boxes, spoons, pens, paper-knives, what-nots, with Mahomedan symbols, instead of Christian—the crescent, the star, the scimitar, the monogram of the prophet.

“No, not quite our affair,” said Patsy. “We are not Mahomedans.”

The shop in which we were chaffering is in the very shadow of Peter’s dome; the bells in the clock tower were ringing the Ave.

The cry is, Still they come! Pilgrims, pilgrims, pilgrims. By just sitting tight on our terrace and using our eyes, the uttermost parts of Christendom have been brought to us. Sardinians, for instance. When Patsy came back from his moufflon hunting trip in Sardinia, and talked familiarly about “Sards,” we were devoured with curiosity to see them for ourselves. A week after, the “Sards” arrived in force. They are more like Corsicans, or even Spaniards, than like Italians; they have grave, dark, impassive faces, and an expression of sombre reserve. The men’s dress is in keeping with their character; a black woollen, knitted bonnet, like a sailor’s cap, hangs on one side to the shoulder, close-fitting jacket, leggings, and sash, all black. Their coarse homespun linen shirts, made very full in the bosom and sleeves, and worn without starch, are a great improvement on the dreadful stiff, white armor in which our men encase themselves for their sins! The “Sards’” only ornaments were silver buckles worn at the knees and on the shoes.

One morning J., who had started early for the studio, came back to tell me that a group of Filipinos had just gone over to St. Peter’s.

“How do you know they are Filipinos?”

“I don’t know; they look like two Filipino art students who used to be in Rome. One of them was named Luna. He was the best draughtsman in the studio; he beat everybody at drawing; seemed to have a dash of the Japanese dexterity.”

“Was he any relation to General Luna?”

“Only his brother,” said J. Now that is Rome, and that is J.!

I hurried over to St. Peter’s and caught up with the Filipinos before they had made the third chapel of prayer. They are small, swarthy men; their faces show a strange mingling of races, something of the Malay, the Mongol, the Latin, with a fourth element I did not recognize,—rather deadly looking folk, I thought, but very devout in their behavior at church.

When royalty comes to the Vatican there is a deal of pother. The morning of the King of Siam’s visit to the Pope, we were waked at dawn by the carts fetching the royal yellow sand, and the men spreading it thick over the streets where the wheels of royalty were to pass. The King, whom we saw perfectly, is a fierce-looking little fellow; he was dressed in quite the most lovely uniform I have ever seen; white broadcloth, embroidered in gold. Do you suppose their good clothes are any mitigation to the ennui of sovereigns? I should think they might be.

Easter Sunday, 1900.

We thought we had seen Rome crowded before, but we had not! During the past week, the crowds have been almost inconceivable. By Wednesday all the bathrooms at the Grand Hotel that could be spared had been turned into bedrooms. Last night a pair of travellers slept in the red plush cushioned elevator, and two in the big comfortable hotel omnibus. Cabs are a rare commodity—even the gobbo has deserted us and hired himself out by the week to the pilgrims. The electric cars (did I tell you they had put these pests in under our very windows?) are so jammed that we go for the most part “shanks’ mare.” Many of our friends have let their apartments, and gone away for the rest of the season. We could have got a good price for ours; but in spite of the undeniable inconvenience (the cost of provisions has almost doubled), we would not have missed the experience. The city has been a Babel of foreign tongues, a kaleidescope of foreign faces and costumes. One tastes life as from a goblet filled and brimming over with sparkling, heady wine. That old gogpate, Z——, has let his villa, carriage, servants, even his precious Antonio, the best cook in Rome. He said to J., “I cannot afford to stay in Rome when the price of filet has doubled and I can get my whole year’s rent by letting the villa for three months.”

“We cannot afford not to stay in Rome when it is so interesting,” said J. There you have the two ways of looking at life—the Philistine’s and the artist’s!

We have taken part in a canonization—there remained but that—of all the ceremonials on “that stage of the Church” incomparably the most sumptuous we have seen. When I heard that the new saint’s name was La Salle, stirred by memories of Parkman’s “Discovery of the Great West,” I insisted upon having tickets to one of the private tribunes. I confess it was a disappointment to find that we were making a saint of the wrong Lasalle, not our own RenÉ Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, but another doubtless excellent person described as “a distinguished educator priest.” You have heard about so many ceremonies that I will only speak of the river of bishops! I did not suppose there were so many bishops in the world. They passed down the vast church in a line of seething white and gold, stretching from the entrance down the nave to the very chair of Peter behind the high altar. Every bishop carried a tall white wax torch, whose yellow flame lighted up his white and gold vestments, his gold-tipped mitre and crozier. I shall never forget that dazzling splendor! I have seen so many of these great pageants that I am rather blasÉe about them, but those gorgeous bishops in their immaculate white and gold robes outshone even the arrogant vermilion cardinals, the purple canons with their gray fur capes—even that man of ivory and iron, Leo XIII., carried aloft in the Sedia Gestatoria, on the shoulders of six crimson lackeys, the triple crown blazing on his head.

On the 31st of May I happened in to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, a dear church, built on the ruins of an ancient temple of Minerva. Fra Angelico is buried here (how can his native Fiesole spare his bones)? There is an ancient Greek sarcophagus, with Hercules taming the Nemean lion in relief; there is a picture of Torquemada, the terrible confessor of Isabella; there is an adorable flower-bespattered tomb carved by that sweetest of statuaries, Mino da Fiesole, and a hundred other “features”! In the piazza outside stands an engaging marble elephant, with the smallest of Egyptian obelisks on his back; altogether the place is a good example of what one is forever harking back to,—Rome’s golden blending of things Greek, Egyptian, classic, pagan, early Christian, renaissance, and rococo!

In the pulpit who should be thundering away, whacking the dusty crimson cushions till the beautiful old carved pulpit shook, but our friend the parroco! He seemed so much in earnest that I paid two cents for a chair and sat down to listen to him. His subject was the erudition of Mary, “the most learned woman,” he said, “who has ever lived. Her knowledge of languages—she spoke at least twenty—proves this. She is known to have talked with Moabites, Samaritans, Egyptians, and other persons, to the number of twenty different nationalities.” The hypothesis that some of these persons may have spoken Aramaic, Mary’s own language, was not admitted by the preacher.

Coming out after church, I overheard one well-dressed contadina—senza cappello (without a hat), a social grade is marked by the wearing of a hat—say to another peasant woman,—

“My son has preached a new sermon on the Madonna on each of the thirty-one days of her month. He has done well.” I thought he had!

It was the parroco’s mother. She had the same soft dark eyes, the same mouth, the same smile—the mother for whose sake, as he himself told us, he became a priest. “Poverella,” he said, “it was her wish; I am all that she has; how could I disappoint her? and she believes that one day I shall receive the cardinal’s hat!”

He had come as he always does, the Saturday before Easter, to bless the house. Pompilia and Filomena had been on their marrow-bones for a week, rubbing, scrubbing, polishing, setting the house in order for the rite. On the kitchen dresser the prescribed food to be eaten on Easter Sunday was neatly arranged: eggs and mortadella for breakfast; lamb, green peas, a certain broth made with lemon and eggs, served only on this day of the year, and the sweet dish already prepared,—what the Italians call zuppa Inglese, and we call Italian cream! In a vase were carefully preserved the blossoms of wall flowers, stocks, and violets, from the sepulchre of Holy Thursday at the church near by in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli; these, according to tradition, must deck our Easter dinner table. It was four o’clock when the parroco reached our house. He was very smart in his neat beretta,—a high, square, black silk cap,—his best white linen cotta trimmed with handsome lace, freshly starched and ironed. It was “done up,” I’ll be bound, by that good brown mother of his. He was followed by an imp of a boy with the oddest snub nose, and hair growing almost down to his eyebrows, who made the responses and carried the silver holy-water vessel by a pair of enchanting wrought handles. We formed a procession, headed by the parroco and the imp; next came the padrona di casa (myself); behind me walked Pompilia the cook in the time-honored striped black silk which I had given to Nena, and she, “per miseria,” had sold to the cook; after her, Filomena, the prettiest girl in the Borgo, in her best blue frock and a rose in her hair; the procession was brought up in the rear by Nena,—the witch, the snuff-taker, the footman, the mainstay and comfort of the whole household. She had borrowed a clean apron, smoothed her rough, gray hair, and redeemed her coral beads and gold earrings from pawn at the Monte di Pieta. There were flowers everywhere in the house, the terrace had been rifled, roses, roses, roses, red, pink, saffron. In the very best vase were a single white rose from my mother’s favorite tree, the Catherine Cook, and one mammoth pink one from Captain Christy. We marched first to the salon, the most honorable room. The parroco dipped a silver sprinkler in the lustral water, which he sprinkled in four directions, north, south, east, west, saying as he did so, “Bless, O Lord, this place, that in it may be health, chastity, victory, virtue, humility, goodness, sweetness, the fulness of law and thanksgiving, and may this blessing abide in this place and upon all those who dwell herein.”

Whether by chance or intention, a few drops fell upon a group of family portraits hanging on the wall. Our dear sunny chamber was next blessed, then the dining-room, the den, finally the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. In each room the prayer was repeated, the water sprinkled. The parroco was in a hurry, he could not wait to taste a gocciatino di vino or a bit of the pizze Filomena’s mother had sent us from her home in Umbria,—there were many more houses to be blessed before nightfall. We went with him to the door, shook hands, slipping into his palm a small envelope—the imp carried openly the silver plate in which I dropped his share of the modest offering, then with hasty bows and smiles and “buona pasqua (happy Easter)” the pair of them clattered down the long travertina staircase, past the recumbent Etruscan ladies, with their button-like eyes, who guard our stair, leaving me to enjoy our clean, sweet-smelling house. On the terrace an hour later, drinking in the glory of the sunset, came an odd sense of the fitness and familiarity of it all. This blessing the house, the food, the penates, the tools, the effigies of ancestors is the Little Ambervalia Pater describes so deliciously in Marius, the Epicurean; there is, too, an echo in it of the Vestalia, the festival in honor of Vesta, held at the house of the Vestal Virgins on the 9th of June, “after which the temple was closed for five days for ceremonial cleansing!” At home, in God’s own country, the ceremony survives under the name of spring cleaning. It was a wonderful stormy sunset; St. Peter’s and the piazza seen in this ferment of light and shadow recalled a curious allegorical design of Bernini’s, in which the two curving wings of his colonnade are made to suggest the arms of Christ’s Vicar, spread out to enfold the world, Angelo’s dome being worked in as a sort of papal tiara floating over the whole.