So Rickety And
Unsteady, That Whenever An Enthusiastic Person Kissed The Figure,
With More Than Usual Devotion, Or Threw A
Coin into the saucer,
with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect as a
second or supplementary
Canister), it gave a great leap and rattle,
and nearly shook the attendant lamp out: horribly frightening the
people further down, and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable
embarrassment.
On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the Pope
bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of
St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue: so
cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright: that all the previous bad
weather vanished from the recollection in a moment. I had seen the
Thursday's Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of
umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred
fountains of Rome--such fountains as they are!--and on this Sunday
morning they were running diamonds. The miles of miserable streets
through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's
dragoons: the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of
colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect.
The common people came out in their gayest dresses; the richer
people in their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled to the church
of the Poor Fishermen in their state carriages; shabby magnificence
flaunted its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the
sun; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the Great
Piazza of St. Peter's.
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