July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

Pontifex Maximus. 193
suggested by this strange musical quality. It was more
convincing than all the statistics of measurement.
Cherubs sported on the pillars or grouped themselves
into medallions-delicious creations, who served to mitigate
the essential vulgarity of the prevailing decoration.
Heroic prophets standing in theatrical attitudes, their garments
hanging in unnatural folds, or on the tombs the
figures of women, grinning skulls, and popes, knowinglooking
and worldly wise. Bernini's baldachino rose in
costly vandalism above the main altar, and at the
extremity of the chancel there was a grotesque glory of
gilded plaster. But even the motley, tasteless mosaic
detail could not rob St. Peter's of its magnificent lines,
which in the aggregate produce an impression of vastness,
at first unsuspected, but gradually creeping into the soul.
While I waited the Vatican was swarming like a hive.
All grades of the Roman hierarchy had sent representatives;
all the orders, in their multi-coloured cowls,
emissa.ries from the ends of the earth, to wait upon the
Holy Father; country clergymen, coming like Luther,
all reverence, into the realms of intrigue; monks sworn
to poverty, bronzed and bearded; priests, secret spies,
money lenders, and political advisers; missionaries and
chaplains; men fresh from their parishes, or debauched
by crimes begun at the confessional or in the drawingroom;
pages, clad in scarlet, in the service of the cardinals.
In the cells of that mighty hive there were feasting and
praying, fasting and blaspheming; for aspirations and
infamies, which were to affect the world, were being concocted,
and the representative of the Nazarene Carpenter
was crying aloud for kingly power.
And all the time the Swiss Guard watched by the
portals. They looked theatrical and just a little foolish
in the costume of red, black, and yellow designed by
Michael Angelo. The deliberate guttural of their speech