The golden coach followed, drawn by
six horses gorgeously caparisoned, and within, the smiling white-
haired Pio Nono, scattering his benedictions, while the multitude
fell upon its knees as one man. Such were the daily spectacles of
coloured pomp and of antique solemnity, which so long as the sun
was shining, at any rate-- dazzled the onlooker into a happy
forgetfulness of the reverse side of the Papal dispensation-- the
nauseating filth of the highways, the cattle stabled in the
palaces of the great, and the fever flitting through the ghastly
tenements of the poor.
In St. Peter's, the North Transept had been screened off; rows of
wooden seats had been erected covered with Brussels carpet; and
upon these seats sat each crowned with a white mitre, the 700
Bishops in Council. Here all day long rolled forth, in sonorous
Latin, the interminable periods of episcopal oratory; but it was
not here that the issue of the Council was determined. The
assembled Fathers might talk till the marbles of St. Peter's
themselves grew weary of the reverberations; the fate of the
Church was decided in a very different manner-- by little knots
of influential persons meeting quietly of a morning in the back
room of some inconspicuous lodging-house, by a sunset rendezvous
in the Borghese Gardens between a Cardinal and a Diplomatist by a
whispered conference in an alcove at a Princess's evening party,
with the gay world chattering all about.
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