s, whence now and then you could hear the half-shriek, halflaugh of
a frolicsome girl, whom the shadow had betrayed into a young man's
arms. Elder groups were seated on the fragments of pillars and blocks
of marble that lay round the verge of the arena, talking in the quick,
short ripple of the Italian tongue. On the steps of the great black
cross in the centre of the Coliseum sat a party singing scraps of songs,
with much laughter and merriment between the stanzas.

It was a strange place for song and mirth. That black cross marks one of
the special blood-spots of the earth where, thousands of times over, the
dying gladiator fell, and more of human agony has been endured for the
mere pastime of the multitude than on the breadth of many battlefields.
From all this crime and suffering, however, the spot has derived a more
than common sanctity. An inscription promises seven years' indulgence,
seven years of remission from the pains of purgatory, and earlier
enjoyment of heavenly bliss, for each separate kiss imprinted on the
black cross. What better use could be made of life, after middle age,
when the accumulated sins are many and the remaining temptations few,
than to spend it all in kissing the black cross of the Coliseum!

Besides its central consecration, the whole area has been made sacred
by a range of shrines, which are erected round the circle, each
commemorating some scene or circumstance of the Saviour's passion and
suffering. In accordance with an ordinary custom, a pilgrim was
making his progress from shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying a
penitential prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along
which he crept, or sported with their friends close by the shrines
where he was kneeling. The pilgrim took no heed, and the girls meant
no irreverence; for in Italy religion jostles along side by side
with business and sport, after a fashion of its own, and people are
accustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others praying, between two
fits of merriment, or between two sins.

To make an end of our description, a red twinkle of light was visible
amid the breadth of shadow that fell across the upper part of the
Coliseum. Now it glimmered through a line of arches, or threw a broader
gleam as it rose out of some profound abyss of ruin; now it was muffled
by a heap of shrubbery which had adventurously clambered to that dizzy
height; and so the red light kept ascending to loftier and loftier
ranges