s, or made any
preparations in honour of the event. There were not many persons outside
the gates. Every few steps you met patrols of six French soldiers headed
by a gendarme. These patrols had been sent by General Goyon to keep the
crowd in order; but, unfortunately, there was no crowd to keep in order;
so that the soldiers looked and seemed to feel as if they were sent on a
fool's errand. At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected,
almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were
very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself
was gaily filled, but not crowded in any part. Priests, monks, and women
formed nine-tenths of the congregation. The sacrament was administered
by the Pope himself to a number of communicants, amongst whom the English
converts visiting Rome were as usual conspicuous. After mass was over
the Pope had breakfast at the Convent, and returned about noon to the
city. Meanwhile, something approaching to a crowd, that is about 600
people, half of whom were priests and the rest _impiegati_, were
collected at the gates; and as the Pope passed to his coach and four,
each of this crowd, with somewhat suspicious unanimity, drew a
handkerchief from his pocket, and raised a feeble cheer. Inside the
gates, and along the streets through which the Papal procession passed,
there was no appearance of any unusual concourse of people. By the
corner of the Gualtro Fontane street, near the new palace of Queen
Christina, a large body of nuns and school-children, decked out in white,
were drawn up on the pavement, who waved their hats, and threw flowers as
the Pope went by; but this was all; and even the Pope himself could
hardly have supposed what demonstration there was to be spontaneous. It
is true the _Giornale_ made the most of it. Their narrative ran thus:
"About half-past eleven in the morning his Holiness, accompanied by the
applause of all who had joined to escort him, entered his carriage, and
took the road towards his residence at the Vatican. Words are
insufficient to express the enthusiastic affection, the joyous
demonstrations, which, for the length of three miles from St Agnese to
the Quirinal, were manifested towards him by the good people of this
Sovereign City, who had crowded to behold his passage; and who, by any
means in their power, expressed the tender affection which they could not
but entertain for his sacred person. Infinite, to