, and the organist, who was a practical
Anglo-Saxon, conceived the original and economical idea of selling the
useless pipes at the night fair for the benefit of the church. The
braying of the high, cracked reeds was frightful and never to be
forgotten.

Round and round the square, three generations of families, children,
parents and even grandparents, move in a regular stream, closer and
closer towards midnight and supper-time; nor is the place deserted till
three o'clock in the morning. Toys everywhere, original with an
attractive ugliness, nine-tenths of them made of earthenware dashed with
a kind of bright and harmless paint of which every Roman child remembers
the taste for life; and old and young and middle-aged all blow their
whistles and horns with solemnly ridiculous pertinacity, pausing only to
make some little purchase at the booths, or to exchange a greeting with
passing friends, followed by an especially vigorous burst of noise as
the whistles are brought close to each other's ears, and the party that
can make the more atrocious din drives the other half deafened from the
field. And the old women who help to keep the booths sit warming their
skinny hands over earthen pots of coals and looking on without a smile
on their Sibylline faces, while their sons and daughters sell clay
hunchbacks and little old women of clay, the counterparts of their
mothers, to the passing customers. Thousands upon thousands of people
throng the place, and it is warm with the presence of so much humanity,
even under the clear winter sky. And there is no confusion, no
accident, no trouble, there are no drunken men and no pickpockets. But
Romans are not like other people.

In a few days all is cleared away again, and Bernini's great fountain
faces Borromini's big Church of Saint Agnes, in the silence; and the
officious guide tells the credulous foreigner how the figure of the Nile
in the group is veiling his head to hide the sight of the hideous
architecture, and how the face of the Danube expresses the River God's
terror lest the tower should fall upon him; and how the architect
retorted upon the sculptor by placing Saint Agnes on the summit of the
church, in the act of reassuring the Romans as to the safety of her
shrine; and again, how Bernini's enemies said that the obelisk of the
fountain was tottering, till he came alone on foot and tied four lengths
of twine to the four corners of the pedestal, and fastened the strings
to t