reparations had been made
for resisting ghostly fear, and as soon as the sun went down the
firepots in the booths would be filled with charcoal, and presently a
marvellous smell of frying oil would pervade the air, while thousands
upon thousands of little lights would be lighted, all made of big
snail-shells filled with olive oil and tallow and each having a tiny
wick in it. But the sun was not low yet, and the great bells were
ringing to call the people into the Basilica for Vespers.

Fine coaches drove up to the transept entrance, one after the other,
bringing cardinals and princes and Roman ladies of high rank by the
score; and their gorgeously liveried footmen followed them into the
church carrying fald-stools and kneeling-cushions as if for a great
ceremony in Saint Peter's; and though it was a cloudless day in June two
huge closed umbrellas, of the colours of each family, were strapped upon
the top of every coach, but those of the cardinals were scarlet. Amongst
the many arrivals came the blue and yellow liveries of Christina of
Sweden, and with her was Don Alberto in a wonderful summer suit of pale
dove-coloured silk, and he wore the collar of the Order of Saint
Gregory; there were several other gentlemen in her train, and not a few
ladies, so that she was royally attended. She herself wore a
three-cornered blue French hunting-hat on the top of her immense black
wig, and a short riding-skirt of green cloth, and boots like a man.

The reason why there was such a concourse of society at the Lateran on
the eve of the feast was that Alessandro Stradella was going to sing an
air himself, and direct a part of the service which he had composed for
the occasion; and besides, a vast number of the common people were
collected about the Basilica, both from the city and from the Campagna,
to enjoy the customary feast of snails as a defence against witches and
fairies, and they thronged into the church through the great east door
to hear the music too, till there was no standing-room at all in the
transepts and little in the nave and aisles for thirty or forty yards
below the tabernacle, close beside which the old organ used to stand.
For there was no loft then, and the instrument stood out in the church
with its wide wooden balcony, draped all in red, which is the colour
appropriate to the Apostles, and to Martyrs also, of whom Saint John the
Baptist is counted one. The organ was a new one then, and, by the same
token, I sa