all with
their white mops; a penetrating sweet smell of wine and oil filling
the place, and seeming to waken paganism. As they turned again towards
the high-altar, its huge twisted gilded columns glimmering in the
light of the tapers, lights appeared in the Veronica balcony; priests
moved to and fro with a great gold cross in that distant lit-up gloom;
the canons fell on their knees, great purple poppies. There was the
noise of a rattle; more lights in that balcony, and another gold
shining thing was displayed; the Veronica this time, with (as you
guessed) the outline of a bearded face.

It was twilight outside; and St. Peter's, its colonnade, St. Angelo's,
the Tiber, looked colossal.

MAUNDY THURSDAY.

XIV.

GOOD FRIDAY.

It was overcast yesterday, and the sun set as we approached this
place, the train passing through woods of myrtle and lentisk scrub.
Suddenly we came upon green fields lying against the skyline, and full
of asphodels--a pale golden-rosy sunset under mists, a pinkish full
moon rising in the misty blue opposite; and against this pale, serene
sky, the hundreds of asphodels, each distinct like a candlestick,
rising out of the green. I never saw such a vision of the Elysian
fields.

Here at Anzio we found a Gesu Morto procession winding with a band,
and a red-and-white confraternity, through the little fishing town. At
one moment the great black erect Madonna appeared among the
torch-light against the deep blue sky, the misty blue moonlit sea.

Much less fine than such processions are in Tuscany; but impressive.
The little boats, with folded lateen sails, near the pier had coloured
lanterns slung from the mast to the bowsprit. The sea broke like
ruffled silk.

ANZIO, _April_ 17.

XV.

ASPHODELS.

Like Johnson and his wall-fruit, I have never had as many asphodels to
look at as I wanted. Ever since I saw them first, rushing by train
through the Maremma, nay ever since I saw them in a photograph of a
Sicilian temple, nay perhaps, secretly, since hearing their name, I
have felt a longing for them, and a secret sense that I was never
going to be shown as many as I want. Here I have. Yesterday morning
bicycling inland, along a rising road along which alternate green
pastures and sea, and woods of dense myrtle and lentisk scrub
overtopped by ilexes and cork-trees, _there were asphodels enough_:
deep plantations, little fields, like those of cultivated narcissus,
compact masses o