roof, the bleakness of outdoors,
enclosed, as it were, within doors.

_Palm Sunday_, 1899.

VI.

SANTI QUATTRO CORONATI.

I went into several small churches to see the sepulchres. Not like our
Tuscan ones; wretched things, mainly tinsel and shabby frippery.

At Santa Prisca we trespassed into orchards, almond trees barely
green, artichokes and dust-heaps, with the belfries of the Aventine
behind, the pillared loggia of San Saba, and the great blocks of the
Baths of Caracalla in front. The church, shut on ordinary days, was
quite empty, only a dozen Franciscans at office, kneeling by the frame
of lighted candles, one of which was extinguished with each verse of
hoarse liturgy by a monk kneeling apart.

After Sta. Prisca, San Clemente, very Byzantine and fine in the gloom,
and then to that dear church of the Santi Quattro Coronati, which has
beckoned to me ever since my childhood; and which, with its
fortified-looking apse, its yard and great gate-tower, looks like a
remote abbey one would drive to, forgotten, hidden, unheard of, for
hours and hours from some out-of-the-way country town. "We'll take you
to so and so," one's host would say, and one would never have heard
the name before.... And there it is, above the modernest slums of
modern Rome!

The church was darkish; a little light from the sunset just picking
out some green and purple of the broken pavement; the tapers of a
curtained-off chapel, and tapers above the sepulchre, throwing a broad
weak yellow light up to the arched triforium, to the grated gallery
whence came the voices of nuns chanting the Lamentations.

From round the illuminated sepulchre rose, like a flock of birds on
our entrance, a bevy of kneeling nuns in _beguine_ cloak and cap. And
in the apse, before the high-altar, was stretched on the slabs, with a
night-light at each corner, something dark and mysterious: the
crucifix, the form barely defined, shrouded in violet.

When the nuns went away a number of children, tiny, tiny girls came
in, and knelt round that veiled mysterious thing; a baby at the end of
their procession. One of the little girls could not resist, and lifted
a corner of the violet silk. But her elder sister quickly slapped her,
pulled her kerchief straight, and all was order and piety.

The dear church, quite empty save for these children, was full of the
smell of the fresh flowers round the sepulchre. A holy, fragrant,
venerable, kindly church, safe-hidden