riedly into his court-yard gate,
the footman signing to close it, a discharge of fire-arms was heard,
and the drums of the Civic Guard beat to arms.

The Padrona ran up and down, crying with every round of shot, "Jesu
Maria, they are killing the Pope! O poor Holy Father!--Tito, Tito,"
(out of the window to her husband,) "what _is_ the matter?"

The lord of creation disdained to reply.

"O Signora! pray, pray, ask Tito what is the matter?"

I did so.

"I don't know, Signora; nobody knows."

"Why don't you go on the Mount and see?"

"It would be an imprudence, Signora; nobody will go."

I was just thinking to go myself, when I saw a poor man borne by,
badly wounded, and heard that the Swiss were firing on the people.
Their doing so was the cause of whatever violence there was, and it
was not much.

The people had assembled, as usual, at the Quirinal, only with more
form and solemnity than usual. They had taken with them several of the
Chamber of Deputies, and they sent an embassy, headed by Galetti, who
had been in the late ministry, to state their wishes. They received
a peremptory negative. They then insisted on seeing the Pope, and
pressed on the palace. The Swiss became alarmed, and fired from the
windows and from the roof. They did this, it is said, without orders;
but who could, at the time, suppose that? If it had been planned to
exasperate the people to blood, what more could have been done? As it
was, very little was shed; but the Pope, no doubt, felt great panic.
He heard the report of fire-arms,--heard that they tried to burn
a door of the palace. I would lay my life that he could have shown
himself without the slightest danger; nay, that the habitual respect
for his presence would have prevailed, and hushed all tumult. He did
not think so, and, to still it, once more degraded himself and injured
his people, by making promises he did not mean to keep.

He protests now against those promises as extorted by violence,--a
strange plea indeed for the representative of St. Peter!

Rome is all full of the effigies of those over whom violence had no
power. There was an early Pope about to be thrown into the Tiber;
violence had no power to make him say what he did not mean. Delicate
girls, men in the prime of hope and pride of power,--they were all
alike about that. They could die in boiling oil, roasted on coals, or
cut to pieces; but they could not say what they did not mean. These
formed the true Church