mundane, he is the most painstaking, conscientious
actor. Even as he flew by in his dust-cloud
a few seconds ago, was he playing. Tomorrow,
or a few days hence, of an ordinary
Friday, when I wait on the steps of Saint Peter's
to see the public come forth from its half-hour's
customary devotion, I shall see him come out
in a sort of subdued or mitigated condition
adapted to the occasion, and almost
immediately draw up his curtain and begin to play.
He plays to a thin and shifting house, but
more specially to the purpled monsignore,
whose light mauve silk drapery flutters in
the sun behind him. Yet, thus cramped and
under unfair disadvantage, what a shower
of nods and becks, vigorous and expressive,
what stoopings, contractions, shruggings,
modelled clearly after the well-known historic
Dumb Girl of Portici, does he crowd into that
short span! How he does work his audience,
playing at them through the passive purple lay
figure, who is useful to him as is the obsequious
confidant to his leading tragedian.

I note that of all this miscellany of devout
Christians, pagans, atheists, and general
unbelievers, together with the many who come to
scoff and on no pretence remain to pray, the
ecclesiastical element, the great dark-robed,
over-shadowed with the sinuous sombrero, are most
profuse in their salutations to Goyon the Magnificent.
The most juvenile Friar Minim, on a
day's furlough from his seminary, seems to me
to watch, for him to get in his way, to have
opportunity of doing him profound ko-too.
Superabundant is the return of homage; Minim Friar
is paid back a hundredfold in that coin. The
Magnificent, drowning him in his cascade of
words and gesture, is scrupulously exact in his
payments. Not one of the black-robed, be his
gaberdine ever so dusty, but is repaid with
effusion, with gratitude; and Friar Minim takes
home with him that flourish of the foam-crested
cocked-hat and the picture of the gracious warrior.
So flourishing, Goyon reaches gradually
to where his car waits with his plumed green
man standing at the door, flourishes himself gracefully
off at the wings, and is gone, riding on his
cloud.

The Gaulic emperor being but in ill odour on
the Seven Hills just now, I marvel how it is
that the imperial lieutenant should be in such
high esteem—so precious in the eyes of the
dark-robed. But the footing of Brennus-in-
the-Boots is of a singular character. When
first he stamped in, some years back, with
his patent in his pocket, he made as though
he would pluck the beards of the reverend senators
sitting in the Capitol. He, the rough and
ready soldier, would stride into the Vatican
noisily, striving to have his will carried out
with noise and bluster, striving to bully and
browbeat the Santo Padre. But the bluster was cast
back in clouds of foam as from a rock—Goyon
the Magnificent took nothing by that game.
He broke down sadly in Timour the Tartar,
Bajazet, and such favourite pieces: and, to the
agreeable surprise of his friends, made his bow
one morning in a round of new and milder
parts. From that day forth, he became
eminently ecclesiastical. He is the good fighting
captain whom duty compels to serve under a
barbarian and unscrupulous prince; ostensible
instrument of a wicked sovereign, he artfully
softens the side-blows aimed at the power of the
holy father, and tempers the wind to the shorn.
He is taken to be well intentioned on the whole—
an honest soldier who will do no more harm
than he can help. Hence the flourishing of sombreros
and counter-flourishing. Hence it is that
Santo Padre himself has placed across his shoulders
the broad ribbon of his own special order—
the Order of Christ—with the rich Latin-shaped
cross about his neck; though it must be
confessed that the dull crimson hue of that ribbon
does not harmonise too well with the bright
scarlet of the Legion of Honour. The Magnificent
wears both. He is gorgeously indeed hung
all over with jewelled crosses, and crescents,
and ribbons, like a jeweller's window. I am
shown, too, one day, a huge copper medal, very
heavy, and very shining, struck by a grateful
municipality and presented (in gold) to Master
Goyon, of the first form, for his excellent
behaviour during a course of years at this
foreign academy.

We have followed Goyon the Magnificent on
the Sunday of Palms, as he sparkled and glinted,
all up the procession; contributing, by his admirable
attitudes of the human figure in repose, to
the success of that ceremonial as a ceremonial.
Not to be forgotten the calm invitation to closest
scrutiny, the quiet sense of security that not a
wrinkle was astray, as who should say, " Walk
up, ladies and gentlemen (ladies more especially),
there is no deception (beyond the legitimate
supplement to nature's short-comings).
Please to direct your glasses this way. Je
me flatte que je me suis bien posé." Not
to be forgotten that calm dignity with which
he, standing there, tall, alone, and in one
of his well-known Talma attitudes, waved
off a poor distraught sort of harlequin who,
blinded with agitation, was floundering across
the line processional. There were to be so many
cubits in front of the Magnificent, and so many
behind. This rude interruption would have interfered
with the fitness of things, and general
harmony of the perspective. A smile of dignity
from under the iron-grey moustache, and a
superb wave of the creaseless kid-gloved hand,
and intruder is motioned off: the laws of harmony
are saved from disturbance. We have
seen him thus go off at the end of his first act,
amid a shower of bravos and general approbation.
Now, when the curtain rises for the second
act, he is there at the side scenes, fresh and
radiant, without so much as a hair turned. We
are in the heat and flurry of that Maunday
morning, swept hither and thither, sucked into
great roaring human waves and cast up on
strange shores. There are strangest groupings,
unique ceremonials, waiting here and there, at
this corner and that; mysterious figures will
flit by presently and pass into nothing. There