Roman Volks'-lore. It is but rational to hope
that he will come in preternatural plumage, and
flit by me, as I stand on the bottom step of my
marble flight of stairs (mine by temporary use),
and wait for him anxiously.

Clatter of carriages and hoofs growing more
and more obstreperous as they draw near but
merely passing on with a flash of lamps into the
night—excite only empty alarms and a justifiable
resentment. For one poor sufferer, the
suspense must be horrible. How many times
that night did the brain of demented host topple
on the verge of lunacy? But hark! Clatter
again of carnage and hoofs, but this time of a
stately solemn order: hoofs tramping it solemnly,
as is only befitting the Barclay and Perkins
animals that draw princes of the Church. As the
great flaming red berline comes reeling and
heaving up, and its one eye pours a flood
of light into the arch, the three pantomimic
footmen in the comic cocked-hats and flowing
beadles' cloaks, are on the ground in an instant,
discharging the door and steps with a succession
of bangs: instantly opens little folding-door at
the top of marble flight, disclosing illuminated
chambers with disguised Calmucks, artfully made
up in florid livery, seen flitting in the light.
Descends now a dark-robed Maggiordomo (he
might have been a notary lent from the Opera)
with a pair of wax candles ready lighted, and
lurks round the corner until the fitting moment.
Hush! he comes descending lightly from his
great flame-coloured berline. Emerge now
from ambush, notary from L'Elisir d'Amore,
with thy candles, and make as though you would
kiss the dust.

The light being suspended overhead and casting
spasmodic shadows, it is a positive Rembrandt
figure that walks by me so swiftly, as
though it were trampling roughshod over
obstacles. The ivory face shining out yellowly,
the eyes, the famous eyes like coals, at the bottom
of their caverns, the mouth compressed and
almost insolent. He is dark, all dark to-night;
a carravaggio figure rubbed in with chalk and
charcoal. Black-robed, save as to the neat little
scarlet buttons and scarlet stockings peeping
out. I think with wonder of the soft, gentle,
white-robed ascetic, seen but yesterday amid
floating clouds of incense, and crucifixes, and
lighted tapers, attended with dreamy notions of
a day not far distant when I shall sing, "Sancte
Autonelli, ora pro nobis!" and, presto! he walks
by, roughly tramping on imaginary rebellious
necks, and with a scornful face—still not
approaching to that "bouche de brigand" of yours,
M. Edmond: to-night it is II Cardinale Segretario,
H.E. the Cardinal Secretary of State!
yesterday we were but a poor holy man and
simple deacon.

As I go out again into the night and see
the suspicious errandless figures hovering about
the flame-coloured coach, who have the look
indefinable of disguised police, and the lounging
gendarmes hanging about, striving to appeal
purposeless too, and then look up to the brightly
illuminated window where there are Grand-
Ducal shadows flitting past, and where "He"
is sitting next her highness, rippling off most
sweet and silvery French, I think what a
wretched sinking heart must shrink and wither
away behind those cardinal's robes! What sort
of a grisly private skeleton has he to come home
to and find sitting in those Vatican chambers?
or who indeed may travel abroad with him on
state occasions and triumphs, standing by his
ear on the wheel of the flame-coloured coach, to
whisper, not "Remember that thou art but
man!" but this, "Remember thou art the most
hated man in Rome! Remember that this
hate is savage, furious, and to be sated with
blood only: at the first sign of revolution, wild,
blear-eyed sans-culottes will make straight for
that chamber of the three windows, frantic
women rending thee limb from limb, men bearing
thy head upon a pole!" That is something to
think on at the dead hours of the night.

I go out into thoroughfares and by-ways, pursued
by the strangest craving to hunt to earth
this mysterious character; I gather opinions from
various ranks, and find a curious unanimity—at
best a certain doubtfulness. There is no quarter.
Every man's hand is armed with a rough stone,
flung on the first invitation. It is Aunt Sally in
purple; and the sticks come flying fast and thick.

And yet this curious fact remains. Bogie is
impalpable! Gentle and simple join in the hue
and cry, but are unable to account for this
singular antipathy. I grow weary of putting to
them the question, "What wrong hath this man
done that you must so persecute him?"
Stimulated by opposition, I determine to do battle
with the spectre. I actually feel it incumbent
to issue a sort of "royal commission" directed
to myself, to collect evidence and report upon
the facts. And your special commissioner does
hereby respectfully submit the following report,
which is in a manner no report:

There was the special cabman, with a great
brushy beard, and a gruff voice, and a cap that
swelled and overflowed after the manner of a
turban, with a general Turkish flavour about
him, to whom I was at first attracted by the
royal Ottoman fashion in which he was having
his boots cleaned as he sat upon his box. The
special Turco-cabman being skilfully quickened
by artful allusion to the unprecedentedly high
quotation of oats, and the general indisposition
to enjoy carriage exercise, lashes his horses
vindictively. His horses start away with a
bound. "He has done it," special cabman
remarks, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.
"'Tis all his work. See you this, signor? Last
year, did not every gentle stranger, if he only
wished to cross the street, send for a vettura and
do the thing in a princely manner? Whose
work, I say, is this?" (emphasised by a ferocious
crack of his whip). " A-r-r-r! An-to-NEL-li's!"
(with a savage stress on the third syllable).
Special cabman will not bear pressing as to the
immediate connexion considered in the relation
of cause and effect between this wicked minister
and the marked disinclination of tourists to
enjoy carriage exercise. He would plainly