But can it maintain itself against the priests? I think so. Yet a man would be blind indeed who could not see their number, power and activity. Rome swarms with them. Speaking of the incredible number of cassocks that one encounters in the streets, Zola says: "Ah! that ebb and flow; that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different nations would alone suffice to drape and decorate the streets, for there are the French and the English all in black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, the North Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles in black with green sashes, the Greeks in blue, the Germans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans in black or violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, the Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, to say nothing of all the others with broidery and bindings and buttons in a hundred different styles. And, in addition, there are the confraternities, the penitents, white, black, blue and gray, with sleeveless frocks and capes of different hue, gray, blue, black or white. And thus, even nowadays, papal Rome at times seems to resuscitate, and one can realize how tenaciously and vigorously she struggles on in order that she may not disappear in the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era." Yes, Italy will escape from the clutches of the papacy, but she will have to work. There must be no relaxation of vigilance or energy on her part--or on ours. For this multitude of young priests from every part of the world spells menace for other lands besides Italy.
[19] On the Appian Way, beyond the tomb of Cecilia Metella, a marble tablet has been placed, informing all men that here Pius IX. once ate his lunch.
Only three or four blocks from our hotel stands the Church of the Cappuccini, which contains one of the most gruesome sights in Rome, the celebrated cemetery of the Cappuccini monks, the soil of which was brought from Jerusalem. All Roman Catholic cemeteries have a peculiarly melancholy aspect. They have none of that gentle beauty which is so characteristic of our cemeteries, where the grass grows green under the open sky or great trees cast their peaceful shade over "God's acre." But this is the most weird and ghastly of them all. There are four recesses or chapels underneath the church, the pillars and pilasters of which are made of thigh-bones and skulls, the architectural ornaments being represented by the joints of the spine, and the more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human frame. "The summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skillfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect.... On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of that particular head-piece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the greater number are piled up undistinguishably into the architectural design.... In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life.... Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. There is no disagreeable scent, such as might have been expected from the decay of so many holy persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have taken their departure. The same number of living monks would not smell half so unexceptionably." So Hawthorne says, and I have spared my readers the most disagreeable parts of his description.