_Eh, Signore! Finito il nostro carnovale. Adesso è il carnovale dei preti:_--"Our carnival is over, and that of the priests has come." All the _frati_ are going round to every Roman family, high and low, from the prince in his palace to the boy in the _caffe_, demanding "_una santa elemosina,--un abbondante santa elemosina,--ma abbondante_,"--and willingly pocketing any sum, from a half-_baiocco_ upwards. The parish priest is now making his visits in every ward of the city, to register the names of the Catholics in all the houses, so as to insure a confession from each during this season of penance. And woe to any wight who fails to do his duty!--he will soon be brought to his marrow-bones. His name will be placarded in the church, and he will be punished according to circumstances,--perhaps by a mortification to the pocket, perhaps by the penance of the convent; and perhaps his fate will be worse, if he be obstinate. So nobody is obstinate, and all go to confession like good Christians, and confess what they please, for the sake of peace, if not of absolution. The Francescani march more solemnly up and down the alleys of their cabbage-garden, studiously with books in their hands, which they pretend to read; now and then taking out their snuff-stained bandanna and measuring it from corner to corner, in search of a feasible spot for its appropriate function, and then rolling it carefully into a little round ball and returning it to the place whence it came. Whatever penance they do is not to Father Tiber or Santo Acquedotto, excepting by internal ablutions,--the exterior things of this world being ignored. There is no meat-eating now, save on certain festivals, when a supply is laid in for the week. But opposites cure opposites, (contrary to the homoeopathic rule,) and their _magro_ makes them _grasso_. Two days of festival, however, there are in the little church of San Patrizio and Isidoro, when the streets are covered with sand, and sprigs of box and red and yellow hangings flaunt before the portico, and scores of young boy-priests invade their garden, and, tucking up their long skirts, run and scream among the cabbages; for boydom is an irrepressible thing, even under the extinguisher of a priest's black dress.