“Some day,” said Caput, wistful lights in the eyes that looked far away to where the road lost itself in the blue hills—“Some day, I mean to drive all the way to the Appii Forum, and follow St. Paul’s track back to the city.”
He brought out his pocket Testament, and, amid the broken walls, the shadows of the olive-boughs flickering upon the page, we read how the Great Apostle longed to “see Rome,” yet knowing that bonds and imprisonment awaited him wherever he went—the Rome he was never to quit as a free man, and where he was to leave a multitude of witnesses to his fidelity and the living power of the Gospel, of which he was an ambassador in bonds. Thence we passed to the few words describing his journey and reception:
“We came the next day unto Puteoli, where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days. And so we went toward Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. Whom, when Paul saw, he thanked GOD and took courage.”
For some miles the Way has been cleared down to the ancient pavement. It was something to see the stones over which St. Paul had walked.
We took St. Peter’s in our drive home. When one is used to the immensity of its spaces, has accommodated his imagination comfortably to the aisle-vistas and the height of the ceilings, St. Peter’s is the most restful temple in Rome. The equable temperature—never cold in winter, never hot in summer; the solemn quiet of a vastness in which the footfalls upon the floor die away with out echo, and the sound of organ and chant from one of the many chapels only stirs a musical throb which never swells into reverberation; the subdued light—all contribute to the sense of grateful tranquillity that allures one to frequent visits and slow, musing promenades within the magnificent Basilica. Madame de Staël says in one line what others have failed to express in pages of labored rhetoric:
“_L’Architecture de St. Pierre est une musique fixée._”
Listening with all our souls, we strolled up one side of the church past the bronze Image, in appearance more Fetish than saint. A statue of Jupiter was melted down to make it. The frown of the Thunderer still contracts the brows that seem to find the round of glory, spoked like a wheel, too heavy. The projecting toe, often renewed, bright as a new brass kettle from the attrition of kisses, rests upon a pedestal five feet, at least, from the floor. Men can conveniently touch it with their lips. Short women stand on tiptoe, and children are lifted to it. Each wipes it carefully before kissing, a ceremony made necessary by a popular trick of the Roman _gamins_. They watch their chance to anoint the holy toe with damp red pepper, then hide behind a column to note the effect of the next osculation. At the Jubilee of Pius IX., June 16, 1871, they dressed the hideous black effigy in pontifical vestments, laced and embroidered to the last degree of gorgeousness, and fastened the cope of cloth-of-gold with a diamond brooch!