I have had many other descriptions of the Pope’s receptions, which were semi-weekly in this the last year of his life. In the main, these accounts tallied so well with the charcoal sketch furnished by my Yankee-Western dame, that I have given it as nearly as possible as I received it from her lips.
Victor Emmanuel had reigned in Rome six years when we were there. The streets were clean; the police vigilant and obliging; every museum and monastery and library was unbarred by the Deliverer of Italy. Protestant churches were going up within the walls of the city; Protestant service was held wherever and whenever the worshippers willed, without the visible protection of English or American flag. One scarcely recognized in the renovated capital the Rome of which the travelers of ’69 had written, so full and free had been the sweep of the tidal wave of liberty and decency. The Pope, than whom never man had a more favorable opportunity to do all the King had accomplished, and more, was a voluntary prisoner in his palace of a thousand rooms, with a beggarly retinue of five hundred servants, and stables full of useless state-coaches and horses. Whoever would see him shorn of the beams of temporal sovereignty must bend the knee to him as spiritual lord. Without attempting to regulate the consciences or actions of others, we declined to make this show of allegiance. Since attendance in the temple of Rimmon was a matter of individual option, we stayed without—_Anglicé_—we “stopped away.”
Victor Emmanuel we saw frequently in his rides and drives about Rome, and at various popular gatherings, such as reviews and state gala-days. He was the homeliest and best belovèd man in his dominions. Somewhat above medium height and thick-set, his military bearing, especially upon horseback, barely redeemed his figure from clumsiness. The bull-neck, indicative of the baser qualities, the story of which is a blot upon his early life, upbore a massive head, carried in manly, kingly fashion. His complexion was purple-red; the skin, rough in grain, streaked with darker lines, as if blood-vessels had broken under the surface. The firm mouth was almost buried by the moustache, heavy and black, curling upward until the tips threatened the eyes. The nose thick and _retroussé_, with wide nostrils, corroborated the testimony of the neck. But, beneath the full forehead, the eyes of the master of men and of himself shone out so expressively that to meet them was to forget blemishes of feature and form, and to do justice to the hero of his age—the Father of United Italy.