be one of unprecedented solemnity and magnificence.
This was the programme published by the ’Osservatore
Romano,’ and that newspaper proceeded to pronounce
a eulogy of some length and considerable eloquence
upon the happy pair. Rome was fairly taken off
its feet; and although some malcontents were found,
who said it was improper that Corona’s marriage
should be celebrated with such pomp so soon after
her husband’s death, the general verdict was
that the whole proceeding was eminently proper and
becoming to so important an event. So soon as
every one had been invited, no one seemed to think
it remarkable that the invitations should have been
issued so late. It was not generally known that
in the short time which elapsed between the naming
of the day and the issuing of the cards, there had
been several interviews between old Saracinesca and
Cardinal Antonelli; that the former had explained
Corona’s natural wish that the marriage should
be private, and that the latter had urged many reasons
why so great an event ought to be public; that Saracinesca
had said he did not care at all, and was only expressing
the views of his son and of the bride; that the Cardinal
had repeatedly asseverated that he wished to please
everybody; that Corona had refused to be pleased by
a public ceremony; and that, finally, the Cardinal,
seeing himself hard pressed, had persuaded his Holiness
himself to express a wish that the marriage should
take place in the most solemn and public manner; wherefore
Corona had reluctantly yielded the point, and the
matter was arranged. The fact was that the Cardinal
wished to make a sort of demonstration of the solidarity
of the Roman nobility: it suited his aims to
enter into every detail which could add to the importance
of the Roman Court, and which could help to impress
upon the foreign Ministers the belief that in all matters
the Romans as one man would stand by each other and
by the Vatican. No one knew better than he how
the spectacle of a religious solemnity, at which the
whole nobility would attend in a body, must strike
the mind of a stranger in Rome; for in Roman ceremonies
of that day there was a pomp and magnificence surpassing
that found in any other Court of Europe. The
whole marriage would become an event of which he could
make an impressive use, and he was determined not
to forego any advantages which might arise from it;
for he was a man who of all men well understood the
value of details in maintaining prestige.
But to the two principal actors in the day’s doings the affair was an unmitigated annoyance, and even their own great and true happiness could not lighten the excessive fatigue of the pompous ceremony and of the still more pompous reception which followed it. To describe that day would be to make out a catalogue of gorgeous equipages, gorgeous costumes, gorgeous decorations. Many pages would not suffice to enumerate the cardinals, the dignitaries, the ambassadors, the great nobles, whose magnificent coaches drove