It was Sunday, I remember, for he had to sing in St. Peter’s in the afternoon; and it was so near, we walked over with him.  Nino had never lost his love for church music, though he had made up his mind that it was a much finer thing to be a primo tenore assoluto at the Apollo Theatre than to sing in the Pope’s choir for thirty scudi a month.  We walked along over the bridge, and through the Borgo Nuovo, and across the Piazza Rusticucci, and then we skirted the colonnade on the left, and entered the church by the sacristy, leaving De Pretis there to put on his purple cassock and his white cotta.  Then we went into the Capella del Coro to wait for the vespers.

All sorts of people go to St. Peter’s on Sunday afternoon, but they are mostly foreigners, and bring strange little folding chairs, and arrange themselves to listen to the music as though it were a concert.  Now and then one of the young gentlemen-in-waiting from the Vatican strolls in and says his prayers, and there is an old woman, very ragged and miserable, who has haunted the chapel of the choir for many years, and sits with perfect unconcern, telling her beads at the foot of the great reading-desk that stands out in the middle and is never used.  Great ladies crowd in through the gate when Raimondi’s hymn is to be sung, and disreputable artists make sketches surreptitiously during the benediction, without the slightest pretence at any devotion that I can see.  The lights shine out more brightly as the day wanes, and the incense curls up as the little boys swing the censers, and the priests and canons chant, and the choir answers from the organ loft; and the crowd looks on, some saying their prayers, some pretending to, and some looking about for the friend or lover they have come to meet.

That evening when we went over together I found myself pushed against a tall man with an immense gray moustache standing out across his face like the horns of a beetle.  He looked down on me from time to time, and when I apologised for crowding him his face flushed a little, and he tried to bow as well as he could in the press, and said something with a German accent which seemed to be courteous.  But I was separated from Nino by him.  Maestro Ercole sang, and all the others, turn and turn about, and so at last it came to the benediction.  The tall old foreigner stood erect and unbending, but most of the people around him kneeled.  As the crowd sank down I saw that on the other side of him sat a lady on a small folding stool, her feet crossed one over the other, and her hands folded on her knees.  She was dressed entirely in black, and her fair face stood out wonderfully clear and bright against the darkness.  Truly she looked more like an angel than a woman, though perhaps you will think she is not so beautiful after all, for she is so unlike our Roman ladies.  She has a delicate nose, full of sentiment, and pointed a little downward for pride; she has deep blue eyes, wide apart and dreamy, and a little shaded by brows that are quite level and even, with a straight pencilling over them, that looks really as if it were painted.  Her lips are very red and gentle, and her face is very white, so that the little ringlet that has escaped control looks like a gold tracery on a white marble ground.