Their selections are
principally from the cheap rosaries, coarse mosaics, and gilt
jewellery, and generally those articles of which a lot may be had for
a crown-piece. They care little for what is really good in its way;
all they want is something which can be bought nowhere but at Rome,
and which will serve to their descendants as the evidence of their
visit to the Eternal City. They haggle as if they were at market, and
yet, when they get back to the 'Minerva,' they wonder they have so
little to show for their money.
If they took home nothing worse than their cheap rosaries, I should
not find fault with them; but they carry opinions and impressions.
Don't tell them of the abuses which swarm throughout the kingdom of
the Pope. They will bridle up, and answer that for their parts they
never saw a single one. As the surface of things is smooth, at least
in the best quarter of the town--the only quarter these good folks are
likely to have seen--they assume, as a matter of course, that all is
well. They have seen the Pope and the Cardinals in all their glory and
all their innocence at the Sistine Chapel; and of course it is not on
Easter Sunday, and in the eyes of the whole multitude, that Cardinal
Antonelli occupies himself with his business or his pleasures. When
Monsignore B---- dishonoured a young girl, who died of the outrage,
and then sent her affianced bridegroom to the galleys, he did not
select the Sistine Chapel as the theatre of his exploits.
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