st the dust of buried ruins, and as though
intoxicated by the torrent of life which arose from the ancient soil, it
founded the museums, thus reviving the superb temples of the pagan age,
and restoring them to the cult of universal admiration. Never had the
Church been in such peril of death, for if the Christ was still honoured
at St. Peter's, Jupiter and all the other gods and goddesses, with their
beauteous, triumphant flesh, were enthroned in the halls of the Vatican.
Then, however, another vision passed before Pierre, one of the modern
popes prior to the Italian occupation--notably Pius IX, who, whilst yet
free, often went into his good city of Rome. His huge red and gold coach
was drawn by six horses, surrounded by Swiss Guards and followed by Noble
Guards; but now and again he would alight in the Corso, and continue his
promenade on foot, and then the mounted men of the escort galloped
forward to give warning and stop the traffic. The carriages drew up, the
gentlemen had to alight and kneel on the pavement, whilst the ladies
simply rose and devoutly inclined their heads, as the Holy Father,
attended by his Court, slowly wended his way to the Piazza del Popolo,
smiling and blessing at every step. And now had come Leo XIII, the
voluntary prisoner, shut up in the Vatican for eighteen years, and he,
behind the high, silent walls, in the unknown sphere where each of his
days flowed by so quietly, had acquired a more exalted majesty, instinct
with sacred and redoubtable mysteriousness.

Ah! that Pope whom you no longer meet or see, that Pope hidden from the
common of mankind like some terrible divinity whom the priests alone dare
to approach! It is in that sumptuous Vatican which his forerunners of the
Renascence built and adorned for giant festivities that he has secluded
himself; it is there he lives, far from the crowd, in prison with the
handsome men and the lovely women of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, with
the gods and goddesses of marble, with the whole of resplendent Olympus
celebrating around him the religion of life and light. With him the
entire Papacy is there steeped in paganism. What a spectacle when the
slender, weak old man, all soul, so purely white, passes along the
galleries of the Museum of Antiquities on his way to the gardens. Right
and left the statues behold him pass with all their bare flesh. There is
Jupiter, there is Apollo, there is Venus the _dominatrix_, there is Pan,
the universal god in w