es, not to mention the
numerous staircases, before he reaches the gardens, where a pair-horse
carriage awaits him. It's quite fine this evening, so he will surely
come. We must have a little patience."

Whilst Narcisse was giving these particulars Pierre again sank into a
reverie and saw the whole extraordinary history pass before him. First
came the worldly, ostentatious popes of the Renascence, those who
resuscitated antiquity with so much passion and dreamt of draping the
Holy See with the purple of empire once more. There was Paul II, the
magnificent Venetian who built the Palazzo di Venezia; Sixtus IV, to whom
one owes the Sixtine Chapel; and Julius II and Leo X, who made Rome a
city of theatrical pomp, prodigious festivities, tournaments, ballets,
hunts, masquerades, and banquets. At that time the papacy had just
rediscovered Olympus amidst 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 lik