First, however, let me state what had happened before the proceedings opened in the Piazza del Duomo.  At six o’clock mass began at SS.  Apostoli, lasting for more than two hours.  At its close the celebrant was handed a plate on which were the sacred flints, and these he struck with a steel in view of the congregation, thus igniting a taper.  The candle, in an ancient copper porta fuoco surmounted by a dove, was then lighted, and the procession of priests started off for the cathedral with their precious flame, escorted by a civic guard and various standard bearers.  Their route was the Piazza del Limbo, along the Borgo SS.  Apostoli to the Via Por S. Maria and through the Vacchereccia to the Piazza della Signoria, the Via Condotta, the Via del Proconsolo, to the Duomo, through whose central doors they passed, depositing the sacred burden at the high altar.  I should add that anyone on the route in charge of a street shrine had the right to stop the procession in order to take a light from it; while at SS.  Apostoli women congregated with tapers and lanterns in the hope of getting these kindled from the sacred flame, in order to wash their babies or cook their food in water heated with the fire.

Meanwhile at seven o’clock the four oxen, which are kept in the Cascine all the year round and do no other work, had been harnessed to the car and had drawn it to the Piazza del Duomo, which was reached about nine.  The oxen were then tethered by the Pisano doors of the Baptistery until needed again.

After some haggling on the night before, I had secured a seat on a balcony facing Ghiberti’s first Baptistery doors, for eleven lire, and to this place I went at half-past ten.  The piazza was then filling up, and at a quarter to eleven the trams running between the Cathedral and the Baptistery were stopped.  In this space was the car.  The present one, which dates from 1622, is more like a catafalque, and unless one sees it in motion, with the massive white oxen pulling it, one cannot believe in it as a vehicle at all.  It is some thirty feet high, all black, with trumpery coloured-paper festoons (concealing fireworks) upon it:  trumpery as only the Roman Catholic Church can contrive.  It stood in front of the Duomo some four yards from the Baptistery gates in a line with the Duomo’s central doors and the high altar.  The doors were open, seats being placed on each side of the aisle the whole distance, and people making a solid avenue.  Down this avenue were to come the clergy, and above it was to be stretched the line on which the dove was to travel from the altar, with the Pazzi fire, to ignite the car.