“Si le costume bourgeois,” says George Sand, in Le Peche de M. Antoine, “de notre epoque est le plus triste, le plus incommode et le plus disgracieux, que la mode ait jamais invente, c’est surtout au milieu des champs que tous ses inconvenients et toutes ses laideurs revoltent....  Au milieu de ce cadre austere et grandiose, qui transporte l’imagination au temps de la poesie primitive, apparaisse cette mouche parasite, le monsieur aux habits noirs, au menton rase, aux mains gantees, aux jambes maladroites, et ce roi de la societe n’est plus qu’un accident ridicule, une tache importune dans le tableau.  Votre costume genant et disparate inspire alors la pitie plus que les haillons du pauvre, on sent que vous etes deplace au grand air, et que votre livree vous ecrase.”]

If one visit the Ara Celi during the afternoon of one of these festas, the scene is very striking.  The flight of one hundred and twenty-four steps, which once led to the temple of Venus and Rome, is then thronged by merchants of Madonna wares, who spread them out over the steps and hang them against the walls and balustrades.  Here are to be seen all sorts of curious little colored prints of the Madonna and Child of the most ordinary quality, little bags, pewter medals, and crosses stamped with the same figures and to be worn on the neck,—­all offered at once for the sum of one baiocco.  Here also are framed pictures of the Saints, of the Nativity, and, in a word, of all sorts of religious subjects appertaining to the season.  Little wax dolls, clad in cotton-wool to represent the Saviour, and sheep made of the same materials, are also sold by the basketful.  Children and contadine are busy buying them, and there is a deafening roar all up and down the steps of “Mezzo baiocco, bello colorito, mezzo baiocco, la Santissima Concezione Incoronata,”—­“Diario Romano, Lunario Romano Nuovo,”—­“Ritratto colorito, medaglia e quadruccio, un baiocco tutti, un baiocco tutti,”—­“Bambinelli di cera, un baiocco."[C] None of the prices are higher than one baiocco, except to strangers,—­and generally several articles are held up together, enumerated, and proffered with a loud voice for this sum.  Meanwhile men, women, children, priests, beggars, soldiers, and villani are crowding up and down, and we crowd with them.

[Footnote C:  “A half-baiocco, beautifully colored,—­a half-baiocco, the Holy Conception Crowned.”  “Roman Diary,—­New Roman Almanac.”  “Colored portrait, medal, and little picture, one baiocco, all.”  “Little children in wax, one baiocco.”]