“Yes, indeed!” said Agnes, joyfully.  “Oh, grandmamma, what a blessed sight it will be!”

“Yes, child, and a fine sight enough he makes with his great canopy and his plumes and his servants and his trumpeters;—­there isn’t a king in Christendom that goes so proudly as he.”

“No other king is worthy of it,” said Agnes.  “The Lord reigns in him.”

“Much you know about it!” said Elsie, between her teeth, as they started out.

The streets of Rome through which they walked were damp and cellar-like, filthy and ill-paved; but Agnes neither saw nor felt anything of inconvenience in this:  had they been floored, like those of the New Jerusalem, with translucent gold, her faith could not have been more fervent.

Rome is at all times a forest of quaint costumes, a pantomime of shifting scenic effects of religious ceremonies.  Nothing there, however singular, strikes the eye as out-of-the-way or unexpected, since no one knows precisely to what religious order it may belong, or what individual vow or purpose it may represent.  Neither Agnes nor Elsie, therefore, was surprised, when they passed through the door-way to the street, at the apparition of a man covered from head to foot in a long robe of white serge, with a high-peaked cap of the same material drawn completely down over his head and face.  Two round holes cut in this ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when removed from its appropriate and natural accessories.  As they passed out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of despairing souls raising imploring hands from very red tongues of flame, by which it was understood at once that he sought aid for souls in Purgatory.  Agnes and her grandmother each dropped therein a small coin and went on their way; but the figure followed them at a little distance behind, keeping carefully within sight of them.

By means of energetic pushing and striving, Elsie contrived to secure for herself and her grandchild stations in the piazza in front of the church, in the very front rank, where the procession was to pass.  A motley assemblage it was, this crowd, comprising every variety of costume of rank and station and ecclesiastical profession,—­cowls and hoods of Franciscan and Dominican,—­picturesque headdresses of peasant-women of different districts,—­plumes and ruffs of more aspiring gentility,—­mixed with every quaint phase of foreign costume belonging to the strangers from different parts of the earth;—­for, like the old Jewish Passover, this celebration of Holy Week had its assemblage of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cretes, and Arabians, all blending in one common memorial.

Amid the strange variety of persons among whom they were crowded, Elsie remarked the stranger in the white sack, who had followed them, and who had stationed himself behind them,—­but it did not occur to her that his presence there was other than merely accidental.