XII.

When the Tiber, according to its frequent habit, rises and inundates the city, the Pantheon is one of the first places to be flooded—­the sacristan told us.  The water climbs above the altar-tops, sapping, in its recession, the cement of the fine marbles which incrust the columns, so that about their bases the pieces have to be continually renewed.  Nothing vexes you so much in the Pantheon as your consciousness of these and other repairs.  Bad as ruin is, I think I would rather have the old temple ruinous in every part than restored as you find it.  The sacristan felt the wrongs of the place keenly, and said, referring to the removal of the bronze roof, which took place some centuries ago, “They have robbed us of every thing” (Ci hanno levato tutto); as if he and the Pantheon were of one blood, and he had suffered personal hurt in its spoliation.

What a sense of the wildness everywhere lurking about Rome we had given us by that group of peasants who had built a fire of brushwood almost within the portico of the Pantheon, and were cooking their supper at it, the light of the flames luridly painting their swarthy faces!

XIII.

Poor little Numero Cinque Via del Gambero has seldom, I imagine, known so violent a sensation as that it experienced when, on the day of the Immaculate Conception, the Armenian Archbishop rolled up to the door in his red coach.  The master of the house had always seemed to like us; now he appeared with profound respect suffusing, as it were, his whole being, and announced, “Signore, it is Monsignore come to take you to the Sistine Chapel in his carriage,” and drew himself up in a line, as much like a series of serving-men as possible, to let us pass out.  There was a private carriage for the ladies near that of Monsignore, for he had already advertised us that the sex were not permitted to ride in the red coach.  As they appeared, however, he renewed his expressions of desolation at being deprived of their company, and assured them of his good-will with a multiplicity of smiles and nods, intermixed with shrugs of recurrence to his poignant regret.  But!  In fine, it was forbidden!

Monsignore was in full costume, with his best ecclesiastical clothes on, and with his great gold chain about his neck.  The dress was richer than that of the western archbishops; and the long white beard of Monsignore made him look much more like a Scriptural monsignore than these.  He lacked, perhaps, the fine spiritual grace of his brother, the Archbishop at Venice, to whose letter of introduction we owed his acquaintance and untiring civilities; but if a man cannot be plump and spiritual, he can be plump and pleasant, as Monsignore was to the last degree.  He enlivened our ride with discourse about the Armenians at Venice, equally beloved of us; and, arrived at the Sistine Chapel,