The hunchback was lying like a Jew, but the crowd rose unanimously against the obelisk.  He was, in one way, their superior, and majorities are always made up of pigmies.

“Hi!  Come down from your stand!”

“Hi! get off your pedestal!”

“Off with your hat!”

“Down with your head!”

“Sit down!”

“Lie down!”

This revival of curiosity expressing itself in invectives evidently betokened the crisis of the show.  And indeed the chapters of canons, the clergy and bishops, the pages and chamberlains, the representatives of the city, and the gentlemen of the king’s chamber now appeared, and finally the king himself, who, bare-headed and carrying a taper, followed the magnificent statue of the Virgin.  The contrast was striking:  after the grey-headed monks and pale novices came brilliant young captains, affronting heaven with the points of their moustaches, riddling the latticed windows with killing glances, following the procession in an absent-minded way, and interrupting the holy hymns with scraps of most unorthodox conversation.

“Did you notice, my dear Doria, how like a monkey the old Marchesa d’Acquasparta takes her raspberry ice?”

“Her nose takes the colour of the ice.  What fine bird is showing off to her?”

“It is the Cyrenian.”

“I beg your pardon!  I have not seen that name in the Golden Book.”

“He helps the poor marquis to bear his cross.”

The officer’s profane allusion was lost in the prolonged murmur of admiration that suddenly rose from the crowd, and every gaze was turned upon one of the young girls who was strewing flowers before the holy Madonna.  She was an exquisite creature.  Her head glowing in the sun shine, her feet hidden amid roses and broom-blossom, she rose, tall and fair, from a pale cloud of incense, like some seraphic apparition.  Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight, slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave to her profile that character of antique beauty which is vanishing day by day from the earth.  A calm and serene smile, one of those smiles that have already left the soul and not yet reached the lips, lifted the corners of her mouth with a pure expression of infinite beatitude and gentleness.  Nothing could be more perfect than the chin that completed the faultless oval of this radiant countenance; her neck of a dead white, joined her bosom in a delicious curve, and supported her head gracefully like the stalk of a flower moved by a gentle breeze.  A bodice of crimson velvet spotted with gold outlined her delicate and finely curved figure, and held in by means of a handsome gold lace the countless folds of a full and flowing skirt, that fell to her feet like those severe robes in which the Byzantine painters preferred to drape their angels.  She was indeed a marvel, and so rare and modest of beauty had not been seen within the memory of man.