It was in Rome, while we were doing the Vatican, that our guide furnished us with a sight that, considered as a human experience, was worth more to me than a year of Old Masters and Young Messers.  We had pushed our poor blistered feet—­a dozen or more of us—­past miles of paintings and sculptures and relics and art objects, and we were tired—­oh, so tired!  Our eyes ached and our shoes hurt us; and the calves of our legs quivered as we trailed along from gallery to corridor, and from corridor back to gallery.

We had visited the Sistine Chapel; and, such was our weariness, we had even declined to become excited over Michelangelo’s great picture of the Last Judgment.  I was disappointed, too, that he had omitted to include in his collection of damned souls a number of persons I had confidently and happily expected would be present.  I saw no one there even remotely resembling my conception of the person who first originated and promulgated the doctrine that all small children should be told at the earliest possible moment that there is no Santa Claus.  That was a very severe blow to me, because I had always believed that the descent to eternal perdition would be incomplete unless he had a front seat.  And the man who first hit on the plan of employing child labor on night shifts in cotton factories—­he was unaccountably absent too.  And likewise the original inventor of the toy pistol; in fact the absentees were entirely too numerous to suit me.  There was one thing, though, to be said in praise of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment; it was too large and too complicated to be reproduced successfully on a souvenir postal card; and I think we should all be very grateful for that mercy anyway.

As I was saying, we had left the Sistine Chapel a mile or so behind us and had dragged our exhausted frames as far as an arched upper portico in a wing of the great palace, overlooking a paved courtyard inclosed at its farther end by a side wall of Saint Peter’s.  We saw, in another portico similar to the one where we had halted and running parallel to it, long rows of peasants, all kneeling and all with their faces turned in the same direction.

“Wait here a minute,” said our guide.  “I think you will see something not included in the regular itinerary of the day.”

So we waited.  In a minute or two the long lines of kneeling peasants raised a hymn; the sound of it came to us in quavering snatches.  Through the aisle formed by their bodies a procession passed the length of the long portico and back to the starting point.  First came Swiss Guards in their gay piebald uniforms, carrying strange-looking pikes and halberds; and behind them were churchly dignitaries, all bared of head; and last of all came a very old and very feeble man, dressed in white, with a wide-brimmed white hat—­and he had white hair and a white face, which seemed drawn and worn, but very gentle and kindly and beneficent.

He held his right arm aloft, with the first two fingers extended in the gesture of the apostolic benediction.  He was so far away from us that in perspective his profile was reduced to the miniature proportions of a head on a postage stamp; but, all the same, the lines of it stood out clear and distinct.  It was his Holiness, Pope Pius the Tenth, blessing a pilgrimage.