“Let us go to the Palazzo M?,” suggested Gzhatski to Irene one bright, sunny morning towards the middle of March. “They have a very interesting family festival there to-day, and except in Rome you will nowhere see anything similar.”
So they drove to the old quarter of Rome, where most of the palaces of the Roman aristocracy are to be found.
The exterior of the Palazzo M? was in no sense strikingly beautiful. It was built in something like a semi-circle, which fact seemed in old times, when the street was narrow, perfectly natural. Now, however, the Corso being straight and broad, the effect is peculiar. At some time in the Middle Ages, Saint Philip of Neri had worked a miracle in this palace, having[227] brought back to life a dead child of the M? family.
Saint Philip had entered the room a moment after little Paolo M? had breathed his last, and had found the parents sobbing with grief and despair over the body of their beloved boy. Touched by their sorrow, the Saint had commanded the departed one to arise, upon which Paolo had immediately come back to life. “Why have you brought me back to earth?” he had asked his parents, in tones of reproach. “I was so happy there!” Struck by these words, the parents had prayed Saint Philip to let Paolo die again, and the Saint, with a wave of his hand, had released the innocent young soul, that it might fly back to a happier world.
This miracle had been performed on a 16th of March, and, to the present day, the top floor of the palazzo, with the chapel in which the remains of Saint Philip repose, is thrown open every year on that date to the people of Rome. In an unbroken stream the neighbouring poor with their little children, monks and nuns, as well as the inevitable[228] tourists, ascend and descend the splendid staircase. The entrance to the palace is decorated for the occasion with flags and brightly-coloured draperies. In the doorway stands a servant in gold-embroidered uniform, the courtyard is crowded, and heads peep from all the little windows of the third floor.
The rooms leading to the chapel are low, with wood-panelled ceilings, narrow windows, and furniture of the Middle Ages. The chapel itself is brilliantly illuminated. Women, one after another, fall on their knees and pray fervently. This is a children’s festival, particularly dear to mothers. Monks and nuns repeat the legend in detail to the assembled crowd, the Roman poor listening reverently and with emotion, the tourists looking on with mocking smiles.
On the same day, in the great reception rooms below, the princely M? family receives its friends, from four to seven. The family is of ancient and historic lineage, tracing its origin back to pre-Christian Rome. Like all the rest of the Roman aristocracy the princes[229] are religious Catholics, firm in their allegiance to the Vatican.
Irene’s gaze wandered in mute admiration round the enormous entrance-hall, with its magnificent painted ceiling, its antique statues, and the crimson baldaquin at one of its walls. Only the most ancient families in Rome possess such a baldaquin. Under it stands the chair reserved in old days for the use of the Pope, who frequently honoured noble Romans with his visits. Across the balustrade surrounding this throne, footmen, in most wonderful blue and cerise liveries, were laying the wraps of arriving visitors, to whom at the same time a house-steward in black dress clothes and a heavy chain was handing a visitors’ book for signature. Beyond the hall could be seen long enfilades of rooms, with magnificent tapestries, pictures, statues, and many other ancient treasures of art not to be met with elsewhere. Irene particularly noticed a jewel-case in the shape of a girl’s figure carved in wood, and coloured.
The guests were assembled in the principal drawing-room, an immense room with a[230] painted wooden ceiling of the fifteenth century. The walls were hung with crimson brocade, and covered with pictures by old masters. The portières were of heavy crimson velvet, the furniture was massive and gilt. In the middle of the room, over the red felt with which the floor was covered, lay two large white bear-skins, the only compatriots Irene met at this reception.
The whole M? family was present, grandfather, grandmother, and grandson (a handsome boy of fifteen, dressed in the uniform of one of the Roman colleges)—even an eight-months-old infant in a film of white lace, presiding majestically on the knees of his nurse, an Albanian peasant woman, attired in her picturesque national costume. The tiny prince seemed to be enjoying himself more than anyone else, energetically and with gurgles of delight pulling the moustache of every man and tearing off the veil of every lady who bent over him! It was charming to see the indescribable tenderness with which the whole family regarded this latest representative of their ancient race!
[231]
In general, the festival was patriarchal and aristocratic to the highest degree—aristocratic in the true fashion of ancient times, when the nobles, really loving the people, befriended them and opened their doors to them on all festive occasions. It was so in all countries, and that wholly un-Christian and senseless gulf which now separates one class from another only came into being with the forma............