Unaided by
the right comment, I was dragged down considerably by those pagan
tombs; and as an antidote, the unexplained catacombs were not
sufficiently elevating. I did not read the signs of the subterranean
churches aright, any more than the uncultivated Yankee reads aright an
Egyptian portraiture. Monkish skulls and other unburied bones, seen by
the light of moccoletti, were to me nothing but forms of folly. The
abounding life of Catholicity was hardly understood by our party,
which for some reason seemed inclined to impute the most death to the
faith which has the most form. We did not gather how this abounding
life can afford, though making more of our little fleshly sojourn than
any other patron, to compare a skull with the life of the spirit, and
relegate it to ornamentation and symbol.
Through the streets of Rome trotted in brown garb and great
unloveliness a frequent monk, brave and true; and each of these, I was
led by the feminine members of the family, to regard as a probable
demon, eager for my intellectual blood. A fairer sight were the
Penitents, in neat buff clothes of monastic outline, their faces
covered with their hoods, whose points rose overhead like church
steeples, two holes permitting the eyes to peep with beetle
glistenings upon you. They went hurryingly along, called from their
worldly affairs; and my mother imparted to me her belief that they
were somewhat free of superstition because undoubtedly clean.
Sometimes processions of them, chanting, came slowly through the city,
bearing the dead to burial.
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