Among the women there was the same scale of decreasing nationality
of costume according to rank, though the culmination was in
resemblance to the graceful classic robe of Rome instead of the last
Parisian mode. The poorer women wore bright, dark crimson, or blue
in gown or wrapping veil; the ladies were mostly in white or black,
as were also the clergy, excepting such as had officiated at the
previous Eucharist, and who wore their brilliant priestly vestments,
heavy with gold and embroidery.

Beautiful alike to eye and ear was the procession, above all from a
distance, now filing round a delicate young green wheatfield, now
lost behind a rising hill, now glancing through a vineyard, or
contrasting with the gray tints of the olive, all that was
incongruous or disorderly unseen, and all that was discordant
unheard, as only the harmonious cadence of the united response was
wafted fitfully on the breeze to the two elderly men who, unable to
scale the wild mountain paths in the procession, had, after the
previous service in the basilica and the blessing of the nearer
lands, returned to the villa, where they sat watching its progress.

It was as entirely a Roman villa as the form of the ground and the
need of security would permit. Lying on the slope of a steep hill,
which ran up above into a fantastic column or needle piercing the
sky, the courts of the villa were necessarily a succession of
terraces, levelled and paved with steps of stone or marble leading
from one to the other. A strong stone wall enclosed the whole,
cloistered, as a protection from sun and storm. The lowest court
had a gateway strongly protected, and thence a broad walk with box-
trees on either side, trimmed into fantastic shapes, led through a
lawn laid out in regular flower-beds to the second court, which was