companions walked one behind the other, reciting prayers and litanies.
Whether his general confession and his first mass at Rome, probably at
Santa Maria del Popolo, gave him that sense of spiritual satisfaction
which he craved, he has not told us. When he had come in sight of the
city, he had fallen on his face like the crusaders in sight of
Jerusalem, and had fervently blessed that moment. Now he ran through the
seven stations of Rome, read masses wherever he could, gathered an
abundance of indulgences by going through prescribed forms of worship at
many shrines, listened to miracle-tales, knelt before the veil of St.
Veronica near the Golden Gate at San Giovanni and before the bronze
statue of St. Peter in the chapel of St. Martin, where a crucifix had of
its own accord raised itself up and become transfixed in the dome, saw
the rope with which Judas hanged himself fastened to the altar of the
Apostles Simon and Judas at St. Peter's, the stone in the chapel of St.
Petronella on which the penitential tears of Peter had fallen, cutting a
groove in it two fingers wide, had the guide show him the Pope's crown,
the tiara, which, he thought, cost more money than all the princes of
Germany possessed, was perplexed at finding the heads and bodies of
Peter and Paul assigned to different places, at the Lateran Church and
at San Paolo Fuori, mounted the Scala Santa--Pilate's staircase--on his
knees, passed with awe the relief picture in one of the streets which
the popular legend declared to be that of the female Pope Johanna and
her child, saw the ancient pagan deities of Rome depicted in Santa Maria
della Rotonda, the old Pantheon, stared at the head of John the Baptist
in San Silvestro in Capite, tried, but failed to read the famous
Saturday mass at San Giovanni, the oldest and greatest sanctuary of
Christianity, rested from a fatiguing tour through the Lateran in Santa
Croce in Gerusalemme, where Pope Sylvester II, the Faustus of the
Italians, was carried away by the devils, went through the catacombs
with its 6 martyred Popes and 176,000 other martyrs, etc., etc.