attendants in old-fashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black
dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide-awake hats and tweed
overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed costume of black; so that,
in any other country, the scene might have been taken for a fancy ball.
By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple
robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were
old men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally men of bulk and
substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats,
trimmed with gold-lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are
identical in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn by the
Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the
Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but
apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants
changed the upper portions of their master's attire, and put a little cap
of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one
by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel,
with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the mean while,
within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the
voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn
apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people,
and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a
screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the
guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with
the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, not the
pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black, with a red
face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified
complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took
off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found
that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain.