the luxurious, gilded, carved, and painted roof, whose tawny splendour is
very fine now that time has toned down the eccentricities of the
decoration. But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of
the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant' Agnese, Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of
the neighbourhood. Four hundred churches were a good many for even Rome
to people; and, indeed, some were merely attended on fixed ceremonial
occasions, and a good many merely opened their doors once every year--on
the feast day, that is, of their patron saint. Some also subsisted on the
lucky possession of a fetish, an idol compassionate to human sufferings.
Santa Maria in Ara Coeli possessed the miraculous little Jesus, the
"Bambino," who healed sick children, and Sant' Agostino had the "Madonna
del Parto," who grants a happy delivery to mothers. Then others were
renowned for the holy water of their fonts, the oil of their lamps, the
power of some wooden saint or marble virgin. Others again seemed
forsaken, given up to tourists and the perquisites of beadles, like mere
museums peopled with dead gods: Finally others disturbed one's faith by
the suggestiveness of their aspects, as, for instance, that Santa Maria
Rotonda, which is located in the Pantheon, a circular hall recalling a
circus, where the Virgin remains the evident tenant of the Olympian
deities.

Pierre took no little interest in the churches of the poor districts, but
did not find there the keen faith and the throngs he had hoped for. One
afternoon, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, he heard the choir in full song,
but the church was quite empty, and the chant had a most lugubrious sound
in such a desert. Then, another day, on entering San Crisogono, he found
it draped, probably in readiness for some festival on the morrow. The
columns were cased with red damask, and between them were hangings and
curtains alternately yellow and blue, white and red; and the young man