Returning to the church above we found, kneeling before one of the
altars, two pilgrims,--a man and a woman. The latter was habited in
a nun-like dress of black, and the former in a long pilgrim's coat of
coarse blue stuff. He bore a pilgrim's staff in his hand, and showed
under his close hood a fine, handsome, reverent face, full of a sort
of tender awe, touched with the pathos of penitence. In attendance
upon the two was a dapper little silk-hatted man, with rogue so
plainly written in his devotional countenance that I was not surprised
to be told that he was a species of spiritual _valet de place_,
whose occupation it was to attend pilgrims on their tour to the Seven
Churches at which these devotees pray in Rome, and there to direct
their orisons and join in them.
It was not to the pilgrims, but to the heretics that the monk now
uncovered the precious marble slab on which Christ stood when he met
Peter flying from Rome and turned him back. You are shown the prints
of the divine feet, which the conscious stone received and keeps
forever; and near at hand is one of the arrows with which St.
Sebastian was shot. We looked at these things critically, having to
pay for the spectacle; but the pilgrims and their guide were all faith
and wonder.
I remember seeing nothing else so finely superstitious at Rome. In a
chapel near the Church of St. John Lateran are, as is well known,
the marble steps which once belonged to Pilate's house, and which the
Saviour is said to have ascended when he went to trial before Pilate.
The steps are protected against the wear and tear of devotion by a
stout casing of wood, and they are constantly covered with penitents,
who ascend and descend them upon their knees. Most of the pious people
whom I saw in this act were children, and the boys enjoyed it with a
good deal of giggling, as a very amusing feat. Some old and haggard
women gave the scene all the dignity which it possessed; but certain
well-dressed ladies and gentlemen were undeniably awkward and absurd,
and I was led to doubt if there were not an incompatibility between
the abandon of simple faith and the respectability of good clothes.