Then,
perhaps, you come across a drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a
travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so,
trudging homewards from some outlying chapel. That red-bodied funereal-
looking two-horse-coach, crawling at a snail's pace, belongs to his
Excellency the Cardinal, whom Papal etiquette forbids to walk on foot
within the city, and whom you can see a little further on pottering
feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported by his clerical
secretary, and followed at a respectful distance by his two attendant
footmen with their threadbare liveries. At last, out of the dreary
waste, at the end of the interminable ill-paved sloughy road, the long
line of the grey tumble-down walls rises gloomily. A few cannon-shot
would batter a breach anywhere, as the events of 1849 proved only too
well. However, at Rome there is neither commerce to be impeded nor
building extension of any kind to be checked; the city has shrunk up
until its precincts are a world too wide; and the walls, if they are
useless, are harmless also; more, by the way, than you can say for most
things here. There is no stir or bustle at the gates. Two French
soldiers, striding across a bench, are playing at picquet with a pack of
greasy cards. A pack-horse or two nibble the blades of grass between the
stones, while their owners haggle with the solitary guard about the
"octroi" duties.
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