A sturdy, bare-headed, bare-footed monk, not
over clean, nor over savoury, hustles along with his brown robe fastened
round his waist by the knotted scourge of cord; a ghastly-looking figure,
covered in a grey shroud from head to foot, with slits for his mouth and
eyes, shakes a money-box in your face, with scowling importunity; a fat
sleek abbe comes sauntering along, peeping into the open shops or (so
scandal whispers) at the faces of the shop-girls. If you look right or
left, behind or in front, you see priests on every side,--Franciscan
friars and Dominicans, Carmelites and Capuchins, priests in brown cloth
and priests in serge, priests in red and white and grey, priests in
purple and priests in rags, standing on the church-steps, stopping at the
doorways, coming down the bye-streets, looking out of the windows--you
see priests everywhere and always. Their faces are, as a rule, not
pleasant to look upon; and I think, at first, with something of the "old
bogey" belief of childhood, you feel more comfortable when they are not
too close to you; but, ere long, this feeling wears away, and you gaze at
the priests and at the beggars with the same stolid indifference.
You are getting, by this time, into the heart of the city, ever and anon
the streets pass through some square or piazza, each like the other. In
the centre stands a broken fountain, moss-grown and weedy, whence the
water spouts languidly; on the one side is a church, on the other some
grim old palace, which from its general aspect, and the iron bars before
its windows, bears a striking resemblance to Newgate gone to ruin.
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