In this attire you have to stand for a
couple of hours amongst a perspiring and ill-tempered crowd, composed of
tourists and priests, for the Italians are too wise to trouble themselves
for such an object. During these two mortal hours you are pushed forward
constantly by energetic ladies bent on being placed, and pushed back by
the Swedish guards, who defend the entrance. The conversation you hear
around you, and perforce engage in, is equally unedifying, both
religiously and intellectually, a sort of _rechauffe_ of Murray's
handbook, flavoured with discussions on last Sunday's sermon. When you
are reduced to such a frame of mind and body as is the natural result of
time so employed, the doors of the chapel are opened, and you have
literally to fight your way in amidst a crowd of ladies hustling,
screaming, and fainting. If you are lucky, you get standing room in a
sort of open pen, whence, if you are tall, you can catch a sight of the
Pope's tiara in the distance; or, if you belong to the softer sex, you
get a place behind the screen, where you cannot see, but, what is much
better, can sit. The atmosphere of the candle-lighted, crammed chapel is
overpowering, and occupation you have none, except trying in the dim
light to decipher the frescoes on the roof, with your head turned
backwards. For three long hours you have a succession of dreary
monotonous strains, forming portions of a chant, to you unintelligible,
broken at intervals by a passage of intonation.
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