The Piazza del Popolo was a lake, with the four stone lions just visible, and still spouting water, though it was a drug in the market. In at the open gate rolled a muddy stream, bearing hay-stacks, brushwood, and drowned animals along the Corso. People stood on their balconies wondering what they should do, many breakfastless; for how could the _trattoria_ boys safely waft their coffee-pots across such canals of water? Carriages splashed about in shallower parts with agitated loads, hurrying to drier quarters; many were coming down ladders into boats, and crowds stood waiting their turn with bundles of valuables in their hands. The soldiers were out in full force, working gallantly to save life and property; making rafts, carrying people on their backs, and going through the inundated streets with boat-loads of food for the hungry, shut up in their ill-provided houses. Usually at such times the priests did this work; but now they stood idly looking on, and saying it was a judgment on the people for their treatment of the Pope. The people were troubled because the priests refused to pray for them: but otherwise they snapped their fingers at the sullen old gentlemen in the Vatican; and the brisk, brave troops worked for the city quite as well (the heretics thought better) than the snuffy priests. In the Ghetto the disaster was truly terrible, for the flood came so suddenly that the whole quarter was under water in an hour. The scene was pitiful; for here the Jews live packed like sardines in a box, and being washed out with no warning, were utterly destitute. In one street a man and woman were seen wading up to their waists in water, pushing an old mattress before them, on which were three little children, all they had saved. Later in the day, as boats of provisions came along, women and children swarmed at the windows, crying, 'Bread! bread!' and their wants could not be supplied in spite of the care of the city authorities. One old woman who had lost everything besought the rescuers to bring her a little snuff for the love of heaven; which was very characteristic of the race. One poor man, in trying to save a sick wife and his little ones in a cart, upset them, and the babies were drowned at their own door. Comedy and tragedy side by side. Outside the city, houses were carried off, people lost, and bridges swept away, so sudden and violent was the flood. The heavy rains and warm winds melted the snow on the mountains, and swelled the river till it rose higher than at any time since 1805. Many strangers, who came to Rome for the Christmas holidays, sat in their fine apartments without food, fire, light, or company, till taken off in boats or supplied by hoisting stores in at the windows.