They walked through the morning, already hot, though the hour was so early, with a sultry, splendid blue over their heads, and the air too sweet as it flowed over the garden-walls. The orange-trees seemed to be oppressed by the weight of their own odors, and to throw them off in strong, panting respirations. The sun was blazing directly behind one of the cupolas of the basilica, as they went up the hill, seeming to be set in the lantern; and then a light coolness touched them in the shadow, and they entered the beautiful church, where perpetual freshness reigns, rivalling the climate of St. Peter’s. The bells were just dropping off for the last fifteen minutes’ tolling, and the canons were coming in for choir, one by one, or two by two. One or two of the earlier ones, in their snow-white _cottas_ and ermine capes, were kneeling before a shrine or strolling slowly across the nave toward the choir-chapel. Here and there a Mass was being said, with a little group of poor people gathered about the altar, kneeling on the magnificent pavement of involved mosaic work, or sitting on the bases of the great columns. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head received communion at one altar, two little children playing about her, and clinging to her skirts as she got up to go to her place, her hands folded, her face wrapt in devotion, as undisturbed by the prattling and pulling of the little ones as St. Charles Borromeo over his altar by the winged cherubs that held up and peeped through his long scarlet train. Our American ladies knelt near the door, by the side of the tribune, facing the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at the other side of the church. The morning light entering this chapel set all its marbles glittering, and made the gilt tabernacle in the centre brighter than the lamps that burned before it, and, shining out into the church, set the great porphyry columns of the canopy in a glow. One might fancy that the blood of the martyrs whose bodies and relics reposed beneath was beginning to rise and circulate through the rich stone, above which the martyr’s crown and palm stood out in burning gold. Having finished their prayer to “His Majesty,” as the Spaniards beautifully express it, the two knelt at the _prie-dieu_ before the entrance to the gorgeous Borghese Chapel, to salute Our Lady in sight of St. Luke’s portrait of her. The face was doubly covered by its curtain of gold-embroidered silk and gates of transparent alabaster; but their eyes were fixed on the screen as they prayed, and these needed no more than they saw. Of this picture it has been said that sometimes angels have been found chanting litanies about it.