crucis_ it was for a young woman to run the gauntlet of these clerical departments if she had to ask some favour for the exiled husband. [Illustration: STEPS OF THE CHURCH OF SS. DOMENICO AND SISTO Above the steps of _Magnanapoli_ which lead from the Forum of Trajan to the Quirinal hill. Their architect was Bernini. See page 231.] But if they were unlettered and superstitious were the people in those days better than now? The comparisons we sometimes hear urged are not really fair for two reasons. There is to be found in Rome to-day among the lower and the half educated classes all that want of moral equilibrium which a revolution of ideas brings with it. Moral Italy has yet to be made, as the moral unity of Italy is also as yet only in the making. Before 1870, on the other hand, those who were faithful to the standard then put before them, were faithful to what was never better than a poor and low ideal of conduct, sentiment, and religious duty. The papal standard required no refinement of feeling, no education of the conscience: no one was scandalised that a shop should display the barbarous notice "_Qui si castrono per la cappella papale_," or that the popular story ran that when Guido Reni was painting his picture of the Crucifixion before a living model attached to a cross, he killed him at the last moment in his frenzy to see and seize the death struggle, and fled the city; but that the holy father had absolved him because, as you who go may see, it is a _capo d'opera_. And the poor man killed to make a fine picture of Him who endured death to teach us pity for each other? _Ebbene, poveretto_.... The pope is like Nemesis, like the blind forces of nature, like an avalanche, a falling mountain, or an earthquake--not a moral force, but a weight of authority. As you can see for yourself if you go to San Lorenzo in Lucina the work is a _capo d'opera_ and the pope knows better than you. Moral judgment is silent before the weight of authority. My narrator, who only wished to magnify a great picture, not to raise a moral problem, always carried with him a paper blest by the pope, and of extraordinary efficacy, that is it was Spanish and was covered with writing, every corner had something pious in it, and no one who carried it could die unabsolved. The proof was set forth in the blest paper itself, for one man _did_ die unabsolved, they cut off his head in fact; but the head was not to be brow-beaten, it simply went off to the nearest town--and in these cases, as the witty Marquise du Deffand said to Gibbon, _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_--and found a priest (what priest ever shows himself the least _deroute_ in such circumstances?) who at once confessed the head, and there the matter ended.